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Is this the right thread to bounce ideas off for planning a 5 gal planted tank? I'm interested in keeping plants first, then adding some cherry shrimp, then if things become stable enough that they start breeding, I thought it might be nice to add some nano fish. I'm not sure what exact plants I want just yet, and not sure what fish I might want. That's what I would need some help with. Also, considering a snail. Perhaps with the fish, perhaps instead of the fish. Perhaps it might be too much of a calcium thief, and I shouldn't keep one with shrimp. Toying with the idea of some fish that might prey on baby shrimp to keep a damper on the population somewhat. Not too sure how viable any of this is. I've been watching piles of youtube videos about all this stuff, and have quite a few ideas. But, as with most hobby / diy / pet / cooking things, I consistently find good advice when I ask on the SA forums. vvv oh yeah, I've seen that one, and about a gorillion hours more from aquarium co-op and other related channels. Wondering if a really heavily planted tank with some of those celestial pearl danios would be alright with cherry shrimp? And are there snails like nerites that need more salinity to breed, but won't escape on me? I should also add, I'm just musing over ideas for planning at this point, and trying to learn more before I make any decisions. I was just curious if this is the proper place to ask, when I'm getting serious about planning? B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 05:47
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That seems like some grade A advice, and has given me a lot to think about as I plan. Thank you One part stood out to me: Ok Comboomer posted:And a freshly-planted tank will look like poo poo compared to a mature tank where the plants have had months to grow in and fit themselves into their environment. You can’t fake that stuff, you simply have to let plants do their thing. I unfortunately, do not have room for a 10gal. I understand that this will greatly increase the difficulty of maintaining stable water conditions, and will necessitate more maintenance. It is a factor that I am aware of, and am willing to attempt to deal with it. Ideally, I'd have a big old warm and humid room glassed in and full of tropical plants and tanks requiring sedan sized canister filters, but alas, we're packed to the gills in this place already.
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Dec 28, 2020 06:39
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Watching youtubes, and thought I would share with the thread this guy's enthusiasm is really endearing. I love his fish store tour videos.
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Dec 31, 2020 21:17
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After watching this guy's channel a bunch, I've found myself with a big enthusiasm for medaka. I also fell down a big rabbit hole, and found myself reading a paper in Nature about osteoclast activity in medaka fish reared at the international space station, which includes a link to footage of them mating in outer space!
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Jan 11, 2021 01:07
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Kelp in aquaria got me thinking. In 2017, when our daughter was just a baby, my wife and I planned a road trip down the West Coast of the US, then a swing over to Vegas, and then looping through a bunch of national parks like Arches, Zion, etc on our way back North. We were planning out where we wanted to stop, and Mrs. Chiller suggested we head East from San Fransisco. Whoa, hold on honey, can we make it as far as Moneterey? Her: "Why, what's there that you want to see?" Me:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSbABWGgRh0I heard a little grumbling about the ticket price, but in my opinion, well worth the admission.
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Jan 20, 2021 21:03
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reading what's been posted, along with those worm photos, I'd be seriously tempted to just sterilize the entire operation in my instant pot. I get grossed out enough filleting a halibut and seeing worms. yyyaaaaaarrruuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!
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Feb 3, 2021 18:08
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Ok Comboomer posted:I found this channel last week and it’s my new favorite online tank  you're right, Charlie is (somewhat paradoxically) the backbone of the operation.
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Feb 7, 2021 17:07
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Goons with low pH tap water, how do you deal with that? Mine seems to be coming out at 5.0, which seems incredibly low to me. I've got a betta bowl with a bunch of crushed up oyster shells bubbling away right now with some spider plants hanging their roots in it, and some marimo balls, just to see what happens with the pH over time, and to see if the plants can handle that. Other bowls just have the regular dechlorinated water, and an array of plants. I've been dosing with bacterial starter, and lightly dosing with aquatic ferts at weekly water changes (1/4 the dose that's recommended for established tanks) for around 2 to 3 weeks now. eta: only one bowl has had an algae bloom, and it didn't have a marimo in it, while also being the smallest volume, and having a heater, was running the warmest. Second edit: To return to this, I think my test kit might be screwy. I melted some snow from the back yard, that fell yesterday, and it tested at 5.0 as well. I'm going to assume the snow is pretty close to 7, rather than in the same range as coffee. B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 02:35
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BONGHITZ posted:You can always try seachem alkaline buffer. I love it. Keeps my numbers up. Nice. I thought that would help. I've started adding a bit, and some equilibrium to my water change water, along with lightly sprinkling some aragonite on the substrate. Number's going up slowly.
