Guru Aquatics...

[Sounguru]

Well it is a good day I woke up this morning and made some mesurements only to find out my 18 gallon was really a 15 tall... Oh well it still holds water.

So while doing that and checking all the tanks to make sure everyone was still alive I spotted something moving in the 15 and here is what I found.

Okay here is a the entire shot so you can get an idea of these size...



And now here is he baby shrimp less than 5 hours old....



Whoo I guess this means that the water isn't too bad if I'm getting baby shrimpies... I'm so stoked.

[angelcakes]

congrats on baby shrimp

[troy]

Congratulations!

[Sounguru]

Thanks Guys I was really after I broke every law of fishkeeping but now I'm doin a

[Sounguru]

Okay figure I would do a fun little update called what is in my tank....

So I will start with the 15 Gallon (used to be an 18 until I measured it).

The cool stuff

• Cherry Shrimp 20 or so adults
• 4 Confirmed Cherry Shrimp fry
• 250+ Malyasian Tunneling Snails
• 5 Assassin Snails
• 25 Assassin Snail eggs confirmed
• 5 Corckscrew Vals Wild collected
• 1 Amazon Sword
• 1 Crypt of some type
• 3 Bog plants that I got at petsmart that are doing beautiful
• Piece of a root

Now the not so fun stuff depending on how you look at it....

• Detritus Worms - Normal in every tank but a small infestation often called Planaria
• Planaria - I have counted at least 20 or so...
• Hydras - I have found 3 so far
• Some large Grey Worm - No idea what he is but shys away from light and is at the bottom under all the substrate

Now I believe in naturally balanced tanks so I'm not surprised by the pest in the tank. I will admit there are a little more than there should be because it was a fry tank fed 5 times a day until recently. I also can't vac the gravel because it is a larger sized rock and little baby shrimp can get sucked down among the rocks just by the water movement.

Funny thing is I find the pest to be just as interesting as the things we consider our pets.... So I will keep them as long as they don't become a problem.

[Sounguru]

Here they are on day 2

Theses guys are lesss than 1/8th of an inch long.....

[Sounguru]

Okay before I start into a really long boring update I have one question...

If someone post in a journal and no one reads it did he really post?

So anyway now that really deep thought is off my chest back to my usual be boppy self. So what do we have today from Guru's Aquatics for you well quite a lot today was testing day and there is some good news and some really hosed up news.... There will aslo be some thoughts on what I may do in the future and what my grand plans are...

So let's get started with a tank by tanks break down:

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5 Gallon (The Car Under the Tree)

PH 7.2
AM 0
NO2 0
NO3 40

Okay so we have finished the cycle so this will make my son happy. Cool thing is I did not have to add an ammonia source the root did that for me. So first plan is a 25% water change which I did and brought the NO3 down to 20. So I added in a couple of Cherry Shrimp since that is the same levels as the tank they are in now. I will do a 25% water change every day until the NO3 is down and then monitor it closely.

Future Plans: This tank will get a reworked hood with LEDs. This will be my test bed tank so I don't go and drop a lot of money into something bigger only to find it doesn't work. The Cherry's I put in are the 2 reddest I have I know one for sure is an unberried female the saddle is real clear but the other I think is a male. If this turns out to be the case I plan to line breed a really red line of shrimp where both the males and the females are dark solid red. Someone somewhere called them supperreds but I think that is a load of carp. So if all goes well I plan to have some of those up for sale soon and if not he super reds at least some nice red Cherries anyway. I also plan to add about 6 to 8 Celesital Pearl Danios and a Mystery or nicely colored Ramshorn for my son since he really wants some fishies and an snail.

PS: I can only find one of the shrimp the Female, I think the male either jumped ship or actually never made it in the tank. The tanins in the water make it diffucult to see so I will wait a few days before getting the other really red male out of the 15 gallon.
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15 Gallon ( Quiet Death )

PH 7.2
AM 0
NO2 0
NO3 20

Okay I did a 25% water change but made little dent into the NO3 so I will continue to do that daily until down. With this being the heaviest planted tank I hope that I can find the balance to where the plants wlll suck the NO3 out of the water. Now I have 5 confirmed baby shrimp probably more and over 40 confirmed Assassin snail eggs. I have added a pond snail to start a colony of those because if all 40 of these hatch they will do so all about the same time and the babies will wipe out the small MTS I have in the tank in no time. The 5 larger snails have definatly made a dent into the larger MTS so I'm hoping I can get a colony of larger pond snails ready to transfer over in the next month along with some of the larger MTS in the snail tank. I also added a power hear to the sponge filter and that has made a hude difference in the levels and flow of the tank. One funny thing about this tank I have over 200 MTS of varying sizes and I would say 100+ are all up at the top going around and around the tank all in the same direction, almost like they are migrating. I have read that when you have that many MTS on the glass during the day it is a sign of poor water quality. So I hope that when I get the NO3 under control they will move back down. If they don't I will have to assume it is either normal or there is some unknown factor I can't see like something leaching from the log or lack of food.

