# Baby Betta Journal



## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

After the recent death of a loved betta- a friend had given me a baby for my birthday! Now, I'm a bit distressed since, I kind of murdered the last one(Oh Gloria :c I couldn't get your meds on time! Can't forget the grand ol' time we had trying to diagnose you.. yeah...) It also doesn't help that I've no idea how to care for the little one! 

Anyway, I would like to bring you all on our journey~ I will not get too attached to this boy as of yet since he is quite young and susceptible to disease. Therefore he will not be named until I see him grow much older. 

The current conditions for his living are quite.. interesting. I had to pull out a heater from my cycling tank(goodbye, cycle.) and shove it into _-gasp-_ a vase! I hear that young ones are placed in small volumes of water while breeding, so I figured it was alright as long as I had a heater in it. From the looks of it, seems to be a .5 gallon. I have it at 80-82 degrees with a tiny bit of anacharis. I'm also feeding him hikari bio-gold pellets (4 a day cut in half) spread out between two feedings. Oh, I will also be changing the water 50% a day since I hear that's also good for their growth.

I seem to have forgotten the most important part, huh!* Pictures.
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(He has a kink at the end of his tail, I wonder if that will harm him in the long run)
It will be distorted for quite a while due to the vase's glass work. I will probably put the little one in a 1g/2g if/when he gets older. Also, if I'm doing something wrong with the care- please do not hesitate to correct me!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

So here is the basic care outline for baby Bettas:

Heat is important; keep it around 78-82 ideally. The higher the temp the faster they will metabolize everything which means more food more frequently. That's true with all fish. So twice a day feedings is fantastic, three times a day isn't totally necessary but nice if you can. Change water daily around 50% or more if you can to remove the growth stunting hormone that they excrete. Frozen foods will be your best friend as well, you can feed those three-four times a week to the baby although some of them aren't overly nutritious like Brine Shrimp so mixing it up will be good. Daphnia is a great natural laxative for them. Ideally you want at least a gallon and over, the larger the water volume the easier it is to care for them. The .5 will be all right for now but I still suggest to get a larger tank when you can. Live plants can also help dilute the growth stunting hormone, has to be a planted tank though with actively growing plants so if you had a whole bunch of anacharis that was happily growing; that will help as well.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ooh, thank you very much! I DO have quite a lot of frozen bloodworm cubes. I haven't fed them much(maybe like, 1/2 of one a day) since I heard they were very "rich".

Currently, I'm cycling a 10g planted tank that I'm pretty sure I've either broken the cycle or stalled severely due to taking out the heater. I hope my plants won't die :c.

As for this journal I believe I will be updating daily for the first week or two to document his overall health. After it will probably be weekly updates. Hopefully the lil' fella grows up strong!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah, the frozen foods can be fed more often to baby Bettas but with adults, best to keep to twice a week or less is fine 

No heater shouldn't kill your cycle off unless the temp dips below 50 degrees or so, it could slow it, yes, but it should be fine. BB do like higher temps around 80-90 though. Do you have a thermometer in the 10 to check the temp?


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yes, it's pretty much at 55-60 degrees in the 10g, so I'd assume it's fine. Also, since you say it's alright for young bettas to have bloodworms- is it alright to continue this one on daily feedings of it? I heard that they need high protein diets at a young age- so I was also thinking of feeding him some crushed granules/baby shrimp from one of the old tetra food bottles I have around.

Also, some closer pictures! He's pretty darn quick- so it was a struggle to snap a pic! The lil' spikes at the end of his tail make it look like he'll end up a crowntail~


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Daily probably is a little excessive, every other day is okay but make sure the other feeding isn't frozen foods and regular pellets. It's best if you can avoid low quality foods like Tetra, TopFin or Hikari. I really recommend New Life Spectrum Small Fish Formula or if you want to buy the Grow formula, that's cool too. The thing with foods is, and this is true for cat and dog foods as well, they contain fillers. Fillers are anything Wheat, Corn or Soybean and the more the food contains fillers the cheaper the company is trying to make it. Fillers are really hard to digest for them so this is why we don't want fillers in the first three ingredients.

