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LingcodKilla posted:Bay Area fish keeper checking in. Hope to find goons to trade with. San Jose in the house! Do you have plants? I'd like to buy someones extra Wisteria and swords and whatnot to get started soon.
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Jun 17, 2013 05:22
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:32 |
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So I'm setting up my outdoor planter pond and I have a question. I used about 3 inches of Miracle Grow Organic Choice for the dirt and my great plan was to dumb the water in hard, stir it up to get the wood chips and fine dust out (by scooping the water out down to the dirt level) and then refilling. It occurs to me: did I remove a bunch of key nutrients or something by doing that? The water was mega cloudy, even after 2 days, so I removed all the water. Also, the dirt feels very loose under the water - should I cap it with sand or drain the water and compact it down a little? I'd like to put a bunch of plants in this weekend.
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Jun 21, 2013 02:19
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demonR6 posted:You could cap it with about a half inch of play sand once you drain it then you do not have to worry about floating things. You aren't removing anything though, I sifted two bags of MGOCPS down to a consistency of finely ground coffee and it has been growing plants for two years now successfully. Great, thanks. Anyone in the bay area with a collection of plants I can buy the cuttings of?
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Jun 21, 2013 02:56
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So I got all of my plants for my container pond, only to realize the black plastic packing crate (for the emergent pots to sit on) is too large to fit. I also bought a pair of iron "organizer racks" from Homegoods that are covered in a coating of "platinum finish". They feel plastic-ey but are iron - is that ok to put in there or will the iron in there leech into the water? I didnt want to get bricks because I wanted to not loss the water volume - should I just get bricks and not risk it?
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Jun 22, 2013 20:08
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demonR6 posted:@ booshi - some bettas cannot have tank mates, of any kind.. even snails. Alright thanks bud. I'm going to get a pair of small cinder blocks and put one of those 12"x12" cinder block paver stones as a platform.
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Jun 22, 2013 23:58
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cov-hog posted:Be careful about bricks and cinder blocks - they could jack up the pH of the water. I had an incident where I used bricks to support a 12"x12" flooring tile to make a sunning platform for an aquatic turtle and all the feeder fish instantaneously died. The turtle started squinting his eyes underwater as well and wouldn't come out of his shell until I put the old river rocks back. Oh poo poo, never thought of that. Right now its just plants but I'll grab a PH kit at the store tomorrow.
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Jun 23, 2013 01:46
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Slugworth posted:Not sure if you've already found a solution, but you might consider making a frame out of PVC pipe to replace the organizer racks. It doesn't leech any chemical, doesn't affect ph, and if you fill the PVC with sand, won't float away. And you keep your water volume. I measured the pH this morning and its 7.2 Seems ok?
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Jun 23, 2013 18:14
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cheese posted:I measured the pH this morning and its 7.2 Seems ok? Uhhhh gently caress. So I measured again before going to the store to get my platys and on the pH test kit its about a 7.8! I then tried out our tap water and that was at least a 7.6 (slightly less dark blue). Am I hosed? If the brick and cement is raising the pH, its not by much and our water is already apparently very alkaline to begin with. I want this pond to be low effort - what are my options here? Edit: I know from my old reef tank days that some vinegar will lower the pH, but am I going to have to keep doing this? What level should I shoot for? cheese fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jun 23, 2013 |
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Jun 23, 2013 22:11
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demonR6 posted:You could use pH down chemicals but then that ends up being a regimen. I think the brick needs to go. Try making it out of cpvc as mentioned earlier. I just called an LFS and they said their water is 7.6ph and they run all their tanks at that, except for the very specific soft water ones (like south american dwarf cichlids)... gently caress, I have the pond looking how I want. I'm using 2x bricks, a cinder block and a cement 12" tile - do they all need to go?
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Jun 23, 2013 22:31
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kaosAG posted:You could probably seal them somehow if you really don't want to find some rocks that will do what you need them to. I'd give it a week or so and see what it does. If you're keeping platys in the pond then they'll be just fine at 7.8, they tend to do a bit better in more alkaline/harder water anyhow.
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Jun 23, 2013 23:40
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So my little container pond has been up and running for a few days now. (sorry about the lovely cell phone picture)  24" wide walmart plastic container (~18 inches deep) About 2 inches of Miracle Grow Organic Potting Soil on the bottom with about an inch of play sand to cap it. An 8x8" cinder block with a pair of bricks on top, supporting a 12" square cinder block tile to achieve the right height for the immersed plants. The three immersed plants in the back are water mint, parrots feather and variegated golden candles. 2x water hyicanths on either side, with some duckweed and a couple of amazon frogbit. I've got 2x bunches of anarchis, one floating and the other planted at the bottom along side some wisteria and an amazon sword. pH is high at ~7.7 but I swear the duckweed has already doubled and both frogbit's have sent out a new runner with a leaf at the end, so the water can't be that bad. 4 platies (male and 3 females) round it out and just now, contrasted against he light grey tile, I think I see a baby platy swimming around. Adding a tiny bit of fish food each afternoon and so far so good. I may or may not add a few white cloud mountain minnows, as the platies are rarely seen so far and appear to be enjoying the cinder block cave too much. Thanks for all the help and we will see how this develops over the summer. cheese fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 04:41
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demonR6 posted:Looks cool, keep the updates coming.
