Rookie Mistake - Help?

[jjohnwm]

...I don't want to add any more complications for myself, and having water I can use straight from the hose is really handy. Better to simply choose fish and plants who can roll with the conditions I've got than struggle to change it....

This ^ is the key to success and happiness in the hobby, IMHO. It should be made into a bumper sticker or tattoo or something...

...I've even considered offering free rocks to other fishkeepers in my area, on the condition that they come out and harvest them themselves, but I don't know if anyone would consider it worth the effort since the amount of rocks they would need is probably cheap enough to buy and maybe not worth the time to pick out of my arenas and paths...

Yeah, that might or might not work. Personally, as far as I am concerned nothing is "cheap enough to buy..." when I also have the option to build it, catch it, breed it, raise it, shoot it, filet it, butcher it or dig it up myself...but that's just me. I have several monstrous rockpiles on my land, left over from when the earlier settlers laboriously cleared the fields for agriculture. I can and do always find whatever rocks I need, for whatever purpose, right there for the taking. My trusty ATV and I have retrieved many tons worth over the years, for rock gardens, tree circles, walkway borders, aquariums...you name it.

But there are definitely people who are constitutionally incapable of picking up a rock in a field, taking it home and using it in a fishtank. They simply must pay big bucks for stones that were harvested from a fossil dig in the Gobi desert, hand-chipped from the belly scales of freshly-hatched Spendosaurus nestlings that drew their last breath 70,000,000 years ago; nothing else will do. Hey, more power to 'em; keeps 'em off my rock pile! But they won't be your target market.

 

[Heck]

I was gone for the weekend. Overfed Thursday night, and on Friday I did big water changes and then fed lightly. Left my lights off.

Flew out of Sacramento on Friday night. The Great Heckening caught up to us in Salt Lake City - we were stuck there for hours before we were able to fly to out destination, which was Bozeman, MT. While stuck in SLC I saw a lady about my age get drunk, throw a giant fit about the inconvenience, get detained by airport cops and - since she was basically too drunk to walk at that point - get wheeled away in a wheelchair by the cops. I sort of envied her; I, too, would have liked to get drunk and yell at cops.

Arrived in Bozeman at like 4am Saturday. Made it to our Saturday and Sunday appointments but it was exhausting. On Sunday I had a bunch of things I needed to do that were quite physical, and I really didn't want to since I was beat, but I pushed through on the theory that I could sleep on the flight home.

Sunday night at 10pm we got an email that our flights home were canceled. So we rented a minivan and drove home starting at 11pm. Mr. Heck took the first driving shift while I tried to sleep (well, first I had a gigantic fit and cried for like an hour because our route home took us through Yellowstone for about 10 minutes and not only was it dark but I wasn't even aware that we were in the park until after we came out. I've *always* wanted to go to Yellowstone; I've been to several beautiful national parks but haven't been there, and I was hysterical about passing through without seeing anything or stopping).

Got back to Sacramento just after 3pm Monday and had chores to do - I had arranged for a friend to cover my dog and horse chores, but I had been expecting to arrive home somewhat rested midmorning, not 3pm after a 17 hour drive. My friend had done a big chunk of my chores but I still had a lot to do.

When I finally got in the house I discovered that one of my Hara Jerdoni had died and another is missing. I guess it's possible the missing one was eaten but I didn't find a single scrap, so I'm wondering if I vacuumed him out accidentally on Friday. It's possible.

All remaining fish are fine. There is no new damage on any of the Crime Fish.

I do notice that the mystuses have grown - more than I would have thought possible over a weekend. So that's alarming.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Is this better?
***To me it's a cool photo you cannot improve or spoil.

...the priority is giving the fish a fun and safe habitat, not winning an aquascaping award.
***You are funny with a right touch of sarcasm as always

Plants have been a tough one. I'm using only sand, no soil, which is a no-go for a lot of plants, and I'm told my pH is also a potential problem. A girl at the LFS tried to get me to buy stuff to lower my pH and vet some plants she likes, but... no. Right now I have a total of 209 gallons to manage (between the 3 tanks) and I am saving a HUGE amount of time and headache by working with the water I've got (just gonna gloat again that I can refill my tanks with the garden hose, no treatments - might have to limit that to smaller water changes in the winter, but in the summer my well water comes out of the hose tank safe and 78°).
***That's right. Do NOT mess with artificially maintaining pH, I'd say.

Plus even when a plant seems like it's doing okay, the fish are pretty hard on them. I'm having some luck with my dwarf tiger lotus (which is now 3 dwarf tiger lotuses) and corkscrew val - if that's all I can grow with the water and fish I have, that's fine. Plus I have the plants above the water with just the roots in for nitrate assistance - right now it's garlic, sweet potato, and basil.
***I am not a plant guy whatsoever. I love your use of vegetables and herbs though, I hope it works indeed. Have you proven it to yourself with the API tests?

