Stressed out fish can lose all their "normal" coloring. I should have guessed you'd breed them, lol. What a happy story & that your buyer liked the contradens too. Pleco connoisseurs often stick together, lol. Did he buy some of your others? I bet he wanted to....
Adventures in Fishkeeping or A Fish Tale
- Thread starter TwoTankAmin
- Start date
I have been at this for 22+ years. My current filtration methods have not change much in years. So you would think I would have paste the point of making the sort of mistakes I know to avoid. Well, you would be wrong.
Two nights ago I was feeding tanks before I made dinner. I was feeding my flak mix to the 150 with my clown loaches. Usually when the flakes hit the water where I drop them, the current from the anister spraybar blows them pretty hard across the length of the tank. Bit instead the flaks just sort of sat there. The flow was only a trickle. Not good.
I went to the other end of the tank where the filter intake was on the bottom rear of the tank. There is an AC 110 500 gph hang-on at that ernd as well. The flow from that was also a trickle. Yikes. Two major sources of surface agitation which oxygenate the water were almost off. Thank goodness for all the anubias in that tank.
Once I saw that AC intake, which is sponged, I knew what was wrong. The sponge was collapsed and shrunken. It was so clogged it could not pass nearly enough water. The canister intake down at the bottom was also collapsed. I did not think I was that far behind normal maint. got that tank, but clearly I was.
I am just relieved that I caught this, even if a bit later than I should have, and that the fish seemed OK. In my defence, life has been pretty hectic this summer and I have constantly been behind on almost everything with health at the top of the list and the rest after that being juggled. I can also plead Covid- an entire year + was lost in terms of fish going out but not their proclivity for spawning. Ne event, not club meetings, no buyers allowed in here for a long time.
But still, some of the the clowns in that 150 are my longest kept fish and will the the last to go. I should never put them in jeopardy because I am not on top of their tank. I have pre-filtered virtually everything except my sponge/foam filters for a very long time. I know to monitor them and most of the time I rinse them weekly.
On the other hand I just resitered to be a room seller at the 9th All Aquarium Catfish convention outsode Washington, DC. I will be doing room sales. It may be the last event I attend or at which I sell. There is a chance for one more NEC as it is just over an hour drive from me. I am considering doing some more serious stuff online if I must. Maybe avoid registering with Google and trying to do Youtube I could do some guest spots on other people's sites who I know.
This is not my ideal solution but I may have to go Crazy Eddy in the end to move it all out.
Two nights ago I was feeding tanks before I made dinner. I was feeding my flak mix to the 150 with my clown loaches. Usually when the flakes hit the water where I drop them, the current from the anister spraybar blows them pretty hard across the length of the tank. Bit instead the flaks just sort of sat there. The flow was only a trickle. Not good.
I went to the other end of the tank where the filter intake was on the bottom rear of the tank. There is an AC 110 500 gph hang-on at that ernd as well. The flow from that was also a trickle. Yikes. Two major sources of surface agitation which oxygenate the water were almost off. Thank goodness for all the anubias in that tank.
Once I saw that AC intake, which is sponged, I knew what was wrong. The sponge was collapsed and shrunken. It was so clogged it could not pass nearly enough water. The canister intake down at the bottom was also collapsed. I did not think I was that far behind normal maint. got that tank, but clearly I was.
I am just relieved that I caught this, even if a bit later than I should have, and that the fish seemed OK. In my defence, life has been pretty hectic this summer and I have constantly been behind on almost everything with health at the top of the list and the rest after that being juggled. I can also plead Covid- an entire year + was lost in terms of fish going out but not their proclivity for spawning. Ne event, not club meetings, no buyers allowed in here for a long time.
But still, some of the the clowns in that 150 are my longest kept fish and will the the last to go. I should never put them in jeopardy because I am not on top of their tank. I have pre-filtered virtually everything except my sponge/foam filters for a very long time. I know to monitor them and most of the time I rinse them weekly.
