33 gallon long - Dicrossus filamentosus and friends

[ButtNekkid]

Have you ever had problems with BGA? I always get some on my floaters.

 

[Bart Hazes]

I have BGA on floater in 3 out of 14 tanks and haven't figured out what makes them different. It started after a recent summer holiday trip and hasn't disappeared yet.

 

[doinkmobb]

I don't think I have any BGA in the tank, but there is a lot of BBA and other algae growing in the plants. I have a T5 54 watt light about 3-4" above the water, it's probably a bit too much light. When I had an ich problem a few months ago, I had the heat way up, which the pennywort didn't like and it started withering away. That's when the algae started to get worse.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I have BGA on floater in 3 out of 14 tanks and haven't figured out what makes them different. It started after a recent summer holiday trip and hasn't disappeared yet.

I've had it very occasionally on the leaves of Pistia, but only in tanks where the water is too soft for Ramshorn snails.

I assume the snails normally graze it, but I don't have any direct evidence of that.

cheers Darrel

 

[doinkmobb]

The tank is still doing sorta OK. The dominant male checkerboard killed the other two males; I tried to rescue one of them by moving him to my 75 gallon, but he didn't make it. The neons and hatchets have slowly dwindled down to their current numbers. I'm not sure why fish aren't thriving in this tank. I wonder if the pH is some ridiculously low number that only the checkerboards are tolerating.

 

[Drayden Farci]

Where did you get your fish? Cardinals are one of those fish that if you don't get good quality, they will die off one by one. It seems like a lot of online vendors don't have a good supply, but there are a few with a good reputation.

The hatchets also seems to die slowly. I've only kept them once, and it was a small group, but I observed them going down over a period of 4-5 months only.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

The hatchets also seems to die slowly. I've only kept them once, and it was a small group, but I observed them going down over a period of 4-5 months only.

I remember <"your thread">.

They should be quite long-lived, but they really need to be fed with live food and particularly floating insects.

Summer is fine they get mosquito larvae and aphids, but for the winter I have a vestigial-winged fruit fly culture, they are easy to keep and you can buy them from "Dart-frog" sellers.

If I ever go back down that route I'm going to try gut loading them before I feed them to the fish.

cheers Darrel

 

[doinkmobb]

Where did you get your fish? Cardinals are one of those fish that if you don't get good quality, they will die off one by one. It seems like a lot of online vendors don't have a good supply, but there are a few with a good reputation.

The hatchets also seems to die slowly. I've only kept them once, and it was a small group, but I observed them going down over a period of 4-5 months only.

I have a local saltwater shop get me fish, I think sometimes they get them from a local supplier, other times they are shipped in. Now that I think about it, I haven't had great luck with most of the fish they've ordered me; hatchets, cardinals, sterbai corys, none of them have done well. Although, the cupid cichlids and lemon tetras are doing great. Petsmart is also hit or miss, the neons I've gotten from them didn't last, but the sterbais and twig catfish, haven't lost a single one of those guys.

 

[ButtNekkid]

The hatchets also seems to die slowly. I've only kept them once, and it was a small group, but I observed them going down over a period of 4-5 months only.

I´ve had a group of 8 Carnegiella myersi that have survived on dry food only for a year. 2 of them got stuck behind a filter and 1 was wiped out by ich that Cardinal tetras brought along. The last 5 are still going strong. They are wild caught. I have not found those smaller fruit flies despite extensive searching.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I´ve had a group of 8 Carnegiella myersi that have survived on dry food only for a year. 2 of them got stuck behind a filter and 1 was wiped out by ich that Cardinal tetras brought along. The last 5 are still going strong. They are wild caught.

That is interesting to know.

I have not found those smaller fruit flies despite extensive searching.

They are the ones you want "vestigial-winged (small) Fruitfly - (Drosophila melanogaster)". I kept a culture for about 5 years, but I don't have a culture at the moment.

cheers Darrel

 

[ButtNekkid]

Hi all, That is interesting to know.
They are the ones you want "vestigial-winged (small) Fruitfly - (Drosophila melanogaster)". I kept a culture for about 5 years, but I don't have a culture at the moment.

cheers Darrel

Hi,

Was that culture laborious to keep?

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Hi, Was that culture laborious to keep?

They are a bit of work, which is partially why I don't have a culture now.

I used Banana and "Weetabix" cereal with a dash of orange juice and wood packaging in 500cm3 jam jars with sponge bung. You wan't to add a small amount yeast to the initial culture, after that the adult flies will transfer the yeast with them. I used to keep 4 separate cultures, and always make sure that I didn't feed all the adult flies to the fish. I used to sub-culture them about once a month.

They can't fly, but they don't know this, so they climb to the top of anything they can find and "take off" with surprising rapidity.

Mine also ended up in the micro-worm cultures (possibly wild-type Drosophila), meaning that I ended up with micro-worms in the fruit fly cultures.

cheers Darrel

 

[doinkmobb]

One other thing, I'm seeing females guarding eggs about 2-3x per month, but they are always gone within a few days. I really don't know if it's multiple females or just one laying eggs. There's no catfish in the tank, so I don't think they are being eaten by anybody...other than maybe the female.

