Boita Compatibility

[BigFish01]

So no good driftwood then.. Lol my bn is all over the place still. Hard to get pics of him. He is starting to get his bristles!! Was hoping for a girl but its a boy... Lol. Maybe ill get a girl one next time... still need another heater for my qt tank.. Its at 83 right now. The thermostat is turned all the way down. Ha. Dont trust for fish. But i have media stuffed in my hob filter for the new arrivals when they can come. Hope that will be soon. Found some lg tiger barbs for 2.39. Not too bad

 

[greenmumma141]

thats a good price. i think the smaller the tiger, the more naughty they are lol. my little one is still a trouble maker... The new shop i found had some really cool mopani wood, and some reaaaallly cool "red spider wood" very rooty look stuff. Super cool and it was expensive still, but it could have been a lot more. I want the chunkier wood for the main piece in my tank and they didnt have any of that.. and my fish budget is down to the big zilcho lol. but i was thinking that a little piece of the spider wood plus a little moss would make an awesome tree for the top of my hill.... hmmm......

 

[BigFish01]

i really like the tree idea. Thats my plan with my java fern i think is i'm going to tie it to the "tree" and hope it grows good from there. The root looking wood could make some good hiding places!! 
 
I definitely know how the fish budget being zero thing is. I'm totally there. Luckily taxes are right around the corner.. 90% is going to bills... and the last few hundred left is going to fish.. Wow.. Never thought i would say that.. Such a nerd!! 

  
 
But that is kind of a needed item rather than a wanted piece of wood or more fish. Think that i need to let the filters i have catch up with all the fish i have added. So far not even a blip on the test kits for ammonia, or nitrites. And my nitrates have went up 5ppm so far. Guess that means all is well. My qt has climbed to 84... I decided to leave the leftover fish poo and food in the tank to create food for the plants. So far i'm starting to get algae.. ha. Maybe i can propagate my plants in there so they wont get uprooted and get a good root base going. Just wish i could stabilize the temp a little more. Oh well. Another days project I suppose!! 
 
Hope your new little bn's are doing good. All sems to be well here!

 

[greenmumma141]

a needed filter is def. different than fun fish stuff, i agree. yes, tax money should replenish my fish budget too muahaha...
 
I def like the tree idea too. I dunno, the more i think about a piece of that spider wood the more i like it. Now i can go back and forth about chunkier wood or spider wood lol.  I cannot keep the new rotilla plant in the substrate for anything!!! its making me crazy. so is all the leaves being covered with stuff :gross: and sadly...well.... when i came downstairs this morning I found the smaller bn and he was dead the other one is fine, still cleaning away. He was hiding as soon as he entered the tank, whereas the slighty bigger one just started cleaning. I noticed his stomach was a weird almost black color, on the inside of his skin i mean. I dunno, pretty sad though, i hate it when that happens. And theres no way Im driving 40 minutes one way for $4. I thought i had acclimated them pretty thoroughly, who knows. I think i will take a trip to the hardware store today and get some pvc and silicone and whip up a couple caves. maybe a rock covered cave and a sand covered cave? hmm.. we'll see how that goes lol. 
 
Good to hear all your fish are doing well, especially the little yoyos

 

[BigFish01]

You know I remember seeing that discoloration in the one I had pass also... kinda strange now that I think of it. My other one is just cruising around the tank cleaning and cleaning.. Hope your second one does good. I paid like 7 for mine so 4 is a good price! Sucks its so far away though.
 
I just spent the last two hours or so picking apart my java fern plantlets, Tied 10 or so to my tree with cotton thread (hope it holds, its harder than it seems... ha) and the other fifty or more i picked off and chucked into my qt to float around. Temp is a little high but I ordered a couple heaters, my  new filter, magnet algae scraper, and a hardness test kit off ebay today. 335.00! not too bad, it came with bio ceramic rings, and pads and all. amazon.com was 265 for just the filter no pads, this came with everything for 276. Pretty happy with that!
 
I want a chunkier piece of wood but have nowhere to put it really. so when I do find my piece I guess it will have to be the rootier kind. cant wait to pull my fake plants when my real ones start taking off... Of course, everything that I picked out is very fast growing except the java fern. so pruning it will be a chore. Maybe I could set up my 55gal to house the extras and sell them on ebay or something. Could be a plan to get my money back out of them at least! And some can go in my pond when it gets warm enough. Good way to trap snails for my clowns and polka dots! I can go to the lfs and get fifty to a hundred snails and my clowns will have them eaten in a week easy. 
 
Did you notice a difference in your tank overnight from the little bn? I'm sure you will soon if you haven't! they are good cleaners. 
 
Never noticed how much the sand shows the poo till I added 18 fish into my tank. Now its everywhere. could suck it out every day. I hope that the way I plan to set up my fliter it will catch a lot of it. hopefully going to create like a river flow from one end to the other. actual output on that filter is like 640 with media, still great turnover. I will also have my hob filter which runs about 300gph for aeration. undecided if I want to keep using my other canister though. Its a pain in the butt!