On the other hand I just resitered to be a room seller at the 9th All Aquarium Catfish convention outsode Washington, DC. I will be doing room sales. It may be the last event I attend or at which I sell. There is a chance for one more NEC as it is just over an hour drive from me. I am considering doing some more serious stuff online if I must. Maybe avoid registering with Google and trying to do Youtube I could do some guest spots on other people's sites who I know.
This is not my ideal solution but I may have to go Crazy Eddy in the end to move it all out.
I remember Crazy Eddie from my east coast days, lol.
I've had sudden prefilter collapse in just a few days after cleaning both it & the filter media. Mine is often from duckweed or moss (ugh). I know you don't have those but it doesn't always take long. Yep, you've missed a couple prefilter rinse outs but no big deal, you caught it in time to fix it fast. I bet your clowns noticed the lesser flow but were fine with it, otherwise they'd have been hanging at the surface looking stressed. It doesn't sound like they were...or you'd have noticed much sooner.
I'm glad to hear you're going to CatCon. A long drive but a fun, hopefully profitable last call. Why are they quitting having them now we're almost semi-post covid? Or is that to your schedule? I know you have a retirement plan for you & your pleco breeding.
I've had sudden prefilter collapse in just a few days after cleaning both it & the filter media. Mine is often from duckweed or moss (ugh). I know you don't have those but it doesn't always take long. Yep, you've missed a couple prefilter rinse outs but no big deal, you caught it in time to fix it fast. I bet your clowns noticed the lesser flow but were fine with it, otherwise they'd have been hanging at the surface looking stressed. It doesn't sound like they were...or you'd have noticed much sooner.
I'm glad to hear you're going to CatCon. A long drive but a fun, hopefully profitable last call. Why are they quitting having them now we're almost semi-post covid? Or is that to your schedule? I know you have a retirement plan for you & your pleco breeding.
I have not posted in this thread for some time. And the reason I am post now is it has been a rally lousy day. When I got up this morning I was embarking on a long day of catching and bagging fish. I went into the adjacent room to get some supplies when I noticed my oldest and biggest clown loach was floating at the surface upside down, dead.
I have had the fish for abut 20 years and it was about 4 inches when I got it. Nothing else in the tanks died and I saw no signs of problems. Maybe it had a heart attack or a stroke. It must have been at least 22 or 23 years old and about a foot in size and bulky.
Now my oldest fish is a zebra pleco I got in 2006 as part of a proven breeding group. It doesn't spawn any more as far as I can tell, but it has a home here for another year+ and then I will likely give him away to a good keeper who will give him a good home until his time is up.
My plan to exit the hobby has been moving along nicely. 3/4 breeding groups have been sold. So now only their kids need to go out. But I still have about 125of them. Of course the other breeding groups are still at it and I have about 165 kids from groups I wont be selling until next year.
Today I sent out my Budrovcan 236 breeder with six 1.25 inch fry. The buyer will get another 5 at 2.25 inch as well. It was also an interesting day because the alpa male was on close to free swimming fry and I had to break his cave apart to ship him. I was worried I would dmage him or the fry. The cave was a pretty sturdy one and I had to smack it almost to bits to get him out. The good news is I have 20 fry with almost consumed yolk sacs in a hang-on the front of a tank breeder box. With luck I should be able to release them into the grow tank with their brothers, sisters and cousins after I can feed them and fatten them up a bit
The buyer also took a proven reverse trio of basic 236 along with offspring from both the lone dad and the pair- 16 fish in all.
Tomorrow six zebras and six L173 from tank raised parents go out.
I actually will have 4 empty tanks tomorrow. I am planning to move my other zebra group out to one of the two empty 33L in the fish space and use the other for addition grow space for the super white 236. They are spawning like mad.
I have a lovely poster with pictures of various plecos from the Rio Xingu. It was signed for me by Leandro Sousa at CatCon. https://biotopeaquariumproject.com/bap-experts/leandro-melo-de-sousa/ I had it framed and now am trying to figure out where to hang it. I think wilI have to shuffle the art in my room. I will get a picture and post it in the near future.