I moved the 3 eBay MLs to the 125 immediately after saying I didn't want to/couldn't catch them. I simply placed a black plastic garden pot in the tank, waited for a fish to use it as a cave, scooped it up, and poured the fish into a bowl. Easy. And as each fish left, the next claimed the pot within moments.
***Good resourcefulness (another one of your strong suits) and kinda funny too how eager the little silly buggers are to outdo each other.

It's been almost a week, so far so good. Actually I think the fish are doing a little better with this arrangement (at least for now) - the sun cats in particular seem less henpecked. The rts's eye is still fine but he's got a bit of nibbling on his fins - but that dude's a jerk, I'd nibble his fins too.
***ROFL...

I attribute the relative peace to several factors:
***Great analytics. You'll be one of the best keepers on our forum soon.

... it's really interesting - the rts will start in on a sun cat, and a ML will come over and start on the rts, and then another ML comes and starts on the first one - by which time the sun cat and the rts have simply left.
***Wonderful and useful detective work.

... and Mr. Heck wanted him, so now he's growing out in the "empty emergency tank/plant growing station."
***Ooooogh! Nice work, Agent Heck! It's spreading in the desired direction.

This is altogether Too Many Fish, even though it's peaceful enough at the moment - I'm thinking I'll give the sun cats back soon. I've seen varying reports about their potential adult size, and if they were to reach 18" my tank would be a sad little jail for them. Even if they don't get that big, they're kind of boring.
***Yes, they do not interact with a keeper and often hide a lot. Our ten-pack reached 14"-18" tip to tip but it took 10-20 years, very large tanks, and all you can eat fish and pellets.

Predatory Fins has baby eupterus with marbled coloring - like, regular eupterus with albino spots, or maybe albino eupterus with regular colored spots. I want one DESPERATELY
***ROFL...

but can't see spending that much on a fish - especially at the moment. Sigh.
***They are striking and first of their kind. The price will come down if more come to the market but it may take year(s). IDK how they are produced... and if it involves manmade manipulations, one would be wise to know of what kind these manipulations are, so they do not accidentally support what they consider cruel practices. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Heck]

***I am not a plant guy whatsoever. I love your use of vegetables and herbs though, I hope it works indeed. Have you proven it to yourself with the API tests?

***They are striking and first of their kind. The price will come down if more come to the market but it may take year(s). IDK how they are produced... and if it involves manmade manipulations, one would be wise to know of what kind these manipulations are, so they do not accidentally support what they consider cruel practices. Just my 2 cents.

* How would I prove it? I have been testing somewhat regularly but only sometimes record the values. I guess I should go back and check my photos to see when the sweet potato started, and start testing *and recording* values for a bit. I've been recording them in a Google sheet, and set up a little graph, so maybe with the date of the potato I could see a change on the graph. Of course I haven't recorded every water change, which would affect it as well, but it might still be interesting.

* How might they achieve that pattern? Can you give examples of human intervention that would accomplish that? I'd assumed someone got lucky and scored a fish with a color mutation, although that would be rare and lucky indeed. It happened with panda coloring in German Shepherds, though - unlike a lot of mammal colors that appear in certain breeds where previously that color was impossible, and it is strongly suspected that the color gene was introduced by using breeding stock from other breeds and simply lying on the pedigree (I'm looking at you, silver Labs), the panda gene in Shepherds was proven to be a de novo mutation originating from an identified dog. Obviously I'd be fine with that, or even outcrossing - I'm no fish breed purist, I don't care if their great granddaddy was a panda Shepherd, I just like Eupteruses and the spots are cool.

But I'd love to know what human manipulation could result in this, and understand where a welfare concern might come in.

In other news:

All of my hara jerdoni and CPDs are dead; all the other fish who have been in with them are fine. This leads me to believe that something in my tank was inhospitable to those species, and I probably won't try them again (it's a shame - the CPDs were boring but I loved the haras). My only surviving nano fish are my scarlet badis, and they are delightful and I want more. Interestingly I've read that they are shy and hard to feed, which has not been my experience - mine are fairly outgoing and will eat anything from biofilm to Massivore (they eat it rather slowly, though!) I also suspect them of being responsible for controlling my pond snails, although I'm not positive.

I have 2 baby raphaels and 2 baby pictus in my 29 gallon now. I've put some thought into how this will go in the future and I think when the babies in the 29 are off quarantine, I will move them into the 55 with the baby eupterus and put the synodontis nigriventris and scarlet badis back in the 29. Later the baby eupterus can go into the 125 (when he's big enough to hold his own - he's growing rapidly but is still far too wee to handle the rtbs and MLs) and the sun cats can be rehomed or returned.