Future Plan: This tank is gonna be a decorative tank on our kitchen bar so once I get the 10 gallons up and running I will move the shrimp out and give the tank 2 months to make sure all snail eggs and baby shrimp have grown up. Then I will build an LED hood and a back area so that all plumbing will be hidden. I will aslo be adding in CO2 injection and will probably make this a home for either Cherry barbs or CPDs. Kind of leaning towards the chery barbs at this point along with some Cherry Shrimp and some red Ramshorns.. seeing the theme yet. I will be switching to a canister filter for this tank along with an inline heater and inline CO2.
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10 Gallon ( Snail Breeder )

This is a temp setup to see which type of snail works best as food for the Assassins and which breeds the fastest. So what we have in the tank is some common ramshorn that aren't really doing anything just growing slowly, some MTS not real sure how many there are but I do know there are some new ones, and the pond snails who are huge and have at least 5 known egg sacs down and one has already hatched. So it looks like the ponds are gonna win the who can breed the fastest race. My next step is to add a heater and sponge filter and see what happens to the MTS population when the tank is heated. I would prefer to feed MTS since I like those snails and they are useful in the planted tanks but to be honest I kind of grown fond of the pond snails too. I figure once I get enough assassins to go in every tank I could keep both and everything will stay in balance.

Future Plans: I have a really scratched up 55 acrylic and I may set it up in the shop and add 3 heaters to keep the temp up thrown some snails in it with a couple of sponge filters and an auto feeder. That should give me plenty of snails to raise the assassins for sale in about 4 months and allow me to break down this 10 and make a tank for my daughter. Which of course will mean that I will also have to get a 10 for my son so they are even....
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[Sounguru]

Okay let's continue on.

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29 Gallon ( WTF )

No readings on this one it has an outbreak of Ich just like it does every time a momma fish drops her babies. This is probably caused by the fact that the male harasses her right after dropping, but oh well it will have to stay that way for a while until I can make some changes I will mention later.

Speaking of Ich the fact that I get a breakout every time makes me wonder if you have a sand substrate if it makes it harder to kill off the Ich. Now here is my reasoning for that, Ich drops off the fish gets buried in the substrate you medicate and there is no water movement through the sand like there is though gravel so it never reaches the Ich. So once it is ready bang out it comes and new infestation. Just some food for thought.

So anyway I have one more female silver to drop her babes in the next week then I should have a month reprieve before it starts again. Ohter than that we are gonna find out if the 9 assassin snail eggs I know of survive the medication or not.

Future plans: Total rip down and addition into a breeding setup I will go into later.
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55 Gallon ( The Wiggle Tank )

PH 7.5
AM 1.0
NO2 1.0
NO3 10

Okay this tank is still going through its cycle and with 200+ fry in it I wouldn't be surprised if it is starting all over again after the removal of the goldfishand addition of he heater. I will do a 50% water change in the morning. I have one batch of about 30 fry that will be ready to go to market here in the next week or so. I know at least 2 are males so I should be able to sex at least half of them by that time. I will be adding some sea salt to this tank because it is over crowded and my black molley fry seem to do better with a little salt. i know that mollies don't need the salt but I find it helps when you can't keep the water perfect.

Future Plans: Not real sure I will keep this tank I'm not wild about acrylic tanks, but if I do I continue to use it as a grow out tank until the breeder setup is done. After that if I keep it I will polish it out and make it into a Live planted tank or a african cichlid tank or move it out to the shop and use it along with the other 55 and the 75 acrylic as grow out tanks.
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75 Gallon ( Severum Paradise )

PH 8.2
AM .25
NO2 0
No3 40

Okay I think the PH is real high on this because of salt creep from the gravel. I did not have a chance to swap out the gravel before having to put it back into use. This tank went though a small bloom but cleared in a coupleof days so if I can bring the PH under control and the little bit ammonia down by adding sponges to the filters it should hold up fine until I can rehome the large cichlids and move the Rainbow Shark out to the 55 hex once it is rebuilt.