The first three ingredients are the more important as ingredients are listed by weight so the most stuff in the food will be at the top! You definitely do not want fillers in the first two for sure, the third can be a Wheat filler as wheat is often a binder to help hold the food together. So take a look at your foods and the ingredients to see just how good or bad they might be. Don't use low quality foods, just throw them out; you'll do your fish more harm than good if you keep using them.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I understand what you mean~ I have a lil' kitty myself- I'm so picky about her foods! I always look for something that I can recognize as an actual food within the first ingredient. Can't believe I didn't think this applied to the fishy community as well- silly me :I

I've often passed NLS in my local store- sheesh 8$ for a bottle. I don't think I'd be able to pay for that and use it up before it expires- waste of money in the long run! I've heard good reviews about omega one- it runs typically about 4$ in my area. The ingredients listed in that particular one seems pretty promising. Plus, it's a much smaller bottle!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh good God! 8 dollars! Yeah nope lol, my little containers were 4 dollars and under, do you have a PetCo around you? They tend to carry more NLS and more of the smaller containers.

Omega One is the next best although I still don't technically like them because they do split up their wheat content to make it look like they are better but really their Wheat content should be around second on the list, but yes they are still better than the other brands. You will also have to split the pellet since Omega tends to be larger than the NLS Betta formula or Small Fish formula, even the Thera A+ formula most of the times. But if that isn't an issue, you can use Omega.


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## Betta Nut (Dec 3, 2013)

lilnaugrim said:


> Omega One is the next best although I still don't technically like them because they do split up their wheat content to make it look like they are better but really their Wheat content should be around second on the list.


Wow, I never really paid attention to that.. You're right!

4th ing. wheat flour, 5th wheat gluten. Pretty sneaky.

I learned something today


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 3:

Had a lil' scare as I fed him too much freeze dried baby shrimp- he blew up like a balloon! I didn't want to throw off his feeding schedule, so when I got home I gave him the tiniest bit of food since his stomach went down.

Not to be gross or anything, but this is like the first time I've ever seen a betta poop. I feel like I've achieved something for some reason, LOL. I've never seen my past bettas do such a thing!

I've sucked it up and decided to go with a pricey NLS! My reason is that I can avoid wasting such a large amount of product by getting more mouths to feed<3

Some pictures! I find it cute that during his feedings- that the blackish portions of his fins turns into a beautiful turquoise! I wonder why that is~ I hope to catch it in a picture soon!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

His tummy in the pictures are a great "after-feeding" tummy size even a little larger is fine so don't worry if the tummy get's big; that's kind of the point! ^_^ Loving her coloration too!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 4:

The water seems to be turning cloudy- unless I'm just paranoid. 

Either way, I'm probably going to do a super tank cleaning today. Gonna clean 3 5g's and disinfect a 1g. Then move the betta(that's in the 1g) and move him to a 5 along with ADFs that will be removed from my 10. Then... place the lil' guy in the 1g for more swimming space. The distortions on the vase is driving me crazy! Can't imagine how he sees things properly in that.

Now, I keep saying "he"... I don't actually know the gender for sure! I assume it's a "he" since he's never shown me stress stripes.

Gosh, I hate cleaning tanks. I feel like I don't disinfect them well enough! I usually just dip a sponge in distilled white vinegar and scrub all the sides-> wait a few minutes -> rinse/dry.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Stress stripes have nothing to do whether it is a girl or boy, they all have stress stripes. I look for the ovaries which can be difficult to spot on more opaque Bettas that you can't see through. Then I also look at the fins and the body as a whole; your girl has shorter fins that normal for a boy her age which hints then for a girl. Also her eyes are smaller which usually denotes a girl as well but that's not a real way to sex, just a trait that occurs more often than not.

Cloudy is probably just a bacterial bloom, that happens for new tanks regardless of filter or not.

