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My personal take on from this video with the camera pointed at the bottom is that the harlquin rasboras, mostly bought in the start of 2017, some before. are flying around the bottom with no fear from the other fish. It used not to be the case.

A bit of food in the water is what is causing the flying dots. Life goes on for the fish.

And one of my oldest sitting glass tanks...It has hillstream loaches in it for several years, probably six years :) Of course the tank had a different history before hand....It needs some care and cutting crypts...I just don't care because the fish do not care.

A couple more with lights as it looks nicer

Sorry, I am actually seeing this just now. I actually have an amazon sword in one of the small plastic ponds. It grows just fine but often struggles to get enough light from the emerged plants. That mini pond is with soil, capped with sand. I took some pictures today. Unfortunately only...

A rare view of one of my hillstream loaches. They're great at hiding, especially that this tank is full of crypts to the brim. I haven't done the gardening in a very long time as you can notice :) The algae is on the glass, not on the plants. This hillstream was bought about 6 years ago.

Some pictures of my ponds. The first one is the kuhli loach and shrimp. Second one is the weather loach and hillstreams. Third one is the pond with the clown loaches.

I don't know if I have mentioned lately but these fish have been fed just one brand of food for over a decade - New Life Spectrum. I don't even feed them anything else really, like frozen food. I lost that habit out of laziness. All of the fish were babies when I got them, including the...

HI ALL,just a video of the pond today. Its been about 6.5 years since its setup with thw same crew although some of the loaches are from before and I added so.e baby loaches later but the yougest are now 5 years,oldest about 11.

So beautiful, both flowers are from the same palm, just different age :)

Hey Everyone, I hope all is well. One of the best plant lights I ever bought -a floodlight, got bust this week, just stopped working. I had seen it flashing a few times a week ago and then darkness this week. It actually lasted longer than most aquarium specific lights I had bought, about 9...

It's been a few years since I posted in this thread and I can't even remember what I wrote :) I am still convinced BBA in a fish tank is due to overstocking(or excessive organic matter) and general bad management especially insufficient planting/filtration and die off. It disappears once...

I have been comparing and my videos are getting poorer, my phone I use to take them is getting upgraded :D Having said that, I think it's because I have just one artificial light, where before I had two. I know the plants are actually using natural light and the fish don't like it too bright so...

Uploading a third one I got up close just to give scale of size of some of the loaches. At the very start of the video one can see at least 3 of the large ones together. Sorry about the flashes, the camera was being blinded by the tank lights. I can also see my 3 stripe loach, with the large...

Did another one, maybe slightly better. For size, compare

My water is also very hard, PH 7.4 and problem with kettles, white residue even on fish tanks, etc.. Thanks. I can't imagine my tank without the clown loaches. They're the focal point really and probably my favourite ever fish. However, snails wise, I found out my weather loach is quite the...

Hey everyone. I've been so busy lately with good and bad in life, can't help it. It just happens. Fish like always became a 2nd fiddle. Today I managed to spend some time for myself while changing the water in all tanks to see who's alive and what's the situation. I remembered today it's been...

I think it's a male. I moved just the one net of shrimp into this tub , so maybe there's just 4-5 shrimp max but there's definitely an adult female I saw around. The less the number of shrimp, the better the chances they'd cross with each other I think. Let's hope for babies :) I might as...

A short video of the weather loach below munching on food while I was changing the water, featuring a blue/purple shrimp, which got moved at the same time. The shrimp is a progeny of my very first bunch of 5 red/red rili shrimp I got many years ago. I get weird colours like that from time to time.

A video of the pond below. Nothing much has changed. One of the filters leaked a few weeks ago and I haven't replaced it yet. It looks like the Chinese filters last longer than the German....

Hey everyone, I hope all is well. And I hate that same saying but it kind of stuck over the last 2 years. I wish all of you the stars in the sky and your health and resistance. The last couple of days I was messing with my fish tubs as I decided to move my home office from the sitting room to...

