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  1. Ben Rhau

    Apistogramma rositae

    By "hockey stick" I assume you're referring to either N. eques or unifasciatus. It's thought that the adaptation to swimming at an oblique angle is to provide an advantage for feeding at the surface. I've kept N. unifasciatus, and they mostly fed at the surface, but could be coaxed to come lower...
  2. Ben Rhau

    'lipstick' pencilfish ??

    Yes, what I'm saying is that one may expect different results with different individuals in different tanks.
  3. Ben Rhau

    'lipstick' pencilfish ??

    I've said this before, but I think it's very difficult to distinguish behavior differences among similar species within a genus. Evidence is all anecdotal, and both individual disposition and context (physical and social) are huge confounding factors. Different genus, but similar to what Mike...
  4. Ben Rhau

    Are Frozen Bloodworm Cubes Bad?

    @anewbie Have you tried the “color enhancing” bug bites? They claim that it contains astaxanthin, but I’m not sure how well that works in practice.
  5. Ben Rhau

    Are Frozen Bloodworm Cubes Bad?

    It has been discussed many times in this forum, if you search for "bloodworms"
  6. Ben Rhau

    Any reason to not send fish waste water through a distiller ?

    Yeah, I don’t see a problem with it.
  7. Ben Rhau

    Any reason to not send fish waste water through a distiller ?

    You could poke around the reef community for people's experience running RO membranes in parallel. If you google it, there are a lot of discussions. I think it could work, especially considering that your input water has low TDS to begin with. Some things to consider: The pressure will be a lot...
  8. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    Yes, but assuming the tap water is buffered, it will consume the protons in the dissociation reaction, pulling that reaction to the right. So the total DIC will be higher in tap water, but the fraction that remains as CO2(aq) will be the same in both.
  9. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    I'm not a chemistry expert, but I think I was incorrect for a different reason than you're saying. Henry's Law holds for nonreactive gases that don't ionize in solution. Given that CO2 is reactive with water, I expect that it does not fully obey Henry's Law. Where I'm wrong: I assumed that RO...
  10. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    When CO2 dissolves in RO water, it's quickly converted to carbonates and protons. This is a buffering system that reaches equilibrium with a pH of around 5.5. It's the same buffer that exists in your tap water (though tap water often contains more buffers). The AI is accurate in the sense that...
  11. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    I’m my experience, Salvinia are pretty useful for cover. Very easy to keep alive, shades well and grows fast. I tend to keep about 2/3 of the surface covered with floaters. Frogbit is also good. I like hydrocotle but it won’t provide broad cover since it’s more of a stem plant.
  12. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    Another situation that fish are shy is when there is food available in the tank independent of you (like live foods growing, or from foraging). If they get to eat plenty way, they're not dependent on that small window of time when you feed them. I know folks who keep elassoma this way, with...
  13. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    It depends. Some fish are just always jumpy when there's movement in front of the tank, and in that case it helps not to have movement from above... Approach the tank lower and possibly when the tank is lit and the room isn't. That said, You said he doesn't accept food from tweezers *anymore*...
  14. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    Also, if the fry survive beyond like a week or so, I would consider removing the male also. The pair will just keep breeding, which is energetically expensive for the female. Gives her some time to recover.
  15. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    Don’t do it right now (and stress out the female) but I would take the pleco out if you want them to breed. See how this clutch goes first. If it eats the fry, no big deal this time. The apistos will keep breeding.
  16. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    If the female has mysteriously disappeared after displaying to the male several times with no fighting observed, it’s highly likely that she has eggs.
  17. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    Yes, it is completely normal for the female to want to stay with her eggs. This is a good sign, in my opinion.
  18. Ben Rhau

    Wild caught A. Ortegai shyness and hiding

    I'm also in the minority (for this group) that have not had problems with bloodworms. Similar to Mike, I only use a certain brand (Hikari) and only from a store whose owner I trust that will properly handle frozen products. He feeds them regularly to a lot of his own stock. I'll echo that no...
  19. Ben Rhau

    Male cockatoo agression. How to resolve

    The behavior is a very good sign from the female. It's not too unusual for the male not to be ready to spawn yet, particularly since you rescaped the tank. I would just wait and feed well with conditioning foods. Breeding is very likely to happen if it hasn't already.
  20. Ben Rhau

    Male cockatoo agression. How to resolve

    The structure looks better to me for sure. It's hard to tell how bright it is because I don't know the photo exposure, but I'm seeing algae growing on the substrate, which indicates an imbalance. You could reduce the light to address that, I keep mine really low. That said, large rosettes of...
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