 

[greenmumma141]

I could see a clean trail through the slime this morning lol and he's still munching along. I think the diatom outbreak is pretty bad, so it will probably take a while to get everything really clean. that's why i wanted 2  I havent noticed any poop hanging around, i have noticed the food is sticking to everything!!! ahh its making me nuts lol hopefully its just bc everything is covered in slime. and maybe ill take it easy on the sinking shrimp pellets, i noticed they get really fluffy so it's probably not best to use them until the tank is cleaned up. I went ahead and cleaned the whole front glass, figuring the one little bn has enough to clean with all the plants, and driftwood, and rocks, and back piece of glass....  I think I need to get a longer piece of the tubing for my sink-syphon. all it sucks up is water and at first i thought my tank just must be super clean, but Im thinking that the tubing doesnt have enough slack to really get a good suction going so its not sucking up any of the debris?  I dunno, its just the feeling Im getting. starting to get a dirty tank phobia going haha. 
 
thats not a bad price on the filter, i always just use amazon, ill keep my eye out on ebay from now on too. Once you get it in the mail and get it going, youll know whether or not you need the canister. Maybe if the new filter and your hob arent quite enough, a powerhead might give you the extra bit that you need.  
 
Thinking about placing a shrimp order, and that should help clean up the tank too. Ive been thinking that i should have a big group of shrimp, i have like 4 ghost shrimp and they keep the main cave pretty clean lol, but i really have to overfeed to make sure all my little cories get enough food bc my barbs are the piggiest things ever! Im going to take a pic to show you how fat my older two tigers are. its embarrassing haha. so anyways, some shrimp might benefit the tank... 

 

[BigFish01]

The shrimp pellets are horrible! I used them for a while until I figured out that they were exploding and getting stuck between all of my rocks and rotting. Now when I use my siphon hose on my powerhead to blow out the rocks it dont have near as much! I just use API tropical premium pellets for community fish. they have 38.5% protein which is good for my selection of fish. Also it contains garlic and some other vitamins to benefit the fish. And they do not leave a mess so far! All of the fish love them. Even the bn pleco and clown pleco eat at them most of the time! I also feed flake with it and blood worm or brine shrimp once a week for a treat. I will also do cucumber and they love that too!
 
I do have a powerhead in there. I originally got it for my 55gal, its only 230gph, but it helps me a lot. I think that is what got me through this long!!! So the new filter should do good by itself hopefully. the hob just circulates the water under it pretty much. and I plan to put the outtake behind the hob to spread the clean water throughout the tank. 
 
As far as I have understood the siphon, The shorter the hose = better suction. The thing that drops it is when it goes up to get to your sink. I use a garden hose and just run it out my side door into the rocks beside the porch. Works great. then i hook it up to my sink to fill. Maybe you could detach the end that hooks to the hose and run it outside through a door? but then again if you suck up a fish they are goners.. Luckily have not had that happen yet..
 
And the shrimp. If you plan to get loaches at all. they will become food to them. Probably not while they are small but when they are getting to adults they will gobble them up! I but some ghost shrimp once in a great while for the loaches. Very expensive treat for them so not very often! I always feel bad afterwards but I guess it is what it is! Fish gotta eat! My favorite treat for them is the snails. I can get hundreds of them for free from the lfs, they are glad to scoop them out for me!


Oh and tiger barbs are very greedy and will eat until they pop! thats another reason I do these pellets, they dont expand and its harder for them to eat. They do eat them but it takes them a lot longer to bite them. I have seen them eat them whole before. Scared the crap out of me

Here is a short video I just took, You can see I moved my tall plants to the corner, Hides the power head a little better. Opens up the tank a little more I think. Also you can see my new plants I tied to the "tree" will see how that pans out. 
My polka dot loach rolls over for me while eating too. Kinda funny how they are. Hope you like!
http/youtu.be/gOcs6VVq9gg


Wow my camera is loud

 

[greenmumma141]

My barbs would never let pellets sit on the floor for that long. I have to secretly drop some in the corners for the cories to get. I use the API bottom feeder pellets too and i like those a lot. My barbs eat them whole and they just keep getting bigger and bigger...
 
your yoyo is too funny. they are the weirdest little fish ever! i ordered shrimp today lol when i get yoyos they can eat the shrimp if they want, my cories can't do anything wrong either haha. it was so funny watching your yoyo, then a godzilla clown loach came out of nowhere lol i wish i had the room for them too...maybe the next tank.....
 
i really like your tree, and I like how you moved stuff around, looks great

 

[BigFish01]

that godzilla clown loach was the two smaller ones!! lol Yeah your tigers must be bigger than mine... I have two that can eat the pellets whole. the rest of them swim around chewing on them, spitting them out and grabbing them again. Its quite entertaining!!! Every one of these fish have different personalities, its great. I feel bad that I only have four clown loaches but they seem to do great together. I also know that what i have for them is a LOT better than they probably would have had if I didnt buy them. I'm also hoping that the polkadots make them more comfortable since they are the same "type" of fish. who knows. They seem pretty happy. Guess i will never know for sure!
 
Guess the fact that the clown loaches are bigger they fend off the tigers a bit so they can have the food. And I have one spot that I toss them in so a couple go under a rock that only the little guys can get to so I know they get food. 
 
