Of my koi swordtail fry that are remaining (16 of them) 7 of them have curved spines.  What causes this?  Is there anything I can do to keep it from happening again with later batches?

Spring is here, my goldfish have survived their first winter outdoors, and surprisingly so have the gambusia!  There seem to be quite a few gambusia still around, which is cool.  I wasn't sure they would survive the winter, but they did.  The water temperature still isn't holding above 55*f, so no feeding yet, but soon:)  Once it is steadily warm, I may add a few small koi and I am very interesting in finding blue bitterlings.  I think I may decide against adding golden orfs, they seem more delicate and seem to need a very large pond to be happy.  I might also try zebra danios and white cloud minnows in the pond and see what happens with them.  I think if I have enough plant cover they will survive being eating by the goldfish and koi. 

I am going to also start breeding cory cats for sale to the local fish stores.  My blue rams are in demand and doing well.  The stores aren't having troubles with them, like they have with ones they ordered.  My acclimation to full tap water from half R/O, half tap seems to be working as there are very minimal losses in my tanks or at the stores.  Anyway, I want to add the cory cats as they are another high demand fish and I can raise the fry in the same tanks as the ram fry and they will help eat up any food the baby rams miss.  This of course means adding more tanks to hold the breeding adults, which means more water changes, but all well. 

For cory species, I think I am going to use albino corydoras aeneus, corydoras paleatus, and corydoras panda.  These seem to be the most popular types around here.  If I ever find dwarf corys I will probably try them as well (corydoras hasbrosus or corydoras pygmaeus), just because I like them.  I will set up three 15 gallon tanks to house the breeding groups and keep them similar to my breeding groups of blue rams.  My only dilema here is that they adhere their eggs to surfaces, including the glass of the tank.  Trying to get the eggs off of the glass would be a bit hard to do without damaging them.  Any ideas? 

 

 

Picture credits:elpono_njg, Whisper Photography

I did a water change on my 29 gallon display tank and some of my crypts melted!  I didn't do any bigger than normal of a water changes, so I'm not sure why they melted.  Will they grow back? 

When I switch my tank over to discus I will need a creature to eat hair algae for me.  I usually use siamese algae eaters when I get a hair algae invasion, however they are very active and would not be a good mix with discus.  I knkow that amano shrimp will eat hair algae some and was wondering if they would do OK in the tank conditions that discus need (high temps and lower pH, soft water).  I know that the discus will eat some of the shrimp, but I have had amanos in with angelfish before and most of them figured out how to survive. 

anybody know why 2 of my 3 balloon mollies would have it in for the 3rd molly? my black female and white male have decided that they no longer want to get along with my orange female. when she gets close to them they both dart at her and bang off of her sides and appear to be trying to nip her as well. she seems undetered and continues to try to stay near them, only to always be chased off again. would adding another female balloon molly add to the chaos or help alleviate it? please help!

My blue ram breeding is going extremely well.  The rams are very popular in the stores and are selling well.  I added 2 more 30 gallon grow out tanks and have seperated out my youngsters I had kept into pairs.  I had ordered 3 blue rams from an alternate source to have some outside blood.  I paired them up with 3 of the hold backs, and sold the other 3 holdbacks to a store.  I now have 4 pairs (my origional pair and the 3 new pairs).  The 3 younger pairs haven't bred yet, but they do seem to like each other.  I kind of split up by going by who seemed to like who.  I have each pair in a 10 gallon tank, with fake plants.  I have the fake plants bunched up heavily in the corners and then a couple spread about.  This gives them the ability to hide from their mate if need be.  I have sponge and/or box filters running in all my blue ram tanks.  I currently have fry in all my grow out tanks except the new ones.  My origional pair breeds every 14 to 18 days on average.  I am feeding several live foods to the adults and the fry, as well as some high quality flakes.  I have spawn split between 2 grow out tanks currently, as I don't have enough spawns to warrant one tank per spawn.  This keeps the tanks cycled and gives the fry more room.  Some of my younger pairs are looking like they may breed soon, so hopefully I can start suppling my local stores more regularly.  I am currently breaking even on this project, I am hoping to start actually making a profit within the next few months.  I am thinking of finding a way to have automatic water changes done, but my snag here is that I need half the water to be R/O and half to be regular tap.  I suppose I could run 2 drip lines and one have an inline R/O?  More planning and thinking on this is needed.

When you get several tanks going, this hobby can be expensive in the winter!  My electricity bill has been climbing with each tank that I add.  I have all of my none display tanks in a small room, I think i am going to try heat the room with a seperate little heater and see if that will cut down on costs at all.  Selling the blue rams is helping some with costs, but I would need to increase breeding I think to really see a dent, but then that also means more heaters.  Summer should be better, when it is naturally warm:)

I have a tentative plan for my reef tank, for when I set it up.  I know where I want to put it and everything, but here is my plan so far.

The tank is 120 gallons, reef ready.  It has a corner overflow thing and you can attach different pipes to the return to direct flow.

Power heads.  I will have a few power heads placed around the tank as needed to prevent dead spots and give a good current.  I am going to use maxi jet power heads and attach them to a wave maker.

I intend to have a 40 gallon long be the sump.  I will have a skimmer, a heater and some foam pads set in the sump for mechanical filtration.  I will not have chemical filtration.  The skimmer I am looking at is called the Octopus NW-150.  The reviews on it seem to be good and its not super expensive.   I will get a mag drive pump to run the sump.  I need to do more reading of reviews to pick out a good one.  I also need to do more reading about how fast the water should turn over.

I also want to have a refugium, I am thinking of using 20 gallon for a small refugium.  Is this possible?  Can I divert the water from the overflow into 2 tanks in the bottom, or connect the sump and refugium?  Can I just use part of the 40 gallon as the refugium?  

In the tank, I have read good and bad things about having a substrate, I decided against it.  It seems like it would be easier not to have one.  I am going to smear silicone on the bottom and then put sand on it.  After a few days, you brush away the extra sand.  This gives the look of having a sand bottom, but without the problems.  

For live rock, here i can get well cured live rock with the purple algae on it for $6.99 a pound.  Base rock is $2.99 a pound.  I plan on getting about 80 pounds of base rock and 40 pounds of the cured live rock.  I know the base rock will need to be cured.  Since this tank is new, I am going to let it cure in the tank.  This should cycle it at the same time I believe.  Once it is cured I will do a few big water changes and then buy the nice purple live rock.  A few weeks after i buy the live rock with the purple algae, i will start adding corals and inverts.  I plan on waiting at least a few months before adding any fish.   

So thats the tentative plan so far.  There will probably be some changes as I read more though!

I have been using the EI style of caring for my tank and my plants look amazing!  I really like it.  Infact, my plants are growing really fast, I need to trim some of them every week.  Stem plants seem to show the most affects with EI, but my swords and crypts are looking better than they ever have as well.  My swords have no little holes in them, like they often used to, and my crypts are incredibly full.  I also love having pressurized CO2.  Its nice to kind of hook it up and "forget" about it.  I really like the layout I went with for my 75 gallon.  It looks good and so far the pygmy sunfish really seem to like it.  It has many like bushes of plants and then some slightly open areas between.  One side is sort of thicker planted.  Kind of like the edge of a forest next to a meadow with bushes in it was the look I was going for, and I think I got it fairly close.