Good one Essjay. It's probably less expensive than buying a full kit from NT Labs anyway.
Well, my new stock arrived yesterday.
They delivered to my wife's shop, my mistake. I hadn't told her. So as it's my birthday on Saturday I sort of got away with things.
The Chili Rasboras are tiny. I mean no bigger than a splinter. I'm guessing they are from a batch of newly hatched fish and way smaller than I expected. They arrived alive but sadly one didn't survive the night. Or at least he was in trouble in the early evening on top of the water but is nowhere to be seen now. As they're so small it's difficult to see them all at once to do a head count.
I'm afraid that my feeding may now be suspect. Being as small as they are they can't take flakes and stuff as easily. I'm crushing dried brine shrimp pellets and mixing with water to feed them. I have some vinegar eels on order and am ready to start with breeding these again. So if I can keep the Chili's going until then I guess they'll be happy to get some live food.
The Galaxy Rasboras and Emerald Dwarfs have been put into the larger tank. That already had 3 Galaxy's, 2 Rummynose, 7 Ember Tetra, 8 Neon's, a couple of Bronze Cory's, 1 Sterbai, 3 Columbian Blue Tetra which I would like to sell on, 1 large female Pearl Gourami - a survivor of a pair that is best with someone else to match back into a pair, a pair of black Mollies also not really wanted in this tank, and a couple of red claw crabs. Sounds a lot of fish for the tank but as most of them are mini size they look quite comfortable and definitely not overcrowded. I'm guessing the fish detritus isn't going to be big either meaning I can do less water changes.
The water is still at tap PH of around 22 but will decrease a little with an added peat sock, and also by addition of some bottled water from my next water change. I must say that I bought this tank, 3' x 1' x 1' to replace a 60 litre Fluval tank and am delighted with it. My only gripe is that it doesn't have a lid as such, just sliding glass panels along the top that naturally fog up so doesn't loo good. The pictures will show it as having black substrate on one side then the normal sand on the other. That's because in changing to the black substrate I didn't want to upset the chemistry too much so am doing a fortnightly replacement of the sand. I have also set up a CO2 DIY system to feed the plants.
I sat and watched them all when I switched on the lights this morning. I am amazed at how much bigger the Neon Tetras seem to have got. They're almost as large as the Rummynose now and showing definite breeding signs. The Galaxy's are all doing fine. The new ones have survived the first night even though the PH is WAY too high, and the Emerald's are also doing well.
I'll be feeding them with vinegar ells too once I get a production run going. In the meantime I'm using the same mash of dried brine shrimp for their little mouths.
Crushed flake is fed for the other larger fish, with an algae wafer for the Cory's. The crabs love these too. The male has taken over the sponge filter, runs out to pick up a bit of the crumbled wafer then scuttles back to eat it. They also carefully scratch around in the substrate for leftovers so my initial thoughts that they would be good for cleanups was correct. They haven't made any attempt to grab a fish so are no danger to them.
Hope you like the photo's. The small tank with the Chili's don't show them too well as they are so small and I can't even seem to get more than one of them in clear water, but at least they appear to be happy enough.