I have had the fish for abut 20 years and it was about 4 inches when I got it. Nothing else in the tanks died and I saw no signs of problems. Maybe it had a heart attack or a stroke. It must have been at least 22 or 23 years old and about a foot in size and bulky.
Now my oldest fish is a zebra pleco I got in 2006 as part of a proven breeding group. It doesn't spawn any more as far as I can tell, but it has a home here for another year+ and then I will likely give him away to a good keeper who will give him a good home until his time is up.
My plan to exit the hobby has been moving along nicely. 3/4 breeding groups have been sold. So now only their kids need to go out. But I still have about 125of them. Of course the other breeding groups are still at it and I have about 165 kids from groups I wont be selling until next year.
Today I sent out my Budrovcan 236 breeder with six 1.25 inch fry. The buyer will get another 5 at 2.25 inch as well. It was also an interesting day because the alpa male was on close to free swimming fry and I had to break his cave apart to ship him. I was worried I would dmage him or the fry. The cave was a pretty sturdy one and I had to smack it almost to bits to get him out. The good news is I have 20 fry with almost consumed yolk sacs in a hang-on the front of a tank breeder box. With luck I should be able to release them into the grow tank with their brothers, sisters and cousins after I can feed them and fatten them up a bit
The buyer also took a proven reverse trio of basic 236 along with offspring from both the lone dad and the pair- 16 fish in all.
Tomorrow six zebras and six L173 from tank raised parents go out.
I actually will have 4 empty tanks tomorrow. I am planning to move my other zebra group out to one of the two empty 33L in the fish space and use the other for addition grow space for the super white 236. They are spawning like mad.
I have a lovely poster with pictures of various plecos from the Rio Xingu. It was signed for me by Leandro Sousa at CatCon. https://biotopeaquariumproject.com/bap-experts/leandro-melo-de-sousa/ I had it framed and now am trying to figure out where to hang it. I think wilI have to shuffle the art in my room. I will get a picture and post it in the near future.
I guess I am not as far out of things as I planned. I forgot I have 10 black corys about to arrive next week. I had initially planned for them to go into a community tank. But now I have 4 empty tanks including a 20L behinf me as I type. So I reconfigured it for the corys and plan to see if i can get them spawning.
I was told by the breeder what sort of tank her's were in and I set up mine smilarly. She said not to got above 78F temp. as that will cause them to stop or not to start spawning. Fortunately, I has zebras in that tank so it has a temp controller on it. It is now set for 25 C. Sand bottom, some wood, river rocks and slate, but no plants.
My next problem is I have too many plants now. I am going to have to put the 29 back up just for plants. *sigh*
For some reason I have a hard time throwing out plants. My planted tanks are all jungles....
The odd thing is none of this can really last very long. I think I need those corys to make up for losing my clown. Today I spotted the other two large ones behind the log. One had its head resting on the others back end. I had never seen that before.
I was told by the breeder what sort of tank her's were in and I set up mine smilarly. She said not to got above 78F temp. as that will cause them to stop or not to start spawning. Fortunately, I has zebras in that tank so it has a temp controller on it. It is now set for 25 C. Sand bottom, some wood, river rocks and slate, but no plants.
My next problem is I have too many plants now. I am going to have to put the 29 back up just for plants. *sigh*
For some reason I have a hard time throwing out plants. My planted tanks are all jungles....
The odd thing is none of this can really last very long. I think I need those corys to make up for losing my clown. Today I spotted the other two large ones behind the log. One had its head resting on the others back end. I had never seen that before.
I'm so sorry you lost you clown! He must have been well over their "usual" 20+ age so no fault of your good fish keeping skills. Stuff happens to old fish...
I know this wind down to 1 or no tanks is hard to do & I sympathize with you for it. Kinda like my moving...but without the chance of restarting again...
I hate throwing out plants too. I hope my plant club will meet again before I have to compost any. My timing is often off for those rare meets anymore.
I know this wind down to 1 or no tanks is hard to do & I sympathize with you for it. Kinda like my moving...but without the chance of restarting again...
I hate throwing out plants too. I hope my plant club will meet again before I have to compost any. My timing is often off for those rare meets anymore.