This gives me a little gratification: I picked up the raphaels and pictuses at my local pet store, and I was concerned that they looked a little spotty. That store has a great return policy and I have poor self control, so I went for it anyway (and they were going into an empty tank)...

The guy who helped me was the same guy I spoke to early spring when I had the Ich outbreak; he's the closest thing that store has to a fish guy, but he didn't know much about ich treatment or catfish and really couldn't help me. I pointed out the spots of concern on the pictuses I didn't buy, and he said, "thanks, I'll need to keep an eye on that and maybe take them to the back. I hope it's not ich; pictus are scaleless and sensitive to medication - if it is Ich, I'll need to figure out how to treat them."

He learned! When I had my Ich situation in the spring, he didn't know any of that - I taught him! So I gave him my recommendation based on my experience and what I've learned here (I've since figured out that my rapid deaths were probably not due to the Ich OR directly the fault of the Ich-x I used, but, again, a big mistake I made - I'm so sorry, fishies, I tried). It's really gratifying that I taught him the extra concern for scaleless fish and it stuck.

On an unrelated note, I freaking hate my RTBS. He's the bravest fish I have, but he's stupid and mean. I mean, I kinda like him because I'm attached, but WHAT A JERK. All my other butthead fish are getting along fairly well, being butts to each other only when there's a reason, like a squabble over territory or the like, but Megalodon goes looking for it. Even the mystuses, famed for their nastiness, have mostly just claimed their spots and mind their business, but Meg cruises around looking for someone to hassle.

The mystuses keep growing like they're getting paid to do it - Bucket is almost as big as Stegosaurus the mature eupterus. Stegosaurus is still my favorite fish, and Bucket is second favorite, with Brontosaurus a close third. I really hope I end up being able to keep all of the mystuses, but knowing which fish I like the best makes it easy to plan for what to do if the aggression gets out of control - return the sun cats and maybe a couple mystuses, put Stegosaurus in the 55 with Brontosaurus the baby eupterus, etc...

I don't know how to tell Mr. Heck that, at the very least, I need another 55 gallon...

 

[Heck]

Obviously I am a fan of tannins. Aesthetically I like the 55 gallon the best at the moment, but that's always changing. The 29 is just a random jumble of quarantine and plant experiments - I'm playing with a ludwigia species that is locally invasive (my friend who works at the nature conservancy across the street told me that it is morally correct to remove it from the creek and put it in plant jail). I figure if anything it's got a good shot, since it likes the local water well enough to be invasive, and if it dies in my tank, at least it was free and I'm doing my part to assist with eradication.

The only aquatic plant that's been doing well for any length of time is the dwarf tiger lotus, which has produced an offspring. I like the muddy red/brown color and find it goes well with my tannins to sort of maintain the blackwater look, but I don't want to pay for more plants when they just keep dying. The ludwigia is greener but is a species that can get rather reddish, so I'll see if I can encourage that (if it lives).

The 125 has too many buckets in it - obviously right now my priority is providing enough hides so the Crime Fish don't eat each other, but I'd like to make it a little more natural, and I need to be using my vertical space a little better. May pick up some cinder blocks to play with. My entire living room floor is completely covered with big rocks harvested from my property that I've been stacking like blocks, trying to lay out caves and glue them together... Mr. Heck is a patient man.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

How would I prove it?
***I'd think simply measuring nitrates before and after. There may be caveats of course, like it may take some time for a plant to adjust and start growing.

How might they achieve that pattern?
***IDK. Because I am not a color morph fan, I don't pay much attention to this. The producers may manipulate with fertilized eggs or newborns to affect the changes they want. Sometimes we presume / heard they flash the eggs with UV light to "bleach" them. wednesday13 is my go-to color morph guy

On an unrelated note, I freaking hate my RTBS. He's the bravest fish I have, but he's stupid and mean. I mean, I kinda like him because I'm attached, but WHAT A JERK. All my other butthead fish are getting along fairly well, being butts to each other only when there's a reason, like a squabble over territory or the like, but Megalodon goes looking for it. Even the mystuses, famed for their nastiness, have mostly just claimed their spots and mind their business, but Meg cruises around looking for someone to hassle.
***Interesting. I've never spent enough time by our tanks housing RTBSs to observe such behavior. We have one currently too in a 240g, that's about 3"-4" now. Seems innocent so far

I don't know how to tell Mr. Heck that, at the very least, I need another 55 gallon...
***

 

[Heck]

Updates in the land of Heck, with a question.