Is it the fish just not knowing what they're doing yet, or are there any water parameters I can check/change? TDS is about 50ppm, GH/KH are both at 1, temp is 81 F, pH is somewhere below 6 (pH meter croaked, I need to get some test strips).

 

[TCMontium]

(This isn't a thread about hatchetfish, sorry to jump in like this.)
I am very amazed and puzzled by the amound of posts I read about hatchetfish needing to eat live food (Fruit flies, mosquito larvae etc.) just to survive longer than a few months in captivity.
I have been keeping mostly C. strigiata and some Gasteropelecus sp. (most likely G. maculatus) for more than 4 years. Even though I have not keept the same fish for 4+ years, they mostly lived more then 6 months and deaths were caused by major water chemistry problems or illnesses brought by newly added fish. A not so little percentage of my hatchets even lived longer that 1 year in my aquariums and then were selled to new owners.

And my point is: I have NEVER fed them live food. Because I can't find live food in Turkey. Only live food people can find regularly in Turkey are artemia nauplii and sometimes daphnia or dirty-water-tubifex.
So what did I feed my hatchets with? Dry Bloodworms, nearly %100 only dried bloodworm diet. Of course I do not suggest that this is the healthiest diet for hatchets, since it lacks variety, but dried bloodworms in fact are good enough for them to live longer than 1 year in captivity. Maybe even for their whole 3-4 years long life, I am not sure about that much.
I would prefer more variety and live food in their diet, but this is the best I can do in Turkey.

Maybe you (mostly europeans and americans) feed hatchets pellet or flake foods and these are harming them too much with the plant matter or additives inside? After all, hatchets are mostly (or only?) insectivores.
Did you ever try to only or mostly (mostly as in as frequent as 25 days of a month) feed them dried insects (in my case, bloodworms/red mosquito larvae)?

 

[Drayden Farci]

(This isn't a thread about hatchetfish, sorry to jump in like this.)

And my point is: I have NEVER fed them live food. Because I can't find live food in Turkey. Only live food people can find regularly in Turkey are artemia nauplii and sometimes daphnia or dirty-water-tubifex.
So what did I feed my hatchets with? Dry Bloodworms, nearly %100 only dried bloodworm diet. Of course I do not suggest that this is the healthiest diet for hatchets, since it lacks variety, but dried bloodworms in fact are good enough for them to live longer than 1 year in captivity. Maybe even for their whole 3-4 years long life, I am not sure about that much.
I would prefer more variety and live food in their diet, but this is the best I can do in Turkey.

I have also heard that dried meats work well, since they tend to float, giving the hatchets a longer period to eat!

To be fair, I had 5 Hatchets (gifted from someone) and 3 jumped out early in the morning when I would open the lid slightly to dose Flourish products, and the other 2 both ended up dying after losing an eye. I presumed something was attacking them, but I couldn't figure out what would be swimming that high up in the tank.

 

[doinkmobb]

This tank maaaaay be going away in its current form. None of the fish are thriving, I'm losing about 1-2 per month, BBA is everywhere and it's just going downhill. I thought about getting a UV sterilizer, but the nuclear option of breaking the whole tank down and starting over might make more sense. I do have play sand in this tank, I've always used pool filter sand before - I wonder if that is the cause.

 

[Drayden Farci]

If it's BBA, I imagine that's due to not enough CO2 and excess light. Short tanks usually have that problem! I don't think the substrate would have anything to do with it, but ???

 

[doinkmobb]

If it's BBA, I imagine that's due to not enough CO2 and excess light. Short tanks usually have that problem! I don't think the substrate would have anything to do with it, but ???

I do have excess light, a four foot T5 fixture with an excellent reflector. I have blocked off a large portion of the light, but I'm guessing it's still too much. Compaction in play sand is supposed to be a detriment - decaying matter, too much anaerobic bacteria?

I'd like to custom build an LED fixture with only a few narrow beam 6500K LEDs to simulate rays of lights penetrating the water. I think any off the shelf LED fixture would still be too bright.

 

[Drayden Farci]

I do have excess light, a four foot T5 fixture with an excellent reflector. I have blocked off a large portion of the light, but I'm guessing it's still too much. Compaction in play sand is supposed to be a detriment - decaying matter, too much anaerobic bacteria?

I'd like to custom build an LED fixture with only a few narrow beam 6500K LEDs to simulate rays of lights penetrating the water. I think any off the shelf LED fixture would still be too bright.

I am doing the same idea with my new 33L. I bought some LED Spotlights from Home Depot that are meant for night time garden illumination, but they should work fine for aquariums. Probably won't keep plants alive but the effect is there. I think for 4 lights and a transformer I spent $130 but you could probably find cheaper somewhere...not sure. I'm still building the stand, then I have to design a canopy, so any pics of your setup would be great!

 

[doinkmobb]

I am doing the same idea with my new 33L. I bought some LED Spotlights from Home Depot that are meant for night time garden illumination, but they should work fine for aquariums. Probably won't keep plants alive but the effect is there. I think for 4 lights and a transformer I spent $130 but you could probably find cheaper somewhere...not sure. I'm still building the stand, then I have to design a canopy, so any pics of your setup would be great!

Crap, I think you asked me before about seeing my stand. I'll try to take some pics this weekend. It's nothing amazing, but it works.