Beware the Shallows

[jedimasterben]

So you have nowhere to put a 500mL container and an air pump? Doubtful.

[llama roadkill]

So you have nowhere to put a 500mL container and an air pump? Doubtful.

 

I have plenty of places to put it, but my mom says no more stuff. I asked her about brine shrimp breeding (nw know they aren't very beneficial) awhile back and she disagreed. That's like a tiny water bottle. Maybe I can convince her to led me breed mysis or something,

[patback]

I have plenty of places to put it, but my mom says no more stuff. I asked her about brine shrimp breeding (nw know they aren't very beneficial) awhile back and she disagreed. That's like a tiny water bottle. Maybe I can convince her to led me breed mysis or something,

mysis are cannibals and extremely hard to culture. It's why they are so damn expensive to buy live. Air pump, soda bottle, and a package of eggs small enough to hide in your palm. Take all of it in your room and put it under your bed. No light is needed. your mom will never know its there.

 

And if she finds it and gets mad, just bring up the fact that she should be happy that she found brine shrimp under your bed instead of drugs,booze, weapons, or porn.

[NirvanaandTool]

And if she finds it and gets mad, just bring up the fact that she should be happy that she found brine shrimp under your bed instead of drugs,booze, weapons, or porn.

 

ROTFL

 

Ben - do you quarantine new arrivals? 6 fish at once with no QT makes me a little

[llama roadkill]

mysis are cannibals and extremely hard to culture. It's why they are so damn expensive to buy live.

 

Air pump, soda bottle, and a package of eggs small enough to hide in your palm. Take all of it in your room and put it under your bed. No light is needed. your mom will never know its there. And if she finds it and gets mad, just bring up the fact that she should be happy that she found brine shrimp under your bed instead of drugs,booze, weapons, or porn.

 

What if I have all of the above? Not saying I do, but...I do...

 

What would be the best and easiest live food to breed?

 

Oh and also I have a loft bed. It's like a bunk bed except there is only a bed on the top. I suppose I could hide it in the stand. Or just ask my mom and explain to her the benefits and ease of care of live food.

 

Nah, that's like playing life on Easy!

[jedimasterben]

I have plenty of places to put it, but my mom says no more stuff. I asked her about brine shrimp breeding (nw know they aren't very beneficial) awhile back and she disagreed. That's like a tiny water bottle. Maybe I can convince her to led me breed mysis or something,

Well, you're not going to actually be breeding brine shrimp, I'm not even sure how that would be done. You'll be hatching them only, which takes 16-24 hours depending on if they're decapsulated or not.

 

To culture mysis, you need a frighteningly large tank, insane amounts of food, and some way to deal with constant cannibalism.

 

mysis are cannibals and extremely hard to culture. It's why they are so damn expensive to buy live. Air pump, soda bottle, and a package of eggs small enough to hide in your palm. Take all of it in your room and put it under your bed. No light is needed. your mom will never know its there.

 

And if she finds it and gets mad, just bring up the fact that she should be happy that she found brine shrimp under your bed instead of drugs,booze, weapons, or porn.

 

Ben - do you quarantine new arrivals? 6 fish at once with no QT makes me a little

Not at this time, and unfortunately it would not make a difference against specifically ich, which I cannot get out of my tank. After rigorous quarantine and proactive treatment, I have stumbled upon a strain that can live for more than 72 days without a host and reappear, and combine that now with the fact that I cannot trap or catch the leopard wrasse in the tank. meh.

[metrokat]

I have plenty of places to put it, but my mom says no more stuff. I asked her about brine shrimp breeding (nw know they aren't very beneficial) awhile back and she disagreed. That's like a tiny water bottle. Maybe I can convince her to led me breed mysis or something,

I was able to hatch baby brine shrimp in a cup of tank water with no light and no bubbler. I left it in there by accident and they hatched. The key is to buy quality eggs and I recommend brine shrimp direct.

[llama roadkill]

I was able to hatch baby brine shrimp in a cup of tank water with no light and no bubbler. I left it in there by accident and they hatched. The key is to buy quality eggs and I recommend brine shrimp direct.

 

Interesting. I was just under the impression brine shrimp are like McDonalds for fish.

[jedimasterben]

They will hatch without water movement, but it takes longer on average and the hatch rate is lower ( but not an issue with high-quality cysts from places like BSD). BSD actually has a hatchery that requires no bubbler and has a very high hatch rate, but not all at once, they hatch over several days so you can harvest multiple times. The eggs also stay in a separate chamber or something like that. Haven't gotten one yet, but everyone sings its praise.