Thanks Miranda and all. She's been ok lately. Fingers crossed.

We walked to the car yesterday, which is kept in a parking, just to check on it as we hadn't used it for a while. When Angie saw the car she got so excited thinking we're going somewhere so we actually had to, unplanned trip to a natural park :D Healthy spirit in a healthy body, right?

Hey, Happy Christmas and Holidays to everyone. I just wanted to say that my dog Angie has been ok since. She's getting her spirits back and goes to the toilet regularly, so far so good, and it's been the longest period without a vet visit in months. She's been on her new food which I had...

I just wanted to say, it is not insensitive to me at all. It is just that I always had it in my mind that she would live to 16 or so, because she's a Jack Russell. Well, maybe that's not her story. The only story I want to say is that she has taught me to be a good human being. And the most...

Thanks Marcel. Any recommendations what exactly to get for dogs? PM is fine if not ok in the thread. I was thinking the same lines, try the natural remedies. I already started her on some stuff I have around the house. I give her turmeric in the food, dry probiotic and for the last 3 nights she...

Thanks Marcel. I decided to take one day at a time. She was ok yesterday and managed to go to the toilet, also ate all her food. I incorporated some home remedies to help her immune system and ordered some very expensive freeze dried food. Her stomach was destroyed from the pile of antibiotics...

Thanks Kirsty

I disagree. Dogs definitely understand delayed reward without being given out to or threatened or given repeated instructions what to do in a certain situation. My dog just started doing the things she does, like waiting in her bed to be given a treat. Absolutely no one taught her that or told...

Yes, and as far as I am concerned, even my dog can do that.... My dog may not be able to talk the way we do but she surely understands quite a few things. For example, since I started working from home, she has figured that me on the keyboard is a no,no and does not approach me until I get away...

I will answer your dilemma with another question. Would the world be better off if human intelligence is identical to that of orcas? Would there be less or more fish in the sea?

Yes, exactly, depends on the definition of intelligence. One thing to keep in mind is that the human species set the definitions. Yet, we are not "intelligent" enough to do so in my opinion.

Strange that with so many fish keepers a thread about fish intelligence lasted only 3 pages....What do most people keep fish for? Aesthetics? Home decoration? :) There is a disturbing documentary on Netflix called Seaspiracy...It seems everyone feels better not to know anything about fish and...

One of my old internal filters, a Fluval, finally gave up yesterday after 11 years. It just would not turn back on. I was using it on one of the tubs that only holds kuhli loaches at the moment. Unfortunately in the process I also flushed a kuhli loach down the drain by accident. It was in the...

I actually had 2 clown loaches jump out to their death but that was in the span of the last 10 years. Both cases were when they were recently enough put in a tank. The first one was shortly after I moved the clowns to the pond, providing they had spend their time in another open top glass tank...

The heating is expensive enough, especially lately but to me the fish are worth the expense. Right now I only have one LED light and the plants are doing quite well with just natural light and some reflecting light from the other mini ponds. It's been great seeing the fish grow and thrive in...

Hey,just one more video... The very start shows the harlequin rasboras,which I dont normally capture as they like the top and the back of the pond. But they are beautiful...I think. They seem to be doing well.

Hello This is the weather loach tub, hydrophilla going nuts as usual and the loach is doing fine. And some growth over the pond And one more video showing a better view of some of the bigger clown loaches.

Hello, I hope everyone is well. I was thinking today it's 5 years about since I got the denison barbs as babies and they have grown and have been doing well so far. They're beautiful fish to have. So here they are with the rest of the crew, the video taken this evening.

Hey Charlie, Welcome to the forum. I hope you enjoy it as much as all of us have over the years. I can't comment on what your water conditions are. I just want you to keep in mind that the effect of bad water quality is seen in months. The effect is delayed and not immediate. Fish and water...

One more pic because it is such a beauty.....