Future Plans: This tank is gonna be the showpiece of the house fully planted high tech tank. I'm thinkin of going for something like large schools of CPDs or another type of micro fish along with several varities of shimp and snails.
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62 Gallon ( Scat Tank)

PH 8.2
AM 0
NO2 1.0
NO3 5.0
Salinity 1.020

Okay I have borught the salinity down quite a bit but have a little more to go. I'm aiming to bring this back down to a brackish tank. Looks like the cycle is on it's last leg because it cleared up today and the ammonia is down to zero. I moved one of the solid black fry over so that gives me 4 solid black 2 male and 2 females to work with on line breeding. I will go into detail on that more later. I also removed 4 more fry I missed from the last time she dropped and then found another one still in there. Oh well he/she will just have to survive on their own, they have done well so far. I have decided to rehome the Scat after all because I just really don't have an intreast in running a full Sw tank.

Future Plans: Because this tank is taller than a regular 55 but with the same foot print my thought is to use this tank as the divider to the entry and the living room. If I do then it will be a high tech wonder built into a cabinet. I will probably go with angels for that tank since they would make such a nice fish to see when you first walk in and aren't as spookish as discus.

[Sounguru]

And on again....

• 55 Hex drained and getting moved to the shop for rebuild.
• 10 Gallon #1 rebuild going slowly
• 10 Gallon #2 Same
• 55 Acrylic not real sure what is gonna become of it because it really needs a good polish to be worth anything as far as a fish tank goes may use it as a grow out for snails or plants.
• 55 Glass broken end just needs repaired and I will pobably switch the 55 acrylic in the house out for the glass one that way all tanks in the house are glass.
• 75 Gallon acrylic I'm really thinking of using this as a plant grow tank to supply plants for the rest of the tanks and maybe throw snails and shimp in there to sell also. This tank being a long makes it perfect for a plant gow out because it is rather shallow.
• 29 #1 Breeder
• 29 #2 Breeder

So over all here is what I have planned as far as things I want to do:

Assassin Snails : I would like to breed these and put them up for sale it looks like I have at least 2 confirmed females out of the 5 I got originally so that helps the odds. If even half of the eggs hatch I'm on my way. I will first make sure a couple of peole have a small colony for themselves and I have them in every tank before palcing then out on the open market. I figure at about $3 a piece, which is what I figure they will go for by the time my colony gets large enough to thin will still be a nice bonus without a lot of effort on my part.

Mollies : When I was a kid I remember solid black sailfin mollies in the 4 to 5 inch range, Not the smaller ones we see today with the orange stripe. I know I could probably find some if I looked hard enough, but after a little chat with Dave66 I think I will try and line breed my own. So I have started looking for the starters and I have 4 set aside. My plan is to find some really large male/ Female Sailfins with a large percentage of black in them and breed out a few starter large mostly blacks and then breed back into the velvet blacks I know and love until I get the large size and the smoth velvet black. Should be a fun little project in genetics... plus I will keep breeding some other strains for the local LFS and fun.

Now to do this I want to get a series of 6 29's and 6 10's. Since the males will just harrass each other I will probably have to keep them seperate, but if they don't I will keep all of them in one 29 and the females in another. Then I will use 2 of the 10's to allow breeding and 4 of the 10's as isolation tanks to allow the females to drop the young. the 4 remaing 29's will be done by month so all the fry from 1 month will be in one and so on and at the end of 4 months they will be big enough to go to market. Makes it easy to keep them seperate and fish out when the time comes. Now all this will be in the shop so I need to aquire 3 more 29's and 5 more 10's freecycle here I come. I will run this all on a compressor for the sponge filters so easy to maintain.

Shrimp: Again I'm gonna line breed to try and get a really dark red shrimp. Fun and joy... May pick up a few other species to raise also.

So that pretty much covers it...

[Sounguru]

If they all hatch I will be sitting pretty this is just one of 5 plants covered and probably just as many scattered on the gravel. Funny thing is they have not at this point laid any eggs on the larger rocks, wood, and only one on the glass and I think that was an oops.



Also found the missing shrimp in the 5 gallon so I have both I just hope the one is a male not an immature female.

I have also gone to feeding all but the cichlids my own special food so I will see how it goes. I have noticed a growth spurt in the fry but now the tank smells like Garlic. I will soon make a cichlid food also.