Lolobunnz's

[lolobunnz]

2 and a half weeks ago I started up my 29 gallon aquarium. At the moment it is stocked with plastic plants and gravel. I hope to upgrade to live plants when my tank is done cycling. I have 7 Platies currently occupying my tank and I am closely keeping an eye on all water parameters. I have learned a lot researching on this forum and the internet in general and have a 10 gallon fishless cycling for future fry.

Coming up on week 3 I am still at .25 Ammonia, 0 trites and 0 trates. All fish fins up! So that is good.

My Platies are enjoying their new diet and are getting a bit of healthy weight on them.

This is a picture of the weight of which most of my Platies were purchased at

And here are all of my males and females as of today. I know the pictures are pretty bad but those are the best out of 200 I am sure! Storm and Aurora are definitely preggers, tho I do not think I will be fishing out these particular fry to make sure they develop and live on. I will be putting that off for a few more months in hopes of getting offspring from my males.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

You know, as you are doing a fish in cycle, if wouldn't be a bad idea to upgrade to live plants. Live plants feed on fish waste. It would be more beneficial to you than anything.

 

[lolobunnz]

Dieses Madchen, I will be sure to get on the live plants asap. Hopefully tomorrow, you know, when I pick out my fry net! So it appears as if my favorite, Orca, has given birth. She is the only one rockin' the white baby tube by her anal fin and had been peering in and out of the tree stump for a bit. I was just watching my fish as I usually do and saw the lil' arrow dart around and I was ecstatic. I gently lifted the stump and the buildings and waved water around the plants and found 3 little baby Orca fry. Now I just have to keep these HAVE HAVE to. I couldn't tell she was pregnant for she is solid black on her sides. I'm also glad that at the moment I have 3 and not 40 . I wasn't expecting to see fry for another week or two (and from Storm or Aurora, not Orca) and didn't plan on keeping them/doting on them. Goes to show you just how life goes sometimes .

Hours? Minutes? old fry from Orca born today.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Well, congrats on the new babies! May I suggest investing in a 10g fry tank for your babies? They will quickly over populated a breeder net, and the way platys breed, they will soon overpopulate your 29g. While they are still tiny, this may be the opportune time for you to look for people to take them in the futrure, like the LFS or friends Good luck!

 

[lolobunnz]

I have a ten gallon set up. Its listed in the first post and profile i think. But it is still fishless cycling. My boyfriends brother is adopting them and he basically has a 35 gallon that is empty (1 pleco, all cichlids got old and died). And it is established and wont be in the breeding net long. Too bad his is undergravel fo whixh i cant take filter media. His tank has been set up for years and ths water was yellow as all get out. I tested his tank and ammo 0 trites 0 and trates off the charts even after a third 50% water change. The babies will be rehomed once the nitrates are exceptable for them!

 

[lolobunnz]

I have gotten my larger net box for the fry until the upstairs tank is suitable for them and have also gotten a wad of anacharis. Even tho I did like constructing my own fry trap, the circulation of the net is just much better. I wish I could switch all of my plants out for real ones but I just didn't have the cash on me. But this weekend I should be getting more plants and a fertilizer. Then I will post before and after pics of my tank

 

[lolobunnz]

Okay, so ever since I knew the upstairs tank would be housing my fry I have taken great interest in it to make sure that it is a very nice environment to offer. The ammonia and nitrites are at 0 but the nitrates were blood red. Off the charts. I have never seen anyone do a water change on this under gravel filtered tank for the 5 years I have been frequenting my boyfriends families house. So I did 1 50% water change and sucked up so much from the rocks and below. SO MUCH. I only wanted to do a 50% because the pleco in there has been living like that for at least a good year. I didn't want to shock the poor guy. The lone survivor. So the next day I tested the water and it was still blood red and so I did another 50% water change and again got lots and lots of gunk and what seemed to be past large fish scales up into my siphon. The next day I tested again and it was still blood red, off the charts so I did it again and now today the same thing. Except today I didn't get nearly as much crap fro the rocks that I did the last 3 changes. I just checked the nitrates again and they look to be at 80ppm or maybe more. Definitely a bit lighter than the past few days and not as dark as the 160ppm box.

I am just worried that there is no more junk left to suck up and the nitrates are still very high. Hopefully another water change or two and it should be just right. I hope I don't need to get in there and rip it up to free the crap to suck it up. I guess under gravels are fragile with their colonies. The brother is going to be hooking up a nice size power filter for the back and leave the UG filter in there until the new filter has colonies and then get that UG filter out of there. I never dealt with one and it just doesn't seem like something I want to deal with in the least. I like my Aquaclears.