Today I got a bit of a shocking surprise..... I went into the fish room to start water changes and in one of my hillstream tubs and I see that really weird Peace Lily flower, or so I thought because I have a hanging Peace Lily there that has been flowering all summer. I thought it got a bit...

I got a bit of a video of the underwater life in the pond. Unfortunately the clowns all appear smaller sitting at 80 cm distance from my camera, right at the bottom... plus chilling under the driftwood. However, it's all a very happy family in there I think. Fortunately the clowns don't consider...

Hi, It's been a while. Somehow working from home leaves me little time for forums.....and even looking at my fish...... I have just been doing the needful and I wasn't paying much attention in terms of growth, etc.. Yesterday I spent some time observing and kid you not, I could not recognize...

I am wondering, as I am doing a bit of planning in my head, if it is a bad idea to put my weather loach with the hillstream loaches in one tank?...Is dhe going to outcompete them all for food....? She's a curious active weather loach, bites my fingers if I let her. I am thinking to put all cold...

Hey Everyone. We had a power outage the day before yesterday. It was supposed to be out for the day but in the end it was down for only 3 hours. Fish made it fine I think. I was only really worried about the temperature of the pond but even after those 3 hours it hadn't bulged at all. This pond...

Hey Everyone, No pictures today... I just wanted to report all is well. I and my fish crew are doing ok during these difficult times. The news is that I might be finally moving on to new premises and the future fish room is going to be smaller!! :oops: It will be enough for the pond but I have...

Such sad news :confused: and a huge loss to the forum. Condolences to his family.

You will have some massive evaporation at 28-29C for Discus in an open top, at least during winter, obviously depending on the temperature of the room they're in. I keep mine in an open top indoor pond at 26C. I have clown loaches so can't really lower anymore but the winter I lose litres in...

I don't know if I said it on this post some time ago but they won't eat crinum calamistratum....it was the only plant they didn't touch but they shred everything else to bits, including the anubias. That happened only when they got older. I kept them with plants for years before and they only...

Corrected now, apologies Tim

Nope, Tim.On Sundays I am a saint. I barely get time to snooze all day long :) My mind has been wondering elsewhere but I always get back to where I belong.:cool: P.S. Glad to hear from you too, Tim. My sincere wishes of health and happiness to you and everyone you care about. I hope life...

Hey Everyone. I really hope everyone is feeling good and is safe. I had the weirdest experience, on a personal level but it was all about the fish. Sunday afternoon I went for a snooze and I had a dream about myself and my other half doing a water change on the pond. At some point in my dream...

I thought I'd share the weather loach tub. The lily over there is recently cut so the hydrophila is taking over. The hydrophilla has loved this flood light since I bought it and I can't tell you which part grows out of the loach tab or the one next to it which was the betta tub, now kuhli loach...

Thanks mate. How have you kept your loaches all these years? I would be very interested to know as it's not every day someone has 26+ years of age clowns. I know my initial pre-pond 7 clowns went through 2 gushing glass tanks and 3 months in a tub of 80 litres, all in their first 4 year journey...

Mort, you're making it sound as simple as a life span issue :D I hope you're right. I am glad mine are now happy but I'll have to put in a lot more effort than I already have to get mine to over 20 years old, providing I get there myself. I just finished a 3 hour water change on all tanks. I...

Me neither. I agree it's a total myth that keeps coming up, not sure why. I've kept cherries for probably over 8 years now, always with large water changes every week, more like 70%. I think when I started I was told the same, not to do large water changes on a shrimp tank.....:rolleyes: I am...

Wow, 25-26 years is a loooong time to keep a fish alive. I can only dream.

Please, increase the water changes to 50%, not drop to 5%. Don't add any chemicals. Let your tank stabilize to what comes out of your tab. Don't rely on the years of keeping fish. I only got a clue when I started reading, which was about 15 years later.