 

As far as being akin to McDonalds, only unhatched cysts and right fresh from the egg they have some nutrition, but not too much. The brine shrimp you see frozen are adults and are basically useless except for providing calories.

[llama roadkill]

They will hatch without water movement, but it takes longer on average and the hatch rate is lower ( but not an issue with high-quality cysts from places like BSD). BSD actually has a hatchery that requires no bubbler and has a very high hatch rate, but not all at once, they hatch over several days so you can harvest multiple times. The eggs also stay in a separate chamber or something like that. Haven't gotten one yet, but everyone sings its praise.As far as being akin to McDonalds, only unhatched cysts and right fresh from the egg they have some nutrition, but not too much. The brine shrimp you see frozen are adults and are basically useless except for providing calories.

 

Okay. So what would be the easiest and most healthiest live food to raise?

[jedimasterben]

Okay. So what would be the easiest and most healthiest live food to raise?

You can't have both of those. Pick one.

[llama roadkill]

You can't have both of those. Pick one.

Hmm. By easiest I mean just in a small bottle. What other care would need to be taken?

[jedimasterben]

Again, you won't be 'breeding' anything but phytoplankton and some types of copepods (tisbe) in that small of a size.

 

For phytoplankton, you need to purchase a starter culture and fertilizer, keep good lighting on it and good flow (using an air pump and line), and harvest at least 50-75% of the culture weekly, and always have a 'backup' culture for when it crashes (it will eventually happen, just a matter of when). Nannochloropsis is the most widely cultured, and you can get everything you need from FAF at http://florida-aqua-farms.com/

 

For tisbe copepods, it's similar. Minimal aeration crush a pellet every few days to feed them, or tint the water slightly green with phytoplankton.

 

To hatch artemia, buy good eggs (preferably from BSD, their Premium or San Francisco Bay [which are even smaller when they hatch] lines) and the easiest to use is their pumpless hatchery, which is about $25. Put in some tank water (or mix your own, whatevs), put the eggs in the hatchery, put in a little bit of phyto, and then start harvesting 24 hours later. I would also, very preferably, decapsulate the eggs before hatching, that way you do not need to separate them manually.

 

To culture mysids.... I wouldn't even bother. Focus your energy and resources on something else.

[patback]

Ben. Does an ats need to have airstone flow, or can I prop up a powerhead to give it more flow but less air? Just wondering because where I want to place my ats will have flow in an awkward angle and I don't think a bubbler will be strong enough.

[jedimasterben]

People are typically finding just as much success with the powerhead method as they are the airstone method for UAS.

[patback]

Awesome. Someone swiped my drill kit so at work I'm going to scrape up my mesh. Just working in an idea to Hang it now. I'm starting off with the coralife fuge light. As long as I'm getting good growth a month or so down te line, would you recomend me going to LEDs with some red anyway?

[Psychosis]

Noobs and their ATS. Fo' real.

[jedimasterben]

Awesome. Someone swiped my drill kit so at work I'm going to scrape up my mesh. Just working in an idea to Hang it now. I'm starting off with the coralife fuge light. As long as I'm getting good growth a month or so down te line, would you recomend me going to LEDs with some red anyway?

Growth will be exponential with much less power and heat with LEDs. Otherwise, you'd need a warm white CFL and replace it every 3 months (that's their entire useful life lol). You don't really need very many to be effective, either. I can probably scrounge up some here and throw them together that you can take for cheap.

[NirvanaandTool]

Not at this time, and unfortunately it would not make a difference against specifically ich, which I cannot get out of my tank. After rigorous quarantine and proactive treatment, I have stumbled upon a strain that can live for more than 72 days without a host and reappear, and combine that now with the fact that I cannot trap or catch the leopard wrasse in the tank. meh.

 

Whoa uber ich. Yikes.

 

What proactive treatment have you tried?

Right now hypo is my method of choice for all new arrivals but I keep cupramine on hand if there's a stubborn outbreak. I've had ich in my 40 once and now QT all newcomers now.

 

I feel the most of the time its dormant and with a healthy diet (plus cleaner wrasse plus any cleaner shrimp) should help keep it at bay.