Well I guess this thread is just ours! lol We have almost made two pages on our own.. Haha
 
Tried to catch my tetras today to put them into the qt tank to keep it going, but they are too smart. Any time they see the net they dart into the rocks. Left me standing there with the net in the tank for a half hour before I gave up.. I want to re home them but I dont want to tear everything apart to catch them. dont want to go through that again. And if I try to trap them I will catch every fish but them... kinda sucks.. guess thats where they will stay! 
 
I was looking at the red minor tetras. I think they would be a nice accent in my tank. Nice red coloration i think would go good with the clowns and tigers. they are a dollar each at petsmart right now. maybe when I go spend 17$ on plant food I will think about picking up six or so to throw in the qt tank. Gotta wait till wednesday for that though. Do you know anything about them?

 

[BigFish01]

If what i'm reading is right, They have a rep of being nippy like the tiger barbs, So then I think it would be alright to get a group of them as well with the tiger barbs. Think I want to get my tigers up to fifteen first. Then work on a group of fifteen serpae tetra, But the sale is sooooo good!

 

[greenmumma141]

I would say that all of your loaches seem pretty happy to me   This thread is too cool for everyone to keep up with haha  
 
Im not sure about the minor tetras. When i first set up my 30 gallon, I had a small school of black skirt tetras and after a month i had to bring them all back, they were awful things. I know tigers are considered "nippy" but these fish were just miserable. But then i had 3 bleeding hearts and I really liked them a lot, they didn't nip anyone, and they grew to a great size and really cool to watch. It could go either way I guess... 
 
I saw some blue platies the other day that were really neat looking. I swore Id never go back to platies though, but still they were really pretty...  

 

[BigFish01]

Well i have 3 black skirt and 3 white skirt tetra. Only problem i had was my bgk. They chewed his tail off... Poor guy. All the time i thought it was my CAE and rehomed him. He was really a good cleaner just a little boiserous is all. I read that someone had a group of fifteen tigers and ten serpae tetra and the tetra killed all the tigers in a night... But then again i read that tigers killed all of a guys loaches too.... So its hard to say really. Guess it comes down to the setup in that case... I like them though. Always wanted to get an angel but i know better now. Lol i dunno...

 

[BigFish01]

Oh im so exited!! I have one rhizome of anabius from my old tank i thouht was dead and it started growing again. I just left it because the base was stil green but no leafs would grow. Its been prob three months since the last leaf died. And now it sprouted a leaf!!! Very tiny but its still alive. You can see it in the pic of my 55 gal. Its the one with huge green leaves. And one of my little leafy plants from before sprouted also. I thought i dug it all up when it died... Sweet!!!

 

[greenmumma141]

That's awesome!!! not about the horrible fish death stories, but you're sprouting anubias!    ...they take a while to grow, so as long as the rhizome is green, it's alive! I am so glad I bought the lot of them that i did, all of the roots are really taking off, and they look really neat and web-like.
 
I def. think that each fish situation is different, i could have sworn my black skirt tetras were demons and yours are nice. I had a CAE once that I didn't mind at all; it was kind of funny to watch him chase the other fish around every once in a while, he never really did any harm, just a little boisterous as you said hehehehe  
 
Picked up another bolivian today, this one for sure is a male.. he's really beautiful, he already has a slight bluish to his fins, but he kicked one of the females out of the cory forest and staked a claim on the other one so I think i should pick up one to befriend the lonely one lol.. it never ends... but that's okay with me.  And I picked up two little ottos, i tried them once before but didn't realize they were as sensitive and they both died but now I think they will do great with all my plants, and you know... tank slime.  They're fat already, and i can see the difference just since I added them.  Hopefully the slime is on the ousts, def. getting paranoid, so I did a big water change today and i actually took the peat out of my filters as my ph just won't seem to go down! still 7.9-8.0.... i bought some ph down..haven't used it yet and Im not sure if I will, but im thinking about it..... 

 

[BigFish01]

He didn't get killed dont worry. I ended up rehoming him to petco.. Poor little fella. I know every situation is different, and I dont really want to take a big risk so maybe I will stick with the barbs and get some cherry barbs or something. 
 
As far as your ph goes I think you can buy a water filter to take out the crap in your water that makes it hard, Think its a three stage filter or something like that. Its for drinking water but its not RO water, It also takes out chlorine and chloramine too as well as heavy metals and all that gunk. Its called a HMA filter. you can google it, and here is a link to another thread that talks about the ph. maybe you can find something out that will help you in the long term vs putting chemicals in it that are unstable and could cause mass deaths. I know my RO water comes out at 6 and my tap is 7.4 so it drops it a lot. but it also strips it of everything and that includes the good minerals you need in your water to keep fish. Do a little research and see what you can come up with. If i dont hear from you tonight and i have some more time i will see what i can find out myself about ph and HMA filters. 
 
Congrats on the new pair! And i hope the ottos work out this time for you. I thought about getting a couple because they eat black brush algae and i have some of that going on in my tank.. its weird stuff. feels like a hard toothbrush, just a lot smaller.. lol