Unfortunately, I accidentally left the window open in my fish room while we were gone...and I came back to icky fish :( However, ick is very easy to treat with just heat, salt, and water changes - no antibiotics needed! The ick cleared up overnight after treatment. I will continue to treat them for another 10 days until I am sure the ick is gone.
I spent last weekend in Las Vegas celebrating my birthday my mom, who also happened to be running the Las Vegas marathon :) One of my best friends from high school also made it! And of course, the Vegas trip itself was the best birthday present ever from my boyfriend (AKA cameraman) <3 Unfortunately, I accidentally left the window open in my fish room while we were gone...and I came back to icky fish :( However, ick is very easy to treat with just heat, salt, and water changes - no antibiotics needed! The ick cleared up overnight after treatment. I will continue to treat them for another 10 days until I am sure the ick is gone.
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Wow! Filming on my phone and then using YouTube creator is SO EASY! The video quality isn't as good as my DSLR (which I will reserve for videos that I want to be in very high quality), but using my phone is so nice to quickly capture interesting things that happen in my fish room. I made the video below in about 10 minutes! Although I am kicking myself for not insisting on a phone with higher memory storage... :( Below is Part 2 of changing water on sensitive blackwater species like licorice gouramies (Parosphromenus spp.) Enjoy! New YouTube Videos! Changing water on licorice gouramies and a new addition to the fish room :)11/15/2016 Gosh darn it guys, I did it again. I missed October! This semester has been a whirlwind of activity doing my credential program and traveling a lot. I went to Hawaii for a week for my boyfriend's best friend's wedding, and then went to Las Vegas for my birthday weekend. It's been a blast but also difficult to balance all of my school work! I uploaded a few short videos on my YouTube channel. I'm just realizing how decent my iPhone is at filming and it is a heck of a lot less work than using my DSLR and then editing in iMovie. I will still use my DSLR for clear shots and my special videos, but I would like to shoot just little clips whenever anything noteworthy happens. My fish room is my Fortress of Solitude - it's where I go when I want to escape. It's almost meditative :) However, if there's anything quick and fun to show, I'll try and remember to capture it :) Here are a couple quick videos on how I change water on my very sensitive licorice gouramies (key tips - age, soften, IAL treat and heat your water at least overnight). I also am very excited to introduce a special new addition to my fish room - an adorable Red-eye Red-belly puffer fish! He is absolutely adorable and very personable. I took this video the first day he came home with me, so he was still settling in. I'll definitely be filming more of him in the near future.
I like to listen to YouTube when I am working in the fishroom. I have been following these channels for quite some time, and it's wonderful to listen to fish-related content. Very inspirational :)
Fish-related Channels Aquarium Co-op | http://www.aquariumcoop.com/ One of my favorites is my friend Cory's channel. He owns and operates Aquarium Co-op in Edmonds, close to where my family lives. I did a fish store tour of it in an earlier blog post. He also interviewed me on his channel when I went home a year ago. He is extremely knowledgeable about all things fish, especially livebearers, goldfish, and running a fish store. My favorite are his Daily Doses. I have no idea how he manages to put up new content everyday, but it's a treat to watch! Rachel O'Leary | http://msjinkzd.com/ Rachel specializes in invertebrates and nano fish. She is charismatic and incredibly knowledgeable on all things nano! I had the pleasure of meeting her when she gave a talk at the Pacific Coast Cichlid Association a couple of years ago. She puts out about a video a week on helpful tips and occasional species spotlights. The King of DIY Joey is truly the KING when it comes to being a DIY fish keeper! I can only dream of doing some of the projects that he details in his videos. He often does HUGE projects (think hundreds of gallons and monster fish), but he's been moving on to smaller builds lately. His channel is also a tremendous resource for ideas for filters, stands, etc. He usually puts out a video once a week and is definitely worth checking out! Solid Gold Aquatics Jenny is one of the sweetest YouTubers ever. She is dedicated to her expansive goldfish hobby and is an amazingly creative and independent aquarist. Every one of her videos makes me smile, and I'm not even a goldfish person! Steenfott Aquatics Bob works a lot with Cory on various projects. He also has a great YouTube channel of his own! He is rapidly expanding his fish room and it's very fun to watch it grow. LupDiesel Fantastic channel for shrimp keepers! I don't even like keeping shrimp but love learning about them. He also has some wonderful fish room tours and interviews about all kinds of fish. Taylor Nicole Dean Taylor is both a passionate animal lover and a hilarious comedian. I think of her as the Jenna Marbles of animal keepers. Her videos on her wide range of animals are very knowledgeable, detailed, and funny to watch. Greg Jones Greg Jones puts out an enormous amount of content on all things aquariums. His interesting projects, tips, and tricks are well worth watching and adding to your own bag of techniques. California Betta Society We have our own YouTube channel! We try to livestream our events (although we have been doing more livestream on FaceBook because it is MUCH easier to use than YouTube). We also have a couple of useful videos taken at shows. Look hard enough and you might find a Gianne with incredibly long hair :p Sacramento Aquarium Society When speakers are amenable and the equipment/manpower is