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Feb 27, 2021 02:45
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Schwack posted:I ordered a big bag of ammonium chloride from Amazon and it works great. I used it to cycle my first tank and had it keep cycles going in empty tanks without issue. Considering it takes like 1/32 tsp to rocket a 29 gallon to 2ppm ammonia, I feel like I'll be working on this bag for years. Do you have a planted tank, and if so, how do the plants react to this? I'd guess they might like it quite a bit. Here's a horticulture thread cross post I just stumbled across the 20th Anniversary Aquatic Gardeners Association International Aquascaping Contest results. It has some amazing plant photography, and I dig it. vvvvvv cool. That's nice to know. B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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Mar 4, 2021 09:23
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eSporks posted:
ETA: He has a care guide video as well B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 17:54
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I've entered the cycling stage of my first aquarium! Here's a picture dump because I'm excited.    It's a fluval flex 15 gallon Having watched a mountain of YT vids ahead of time, I understood the flow rate coming out of the pump is huge, so I wrapped some cut to fit sponge over the nozzles. In preparation, I also started off a bag of bio balls in a 2 gallon bowl, along with the plants. Actually, all of the plants have been growing in "betta" bowls for the past couple months, to give them a head start. That's where the two mini sponge filters came from. They have fully cycled in the bowls, so as to give the aquarium cycle a head start. I filled the little intake screen things with sponge also. Hopefully that will keep out any shrimp fry I might get in the future (fingers crossed). I mostly filled the big empty entry chamber at the back, starting off with an air stone, some oyster shells and bio-balls in a bag (pre-cycled), and a bunch of cut to fit sponge material. For plants, I picked up some potted java fern (wendelov) and anubias (nana and regular), and some loose marimos. All the rest of aquatics were those little cups of tissue culture plants. Limnobium laevigatum, Sagittaria subulata, Helanthium tenellum "Green"(almost all of it has died off ?!?), Salvinia auriculata, and a couple mosses. Substrate is seachem flourite with loosly sprinkled aragonite, and some oyster shells. Our water here is super soft. I've been dosing with fluval cycle, waste control, seachem stability, equilibrium, alkaline buffer, flourish, and flourish excel. I'd like to have cherry shrimp, oto's, and I'm not sure what else. Some kind of schooling fish. maybe CPDs or chili rasboras? ETA: pothos and spider plants growing out the top too. B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 14, 2021 |
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Mar 14, 2021 20:30
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Schwack posted:CPDs are awesome little fish. I've got a nice group of 40 or so right now and they're a ton of fun to watch. As a bonus, they don't need a heated tank. What kind of effect would a lack of heater have on cherry shrimp and otocinclus? For reference, room temperatures can range from 18degC at night in winter, up to 27 or 28 daytime in the summer. Daytime winter, we run 19.5-20 deg C. The tank is in the same room as our main front door, but protected from drafts. Can CPDs do alright with a bit warmer water? Or would another species be better?
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Mar 14, 2021 21:48
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Schwack posted:I've heard of people keeping them with bettas, so in the high 70's F. They might not spawn at that temp, but they should be just fine. sweet, gonna get my tiny trout on!
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Mar 15, 2021 01:07
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DeadlyMuffin posted:If you're in CA hit me up, I'm breeding them Sadly, I'm in .ca not CA
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Mar 16, 2021 21:59
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on the topic of acclimation, I think Rachel O'Leary makes some insightful points
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Mar 19, 2021 03:26
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Stoca Zola posted:I think slow acclimation of fish makes sense when you are bringing sensitive fish home from a local purchase and you aren't sure if your tank parameters match, but for fish in a box in the mail for 4 days the sooner they get into clean water the better. This is really the take away I got from it. Different topic: Is it called pruning or culling when you have to remove a bunch of excess floating plants?
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Mar 19, 2021 18:18
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I've avoided duckweed so far, but I'm excited that this is the first time I've grown enough salvinia and frogbit to necessitate some removal.
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Mar 19, 2021 22:50
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candystarlight posted:I have more Java moss than I know what to do with. There has been a real shortage of various mosses (around here at least) for the past while. There's probably some value in that, if you have a way of marketing it.
