Fish Thread

[007Sean]

Hello, I want to share an experiment I did with a small brute trash bin filled with bio balls and pure ammonia from Walmart in a 300 gallon plastic tank. I filled the tank with water and put in about a cup of ammonia and let the tank cycle through the nitrification process. I kept adding ammonia as soon as it was cleared, eventually the water ran out of KH minerals and the nitrification stopped clearing the ammonia. Then I put baking soda in the water and the nitrification started again. I concluded that the best test to get is the KH test. Because when the KH goes to zero your fish will get sick.

Was this fresh or saltwater?

 

[RiverOtter]

It’s awesome to watch them grow!

And oh wow that sounds like a super cool project!! why is it so difficult to raise them, out of curiosity? I mean, the ones in the ocean seem pretty prolific? But maybe that’s a different species?

It's because a bunch die in the drifting stages, because food has to basically fall against them. Then, in the next stages, they've been observed to be very cannibalistic - which I think is more because of the very sterile environment that they've been raised in in captivity, than because of natural inclination.
Then, when they are making the transition to land, in captivity, a great many of them drown, because they are raised in jars, there's no slope. People who have raised them have been setting alarms for every 2 hours to try to catch them at the exact right moment that they start to transition to move them, to not lose as many.

People are afraid to lose them to a non-sterile environment if they raise them in live water on a sloped, sanded (aka, impossible to keep sterile) tank, but I feel like there's a lot that can be learned from trying, especially as getting a handful of babies from 1000+ eggs is a success with the current methods.

 

[Fluffs_flock]

I have a female betta. I got her just a few days ago.
I don't have a name for her yet, anyone have any suggestions? She is white with a pink/purple tail.

 

[black_cat]

I have a female betta. I got her just a few days ago.
I don't have a name for her yet, anyone have any suggestions? She is white with a pink/purple tail.

Pictures!! Maybe Orchid or another flower name?

 

[Fluffs_flock]

Pictures!! Maybe Orchid or another flower name?

I can try... betta's are speedy little things, and my camera sucks.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Oh! I should add the info in my new fish tank too!
We have owned fish for about a month. We have a 20 gallon tank, with one Three Spot Gourami, (Another gourami that the Craigslist guy said was a Leopard pint, but I don't that is a thing, so not certain what he is....), one Black Molly, Two Silver Dollars, Six Neon Tetras, Skirt Tetra and a Khili loach. I will get pictures in a bit. Thanks for the awesome fish thread!

Are you going to eventually put the silver dollars in a bigger tank? They grow large and from what I’ve read they’re very active.

 

[Weeg]

Are you going to eventually put the silver dollars in a bigger tank? They grow large and from what I’ve read they’re very active.

We got the tank from Craigslist, I actually don't know what breed the possible "Silver dollars" are, but when we looked at the Petsmart website to guess there breeds, we didn't know which ones they may be between the White Skirt tetra, or the Silver dollars. Since Silver dollars get really big, the ones I'm talking about are probably Skirt tetras then. Thanks for clearing that up!

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

We got the tank from Craigslist, I actually don't know what breed the possible "Silver dollars" are, but when we looked at the Petsmart website to guess there breeds, we didn't know which ones they may be between the White Skirt tetra, or the Silver dollars. Since Silver dollars get really big, the ones I'm talking about are probably Skirt tetras then. Thanks for clearing that up!

It’s still possible that they’re juvenile silver dollars, so haven’t reached full size yet. You could check out some pictures to compare, they seem to have a few clear differences if you look closely.

 

[ShrekDawg]

It's because a bunch die in the drifting stages, because food has to basically fall against them. Then, in the next stages, they've been observed to be very cannibalistic - which I think is more because of the very sterile environment that they've been raised in in captivity, than because of natural inclination.
Then, when they are making the transition to land, in captivity, a great many of them drown, because they are raised in jars, there's no slope. People who have raised them have been setting alarms for every 2 hours to try to catch them at the exact right moment that they start to transition to move them, to not lose as many.

People are afraid to lose them to a non-sterile environment if they raise them in live water on a sloped, sanded (aka, impossible to keep sterile) tank, but I feel like there's a lot that can be learned from trying, especially as getting a handful of babies from 1000+ eggs is a success with the current methods.

That makes a lot of sense!! I would think more natural would be better ? But I can understand wanting it to be sterile or whatever

 

[Weeg]

It’s still possible that they’re juvenile silver dollars, so haven’t reached full size yet. You could check out some pictures to compare, they seem to have a few clear differences if you look closely.

Cool, I will do some more research on that! Thanks for the info, I defiantly want to be prepared!