gouramist

[gouramist]

I have a sticker shop on Ko-Fi now! https://ko-fi.com/mako25753/shop

[gouramist]

They nibbling

[gouramist]

🦀 time for crab 🦀

today i summoned 15 crabs! i caught 4 💰 of them. i became friends with 5 🌼 of them.

group picture!!!

🦀🌼 🦀🌼 🦀🌼 🦀🌼 🦀🌼 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 💰 💰 💰 💰

[gouramist]

Second guy is DEFINITELY 100% without question an endler. Probably an El Tigre endler like betta-butch said. I have a swarm of el tigres endlers taking over my house and he looks just like 'em. They're a wild type endler, named for the river they were found in.

The top endlers are actually probably some kind of snakeskin/cobra endler, which I'm pretty sure were bred by hybridizing endlers with guppies, hence the more impressive fins and being bigger. Very pretty! But not OG endlers :)

Endlers

Not an Endler.

Several months ago we bought some new Endlers for our tank. This little dude was one of the new arrivals. They were all minute in size and looked a great deal alike. As you can see from their current photos, one of these is not like the others. The little guy (bottom photo) is half the size of the smaller Endler in the top photo, the big Endler is about an inch and a half long. The glass beads are 3/4″ wide.

Anyone care to enlighten me as to who/what our tiny friend is? Other than cute, as I can see that! :D

[gouramist]

Those really look/sound like detritus worms. I’d put money on the one on the left being a detritus worm. The chubbier one is odder but that’s still my guess. If they've been in a tank with no fish/an extremely lazy fish for a bit they could have just grown larger than the old ones since they weren't getting eaten? Not sure if that’s the case, but the detritus worms in my old shrimp tank could get pretty mighty with no predators around to slorp 'em up. 1″ would be pretty huge but those pics don’t look 1″? Never had them get that big in my betta’s tank but he was a hate machine.

It’s not always over feeding either. My shrimp tank had a piece of wood that was apparently decaying MUCH faster than it should have for aquarium wood...got it at the fish store too...grumble grumble

(Also detritus worms are pretty much always present in the substrate. They’re a healthy part of the aquarium so long as you don’t have *way* too many, then yeah it’s a sign you’ve got some excessive Gunk Buildup to deal with.)

Hi! I wanted to ask if you've had any experience with worms in your tanks?

I have these thin white-brown worms in my 20g. I thought they were camallanus at first and freaked out, but after treating my betta I don't know what they are since she's acting/eating normally and didn't pass any worms.

They also aren't swimming freely unless I stir up the sand like when I'm cleaning, so I thought maybe they could be some sort of detritus worms? But the last time I had those in my 5g they were super tiny and these are around ½-1" long.

hmm… what comes to mind is planaria, who look like this:

does that look like them? if not, perhaps someone else has a suggestion, the size is throwing me off but I definitely say that thankfully, what you are describing is not camallanus worms… those are fun to deal with 😶 I can also poke around online more, maybe you could post a photo so I can see them and get a better idea of what they look like? I hope we can figure this out & that they’re harmless worms!

[gouramist]

My sister got some chocolate eyespot gouramis (Parasphaerichthys ocellatus), some of the smallest gouramis in the world!

[gouramist]

My boy's a thot

[gouramist]

Meet my new betta!

He already bit me twice while I was trying to work on his filter ❤️❤️❤️

[gouramist]

breaking news: I’ve had my sparkling gouramis for like...three weeks? And they’re already breeding.

Can’t tell if dad’s bubble nest is up for the task, but we’ll see!

The filtration in the tank is baby safe, but might not be ideal otherwise as it’s also full of shrimp. But after the honeys went so well, it’s worth a shot raising them if dad does a good job hatching em!

[gouramist]

I love these lil guys so much. But man are they hard to photograph. Even if they do swim to the glass and DEMAND food when they see me

[gouramist]

Tank lids are so so important

[gouramist]

Meet my new betta!

He already bit me twice while I was trying to work on his filter ❤️❤️❤️

[gouramist]

So i have honey gouramis (who are precious babies) and chocolate gouramis (who are also precious and beautiful) and now i want to get a pair of licorice gouramis to round out my gourami food groups.

[gouramist]

I’m becoming such a proponent of “tiny fish in a huge tank” setups. The behavioral difference is day and night. You can ACTUALLY have large enough groups to spread around any hen pecking nonsense while simultaneously having enough space for them to go do Fish Things instead of being peaceful because they have nowhere interesting to be/do...

I might replace my 38 gallon with a 55+ if i find a good used deal.

The fact that it’s in a basement with a cement floor makes me tempted to go fucking hogwild with the size but we’ll see...

[gouramist]

A helpful reminder to always put decorations removed from a fish tank into a bucket of water, especially if you have otos.

Shook the crap out of everything first but still had one lil’ bozo hanger on in the decor bucket once all was said and done...

Also netting otos out of a round bucket is 1000% harder than it has any right to be.

[gouramist]

Me: *Puts my finger up to the aquarium glass*

Gourami: * swims up to meet my finger and follows it around*

Me: *tears in my eyes* I would die for you

[gouramist]

How often are you doing water changes? I had/have some mystery cherry death problems. But now that I have my tank set up to do as few water changes as possible, while maintaining quality, my deaths have greatly declined. Granted this requires a metric crapton of plants... But lucky for me the plants in that tank are doing fantastic.

Usually when I do finally have to do water changes (no matter how small, I try to keep them all small, always did...) I still have a good chance of seeing a death a day or two afterwords. No flipping idea why. Did everything I could short of RO/DI water to make sure the tap was safe/wasn’t shocking them/was consistent.

Just throwing it out there because I don’t see the issue talked about a lot in trouble shooting, but I’m seeing more and more some shrimp pros talking about minimizing water changes for stability. But it’s said with caution, since immature tanks are frequently a big killer of shrimp, and reducing water changes on new tanks/with new keepers could be WAY MORE fatal than too many WCs. So. Proceed with caution and lots and lots of testing and very light feeding if you try it...

Damn it! Just found another dead cherry shrimp :( My water quality is pristine every time i check it so why are they dying???