Last night at dinner I turned to my wife and said oh so casually... "I am trying to breed my ricefish but I think there are too many snails in the tank for the eggs to survive. So I think the best thing to do is put them in another container to breed". My wonderful wife said, "that sounds reasonable".
I took this as license and today:
A word about Aqueon, these guys have really stepped up their game of late. I have one of their 40 breeders I bought about 8 months or so ago. It has terrible silicone. Don't get me wrong, it holds water. But the construction is sloppy. The short sides are a millimeter too long, etc. A few weeks ago I went into my local Petco and saw these pretty nifty nano tanks they were now selling. At least some of these tanks have rims on the bottom but not the top. Others have no rims at all. And the silicone work is really quite good. Not I'll admit the best I have ever seen, but of a level of quality you need to get down and really stare at to find any flaws.
Meanwhile the newer standard aquariums also have massively upgraded silicone. No longer are the corners just slathered in uneven silicone, but rather carefully applied. They look pretty darn good! There is still a lot of old stock floating around with the terrible corners but the newer ones were downright professional looking.
Anyway I bought a 5.5 gallon aquarium that has a black rim on the bottom but not the top. Essentially very similar to the Fluval Spec V. I also bought a tiny internal filter with a powerhead inside rated at 25 gallons per hour. I am guessing that this rating is based on this pumps best day ever with a cheerleader off in the corner going bonkers with encouragement cause this pump with a piece of sponge in there to hotrod the filter is the very definition of weak sauce. That said, it does move a tiny bit of water and that is all I really wanted for a breeding aquarium anyway.
Now I could leave the tank bare, stick a bundle of moss or subwassertang in there and call it good. But I don't have many aquariums... and any chance to scape something I'm definitely going to jump on. But.. I also don't want to spend money on hardscape if I can help it. Fortunately I have some supplies lying around so I began by dumping a bunch of sand into the tank and moving rocks around. I ended up using only two rocks and a stick. Here is what I came up with:
Then I took everything out, dumped all the sand into a bucket. And then put down 1/2 inch of fluval stratum:
Then I dumped the sand back in and reassembled. I went to my local fish store and fortunately they had recently received a large shipment of plants. These guys were well stocked today. I bought Limnophila Heterophylla, Brazilian Pennywort, chain sword, and Chilensis (aka Sagittaria platyphylla, aka Broadleaf Sagittaria). I also bought 1 cup of a UNS tissue culture for Eleocharis Parvula Mini. This is my first time with a UNS tissue culture and I found it to be of superior quality to other tissue cultures. Currently lighting is a 25W CFL bulb. I will be replacing that with a 10w SANSI Grow Light Led bulb. Here is how it looks now:
You can tell your diy skills are strong when you use random boxes of basement stuff as stands for lights.
This tank is in my basement and hardly in an ideal location. This is meant to soften the blow a bit when my wife realizes that there is another tank in the house.
My plan for the tank is to let the pennywort go wild and grow up to the surface providing some nice cover. Once the tank is cycled (added some Tetra Safestart but you know.. gotta let it do its thing) I will add 1 male ricefish and probably 2 females. Then let them have at it for a few weeks. Once I know there are eggs in there for sure I will remove the adults and see if I can hatch out some fry. I'm excited to do this since despite the fact I have been keeping fish off and on for decades, I have never actually bred fish. I've always had community tanks and well.. if any breeding went on, it never went anywhere. So here's hoping I can make it happen!
I took this as license and today:
A word about Aqueon, these guys have really stepped up their game of late. I have one of their 40 breeders I bought about 8 months or so ago. It has terrible silicone. Don't get me wrong, it holds water. But the construction is sloppy. The short sides are a millimeter too long, etc. A few weeks ago I went into my local Petco and saw these pretty nifty nano tanks they were now selling. At least some of these tanks have rims on the bottom but not the top. Others have no rims at all. And the silicone work is really quite good. Not I'll admit the best I have ever seen, but of a level of quality you need to get down and really stare at to find any flaws.
Meanwhile the newer standard aquariums also have massively upgraded silicone. No longer are the corners just slathered in uneven silicone, but rather carefully applied. They look pretty darn good! There is still a lot of old stock floating around with the terrible corners but the newer ones were downright professional looking.
Anyway I bought a 5.5 gallon aquarium that has a black rim on the bottom but not the top. Essentially very similar to the Fluval Spec V. I also bought a tiny internal filter with a powerhead inside rated at 25 gallons per hour. I am guessing that this rating is based on this pumps best day ever with a cheerleader off in the corner going bonkers with encouragement cause this pump with a piece of sponge in there to hotrod the filter is the very definition of weak sauce. That said, it does move a tiny bit of water and that is all I really wanted for a breeding aquarium anyway.
Now I could leave the tank bare, stick a bundle of moss or subwassertang in there and call it good. But I don't have many aquariums... and any chance to scape something I'm definitely going to jump on. But.. I also don't want to spend money on hardscape if I can help it. Fortunately I have some supplies lying around so I began by dumping a bunch of sand into the tank and moving rocks around. I ended up using only two rocks and a stick. Here is what I came up with:
Then I took everything out, dumped all the sand into a bucket. And then put down 1/2 inch of fluval stratum:
Then I dumped the sand back in and reassembled. I went to my local fish store and fortunately they had recently received a large shipment of plants. These guys were well stocked today. I bought Limnophila Heterophylla, Brazilian Pennywort, chain sword, and Chilensis (aka Sagittaria platyphylla, aka Broadleaf Sagittaria). I also bought 1 cup of a UNS tissue culture for Eleocharis Parvula Mini. This is my first time with a UNS tissue culture and I found it to be of superior quality to other tissue cultures. Currently lighting is a 25W CFL bulb. I will be replacing that with a 10w SANSI Grow Light Led bulb. Here is how it looks now:
You can tell your diy skills are strong when you use random boxes of basement stuff as stands for lights.
This tank is in my basement and hardly in an ideal location. This is meant to soften the blow a bit when my wife realizes that there is another tank in the house.
My plan for the tank is to let the pennywort go wild and grow up to the surface providing some nice cover. Once the tank is cycled (added some Tetra Safestart but you know.. gotta let it do its thing) I will add 1 male ricefish and probably 2 females. Then let them have at it for a few weeks. Once I know there are eggs in there for sure I will remove the adults and see if I can hatch out some fry. I'm excited to do this since despite the fact I have been keeping fish off and on for decades, I have never actually bred fish. I've always had community tanks and well.. if any breeding went on, it never went anywhere. So here's hoping I can make it happen!