Chapta 32- Dumb and Dumba
So today as I was cleaning tanks I thought it would be interesting to chack all the caavess in the 75 gal. with my second breeding group of L236. These are not Budrovcan line fish and are much more affordable.
The first cave into which I looked contained 2 fish. There was a trapping in progress. The next few caves held lone males and nothing special. But then I hit a cave with a dad that appeared to be on eggs. It took a while to confirm the eggs, but I did.
As most folks know, I am a path to exit the hobby not long after the end of next year. I have been selling off my breeding groups of plecos and offspring all year. One of the last two boxes that went out in the last two weeks contained my breeding group of Budrovcan line 236 as well as a proven reverse trio of basic 236 along with offspring from both the lone dad and the couple.
So the smart move here was for me to ignore the above plecos and let whatever may come happen without my interfering. The tank is not super fry friendly and I do not deal with it like most of my other breeding tanks. I care way less about getting fry and when I do, that they survive. Like I said, the smart play was to leave things alone.
But I am too dumb to do that and since the tank which held the last trio that went out was empty and U had sjut done a water change on it, i decide to pull both caves. The dad one agges stayed in his cave firnly, but the male of the pair was not so happy and exited the cave a i was pulling it. But I manage to get him and the cave w. he fm into the specimen box and soon the two caves and three fish were in the 29 and I went to work cleaning the 75 from which they had been removed.
About 15 minutes later I remembered that when I cleaned the empty 29 and the empty 20L under it, I had added ammonia to the water of those tanks, or at least I had planned to. But I wasn't sure I had done so. So I decided to do an ammonia test to find out. And yes, it proved I was even dumba- I had added ammonia before I added the fish.
So I quickly added a bunch of Amquel to the tank to neutralize the ammonia. Since I have a private well, I never use dechlor, so the water from the change did not contain any. Then I did another 1/3 water change, I figure between the Amquel and the water change the tank shoould be safe.
Like the title says, I was dumb and dumba this evening.
So today as I was cleaning tanks I thought it would be interesting to chack all the caavess in the 75 gal. with my second breeding group of L236. These are not Budrovcan line fish and are much more affordable.
The first cave into which I looked contained 2 fish. There was a trapping in progress. The next few caves held lone males and nothing special. But then I hit a cave with a dad that appeared to be on eggs. It took a while to confirm the eggs, but I did.
As most folks know, I am a path to exit the hobby not long after the end of next year. I have been selling off my breeding groups of plecos and offspring all year. One of the last two boxes that went out in the last two weeks contained my breeding group of Budrovcan line 236 as well as a proven reverse trio of basic 236 along with offspring from both the lone dad and the couple.
So the smart move here was for me to ignore the above plecos and let whatever may come happen without my interfering. The tank is not super fry friendly and I do not deal with it like most of my other breeding tanks. I care way less about getting fry and when I do, that they survive. Like I said, the smart play was to leave things alone.
But I am too dumb to do that and since the tank which held the last trio that went out was empty and U had sjut done a water change on it, i decide to pull both caves. The dad one agges stayed in his cave firnly, but the male of the pair was not so happy and exited the cave a i was pulling it. But I manage to get him and the cave w. he fm into the specimen box and soon the two caves and three fish were in the 29 and I went to work cleaning the 75 from which they had been removed.
About 15 minutes later I remembered that when I cleaned the empty 29 and the empty 20L under it, I had added ammonia to the water of those tanks, or at least I had planned to. But I wasn't sure I had done so. So I decided to do an ammonia test to find out. And yes, it proved I was even dumba- I had added ammonia before I added the fish.
So I quickly added a bunch of Amquel to the tank to neutralize the ammonia. Since I have a private well, I never use dechlor, so the water from the change did not contain any. Then I did another 1/3 water change, I figure between the Amquel and the water change the tank shoould be safe.
Like the title says, I was dumb and dumba this evening.
But of course there was only one way this could turn out. I gave it every chance to fat least fail if not become a disaster. I jusy checcked the tank, one pleco alive outside the caves and yhen one pleco on eggs in both caves............