 

[Billsfan905]

YAY for journals
Congrats on Orca's fry! My platy recently dropped her fry too, and I honestly JUST noticed a difference for a week, she looked a tiny bit square. Crazy! My other platy get GIANT before they drop their fry. Maybe it was their first drop?

 

[lolobunnz]

It may have well been Orca's first batch but I had only found three and there was probably more than that total. So who knows if this is her first or not. I noticed her being too buoyant the other day and fat and thought I was feeding her too much freeze dreid food and she was getting a bit of swim bladder.

On another note I did see Shere Khan mate with Necco while she was concentrating on eating a squished pea. She was tiny when I got her from the LFS and to date there is nothing about her gravid spot at all. I really look forward to seeing her and Shere's fry.

I see Brutus mating with Storm even tho she is already pregnant. I am wondering wether or not that will cancel out all of the other males sperm that she already has in her from the LFS and her next batch will be of Brutus' genes? I wonder....

 

[lolobunnz]

Today I got an amazon sword and some java moss. I can't believe someone actually had it around here. It was the last one that they were going to have for a week, too. Lucky me. I put some java moss into my fry net and put the other plants in the tank and took out a few plastic ones. The fish all seem more active than ever and just happier in general. I am sure it would be nice to swim around and play in soft real delicious plants than hard fake plastic plants.


I also had picked up two nice pagoda rocks to make a bit of a cave in my tank. The rock is really dense (so more $ ) and it is supposed to be quite good for planted tanks. There was not much info at all on the rock in freshwater/community type tanks, only that it is not meant to be used in salt water tanks. I still had gotten it and will see how things go. I must say I picked out two nice looking rocks. None of the rocks looked special to me because you can't really tell what they will look like until they are under water. I just chose these two rocks so that I can fix up the cave I had in mind. But these rocks are really gorgeous. The fish are all about it as well. As you can see 4 out of my 7 fish are in the picture of the little rock cave.

Can you spot all four Platies? And you can see Orca's shiney blue flecks in this picture! yay!

And here is the other side to get a better look at the other rock.

 

[lolobunnz]

Orca's Fry Update

Here they sit in their fixed up fry pad. Complete with Java Moss and great circulation. I do not know what I am going to do! I did another 50% water change on the upstairs tank and got some more junk and I tested it now, a few hours later, and it looks like 80ppm on the dot. I guess to another topic discussion with that one . Hoping to move my fry into the fully cycled tank upstairs ASAP.

 

[Mothi]

Grats on the fry. It's good to see you put this much effort into getting the water right for your fry. Hope you can sort the nitrate level out soon. If you do a 60-70% water change in your upstairs tank, it should bring your nitrate down to a safe level.

 

[lolobunnz]

I have been (doing) a lot of research on tank cycling. Really, on everything, not just tank cycling either! My Mom has also gotten me a 50 gallon set up for my birthday present. She is feeding my addiction and I so love her for that. Her and her cute little blonde fro. She also was also very in to getting a lot of live plants for the tank as well. We went to a few stores picking up plenty of plants to bring home and put in to my 3 week cycling 29 gallon until the 50 gallon was ready.

I have been regularly checking stats on my 29 gallon. Since I have added the plants I have not needed to do a water change but once every 3 days when it reads close to .25. But these are plants meant to stock a 50 gallon so there area considerable number of plants in that tank. I have read that with a lot of certain plants in the tank that the nitrogen cycle may not even be detectable until in someway the nitrates get too high. I then remembered that I haven't been having to do 50% water changes every day since placing the plants in there. So I went back out and got even a few more bundles of plants and then decorated the 50 gallon that has been filtering for 2 days.

After adding the plants I took two females (Necco and Storm) and one male (Shere Khan) and moved them to the 50 gallon literally 5 inches away from the 29 gallon. The temperatures are exact and all measurements read the same on both tanks. I also then went out and got one more female ( a bumble bee platy that I named She Ra 'princess of power') so that the Brutus and Shere Khan both have 3 females to themselves.

Here my new 50 gallon tank

And here is my new very skinny (but not worm looking skinny) female bumblebee platy She Ra. She has black pigment over the corner of one eye, making her make the evil eye face all of the time, kind of like 'the rock' does in wrestling.

The one picture is very funny. All 4 of the platy are staring at me straight on. In the picture it is almost intimidating. So I edited the picture on Paint. Enjoy lulz

I was using a bad setting on my phone. Which is why the pictures look bright and foggy. The water is crystal clear like my other tank.

 

[slimeneo]

Haha, they're so cute! Ah, you're so lucky your mother feeds your addiction. I think I'm getting my mom into it.. well somewhat... especially after the 2 fry I found the other day. They are too cute! I LOVE your 50 gal

 

[lolobunnz]

These pictures are of Orca's (or supposedly/most likely) fry between 3-5 days old. The single fry pics are at 5 days the other is at 3 days.