Bettarazzi

Welcome Griff! How big is the tank? And what kind of fish are you generally interested in? You could do a nice planted display if it also came with lights.

Amazing how resilient they are. Would never dare try that in Melbourne.

Love the crowntail plans. I've unfortunately lost my recently purchased crowntail females. I'll have to find more.

The fry are doing alright. It's actually time to start thinning them out. There are some with deformities which need to be removed. Some of the swim bladder problems have resolved themselves which is going to make it harder to do the cull. I started weaning them off bbs about 10 days ago and I think they might be ok to go completely on NLS Grow pellets.

It seems the old Photobucket hosted pics are appearing again. Not sure what's going on.

Hello from Melbourne. Thanks for the pics! Tank looks awesome. You need a little person standing next to it to give us a sense of scale. This forum has had a predominance of betta keepers on it but most of us keep or are interested in other fish. After all, every betta breeder needs a monster fish to dispatch the ugly ones lol. We encourage discussion on any species. In the Coffee Shop forum people discuss whatever the hell they like. Well... we try to avoid hugely controversial topics.

I haven't kept geos. They are beautiful fish but probably too big for my setup. Largest tank I have is a 3 foot 😄 Would love to see a pic of your 6x2x2. A tank that size would take up half my fish room hahaha.

That’s really interesting. I didn’t realise that about Brisbane tap water.

Yay for crown tails. Need more self-bred crowntails in the shows.

I seem to have a few swim bladder issues among the larger fry. And there is a huge range of sizes. I’ve been adding green water occasionally to help the smaller ones. I forgot to log when I moved them from the unfiltered 8 litre spawn tank to a 10 litre with sponge filter. Not that it’s a huge difference. I’ve been doing water changes twice a day. In the morning before work and when I get home. That’s also when I feed them. I’m going to move them into a 2 foot tank in the next few days. AND I still don’t have pics of the parents or the fry!

Ugh! The recent rains in Melbourne diluted the bucket and and cold weather killed off any remaining brine shrimp. I'll have to start again.

30 is a reasonable number to raise. Do some longfin halfmoon spawns goddammit! hahahahaha

Hi plippy. Welcome to the forum. We’re you at the Victoria Betta Show this weekend? They sound like great little tanks you’ve got there. Just be careful with introducing a betta to your shrimp tank. Bettas would see shrimps as food and even if they aren’t able to take a whole one, they will often take nips at legs and feelers.

Hi ganaM. I think the problem is that the fish food doesn’t break down in a controlled way. But I would expect a week to be about right for a tank to cycle. Using substrate and filter media from established tanks will also have sped up the process. Check the nitrates. I think you’ll find you’re good to go. Of course things can change once you add fish. So I would continue taking readings and doing partial water changes after the fish are added. What species of fish will you be adding?

A couple of years ago one of the guest speakers at the Aquarium Society of Victoria mentioned that after harvesting from his bbs hatcher he didn’t chuck out the remnants. Instead he would put all the leftovers, unhatched eggs, the salt water that had been strained into a container outdoors. This was how he grew adult brine shrimp. So I tried it too but only halfheartedly and of course didn’t succeed. Now I was talking to Jan Kleyn yesterday and he was at the same talk and he also tried it but he did succeed. So I’m going to try again. This time I’m putting the bucket by the laundry door where it will be a little closer and I’m more likely to remember it’s there. I’m just using a 10 litre bucket. Apparently Jan never fed them or did anything other than top up with fresh water when the water level dropped from evaporation. Let’s see what happens.