The 125g tank remains stable. 4 mystus leucophasis, 2 horabagrus brachysoma, 1 synodontis eupterus, 1 rtbs. Less fighting recently - Mr. Heck had a bunch of leftover PVC pipes, and I've been playing with making new hides out of the pipe connectors. I'm warming up to the sun cats, particularly Ichthyosaurus - he has claimed a pipe connector that is T-shaped, and while he often hangs out in the top horizontal part, his favorite position is head-up with his tail stuffed down in the stem of the T. I have no idea how he does it, but I find it charming as hell. I had been thinking about rehoming them and still might do so if they get too big, but they're growing very slowly and I'm liking them more. I also scored a really really cool huge piece of driftwood that provides a great hiding place for the biggest Mystus. More hides are the key to this group's success, and I like rearranging things to keep it interesting. Have to keep making sure to save space for Stegosaurus the eupterus to swim his big loops - he gets extra swimmy in the evening after a big water change.



The 55g has 1 eupterus, Brontosaurus, who is growing at an alarming rate, and the 7 nigriventris. Nigriventris are so frustrating - I love watching them swim, but they're so shy. My Hara Jerdoni died; I realized that my house simply gets too hot in the summer for them, so in addition to finding a temp that works for them and the warmer water fish I have the challenge of needing to get a chiller if I ever try those again. I might.



The 29 has 3 pictus and 2 striped Raphaels - it was an accident, I swear. They're all quite small for now; I realize they can't live there permanently. The pictus are frustratingly shy and haven't warmed up at all yet. Of the 2 Raphaels, the one with the less striking/muddier stripes is by far the bolder one - they both come out in the evening but the plainer one is pretty fearless. That tank is struggling with algae, and I'm trying to tackle it by hand while also hoping I can get some plants going to outcompete it. It has bladder snails, limpets, and caddisfly larvae, as well - tons of fun to watch.



So the question is: I've been using the aqadvisor.com stocking calculator to figure out how to rearrange the fish to accommodate everyone's needs as the ones in the 29 get bigger (for starters, the nigriventris don't need to be in the 55). I don't plan to put any new fish into the 125 - upsetting the social balance in there could invite a bloodbath. But when I plug its size, filters, and current stocking list into aqadvisor I get a dire warning that I need to add more filtration. I check my water pretty regularly, and it has been holding steady at 0/0/10. While I'm sure that will change as the fish grow up, and I'm prepared to add more filtration, is there a reason other than nitrogen load that I might need to add filtration more urgently?

 

[Fishman Dave]

No, imo, go by your numbers, not what a piece of computer software says. Maybe good for rough guidance but I think you’re doing splendid. Always good to have a spare filter or two on the go to be able to move media about.

 

[Heck]

Next question: I moved my raphaels and pictuses into my 55 so I can battle algae in the 29 (they were going to move as they got bigger anyway, I just did it sooner than planned).

They've been much more active since the move - swimming around, not doing anything weird, per se, just not hiding. I had assumed that the constant hiding was normal for the raphaels, since everyone reports their raphaels hide/keep still 24/7 (I wasn't as sure about the pictuses).

There is plenty of driftwood and places to hide in the 55, as there was in the 29. The water is similar - I'd just done big changes in both tanks, using the same water source. I am not seeing anything I'd call distress, just more activity.

The only differences I can think of are:
* The 55 isn't having an algae problem
* The 55 has no live plants, while I was finally having some plant success in the 29
And - what may be the most significant difference -
* There are other fish in the 55; a young synodontis eupterus and 6 synodontis nigriventris.

Come to think of it, the nigriventris are more active/hiding less than usual today, too.

I moved the lights from the 29 to the 55, so the 55 is brighter than it had been previously - not brighter than the raphaels and pictuses had been accustomed to, but brighter than the eupterus and nigriventris were accustomed to.

I notice no change in the eupterus's behavior - he was very shy when I got him as a baby several months ago, but has slowly been coming out of his shell. He is not bullying the other fish, just doing his eupterus thing.

Are the raphs and pictuses just active because they're freaked about the move? Are they happier because they're out of the algae? Are they happier because they have more space, despite that they'd previously used only the hideyer side of the 29? Will they calm down and settle into hiding again?

Is it possible that the raphs, pictuses, and nigriventris are dithering each other (or being dithered by the eupterus) and feel emboldened by safety in numbers?

Or is this an indication that they'd rather go back into the algae tank? They can't stay there indefinitely, especially the raphaels, but they're still small enough to go back for now if they want to.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I'd say this is strange for the raphs if there are available hideouts and they are in the open. Id guess they are stressed (by water? because if it was light or bullying they'd hide). Give it some time and see if they calm down?

Pictuses are not hiders when comfortable. Nigriventris are hiders but will come out a lot more than raphs.

Algae and presence or absence of live plants shouldnt matter to their comfort.