For disinfection I use a diluted bleach solution 1:19 parts and after it no longer smells like bleach in rinsing I let it air dry for a while and then I use either 70% or 91% Rubbing Alcohol to spray on everything needed to be disinfected and then rinse very well and let air dry. You should no longer smell bleach or alcohol on the tank/decor. I can write up a more detailed instructions if you like.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ohh, that would be fantastic if you could!! I actually have no idea the age of this one. If size helps at all- size is actually a little less than an inch(ignoring fins). He/she just looks big because I zoomed in quite a bit^^~


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Sorry for double post :I grabbed a ruler and he's/she's about 2.3cm including fins


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

I was comparing her to the thermometer and then comparing my own babies. And yes, when you measure Bettas you measure from "nose" to peduncle which is the end of the body; beginning of tail since tails can vary so much in size, width, shape, etc. And I've seem to have misplaced my disinfecting directions, I'll write them up again so just remind me to do so later!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 5:
Oh, alrighty! I just dumped vinegar and water and scrubbed the sides down and rinsed. I let it dry in the sun and then washed it again the next day.

Aaaaand....I do believe I see an egg spot~ (Unless I'm just crazy, then never mind!) Probably going to move her to the 1 gallon today when I muster up the courage to pour her into it. I don't have a net(I'd be too afraid to net her, anyway! lol) Lil' ones seem too fragile to move around >.< 

Anyway, I finally caught a picture of that lovely tail~










And here's that kink I mentioned before









I don't think it affects her movement at all- she zips around no problem!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Ah yes, I had a girl; Little Blue that had the same kink. it's a deformity but it doesn't really affect them adversely.

Egg spots are not a reliable way to sex as many young boys also have fake egg spots and more than half the time they keep them after maturity as well! So the only reliable way is to look for ovaries.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

My goodness, sexing is so tough for the untrained eyes, then :C

I actually ended up cracking the corner of my 1 gallon... I dropped a 5 gallon on it. So I used some 2-part adhesive that said 'waterproof' and will be letting it sit until tomorrow! I'll probably fill it up and see how it goes before stocking it~

I also have to figure out how to set up an avatar later! For some reason it keeps giving me an error.

Lastly.. my 10g just became a farm for brown algae(at least that's what I think it is) My poor anubias, their tops are completely covered in brown muck :/


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah, sexing can be quite difficult and of course it doesn't help that it seems Betta's are just out to trick us all! lol What might look like a girl could end up as male later!

For avatar's you need to have it a certain size, it gives you the limit on the "Edit Avatar" page. So that might be a thing.

And yeah Diatom's are annoying, definitely not the worst algae you can get! Just keep rubbing the leaves of the brown algae so they don't get choked out and in a few months time the Diatoms will burn themselves out and likely will never return as long as that tank is running fine.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 6:

I pretty much dumped her into the 1 gallon( I'm so freaked out that she'll die from the stress of the move!) Gosh, I always have bad luck with "moving day" for fish. I remember my old betta Kai- I did a drip acclimation in a lil' floating cup.. Next day I find out he committed betta suicide and wedged himself between the wall and the filter and promptly drowned. That day taught me never to have anything that will let bettas wedge their bodies into >.>


Kai(RIP :c) and his old ADF buddies that were just moved from the 10g into a 5g!









Pic of the new home:








The silly lil' one is such a scavenger- she's trying to eat her own excrement, cute but a bit gross! lol
Say hello to my brown tank!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 7:

Eeep! The one week hump has been reached! Hopefully the lil' ones strong health will be consistent for the ongoing years~

Going to PetCo today(It seems I've become a regular there for the weekends, oh dear :3) Going to exchange my NLS all-purpose for small fish formula as I for some reason didn't notice until just now. Maybe even snatch up another betta if I see a cutie that's willing to go home with me.

I've been seeing some funny behavior lately. She's been pecking at the anacharis as if there's something she can eat on it! Her color also seems to have come back- it faded a bit after the move yesterday.

I also need to siphon out all the gunk on the bottom of the tank. I can see the dust floating in my room that's fallen in it, LOL. Makes me want to dust my room!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

The pecking is normal for all fish as there ARE little buggies on the plants generally that they will eat! Sometimes they'll even nibble on a little bit of algae but no worries, it's just veggie for their diet ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Mini-update:

So, they didn't carry small fish formula :c total bummer. I saw the betta shelves and boy was it disgusting as heck. Green water with everything either dead or ill! I DID however see a baby that was swimming around actively which I brought home with me. I will not be posting pics until I see it at least get through the night(I hope so). Funny thing, (I think it's a he, big black eyes) he was pale white with a fat stress stripe and I placed him into a heated tank and he turned a dark color in a few minutes! He seems to be flaring at my female baby- I will be placing him in his own bowl when I get it at the temperature I want as I don't have an adjustable heater(euuugh, I have to play with water levels until it's 80-82)