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Mar 20, 2021 00:50
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Aerofallosov posted:There's a huge recall on marimo balls having zebra mussels in them. It might be good to inspect 'em now and then. Fortunately all the ones I ordered from amazon had spent too long in the dark, getting re-routed all over the drat country, and stayed brown and started smelling of sulfur after weeks of attempted rehab.
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Mar 20, 2021 03:17
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Does anyone here grow limnophila aquatica? I'm wondering why tropica labels it medium difficulty? I'm also interested in hearing anyone's experience with it.
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Mar 23, 2021 23:46
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Check it out, we were, just a few days ago, discussing acclimation procedures. Shipped fish vs picked up locally, right? Well, I ordered some fish to be shipped to me, and have a look at the instructions that were put in the box, on top of the insulation.  and here's a little video clip I shot this morning of the little fish
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Apr 2, 2021 15:27
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Ok Comboomer posted:Even if it’s not being shipped, the fish is gonna experience way more extreme temperature fluctuations just going from the store tank to a bag, into the ambient store air....>the air in the parking lot.....>the air temp in your car for however long you drive.....>into your house, and so on.  The mystery snail in there, and the first 4 lamb-chop rasboras came home with me from the local store. I brought a small cooler to the store with me, and drip acclimated them. There were only 4 of the little guys in the store, so I ordered 10 more, and 13 of the micros, so they could have at least a small school. I didn't feel right letting/making those 4 live without company. ETA: My local store did not have any CPDs for sale, only in the display riparium.
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Apr 2, 2021 16:55
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Enos Cabell posted:Kinda off topic but still fish related, Joel Sartore is a really awesome photographer from my town who I met a few years back while he was doing a shoot in my old neighborhood LFS. He started a project a few years back with National Geographic called the Photo Ark where he and his team are documenting as many animals as they possibly can. They just launched the Video Ark on YouTube, and there is a whole section for fish with some amazing macro videos. Highly recommend checking it out! Wow, thanks for sharing. Criminally underviewed stuff right there.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:23
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I hope to have elderly fish one day. I've been discovering that aquarium photography is really hard. Piles of rasbora blur. I can't imagine how expensive and frustrating it must have been to learn in the days of film. Here's some of my rough attempts           
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Apr 17, 2021 19:19
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Strawberry rasboras are freaking neat. I've got one that's way more coloured up than the rest, and he's gotten pretty territorial about the areas underneath the foliage. He'll dart out and chase any of the other strawberries that get down under there. The rest of them mostly cruise around together, or join in schooling with lambchop rasboras.
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Apr 20, 2021 22:17
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pepperchomp posted:Oh hes ready to make babies haha. Yeah strawberry, phoenix, chilis, spice, I like all those tiny guys. Been trying to figure out a way to breed them. They are extremely hard to find in Hawaii so I kinda wanna try to get more out into the market. Their eggs are so loving tiny and the water here is pretty hard so I am about to give up before I really get into it. I got those new metalhead high dorsal red laces to play with to get my confidence back up. My pond guppies were multiplying too fast for me, my main mother is giving birth literally every 20 days which I didn't even know was possible. Plus my 5 female blue velvet shrimp are all berried. Plus I'm pullin Miyuki white medaka and orange medaka eggs.hopefully I can get better at this and move to the rasboras next. They are all fairly new to the tank, and I'm pretty sure they were very young when they arrived. It's like the one guy was the first to hit puberty, and none of the rest of the school are getting randy yet. It started out with me wanting something small for the tank, and our local store had 4 lambchop rasboras. I got them home and realised I needed more for them to not be stressed out all the time, so I went online to order some tankmates, and picked up another 10, and a school of 12 strawberries at the same time. The shrimp are the most recent addition, when I saw the local store had a big mix of various neo colours, I had them pick out some blue ones for me. The shrimp do not care one little bit if there's a school of lambchops in the way, if one decides to go for a swim, they'll just barge straight through, and spook the fish out of the way. Great fun to watch. In other news, I've been growing out a bunch of floating plants in a rubbermaid tub. Hopefully so I can have some starter plants for a patio pond. A posting on facebook lead to me picking up 3 female and 2 male endler/guppy hybrids yesterday. The fella I picked them up from said he thinks one of the females might already be knocked up. So they're chilling in the rubbermaid, getting ready for when the weather is warm enough for summer tubbin'. This was the first time I've seen endlers of any kind available for me to buy, so I pulled the trigger a little earlier than might have been optimum. The price was pretty great in my books though! eta: I wish I could find medaka available here. They've been bred in space, but not for the Canadian aquarium trade apparently.
