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Post by Carl on Oct 27, 2009 9:48:02 GMT -5
I keep trying to get a good shot of him but he is so zippy and then the greedy emeralds keep crowding the front hoping for food. I guess I'm just going to have to figure out how to upload a video so you can see him and see just how much all my rainbows have grown. Besides youtube, you can upload a video to photobucket (& many other websites as well, even blogger). You should have access to the EA photobucket account and can upload there. BTW, I like your choice of words; "Zippy" ;D Carl
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Post by corycatwoman on Oct 28, 2009 12:57:46 GMT -5
if you are interested in severums you may also wanna look into different color forms of discus as well the 2 are similar in body shape and size and are quite often mistaken for each other in the hobby but most experienced keepers and stores will inform you of which is which. but i thought id throw that out there because there really are lots of different color forms of both severums and discus that might make you double think your final decision for the mere factor of what you think might make your tank pop a little extra.
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Post by corycatwoman on Oct 28, 2009 12:59:47 GMT -5
sorry about that last random post. i was reading page 1 and thaught i was on last page! hehe SORRY GUYZ!
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Post by kagome on Nov 15, 2009 11:16:57 GMT -5
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Post by Carl on Nov 15, 2009 11:51:07 GMT -5
Your new Boesemani is very pretty/colorful As well a nice picture of your Bushynose Plecostumus and good luck with the new plecostumus too. Carl
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Post by goldenpuon on Nov 15, 2009 12:46:09 GMT -5
Nice pictures. Your pleco are very nicely colored.
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Post by bikeguy33 on Nov 16, 2009 0:32:11 GMT -5
love the pix...keep it up...
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Post by babygeige on Nov 16, 2009 8:51:14 GMT -5
Wow! I love the Rainbow! He's so yellow and pretty!
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Post by kagome on Nov 19, 2009 10:10:22 GMT -5
I'm beginning to wonder if my new boesemani is actually a hybrid of some kind. The reason I wonder is his unusual color and the fact that his top line looks quite different from my other two boesemani. I think he might be a boesemani and emerald hybrid. I don't mind really, but if I ever set up a rainbow breeding tank I will make sure to not put him in with my boesemani and will just keep him in my general display tank.
Now that I am gainfully employed I have plans to redecorate my 20g tank. I want to make it a more natural looking riverscape and I want to give the fish more places to hide among plants low to the gravel since that seems to be what they prefer. I'm going to take some pictures of it as it is now and show you guys the process as I go through it.
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Post by kagome on Nov 25, 2009 14:00:11 GMT -5
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Post by Carl on Nov 25, 2009 17:29:24 GMT -5
Did you cut the plant down with the scissors in the foreground of the last picture? ;D
BTW, Thanks for sharing
Carl
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Post by kagome on Nov 29, 2009 0:50:43 GMT -5
Did you cut the plant down with the scissors in the foreground of the last picture? ;D BTW, Thanks for sharing Carl I know it does look funny, doesn't it? Everyone comes in and asks why that plant is like that. Well, it fell over one day and then the fish started hiding it so now whenever I put it back in the tank I just lay it on its side. This is part of why I am redoing this tank. The fish don't seem to want tall bushy plants, they want plants that are low to the gravel for them to hide in. The tree stump cave works just fine but all the paint is coming off of it which makes me nervous and it just doesn't look right. Also if you look at the cave that is to the far right (behind the plant on its side) I want to get rid of this. I like it and I think it's cute, but because of the way the bottom of it is it is very easy for fish to ride out in it when I am cleaning the tank. If you turn it over and try to see if everyone is out you can't see them in there. Even if you gently shake it and bob it up and down at the surface sometimes fish will just stay in it and end up in the bucket. That it just nerve wracking and so I bought caves that stubborn fish can be easily be dumped out of. I ordered a new plant from Carl that I think the fish will like more. I think my order should get here early next week and I'm hoping it will better suite their needs. If it does I will probably order a few more.
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Post by murdock6701 on Nov 29, 2009 9:34:34 GMT -5
I also have/had the tree stump cave and found it to be a great collector of tank debris and poop and had to be removed a lot to clean - one thing it is good for, as well as being attractive, is that you can feed you plants up thru the openings to anchor them down - it defeats the purpose as a cave but works well for holding plants down
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Post by kagome on Dec 12, 2009 23:59:37 GMT -5
OMG!! I totally freaked out today. As you guys know I have been redoing my 20g long. I bought some new caves and ordered a new plant and a 12" airstone to run along the back and a new air pump to run it. It's a really good thing that I decided to mess with all that stuff today, it probably saved all the fish in that tank. My husband was trying to help me out and cleaned the tank yesterday and somehow the heater never got plugged back in and so has been off since yesterday afternoon. When I went to hook up the new airstone and stuck my hand in the water I noticed that it felt very cold and that all of the fish were hiding in the back of the tank whereas usually the rams would be up harassing me while I changed things around in the tank. I checked the thermometer and it read 65 degrees and I usually keep that tank at about 77 degrees. I panicked, of course, and thought at first that my rather new heater was broken. At least I had the presence of mind to first check whether or not it was plugged in. Sure enough it was not. I plugged it back in and after two the temp is back up around 72. The fish are now swimming around much more normally. I'm so glad that I decided to mess around with adding the new stuff to the tank tonight. I had even almost decided to leave it all until tomorrow and I think if I had I would have woken up to a tank of dead fish! Crisis averted for now at least!