Also, I saw a pleco that was being returned! Wow, it was 8 inches- I should've taken a pic~


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 8:

Alrighty, the new addition is sick(not sure what yet). He's just spitting out his food and has some nicks on his fins. It doesn't seem like fin rot, though. I dissolved a few crystals of AQ salt in the water. He is swimming around a bit actively- certainly not zipping around like his "sister" is! He's still quite pale but it's much better than he was yesterday. I currently have him in a vase that is 83-85. 

The usual sprig of anacharis for him to play around with if he's bored~









I say "sister" since they seem to look pretty much the same compared to the day I first got both! I wonder if they're from the same batch or something o-o 








She is coloring up quite beautifully! Like a lil' cherry~ She eats quite well, now.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 9:

So I splurged and bought a heater for my 10g along with a test kit. Eeee~ It's cycled- I think! However, my PH is very high (8.4) no idea why.

Anyway, the babies are doing very well- I hope I don't jinx that :c. The newest baby addition is beginning to have a better appetite which makes me glad and the oldest is a fat piggy!

I was going to pick up a java fern until I saw the betta section(I seem to have come down with the betta fever). A halfmoon for 6$- what a steaaaaal with his looks! I will post a picture tomorrow once I get my camera working and all the junk out of the way. I do believe in the future if all these lil' ones grow up the 10g will be split into 3.


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## BlueLacee (Dec 8, 2013)

Exiting, exiting. Good luck


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 10:
I didn't want to force the new arrival to flare- so I just snapped one as he was close to the front of the tank. He seems very lethargic and spits out food. Hopefully a few days of rest will perk him up! Also, don't mind the algae!









This girl is developing such beautiful colors~ She's totally a brawler- if she gets a glimpse of any fish she goes crazy! Whereas the others are just "whatever.." That's why I have pieces of paper surrounding her tank.









Lastly, this boy seems to be developing vertical stripes. I wonder why that is. I also had a scare with him last night. I woke up in the morning to see the water had reached 87 degrees. Switched out the heaters between those two babies immediately. Figured it would be better in a 1 gallon than the .5

He also seems pretty skinny, I've been trying to fatten him up. The color is beginning to develop nicely in him.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Vertical stripes are known as Breeding stripes however in babies and fish who are not avidly breeding, they are submission stripes. They usually display them when they become submissive to another fish, alternatively if they do not run and hide but rather stand up to the other fish (can be their reflection), they are trying to be the 'alpha' and tell the other fish to back off  Babies can change their stripes on a dime from vertical, horizontal and then regular color!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 11:
Nothing new here! The new adult male seems to have perked up a wee bit. I want to start him on eating but all he does it float to the top and sit there. At least he's swimming around every so often.

The two babies are doing well- trying to stuff 'em with food to fatten them up.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 12:
Nothing new again~ Babies are fine- but I'm seeing less activity from them. I'll probably monitor them like a hawk since I'll be sitting at my desk for hours! The vertical lines on the 2nd baby makes me wonder if I should cover up the sides of his tank. I've already done it to the other one and she's perked up. Hmmm, probably stress? Daily water changes are tough... Way too much for me >.< I end up doing daily for 50% maybe 1-2 days and then skip one day and do a 70%...

The big man in my 10g deserves a name- it's got to be elegant! Ah-ha I think I'll name him Sebastian! That sexy blue tail, man.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 13:
Sebastian...can it be!? I think it is~ A bubble nest :3









I'm so proud of him!

As for the other two, I think I will name the 1st baby Cherry. Both babies had somewhat clamped fins for a few hours which worried me last night. This morning, both are swimming actively with fins spread normally.

My fathers tank(20g) seems to have nothing but problems. Don't mind me ranting but the man thinks fish are easy to care for! Let the tank run for a week, throw in fish without conditioner(I found out that he was using water clarifier, which didn't look like conditioner at all!), and get random freshwater fish. It's no surprise that I've found 4 dead in the past week :/ I decided to test his water and it seems fine except for the high PH and .25 ammonia which is normal for our water. I'm sooo not changing his water for him this time. He's lucky he can even bring a hose from the garage to reach the tank after removing water! I get to lug my water up stairs, LOL.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yes! A beautiful bubblenest at that!