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Jun 28, 2013 02:30
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booshi posted:Yay I can chime in with a few things because all of my experience comes from ponds (my teenage years were spent working in the water gardening department of a nursery). I live in San Jose CA, so we do get down near freezing on some Jan/Feb nights. I think I should be able to let the pond go safely well into November as our falls are pretty warm. I think I may need to replant my immersed stuff soon - the pots they came in are pretty small.
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Jun 28, 2013 16:23
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cheese posted:So my little container pond has been up and running for a few days now. Few week update  Just been toping up with water and throwing in a pinch of fish food every day or two. Water mint is taking over and has to be pruned, the duckweed is spreading like crazy and the hyacinths have tripled in numbers. Loving it.
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Jul 23, 2013 00:49
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Minor Container Pond Update: Got my first flower today. Water Mint has started putting out little purple flowers. Hoping the Hyacinth is next.
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Aug 2, 2013 00:27
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Hi guys, looking for some advice for my outdoor goldfish pond. I had a successful container pond last summer and decided to up the size, setting up a 75 gallon heavy duty plastic container in late April. Added a few mollies and a gorgeous 5 inch Shubunkin that a friend didn't have room for anymore. All was well for a month, so I bought 5 small fantail goldfish. A week later, I added 3x 3 inch Shubunkins. The next day, the smallest of the fantails was floating dead. Checked parameters, all good - the pond is heavily stocked with water hyacinth/water lettuce along with potted marginals, and has both an Eheim 306 canister filter and a bog filter with gravel and pennywort. Parameters have basically been 0 ammonia/0 nitrites/sub 10 nitrates since day one. 2 days later, I noticed one of the fantails weakly swimming at the surface. However, he still ate when I fed and responded to me walking near the pond, so I left him. Was away for 2 days and when I came back, the first fantail was dead, with a light coating of ich and the other 3 remaining fantails had ich as well. I pulled all 3 out, put them each in their own 5 gallon bucket and administered a dose of API "super ich cure" (which has Benzaldehyde green, which I assume is basically malachite green). Over the last 36 hours, all 3 died one by one. None of the main pond fish, including the new Shubunkins and the dozen+ Mollie fry swimming around have ich showing (they eat voraciously and swim normally). My question is this: What should my next step be? Do I use the product I purchased on the whole pond, do I remove as many plants as I can and treat with salt? Or do I just let things be and hope it was just a bad batch of fantails (they were all very small, sub 1.5 inches). cheese fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 02:24
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LingcodKilla posted:Every pond I've ever worked on has become a feeding trough for my local raccoon family. I gave up. Good luck! I live in the middle of urban San Jose and the patio the pond is on is a second story apartment balcony  Just not sure how to address it. My aquarium mentor when I was a kid was firmly in the "every fish always has ich, just keep em fed and low stressed in good water quality and the healthy ones will survive" mentality, but I'm not sure I ever really bought it.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:51
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Well gently caress. Ich spots on a number of other goldfish this morning. Pulling what plants I can and starting salt.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:29
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demonR6 posted:You hit the nail on the head. That is probably the most important regime I read in order to treat Ich. I added a heater to increase the temp and treated with that medicine. I lost a few more fish, but the ones that died were covered in ich and already struggling to swim/getting stuck against stuff. The rest of the fish that were swimming and eating when I started treating have survived.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:37
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Ansith posted:I've got some golden honeys in my 50g and they look to be about the same size as the Dwarfs that I've seen in stores. I'm not sure how much more growing they have to do though. You could try rearranging the decor and adding another few corys? Shame because a pack of active corys is always going to be way more hilarious and entertaining than a GBR pair ever could hope to be.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:04
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Has anyone had success ordering fish online? I'm setting up a new 300g rubbermaid pond and my local selection is just awful. I'd like to get a good bunch of 20+ sarasa comets, some shubunkins and maybe some fantails/more wakins. There are some options out there including some sites that seem to sell batches of those fish, but I don't want to waste my time and get a box of dead fish.
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Mar 7, 2015 19:06
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Slugworth posted:A decent site will offer a guarantee of live delivery, and the process of shipping fish isn't itself problematic - That's how they get to pet stores after all. SocketWrench posted:That's how i got most everything I have. most offer a live arrival thing. Wait for warm weather though as they'll spend some time exposed to really cold conditions in winter.
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Mar 9, 2015 07:09
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:32 |
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I have always had a high horse when it comes to quarantine of new fish, but today, I did a bad thing. After making the switch from a 75g pond to a 180g pond a few months ago, I neglected to set my quarantine tank up. I had been scouring my LFS's for Wakin Goldfish and was assured that my favorite LFS would have them in June - why setup the quarantine tank in March, right? WRONG. I walk in yesterday looking for some new airline tubing and there I see them. 3 tanks of the most gorgeously patterned, fat, 5" red and white Wakin's I have ever seen in person.  8 dollars a piece, when I had been considering spending 60+ to order 4 from a website. They had arrived 2 days earlier. I bought 6 and threw them in my display pond. Fish gods help me, I did it and broke my own rule. Maybe, just maybe, I would have waited to set up the quarantine, but that store only holds fish for a week and the last time they had Wakins (in September), someone came in the day after I looked at them and bought all ~30 of em. 5 minutes after introducing them to my pond, every single one of them ate with gusto and this morning, they are swimming around like they have been there for a year. If the fish gods strike me down, I have my aquarium salt and water heaters ready, and I only just added a few Water Hyacinth last week. Wish me luck.
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Apr 30, 2015 00:34
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