available, SAS records their guest speakers and puts them up on their channel. Some great talks here! The Fish Doctor A specialist in aquatic veterinary care, Dr. Loh is AMAZING at what he does! Endlessly educational, his videos show the extreme side of fish keeping! Non Fish-related I also like to watch several other channels while working on other things... Real Stories | My Shocking Story I love documentaries. Especially shocking ones that deal with medical conditions. I love learning by osmosis while working in the fish room, and these channels definitely satisfy that! GameGrumps My go to for comedic relief. These two dudes can make me laugh for hours with their ridiculous videogaming antics. I used to be a HUGE gamer, but obviously no longer have time for it. I can satisfy my gaming desires vicariously through these guys. Adriana Lippy | http://www.adrianalippyart.com/ My best friend from college is an incredibly talented biomedical illustrator and animator. She showcases her work on her channel. Adriana has also been featured in some incredible places - her art once graced a billboard for Seattle Biomed in downtown Seattle! She accepts commissions and even drew an amazing scratchboard of my childhood dog as a christmas present for my mom. MacGyver the Lizard I am in love with this adorable Argentinian Red Tegu. He acts like a big lovable dog more than your typical lizard. Watching him eat is cuteness overload. Mems-ogyny Shout out to one of my best friends from elementary school! Memory has some truly amazing stories to tell. Her travels throughout the US as a "dirty kid" sound like they are out of a fantasy novel. Hi all! Ah, the freedom of summer break! Fish room update that I actually filmed in February but just now got to edit. Enjoy! I made a "Keeping and Breeding Pygmy Sunfish (Elassoma spp.)" video because I was getting a lot of questions on how to care for these little gems at the San Francisco Bay Area Killifish Association meeting last Saturday (PS YOU GUYS ROCK!) The species I keep hasn't been described yet - it is Elassoma sp. affinis evergladei Three Mile Creek, Elberta, Alabama. For such a little fish, they have a couple of big challenges you must address: 1) They will only eat live food. I've had this particular species for over 6 generations from wild-caught and they still won't take anything that isn't moving. I feed primarily grindal/white worms to adults/sub-adults, and BBS and walter/banana/micro worms for the babies. 2) They are shy. Set the tank up so that the feel secure - LOTS of live plants, mops, pots, dark gravel, etc. No sudden movements near the tank. Mine come right out when they see me, but that trust was built over time. 3) The fry are TINY. You need to provide them with lots of microscopic food. I stuff their tanks/jars with lots of fine-leaved live plants. Having a timer or putting the tanks in natural light helps a lot too. Second half of the lovely interview with Cory from Aquarium Co-op! We talk about salt and tannins in the water, minimum tank size, sexing young Bettas, keeping groups of Bettas, etc, etc. :) I highly recommend subscribing to Cory's YouTube Channel - I love putting it on autoplay while doing water changes or tinkering around with my fish. I've learned so much and always get new ideas! My other favorite channel is Rachel O'Leary's YouTube Channel, which focuses on nano fish :) I always love going home to Seattle :) I was able to visit my family a couple weekends ago and had a great time. One of my good fish friends, Cory from Aquarium Co-op, absolutely grilled me during an interview on his Aquarium Co-op YouTube channel. It was awesome!! You can view the video below :D Can't wait to go for round two! I'm also really excited - I was able to get a small group of Parasphromenus tweediei from Lawrence K. I'm really excited to try a new species and to contribute to their conservation. They are still small, but I'm looking forward to being a part of the Parosphromenus Project! Wish me luck with this delicate species >,< I'm also looking forward to getting a pair of P. linkei in the near future... Acclimation is the process of introducing new fish to your water conditions. Depending on where you get your fish, the water parameters might be very different than your own. I am particularly lucky that San Francisco water has almost 0 kH and gH, making it very easy to acidify the water (using Indian Almond Leaf) for my low-pH loving fish. However, not everyone has soft water! Since SF water is so different, I used to be extremely cautious when acclimating new fish. If I was really worried, I would set up a drip acclimation that would go for an hour or more. However, I did find that my fish were stressed out being confined in a bag or bucket during the length drip process - they don't have anywhere to hide at all in those containers. I realized, though, that when I do my 100% jar water changes, or when we set up fish at shows, that Bettas do just fine with rapid acclimation straight out of the bag. Rachel O'Leary, owner of Msjinkzd, an extremely popular provider of specialized nano fish and invertebrates, has a great video that details the "Plop and drop" acclimation method along with some great explanations to go with it. Far less stress = happy fish! I've used it ever since and I haven't lost a fish yet to poor acclimation. Hi Guys! Finally put together another video. Since it is a little long, here is a table of contents so you can jump to the section that you want to hear about:
1:20 Supplies and Prep Area 3:40 Awards and Memorabilia 4:12 Prime Conditioning Shelf 4:43 Carding 6:12 Conditioning Water 7:33 FlexWatt Heating Tape 8:05 "Storage" Shelf 8:33 Spawning Tanks 9:08 Plant Corner 11:52 Pygmy Sunfish Colony 13:41 Pygmy Sunfish Spawning Tank 14:53 Blue Gularis 15:35 Betta rubra Spawning Tank 17:56 Betta rubra Grow-Out Tank 19:13 Show Betta Grow-Out Tank 19:28 Black Bar "N" Class Endlers 20:34 Catfish Clean-up Crew Cheers and happy fish keeping! |
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