I'm wondering if the new baby is also a girl, kind of looked like it from the recent pictures. I would need more though to really tell 

I'm so glad I'm the only one who has fish in the house! Although we had tanks when I was little my mom actually liked caring for them! She tells me she liked cleaning up the gravel and watching all the muck and poop get sucked up lol. Cleaning is in our genes apparently, she's a principal janitor here at college as was my grandmother. Thankfully I get college here free so I don't have to be a janitor but boy when I get in the cleaning mode don't get in my way or there'll be hell to pay! haha. Well, I'm not THAT intense but I do like to clean. I agree that gravel is much easier than my sand tanks but oh well :roll: It's not so bad also when you have one tank and not the five that I have. At one point I had 16 tanks up and running, this included small QT tanks though since I still had to change them frequently. I think though it was only around 3-4 of them so the majority of my tanks were still larger than 3 gallons!

That stinks about your dad's tank though! I love educating people on the basic care for fish, especially when they listen and are actually interested as well but I also hate when they don't take it seriously. Yes, fish can be easy to care for if you know what you're doing but otherwise it's no walk in the park! Good luck with his tank, sneak in some water conditioner for him! lol Do you guys have municipal water or well water?


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Hmm, maybe! Here's some pics~ Shame that the quality is so poor... Maybe I should use an actual camera that's buried deep within my basement.
















'

Welp, I haven't thought about the type of water I had until just now! Apparently my area uses well water. No wonder my PH was so high! The water report says 6.9-8.4 on average.

Yeah, I sneak in some conditioner. He's had me dose pimafix since one came down with a nasty fungal infection that covered his face and soon after 2 more died. I should probably invest in some medications for my betta's in the case something happens like that. Much better to be prepared than empty handed ^^! I don't think I can even use pimafix on my fish since I've heard it damages their labyrinth organ.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Actually I was going to say, well water doesn't need to be conditioned unless you use chlorine in it. Well Water is generally free of chlorine and most stuff but it does still contain some heavy metals and sometimes pollutants if you have heavy rainfall or lots of snow/ice melting at a particular time. This can wash a bunch of garbage or other micro stuff into your water system and pollute it.

Also well water isn't always high, at my dad's the pH from the well is 6.2 and then at mom's it's around 6.9-7.0 so it varies depending on the area and the source of the well water like mine is naturally spring fed along with drawing from the water table. But it all changes on the area. Also the hardness and softness (GH) changes too depending on where you live. Well water is not set to any one parameter.

PimaFix isn't terrible for their labyrinth organ but it's more of a herbal thing and so it really doesn't do much for the fish unless it's a really mild sickness and then it *may* help. But really, if the fish comes down with something more seriously like a fungal infection, real medications should be used like Furan-2 is great for fungal stuff generally.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oho, I see! My PH lately won't go below 8. I'll probably end up putting together a mini-medicine kit for fish over time.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

That's fine, you don't need to change it to suit the fish. That's the good thing about Bettas; they'll adapt to it just fine! Fins may curl over time but it doesn't hurt them or nothing, just not so aesthetically pleasing is all.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 14:

Aaaaand... we've hit the 14 day mark! Fantastic! To celebrate I splurged a little bit. I ordered some water lettuce and some trumpet snails. I figured they'd be a good addition to the 10g since they feed off dead plant matter and I've got tons of it. The anubias is starting to snag slightly on the rock which is great. Man, I totally regret not doing a dirt tank. Eco-complete substrate doesn't hold thin roots too well. Oh, well. I suppose over the summer I can convert it to a dirt tank and cap it with the eco-complete. The extra can be used for other tanks!

Now for the fishies! Sebastian is certainly more active but he still won't eat. I won't get worried until I see him refuse food for another few days. The boy still rests a lot, though. I wonder if he's sick or under the weather?

The two babies are doing well. Cherry has such a short body, unless I'm crazy. She seems so.. stubby! The other baby is generally pale which worries me. I hope it's just him being a stressy baby.