[llama roadkill]

Again, you won't be 'breeding' anything but phytoplankton and some types of copepods (tisbe) in that small of a size.

 

For phytoplankton, you need to purchase a starter culture and fertilizer, keep good lighting on it and good flow (using an air pump and line), and harvest at least 50-75% of the culture weekly, and always have a 'backup' culture for when it crashes (it will eventually happen, just a matter of when). Nannochloropsis is the most widely cultured, and you can get everything you need from FAF at http://florida-aqua-farms.com/'>http://florida-aqua-farms.com/

 

For tisbe copepods, it's similar. Minimal aeration crush a pellet every few days to feed them, or tint the water slightly green with phytoplankton.

 

To hatch artemia, buy good eggs (preferably from BSD, their Premium or San Francisco Bay [which are even smaller when they hatch] lines) and the easiest to use is their pumpless hatchery, which is about $25. Put in some tank water (or mix your own, whatevs), put the eggs in the hatchery, put in a little bit of phyto, and then start harvesting 24 hours later. I would also, very preferably, http://www.ventralfins.com/misc_articles_decap_bs.html'>decapsulate the eggs before hatching, that way you do not need to separate them manually.

 

To culture mysids.... I wouldn't even bother. Focus your energy and resources on something else.

 

Thanks. I'll look into all of those.

[jedimasterben]

Whoa uber ich. Yikes.

Yep, that's what I'm saying

 

What proactive treatment have you tried?

Right now hypo is my method of choice for all new arrivals but I keep cupramine on hand if there's a stubborn outbreak. I've had ich in my 40 once and now QT all newcomers now.

All fish got at least Cupramine at 0.4ppm. Most got Prazipro as well, but that's really for internal stuff.

 

I feel the most of the time its dormant and with a healthy diet (plus cleaner wrasse plus any cleaner shrimp) should help keep it at bay.

Nope, cleaner fish and shrimp do nothing for external parasites unless they are large enough to not be covered by the host fish's slime coat. Ich is tiny and lives protected in the gills and under the slime coat. Only medications can be rid of it (in most cases, except those strains that are resistant).

[NirvanaandTool]

Good point about the cleaners. So the ich lived through 0.4ppm of Cupramine or it survived the fallow period?

[jedimasterben]

Survived the 72 day fallow period. I saw no flashing after the round of Cupramine on the fish (they were in for almost another 60 days after their treatment).

[jedimasterben]

So this morning when I leave for work, I hear my well pumps both running outside (one pulls from the well and pushes into an aerator to degas sulfur, the other pulls from the aerator tank through the rest of the system and into the house), but it sounds, well, off. So I walk over, and there is literally a jet of water shooting out of the side of the pump pushing into the house. I don't know if it was a pressure relief valve or what, but it stopped when the pressure switch flipped off, so I called my grandpa to see if he could come take a look at it since I was already late for work from just looking it over.

 

I guess the little tube that connects the pressure switch to tell it to turn off came off, no big deal. He fixed that and was on his way.

 

I come home, and as I'm about to pull into the driveway, I see water again pouring out of the same pump. I guess that it ran a LOT during the day before my grandpa came, got really hot, and pushed the PVC out of the threading. I went to Home Depot, got new pieces to plumb into it, and put them all on by myself - but apparently I didn't do a good enough job, as 15 minutes later I go back outside to check it all out and I see it has come off again, this time, though, it was just two of the PVC pieces came apart. I used the purple cleaner and PVC glue on them, and let them dry for 10-15 minutes before turning the water back on, apparently that wasn't enough this time. le sigh.

 

 

 

 

 

In tank news, I switched from the MJ1200 to the Mag5 on the algae scrubber- holy damn, what a difference! It's ridiculous! Now there is a rapid sheet of water flowing evenly down the sheet instead of seeing water just trickle down. Only downside is now there is a very slight 'hissing' sound the tank makes from the water passive through the holes drilled in the pipe.

 

With the Mag5 in place, the whole bit is a few inches shorter than it was before - so instead of lowering the LED heatsinks down, I just angled them down so the light is more incident.

 

Hopefully I can get this damn thing to start growing! All this feeding I'm doing is bringing back the dreaded dinoflagellates! What I thought was cyano before more than likely was not, as I do remember that more often than not there were bubbles attached to the stringy clumps. Further proof that no matter what you do, you will never be rid of dinos.

[jedimasterben]

I CAN'T STOP CLICKING

 

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