Starting a fishroom

[Shane]

The biggest issue with the snails (any snail sp really) is that they can quickly become the main biomass in an aquarium if left to reproduce uncontrollably. The best long term solution I have found is to use snail traps to keep the population as low as possible. Don't go the Assassin snail direction. It is just trading one snail problem for another.
-Shane

[dw1305]

Hi all,

So here's a question for everyone... how hard should I try to keep Malaysian trumpet snails out of tanks I intend to breed fish in? I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle with them, recently having contaminated another tank with a piece of wood that had been out of water and dry for the better part of a year, yet apparently still had viable snails and/or eggs in it somewhere. If they're generally considered harmless to fish eggs, I'd rather just give in and let it happen.

Harmless to fish eggs, Ingo Seidel actually recommends them as egg and fry janitors in the "Back to Nature guide to L numbers".

I have them in all my tanks and have successfully spawning

Corydoras(ln4) pygmaeus

etc

Malaysian Trumpet Snails are live-bearers (including by parthogenesis) so it is usually small snails that move from tank to tank.

cheers Darrel

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Are you kidding?!? A year out of water and still snails? Holy cow!

Dead serious. The wood was removed from a tank with trumpet snails almost exactly a year ago when I moved, and has been sitting on the dry garage floor since then. A couple months back, figuring it had to be safe by now, I added it to a snail free tank. Fast forward to the present, and I now have trumpet snails in that tank

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

The biggest issue with the snails (any snail sp really) is that they can quickly become the main biomass in an aquarium if left to reproduce uncontrollably. The best long term solution I have found is to use snail traps to keep the population as low as possible. Don't go the Assassin snail direction. It is just trading one snail problem for another.
-Shane

That gets to the secondary concerns I had, as I've seen with my contaminated tanks, not only significant bio-load, but they are strong competitors for any food that reaches the bottom of the tank as well. So the snail trap is a good idea to manually manage the population, thank you!

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Harmless to fish eggs, Ingo Seidel actually recommends them as egg and fry janitors in the "Back to Nature guide to L numbers".

I have them in all my tanks and have successfully spawning

Corydoras(ln4) pygmaeus

etc

Malaysian Trumpet Snails are live-bearers (including by parthogenesis) so it is usually small snails that move from tank to tank.

cheers Darrel

That's reassuring to hear. So with all the input in mind, I think that I'll stop worrying so much about it, and embrace the trumpet snail contagion

[Jools]

I think it depends on the fish you keep and how bothered you are by aesthetics. A number of my pleco breeding tanks (

Hypancistrus

,

Peckoltia

,

Panaqolus

) were infested with MTS, but I also had assassin snails and cherry shrimp in good numbers too. In my experience, the much more slowly reproducing assassin snails kept the MTS in check, just. In a large 36" tank, I would have about 30 of these.

Again IME, MTS will eat eggs and dead fry if either are left unguarded (either empty cave or swept out of cave) but IME male plecos remove any snails that get into the cave and I felt this strengthened their instincts for care. This is, after all, replicates what would happen in the wild (mostly, excepting black waters) and why plecos evolved to spawn in caves/guard etc.

Two great advantages I found with MTS may be useful to those with fishrooms.

a) If a filter goes south or the tank gets too hot and in any case if the DO drops, plecos will stay in caves until the very last but early on MTS will climb the glass in numbers. It's a very helpful early indication a filter needs cleaned or attention is required somewhere.

b) They are brilliant at eating food that plecos can't reach or don't want particularly in higher current set-ups. This is especially useful in tanks where lots rocks/caves and many 1-3cm youngsters which can be heavily fed / water changed.

Both these things are not hugely helpful if you have a few tanks, if you have 40+, they helped me.

In summary, I've learned to embrace the snail.

Jools

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Just some corys enjoying the Sunday morning sunshine

[bekateen]

I know the odds are low, but do you have the C141 still? It's been several years.

Cheers,
Eric

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

I know the odds are low, but do you have the C141 still? It's been several years.

Cheers,
Eric

Sadly, I've never had C141. For corys I've only ever had habrosus and paleatus, though I make sure to always keep some space open in the event I stumble upon some knaacki, C150, C141, or other beautiful spotty species.

[bekateen]

Sadly, I've never had C141. For corys I've only ever had habrosus and paleatus, though I make sure to always keep some space open in the event I stumble upon some knaacki, C150, C141, or other beautiful spotty species.

Sorry, I must have been confusing you with someone who used to live down by me in Central California. I sold him my C141 about 5-6 years ago. I thought he was you.

Well, that out of the bag, good luck hunting the other corys.

Cheers, Eric

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Sadly, I've never had C141. For corys I've only ever had habrosus and paleatus, though I make sure to always keep some space open in the event I stumble upon some knaacki, C150, C141, or other beautiful spotty species.

Sorry, I must have been confusing you with someone who used to live down by me in Central California. I sold him my C141 about 5-6 years ago. I thought he was you.

Well, that out of the bag, good luck hunting the other corys.