Some other thoughts:

I might convert this into a general diary! I've always loved stuff like that, but I'm too lazy to take out a book and a pen- so this is totally convenient.

So for starters~ My wisdom teeth are growing in. Who knew that could be so painful. Theeeen.. I have to take another SAT beginning of May. I completely dread that test. I can't understand how I do so well in my classes yet bomb so hard on this standardized test? Can't wait to take it another 3 more times.. and waste more money on it >.> AP tests are even worse. I wasn't informed that I had to pay for an end of the year exam! 90$... for an hour long test that I know I wouldn't pass unless it had anything to do with my major or even had a sliver of love from me. Oooh, boy. This is a total life lesson for me. Future children of mine, don't take an AP unless you actually enjoy it(I only took it for the grade.. it had a nice weight but government/politics is not for me)

My rant is over!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Standardized testing sucks in general, not all of us were meant to be tested the same way! You can be a genius and still suck at SAT's >.< We all learn differently so I'm severely against standardized testing!!

Yeah, half of my tanks are dirt right now ^_^ they're still in the young stage so I have to do frequent water changes until the soil and ammonia all settle and the plants actually start to grow! Good luck with the water lettuce and snails!


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Congrats on having them for 2 weeks! Just got caught up on reading this journal


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 15:

I'm going to be adding a week on for the other lil' baby without a name. He's only been here for one week so far.

So Cherry has been doing well! I have noticed some lighter excrement lately. Not quite white but very pale brown. Usually it's somewhat dark and orange-toned. I'll see how it goes for the next few days before I freak out. Sorry for the gross-ness ^^ 

As for the lil' no name, I recently found out he's a total jumper! It scared me as I was dropping the food into his vase-thing. I have noticed that the two babies go crazy swimming left and right into the glass when they see the bottle of food, LOL!

Other observations I guess would be Lil' no name keeps going pale enough to the point where you can see through his body. I wonder what's going on with that :I He bounces back to get a little bit of color and then it's gone again! At least he's still being a bundle of energy.

Sebastian had a little bit of remodeling done on his domain. I removed all the planted anacharis and let it float since it didn't seem happy being buried. I've yet to figure out what the other two plants I've got in my tank since... PetCo neeeeeever labels their plants in the tanks! I believe one is some sort of wisteria and the other... no idea. I also saw him flare(not really, it was a half-hearted "hey, I can stretch a bit") for the first time! I would love to see his full finnage displayed. I'm also wondering if he's a marble... the orange on his fins is starting to spread a teeny tiny bit. How awkward of a color combination~


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 16:
Major major major situationnnn... The heater in my vase wonked out and bumped up the heat ALL the way to 90-something degrees while I was at school. I panicked and set the vase in cooler water to slowly cool it down as the other heater is in another tank temporarily to see if it's broken. Poor lil' boy is pale as heck with a fat black stripe across his body. Hopefully this won't end sadly :/ He's at least eating while I have the vase set in cooler water and it went down to 85 fairly quick(I do wonder if this will shock him). The stripes have faded a bit now, but he's still very pale. 

As temporary containment I will be splitting the 1g most likely for the sake of proper heating. They are quite small and I do daily changes of 50-75%. I'm pretty sure this won't be horrible >.< as a temporary arrangement... Yeaaah... I'll keep telling myself that :/


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

As long as you don't cool it down extremely quickly is all. My tanks routinely get up to 92-94 during the summer but my fish are always fine so I'm sure he'll be fine.

You can always set the vase into the tank since it will sink and displace some of the water but it should be able to hold the temp of both vase and tank if you do that.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ah ^^" I ended up putting them in the same tank(divided) by the time I read this. On the brightside, the boy colored up soon after being placed into the 1g. However, I'm not sure if Cherry likes her new tankmate at all. She flared so much and ended up tearing her dorsal fin. I'm currently putting in 2 pinches worth of dissolved AQ salt to soothe it. At least I hope that'll aid her in healing. She's going to have to learn to "get over" seeing another fish I suppose, if she's going to be in the 10g waaay in the future. She keeps ramming her face into the side of the divider!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 17:
Alrighty, so I've gotta dry out the 5g then silicone stuff in place. Dry for 24 hrs and see how the tank will deal with 2 babies!

