Think Fish Keepers Daily News [year 2020]

Thanks Matt.

Now the water has cleared I'll be able to take some photos of the kribs - and the rearranged shrimp tank, though the fish are smaller than adult cherry shrimp so they may not show up 

Some photos - please excuse the state of the glass, it needs cleaning but I wanted to wait until the mess from the sand settled first.

I have 3 kribs, big middle and little. The breeder assured me that big was male and middle & little were female. I have no experience with kribs so I don't if he was right.
Big chases the female rice fish; middle chases little.

I have only 5 rice fish left, all female. Since added the new sand, all five of them have gone from pale yellow to bright gold. The last male died at the end of last week, i do wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Photos:
two of big and middle together
little
female rice fish

An update on the 23 litre.

Since I shared the first photo, the tank has been rearranged and fish added.
The filter has been moved to the back wall and a black net used to stop the baby shrimps being sucked up.
The water sprite in the sand has been replaced with Schismatoglottis prietoi.
I gave up on the java fern latifolius which did absolutely nothing and replaced it with anubias bonsai on the small piece of wood.
There is new frogbit on the surface which is why the roots are a bit bent. The water sprite in the main tank is going a bit off so I moved all the frogbit from the 23 litre into the 180 and put the new frogbit in here. There's also some more water sprite Ceratopteris thalicroides 'fein' floating as it arrived with all the roots cut off and this is the tank least likely to have new roots nibbled. Once it grows a bit, it'll be moved over.
And finally, I moved the last three sparrow rasboras (Boraras urophthalmoides) in there a couple of weeks ago and on monday they were joined by 10 chili rasboras (B. brigittae).


The first photo is from the end of July, the second from yesterday

Great looking tanks and great looking fish 

I agree with @fcmf that I had no idea the rice fish were as beautfiul as that.

Kribs are wonderful characters -you probably know I’m a fan of dwarf cichlids!! Having done some reading on them just now it looks like they eat quite a bit of algae in nature though I also haven’t heard of dietary issues with them being fed normal fish foods. Not sure if the second female may get picked on if a pair forms - but I’m sure you know this as have advised me regards this issue with dwarf cichlids before. They seem quite easy to breed which is exciting. I can see you have some caves in your tank which they will appreciate - I once saw them in a shop tank which was very bare and they did not look comfortable at all - the tank had a 3D background on it and they were forcing themselves into little crevices within that looking for shelter... it was not a nice sight. Can’t wait to hear more about their antics 

Schismatoglottis prietoi always seems to never be quite happy with me - staying short and only occasionally deciding conditions are right for a bit of growth. How have you found it? It looks like you might have a planting substrate under the sand from the photo is this right?

Matt - the shrimp tank had Unipac silica sand but it wasn't thick enough having lost some tiny bit by tiny bit over the years. But in the shed I had a small amount of the sand that's in the main tank so I added that. I know it'll end up with a layer of the finer grained sand in the bottom and the larger grained silica sand on the top so I didn't mix it in as well as I should have  I was also afraid of trapping newly hatched shrimps if it did any more vigorous that a gentle stir.
The schismatoglottis is new so I'll have to wait and see how it does. It arrived as one big clump; I split it into a few smaller clumps, some in the shrimp tank and some in the main tank. There are a couple of new leaves beginning to show in the shrimp tank though I did disturb the clumps in the main tank. It's an experiment as I've never really used plants which are rooted in the substrate.


I know that at least one of the kribs will have to be moved on. They could be all male, all female, 1m + 2f or 2m + 1f. Despite the chap being certain they were 1m and 2f they are far too young to tell.
I had also read about them being algae eaters but the way they hunted down the shrimps I had missed makes it obvious they like crustaceans as well. 'Little' has also taken to picking at the edges of the nerite snails 


The female rice have only been that colour for a few days. I bought 15 of them 4 years ago and discovered 18 in the bag. I also had 4 fry hatch in the betta tank after I moved a bit of water sprite in there (he was the betta who ignored everything and the fry grew big enough to move into the main tank). For the last year, the rice fish have been dying one by one - males seem to die faster than females. The last male died just over a week ago, leaving these 5 females. The males were pale metallic blue, about the same colour as dwarf neon rainbowfish. The females were pale yellow. The male died on Thursday, I got the kribs last Sunday, then redid the tank on Tuesday which left it very cloudy. On Wednedsay, when I could finally see the fish, the female rice fish were that gorgeous bright gold.
What made them brighten in colour? The death of the male? The kribs ('big' does chase them)? Or me messing about in the tank?



The pieces of azalea root are still soaking. They sank quite quickly, I was surprised. The water turned brown and there was a layer of oily stuff on the surface after a couple of days, so I changed the water, which then started to go cloudy. It is still cloudy after a couple more water changes.There is no sign of that translucent mould but there's no way it's going in the tank till the water stops going cloudy.
The one reference I've found to azalea wood harming fish is a thread started in 2016 when the poster put new azalea root in the tank without soaking and next day the water was cloudy and the fish gasping at the surface. A reply in the same thread earlier this year said their azalea root killed a hillstream loach and left the rest of the fish gasping.
The oily residue on the surface when I first soaked the wood could probably have prevented gas exchange causing the fish to gasp at the surface. But i don't like the cloudy water, it'll have to stop doing that before I risk it anywhere near my fish 

Definitely the correct decision under the circumstances!

I've already got wood which came with an Aqua One label but I don't remember what it was. I know it was Aqua One as I was surprised they did things like wood so it stuck in my mind. And I do remember having wood at some point which had white translucent goo on which the nerites snails and honey gouramis ate without ill effect.

If it wasn't for the cloudy water in the old tank in the garden I wouldn't be worried; it's just that when the cloudiness appeared I started googling and found people who had fish die after putting Aqua One azalea root in their tanks. The ones that didn't have a problem boiled it first but as these pieces are almost 18 inches long (that's the tank length) I don't have a pan big enough.

I'm half thinking about moving the tank into the house, putting a heater in it and adding some 'pest' and Malaysian trumpet snails. If they eat the goo and survive, it should be OK 

I hope that your remaining fish are enjoying the peace and quiet. 

I hope the new wood doesn't make the water cloudy.

Nooooo! Something seems 'morally' wrong here... My 5yr, 4.5mth old harlequin rasbora is mating with one of the new espei rasboras under a plant leaf. 

Errrrrrr........