Dr A
-
Posts
295 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Plant Articles
Fish Articles & Guides
Clubs
Gallery
Posts posted by Dr A
-
-
Ha, now I look (more) stupid. In hindsight of-course it's not...
Oh well.
Anyway he's building bubble nests in his new home. I
I'm kind of suspicious that the long photo-period the tank was exposed to might have been to blame. I was doing at least 2x 15% water changes a week.
-
Hey,
My guy has seems to have developed finrot.
He's otherwise happy/healthy...
His water parameters seemed OK (GH 160~120, KH 0~40, PH 6, NO2 < .5, NO3 < 20).
I've got him in a hospital tank at the moment with salt. I've got indian almond leaves in there too, I'm just curious if I should be doing both at the same time... Salt is obviously alkaline, and the almond leaves are acidic.
I plan to try him on salt (Tonic Salt) in a quarantine tank doing 100% water changes until I see some improvement.
-
Right, so no mosquito larvae as of yet.
I might get some other food to supplement his diet... would those whiteworm cultures I've read about work?
I like the idea of live things...
Brine shrimp?
Open to suggestions.
Re: Flake food, he's not keen on any flake I've tried to give him. He'll nibble but spit it out or ignore it. He likes the mini-pallets though, and happily forages amongst the substrate, which I take isn't a given amongst bettas.
-
you have an outdoor pot pond???, didn't realize it was an aquatic :sml2:
So many comments I could make about bong-water being the prefect environment for fish...
Anyway... I'll whip out the dying plant and put it in the pot. They're quite tricky to get set-up, the one I've got at the moment is suffering from green algae.
-
from the pic I think it is another one of those lesser spearworts, (Rannunculus flammeus) tends to prefer good lighting in the tank and also likes to stick up out of the water, never kept one in a tank only in ponds
Did some googling and found someone mentioning arrowheads, and it does appear to look like one.
That's good, I can use it in my outdoor pot/pond. I need more plants in there.
-
It's cool when they do that aye? I've got a
ofof mine doing that (makes me want Bettas again now >.< ). Go easy on the bloodworms though, Bettas don't know when to stop and can really hurt themselves eating too much.Yeah, I just give him a few. The biggest problem is actually chopping a small enough amount off the frozen block. I only keep them defrosted for 24hrs.
I've got a bucket outside cultivating mosquito larvae too which should come on-line soon.
Should I invest in some different frozen bits to supplement his diet?
Will try and get some better (top?) pics of the lilly type thing. It doesn't have a rhizome if that helps, and I think the guy in the shop said it has small blue flowers.
-
I need to get a new test kit this week. I'll post results.
Decaying leaves are cool so it'd be nice to leave them in.
-
Update (everybody loves updates):
Betta is still looking tough and having a jolly old time by himself.
He's only built 1 bubble nest, which he didn't re-make after I did a water change.
I purchased some frozen bloodworms which go down well. Jumps out of the water to get the tweezers.
Mixed success with the plants in the tank, the plant I'm growing in the center is going nuts and growing 4/5cm a day. I'm going to have to prune it soon.
Red plant in the back left shed alot of leaves, I've now discovered they need high light and iron. Seems to be comming right though. I've left all the dead leaves in the tank, sort of works with my vibe.
The lilly-type thing in the back right really isn't happy. If someone could ID it for me that'd be awesome. If it's unpractical I'll give it away before it withers away completely. Java fern appears unchanged.
Floating 2x Indian ferns is a bit of a pain, but they've grown to cover most of the tanks surface. I may plant one in the back. The Betta likes it I think.
No real sign of Algae either, I have the lights on for a long time too, so I guess that's good.
Still not 100% happy with the layout. Does anybody know of a small plant that will grow in the front? Maybe I could just try growing moss.
Still no sign of the WCMM carcass.
-
Indeed, there was also quite a bit of fry/whitebait in the lower reaches which is a good sign as well. The only thing I haven't seen in there is koura.
-
No match for the fearsome kitchen sieve anyway.
Are they quite territorial? This particular stream is very much a series of pools separated by gradients, each pool seemed to have one?
-
Went back, didn't collect anything, but noted that there seemed to be far less shrimp around, although climatic conditions were almost identical.
Also noted that that there were more of the larger "blue" ones, none of which were berried. Only smaller ones were.
Did manage to snag one of the fush long enough to take a photograph though. Presumably this is what the whitebait that was in the stream will turn into?
-
Well they're in the tank.
One of them (the one that was super berried up) died and went pink.
The big / blue one still has that stripe. Anyone seen any like that before? He(or She) is almost as big as the betta (tail and all).
I'll dig out the digital camera and get some photos this evening.
I think my brother wants to go with me tonight to see if he can wrangle some. I could put some in my outdoor pond too we'll see what happens there.
-
He's tripple-bagged in the tank now. I know it's slowly warming up as lots of micro-bubbles are forming.