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Post by Carl on Dec 13, 2009 11:42:16 GMT -5
Glad you caught this in time! Carl
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Post by fishfever on Dec 13, 2009 14:42:02 GMT -5
That was really fortunate.. On my fry tank I did the same thing after a cleaning and it ended up being unplugged (along with the HOB filter) for at least a week. But I was real fortunate that it was during the summer so the temp really never nose-dived; probably just dropped a couple of degrees at night. Also I had a good sponge filter in there so the HOB wasn't missed very much.
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Post by goldenpuon on Dec 15, 2009 15:37:29 GMT -5
Sorry to hear abou the heater. But at least you caught it in time.
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Post by kagome on Dec 16, 2009 23:44:12 GMT -5
Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. I've been working on redoing my 20g and have been really happy with the new decor b/c I thought it would better suite the fish's needs and would help prevent further mishaps when taking decor out for cleaning. I bought two new caves from Petsmart, both of which will be much easier to get fish out of when I'm cleaning the tank. Well, for the last week or so the tank has been getting more and more cloudy. I thought I was going through some sort of mini cycle so I tested the water but all came out as optimum parameters, with ammonia and nitrites at zero and nitrates at just below 20. I thought maybe that my minerals were low so I added another chunk of wondershell even though I still had a piece in there. I thought maybe there was a build up of mulm somewhere so I vacuumed the gravel again and again. Still cloudy and getting worse. I thought maybe I was overfeeding, even though I didn't see any uneaten food when I vacuumed and it's the same feeding regiment I've had them on for months. So I stood there very carefully doling out food in tiny increments. I must have looked at Carl's article about cloudy water about 20 times trying to figure out where I was going wrong. I took apart the filter and cleaned everything in dechlorinated water to make sure it wasn't something in there. I kept doing 10% water changes. Still cloudy. Then, tonight, I noticed that the paint is coming off of my brand new cave. I thought about it and the water started getting cloudy a few days after adding that cave. So I put my hand in the tank and rubbed the cave and sure enough a milky cloud came off and floated around in the tank. So I've been driving myself nuts because I spent my hard earned money on a new cave with crappy paint on it. Let's just say that I am less than thrilled about this. Especially since I really like it and it's one of the few caves I've seen that's the right size and doesn't have any sort of bottom or lips around the bottom edge where fish can get caught and ride out of the tank. So.....back to the drawing board I guess and I will need to find my pleco yet another new 'house'.
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Post by Carl on Dec 17, 2009 10:29:40 GMT -5
Sorry for the problem kagome, but I am glad you figured this out. What was the material that these caves were made from, ceramic, etc? Was bacteria growing between the paint and the ornament, or was the actual ornament decomposing under the paint (this is what I suspect)? I usually go to river bed or to landscape yards for many of my decorations for aquascaping over the years. Feller Stone (of Utah) makes excellent manufactured rock caves that are made from real, but re-formed rock. Penn-Plax and others make relatively realistic plastic decor that is safe. And finally DeCoral makes synthetic corals that very realistic as well (safe for FW as well as SW). Feller Stone products are sold nation wide, here is their website: Feller StoneCarl
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Post by kagome on Dec 19, 2009 0:23:51 GMT -5
What was the material that these caves were made from, ceramic, etc? Was bacteria growing between the paint and the ornament, or was the actual ornament decomposing under the paint (this is what I suspect)? Carl, The cave in question is plastic polyresin. I took the cave out of the tank today and the plastic itself seems to be fine, it just that the paint is coming off. I tossed the cave in the trash because despite that fact that I like it's look and the no bottom design it is making such a mess of my tank that it's just ridiculous. I put the other cave back in there and we will just have to be really, really careful to make sure that the angelicus loach comes out before we take it out of the tank for cleaning. Ironically enough the old cave is from Petsmart as well and is the same brand but at least the paint seems to be much more durable. Thank you very much for the links. I didn't realize it before but penn plax makes most of the fake plants that are in my tanks. I have also had many of their "action" decorations over the years. I've also had some of the different fellerstones as well. I wish they made ones that are more like actual caves since my clown pleco wants a roomy and dark hidey hole to hang out in during the day. More than likely I will order a cave made by Blue Ribbon. I have had many of their decorations over the years and have always thought that their stuff was very well made and durable. I hate it that no one around here sells it in local stores. I'll just have to order something.
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