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Apr 23, 2021 20:32
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I realised today that we have a knockoff gopro with a submersible case, so I shot some footage of the new livebearers from the back corner of the tub I have them in. Both of the lads are real pretty boys in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBhMnQPzbsE
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Apr 25, 2021 00:17
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Making a list is a big mistake. maybe not, if it's an aspirational one?
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Apr 25, 2021 01:03
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I came to post a clip, but needed to double check I'm not replying to a Hainbach video, ok comboomer/  One of the lads decided to get behind the camera just now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj25tj7KIaw
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Apr 25, 2021 19:49
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So far, sitting steady at 24.5 SI temp units above freezing. I think that's around 76. Shrimp, rasboras and mystery snail seem to be happy.
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May 6, 2021 17:55
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I discovered yesterday that water lillies and water hyacinth (don't worry, we get winter) are priced very differently. I guess it's the effective difference between buy a tree and buying some mint.
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May 13, 2021 00:50
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I didn't know anything about adding ammonia for starting a cycle out, but I got my sponge filters fired up by just running them in fish bowls filled with plants, and adding liquid ferts & bacteria cultures. Kept all that running until I got a bunch of new plant growth, then bought a proper aquarium, planted it out with all the plants I'd been growing in bowls, and put the sponge filters in there. I ran the sponge filters along with the included filter with the same process of feeding the plants, and dosing nutrafin cycle and waste control until it looked like I had a healthy growth of algae and plants. After confirming no nitrites or ammonia, with regular fertilizing, I started adding animals. Months of patience, and enjoying growing a bunch of plants I've never grown before happened before I felt safe putting livestock in there.
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May 14, 2021 19:35
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoyUkglyK8Q There's babies in the endler/guppy tub now, and the boys are really interested in the female guppy I put in there with them! Eta https://youtu.be/GejprLxQE9M This is where they're heading, come summertime. B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 14, 2021 20:27
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That's what I'm trying to set up for the first time. I'm planning on using aa sponge filter, so I know the water is getting aerated. The plan is to put a bunch of frogbit and salvinia in there, from my aquarium. I have a bit in there now, and water temps down to 12 C didn't kill it immediately. Luckily google gave me a local result for pond supply store, so I can source hardy water lillies and water hyacinth. I expect the floaters, and guppies are only going to be comfortable for a season, and plan to bring the fish indoors/ rehome them come autumn. I'm a total noob though.
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May 16, 2021 01:59
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Big announcement time! We have our first generation of tub born guppies!
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May 22, 2021 16:20
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candystarlight posted:I also switched from cheapo pool filter sand to Seachem Fluorite this weekend, went with the black sand for my scrimp tank. I definitely prefer the way it looks, rinsing wasn't anything at all compared to the dirtiness of the pool filter stuff IMO. If you give it a go, I suggest looking up/learning how to round off, or otherwise smooth the edge. Don't want that one edge to be sharp, and forget about it until years down the road when you go to take the tank down. Eta guppy update, have a sudden boom of 12 or 13 more babies suddenly. We're getting fry now! Like we never used to, ever since ... that rooster... came into our yard! B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 06:09 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 06:00
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Uh, sorry this has to follow, but here's some chillin with the patio pond https://youtu.be/Jw34XwwmpOA
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Jun 15, 2021 00:54
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Desert Bus posted:That looks amazing have you tried jacking off into it??? 
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Jun 15, 2021 01:06
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BONGHITZ posted:https://i.imgur.com/BogF9Zy.mp4 #tubgoals Here's a query for folks who know about livebearers. Are there factors that can bias the sex of developing fry in guppies and endlers? My first clutch/hatching/batch of fry came from an endler/guppy hybrid that was probably pregnant for the first time when I bought her, and the clutch was small, only 5 fry. I'm pretty sure they're all females. The juveniles I have now seem to all be female. I'm wondering if they're like some reptiles, where the whole clutch of eggs can come out male or female, depending on the incubation temperatures? Or was that just the luck of the draw, and I can expect a variety out of the rest of the subsequent fry? Best count I could get of fry , juvies, and adults yesterday has my tub up to high 20's, low 30's
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Jun 15, 2021 18:00
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