Cheers, Eric

No worries, and I think I can safely say I'm not that associate of yours since I've never lived in CA. I do visit Sacramento/Folsom on occasion for work, so know of any fish stores worth checking out in that area for next time I'm there?

[bekateen]

I do visit Sacramento/Folsom on occasion for work, so know of any fish stores worth checking out in that area for next time I'm there?

Absolutely! Here is a link to all the LFS that sponsor our fish club, the Sacramento Aquarium Society:

• http://www.sacramentoaquariumsociety.info/sponsors.html

If you're in Sacramento and can drive a half hour, you need to go to Lee's Feed and Western Wear in Shingle Springs (East on HWY 50). It is the best fish store (in terms of diversity and quality of fish) in the immediate Sacramento area. Sadly, it may look familiar to you because they get a lot of their fish (but not all) from Cichlid Exchange. So you'll recognize some of the fish if you frequent The Wet Spot. There's also Aqualife Aquarium, Aquarium Depot and Splash Aquarium (Exotic Aquarium closed last year after an electrical fire, but they may reopen in a few months). If you want to see a chain store that usually has a remarkably good selection, there are a few locations of Pet Club in the greater Sacramento area. If you can drive about an hour and a half, drive south on HWY 99 to Modesto to visit my favorite local store, Tropical Haven. The owner, Ted Pino, imports fish from all over the world... Petra Aqua in the Czech Republic, CV Bellenz in Indonesia (and another Indonesian company), an exporter in the Congo to name a few.

Also, if you're in Sacramento on the first weekend of the month, please, if you can, swing by RoundTable Pizza on Greenback Ave in Folsom and join us at a Sacramento Aquarium Society meeting. If you do, please introduce yourself to me. I'm the program coordinator there.

• https://www.facebook.com/Sacramentoaquariumsociety
• http://www.sacramentoaquariumsociety.com/
• https://www.youtube.com/user/sacaquariumsociety

Here's our meeting schedule:

• http://sacramentoaquariumsociety.info/m ... tings.html
• https://www.facebook.com/Sacramentoaqua ... ty/events/

Cheers,
Eric

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Also, if you're in Sacramento on the first weekend of the month, please, if you can, swing by RoundTable Pizza on Greenback Ave in Folsom and join us at a Sacramento Aquarium Society meeting. If you do, please introduce yourself to me. I'm the program coordinator there.

Thank you for the suggestions and the invite. I'll keep that all in mind next time my boss asks me to travel... now I just need to come up with a good business reason why my trip will have to extend over a weekend .

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

And on the fishy front, I separated out my best looking male and female L010A with the hopes of getting them laying eggs again.

Last night I saw the female was in the log pestering the male, so I checked on them again this morning and look what I found!

This is the first time I've gotten a solid idea of when the eggs were laid, so next step is to monitor them until they disappear, so on the next clutch I'll know when to pull them.

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

I moved my camera over to the Platydoras tank last night and caught some interesting footage. It seems that they are much more active when I'm not around than I ever imagined And I found this one humorous because she had had enough of his shenanigans...

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Day 10 you can clearly see little whiptails in the eggs.

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

Morning of Day 16:

the late evening of day 16 the eggs were still in place, but by the next morning they were all gone. Presumably hatched. But a search of the tank turned up nothing, and being they share this tank with six pictus cats and far too many corys, I wasn't really expecting to find any fry.

But fast forward a couple days to tonight when I was moving some plants around in the sump and saw some peculiar movement. A closer look and it appears I do have fry after all...

To end up in this particular spot was quite the journey. Once hatched it had to, make it past the pictus and corys to the overflow, escape the first planter/growbed to make it to the main sump area, and finally from the main sump area it made a trip through a water pump into this planter/growbed.

[Jools]

There's always gold in the sump! I bred a few things like this, barbs and panchax for starters. Good luck it!

Jools

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

It's been a while since I've shared any updates, life has been busy and progress in the fish room has been slow. That said I got a surprise sighting of my Microglanis tonight which I figured I'd share. I had withheld pellets from the tank for a few days, and apparently the flakes weren't to its liking, so when I finally chucked some pellets in tonight it was hungry enough to come out with the lights on... Looking at My Fish info for this little guy, and I can't believe I've had it for 7 years now. That seems unusually long lived for such a small fish .

[bekateen]

A sighting is always welcome!

Cheers, Eric

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

And here's the update I had planned to make, I have reached 1 year of having my perugiae tank restarted. I've been taking a weekly photo to document the changes over time. There's nothing special or dramatic and the catfish stay hidden, but it's a project I've been diligently sticking to so I'm happy to have it finished... Going forward I'm pondering if I should keep doing the weekly photo, or maybe drop back to monthly... or just stop worrying about it, the tank and plants will do what they'll do whether I document it or not .

[Jools]

I really like it because I like seeing plants grow.

Jools

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

I really like it because I like seeing plants grow.

Jools

Indeed! And being a woodcat tank, I always knew the weekly photo was going to be about the plants. I just never anticipated the observable growth to be almost entirely the Riccia and java moss.