I am sure by now you got plenty of advise mate. But the above is the key to keeping animals healthy and alive. I am not trying to be patronize you or anyone. I am coming from similar experience, that's all. . You can never tell if a tank is fully cycled or mature because it cycles all the...

The long promised video of the pond is below :D As you can see, it's like the fish are stuck in time, hence I wasn't bothered updating as I get annoying showing the same thing. Nothing has changed and I think that's really important. No stress, no new fish, no messing, no decor...

Thanks guys. Let's hope it makes it. It's been on my mind all day.

Well, good news guys. I am just back after handing off the little swift. I got in touch with the swift rescue, from one contact to another until they got someone in my area. The lady that took it said she'll take care of it for a couple of days then drive it off to Galway to specialist swift...

Looking on that video below, mine seems to be around 20 days or so old comparing to the development of those below.

Trust me, I checked all corners for spiders :oops: We have them here of course but I can't find any today. Extra time at home, extra cleaning lately... Thanks, there isn't a contact in my county but I sent a message to the nearest 2 on the list and I sent an e-mail explaining the situation...

I had read about both cat and dog food being unsuitable already, before I fed the bird it's first meal. For the same reasons it is not suitable for fish either, wrong proteins and fat, hence I thought the fish food is a better option. It's probably not suitable either but it's rich in water...

What am I supposed to do on Saturday evening and Sunday during a coronavirus crisis? This animal would have been dead by now if I hadn't picked it up. I sent an email to the only bird rescue Ireland I found, still no answer. Does anyone know a contact that might help? I read about the food...

Thanks for that. I had read about the cat food and dog food but no explanation why anywhere. My guess is too much carbs/grains in those and wrong type of protein and fat? I need to get crickets is what I am reading. And I don't even know if it will make it to this evening. It's very weak.

It has no feathers around it's neck and under the wings. To me it looks rather weak still to be able to fly. It is way smaller than how it look in the zoomed pictures I posted.

It was in the middle of a busy street, probably fell of the nest of the buildings on it. I read the parents of common swifts never take them back and it's often they fall out of nests and need hand rearing. To be honest, the moment I took it I didn't know anything, not even what type of bird...

I ordered some mealworms, dried and in a can. It's the only thing locally I could find at the moment. I hope it's shipped fast.

I couldn't sleep. I got up at 5.30 to try to feed the bird. It is still alive and I managed to force feed some food and water. I used soaked fish food. I know it's not insects and totally unsuitable but it was too weak from not drinking and eating so it was either that or starve it to death...

I tried my best to feed it, like you said, it refused. I didn't want to stress it further from the handling because I tried numerous times. I will let it be for the night. If it's alive tomorrow, I'll try force feeding it, although not sure how yet but there are some youtube videos on the subject.

Yes, a common swift it is. I am not sure how I'll go about insects. :rolleyes: Would any water critters work, e.g. cherry shrimp, snails, californian black worms? Fish food? Or can I catch something, although I can't imagine how here in the city... I just sent an email to bird rescue...

Hi All, I just found a little baby bird near the supermarket in the city. Can anyone ID? I hope it makes it, poor thing. I've never ever kept birds before and I know nothing about them. I put it in an opened box and it's in my fish room. I tried to give it some smashed walnuts with water...

Hey Guys, I got my new phone, an upgraded version of my old cracked screen one. I tried to take an underwater video and it would not take it:mad:....It shuts down the camera underwater immediately, what the heck.....it was an upgrade, e.g. Samsung S9 for Samsung S20... I think I'll just...

Hi everyone. I hope everyone is coping well in this difficult time and keeps their spirit afloat. I just have a few updates, some negative, some positive. I lost the betta. I found him dead a few weeks back. I am not sure what was up but I doubt it I could have done much to save him as I...

Of course they're not. The only way they can reflect the big picture is to test everyone at once, take the big picture like a snapshot of time.....impossible. So many countries, so many different policies on coronavirus, none took the plunge to test the entire population, despite them paying...