Anyway he's picked up a long dark stripe along his back now as the water is getting warmer...
Pic. Hopefully my betta doesn't get strangled in the plastic and die while I'm at work.
-
Righto, well I'll have to get them out of the ice-cream container.
Betta's @ 25 degrees, I'll warm them up anyway over today, double ziplock bag with some of the colder water in the outside jacket should slowly warm them up.
@F15, didn't know that, that's a shame, unfortunately I can't do much with them now short of keeping them in a icecream container until Sunday.
I netted them at night with just a small fish net (3" or so wide). Wasn't very easy as these guys were free-swimming among the rocks in the bottom of the stream, they didn't seem to be near the edges/weeds. Went at night, suspect you wouldn't see them at all during the day.
I'd recommend the Chelsea Sugar Works, where I went was near there (so therefore I assumed would harbor them too), but it wasn't "easy" to access, the bush was so dense I was liberality walking up the clay banks of the creak from the sea.
I should be able to wrangle some better photographs of the blueish one once it's in situ... I had these crazy visions of MAF coming and sterilising the tank due to a foreign species being found, good to know a few color variations exist.
-
-
Hi there,
Went shrimping earlier this evening at a small stream/outlet on the north shore to see if I could catch this oft discussed NZ Freshwater shrimp, started off at sea level and worked back up the slope, found eels, whitebait and larger fish, and eventually lots of shrimp. Nice to see a somewhat healthy ecosystem.
I only managed to catch three but saw loads. Most where small, two of them I've got have "berried" (seems to be the common phrase), so presumably they're female... however the third one we caught is much larger and has distinct blue coloration over it's shell. It's nearly 50% larger than the others...
Is this out of the ordinary?
I can't find any pictures of blueish ones on the internet?
If it's a new species do I get to name it?
I've tried to take photos but again I'm let down by a camera phone, and it's not easy trying to photograph something that's essentially opaque at best.
Can't be bothered editing out the duds, I'll upload them now.
Even if they're not special, do I need to a quarantine them at all before putting them in why my betta? They're not known to carry any harmful parasites or diseases are they? They're overnighting in ice cream container.
-
Removed the minnows... there's one less in the tank than there was this morning... It was a locally grown one rather than a gold one, so it's not as annoying, but I can't figure out where it's gone, the tank has a lid and the chances of getting through that are tiny, I checked all around it anyway. The bottom of the tank appears to be free of carcasses, and I'm sure the betta redate or even scavenge the whole thing.
-
Wish someone had told me this before...
-
Ha, now if you'd said K Road...
Back on topic I'm going to remove the minnows after work. Saw one try and jump out of the water when the betta swam towards him (he was non aggressive as far as I can tell).
-
nice setup.
little hint, instead of $20 tweezers, you can get forceps for a reasonable price from a farming store, or even use some chopsticks.
Oh yeah, and I'd guess ponsonby is about as far away from a farming supply shop as anywhere you could get in NZ.
(Actually I'm sure it's not, there's bound to be plenty around the extremities of AKL but you know...)
-
There's an "Advanced Search" link where you can configure safe search.
-
Ha, I actually tried with chopsticks, but the points on the end of them weren't fine enough.
-
Surrounding pics.
Apologies in advance for that vertical cord, it's the cable going to my new UHF antenna. Yet to get some white spray-paint to sort it out.
Lounge (TV) also looks kinda messy because my little brother came around to try sort his uni assignments out.
Anyways tankwise, the plant in the back left (redish thing) whilst shedding lots of leaves seems to be coming away, the thing in the middle is going nuts (biggest success story). I don't have any set photo periods, no sign of algae, or snails, which I guess is kinda amazing.
I couldn't get to all the roots of the sword to bury them, I can see why those $20 tweezers could be useful.
Not 100% happy with the tank layout, I'm thinking of replacing the rock on the back right with the sword.
possibly leave the foreground bare...
"The minnows" still aren't happy - the way I see it have two options - 1) Add more (they're less timid in numbers) or 2) Remove them.
Definitely keen to go get some of those shrimp.
Also I'm (perhaps vainly) looking for the betta to make a bubble nest... there's lots of individual clusters over the surface, but I can't say what's made them.
-
Yeah I'll do one this evening.
Just got my Indian Almond Leaf tea-bags so the water is looking a little brown.
The Betta is happy as Larry but I'm still concerned about the minnows. They're completely different (ie. timid) fish now he's in there.
Also possibly need some of that excel fertilizer stuff, some of the plants aren't doing too well, although nothings outright died which is a start.
Managed to get the betta to eat a flake from my fingers too, which is pretty cool.
Another Betta with finrot
in Diseases
Posted
Do you think it's worth continually dosing a bit of salt into his normal tank? Doesn't' interfere with the filter at all?
I'll keep him a hospital tank / jars until things start to get better, 24hrs in each, no filter, salt + 100% water changes...