In the supermarket I felt like in a science fiction movie..."The future is futile" :p Of course, considering how advanced we are in technology, we are yet to find a cure against any viral diseases......And we still treat the head, the organs, the limbs, etc...as separate entities, as if...

In Darwin's terms that means whoever or whatever multiplies the fastest is going to survive. It does not mean the individual is going to live long...For us it means stay home, make babies, and keep the babies safe :bored:

Hey, the Qube 50's are still doing a great job and plants respond really well to them. They can be strong and burn leaves or cause algae if too close. I love that the Qube 50 is so light and so easy to position/twist around and they can be fit on any of my aquariums or plastic tubs. I love the...

You know, my other half asked me the other day....."How are the fish doing by the way, you haven't said anything in ages about them...Did any of them die"..... And then I gather my thoughts and I think about it.....none have yet died.....I am doing fine, I just need to do what I have always...

I have not read the entire conversation. I am sorry, not following anymore,and I might have missed the meaning, but just to note since I got an alert, it is one of my pictures that Darrel linked and it is definitely the result of iron deficiency, which I still battle in my hard water, in my...

I've been thinking, this is the time of the year that I normally get very excited about fish, when the other side of life has calmed down but not this year....total disinterest on my part. I haven't even looked at the fish tanks properly in quite a while, in fact for months, apart from when I...

Hi Andy, Thank you. It is still going as fish are still gong on the same as ever:) Problem is, I have nothing to contribute because nothing literally changes :oops:

If you're going the route of drip acclimation, it seems that a dark covered bucket or similar container is the way to go. I used to drip directly from the tank, topping it up when the level went down in the tank iteslf, at the same time taking scoops out of the bucket I was acclimating the fish...

They are sensitive to water temperature outside their tolerated level. We're talking water either too hot or too cold, i.e below 20C for some tropicals or above 30C. If fish are in a temperature they can't tolerate, they'll go into shock, fainting literally. So why would one not just grab said...

I've myself always wondered why people equalize temperature during acclimation...The fish is either in too cold water or too hot water. Putting it quickly into a tank with appropriate temperature will be the best choice. Having said that, during a water change I've happened to drop the...

Some boring pics. First my betta using his tail as an anchor looking at me just after a water change. Notice how he folds the tail to hold on to the ancient filter in both pictures in different scenarios... Then the the hillstream loach tub that got overrun by algae, which I thought is...

I can't see anything white on the picture.

I have an arcadia stretch LED light that I use over my hillstream loach tank. A few weeks back it failed, flashing intermittently. So the tank ran only on the Qube 50 LED these few weeks because I was being lazy purchasing another light. I was going to buy another Qube 50 as I quite like...

I think some of you guys are talking about technological advances. Hence the difference in opinions. Take for example surface scam. We have surface skimmers now but the knowledge of how to prevent the unsightly biofilm appearing is only anecdotal, e.g. surface agitation, the napkin method...

Right now I am talking from the top of my head but you can read on biofloc technology studies for more details. Biofloc technoloy is a type of non-water changed aquaculture system that tries to achieve nature in a closed system. Non-pathogens could be pretty much anything, certain protozoa...

There's nothing philosophical at all here :p We still discuss topics such as water changes, or how much to feed....The consensus is more water changes and feeding less is better but there are people on both sides of the spectrum. Some do regular and large water changes, some do none. Some...

They cost 12-13 euro here but I got them from the local shop on a deal 3 years ago, about 5-er each. They were colorless juveniles back then and weren't attracting much attention in the shop.

We had an electricity issue over the weekend, there wasn't any for over 12 hours or so. I got worried but there was nothing I could do for the time being. I actually didn't notice any stress at all, although with fish one never knows for sure as the effect is always delayed. I did do quite large...

I think that as far as aquariums are concerned, nothing has changed. :p What has changed is our understanding of them, particularly our individual level of understanding. Every fish keeper starts off not knowing much at all. Some remain where they started, some get confused and get the wrong...