I'll have to put the betta that's in there into my old halfmoon shaped 5g's. I can't divide those as easily :c

Sebastian hasn't eaten for quite a while. I'm not sure how to entice him! I'll probably try some bloodworms later today to see if he's just a picky eater.

Cherry and no-name are doing very well despite the tiny housing. I'm very happy that lil' no name has his color again! Also, I'm starting to think Cherry is very much man... She doesn't have that pineapple organ that I've seen in lilnaugrim's posts! Maybe it's just small and I missed it. Oh, well! As long as she grows up healthy~ The 1g fluctuating with temperatures... I want to get that 5g done ASAP. Guess that's why they say don't use heaters with wattages too high for a tank >.<

Now... pictures!
Lil' no name









Cherry the lil' fatty









Two of 'em









I don't like how they constantly try to duke it out with each other...However, it's definitely lessened compared to yesterday. This is making me want to re-think splitting the 10g.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Haha, Pineapple organ XD The picture I used to demonstrate, the girl's name was Pineapple lol. But as for what I see, they are both females and yes they do look of the same spawn! They're salamander coloration from what I can see! I absolutely love the look of them!

They'll get over each other soon, generally it takes around 2 weeks for them to get comfortable with each other.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 18:
Hmm! Apparently the snails and the plants will be coming in soon- super exciting c:

I wonder what name I should have for the lil' no name? I was thinking of going with a fruit theme but that's kind of bland. She doesn't look very 'fruity' compared to Cherry. Naming is so weird. Eh, I'll let her grow a bit more and maybe her appearance will strike me with some sort of inspiration at some point.

Health-wise I've still got to make a lil' kit of meds for them. However I'm not so sure of what to get aside from the generic epsom/AQ salt. I'll probably look for 2 meds that are for bacterial/parasitic/fungal. I was looking at Potassium Permangante but I trust myself very little when it comes to precise dosage. I hear that even the tiniest bit off could knock out an entire tank.

Now for Sebastian, he still has not eaten! This is a bit bothersome as he just looks at the food and then turns away. Still active, though.

Man, brown algae is still here and now I have blue-green algae(I forgot the fancy name for it). I want a break so I can see my beautiful plants, LOL! I wonder what caused it, though. Nitrates don't seem to be too high(5ppm)

As for my life I've recently learned that I have to get all my wisdom teeth out soon. Sheesh, I just got 4 out not too long ago. I don't mind the surgical portion... I just don't enjoy being unable to eat delicious food for like, 5 weeks :/ Hello mushy-everything for breakfast, lunch AND dinner!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Sorry for the double post but ooooh my gosh. Why is this so high? QAQ








This is from my 10g^









This is from the lil' babies.

This just looks sooo.. wrong.


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## RockChalk (Mar 21, 2014)

Tap water can run that high. Our city's system runs 8-8.5. I use DI water and buffer up to 7 with Neutral Regulator. Ammonia is a base, so if it's high it'll up your pH if the water's not buffered.


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## Canis (Apr 15, 2013)

My tap water has buffers in it, so the pH changes within 24 hours of sitting out. Directly out of the faucet, its at 7.2, but after the buffers wear off, its 8.4. I'd fill a cup with water, test it right away, and then test it again 24 hours later. If the pH in the cup doesn't change, its something in your tank that is making it higher.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I see! It's definitely not the buffers as the other tanks in the home have a similar PH to the lil' babies test vial. I believe it's the funny rock in the corner of my tank that I pulled out from a river. Hm.. It seemed fine a few months ago plus as it didn't change the PH. I suppose I will try to pull it out tomorrow as I will be heading off to bed soon. I don't know what to do about the anubias that's hugging it already. Eeh, I'll gently peel it off~


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

It depends on your Alkalinity (KH), that directly correlates with how stable your parameters are. The more dKH (degrees of KH) you have the more stable environment you have. So if you have 0 dKH, your pH can swing all over the place without warning; that's bad for fish. If you have 3 dKH and/or more then your pH is much less likely to swing around.

Often when tanks are cycling they will have a higher pH for whatever reason and then drop to your normal pH once the tank is matured, not just done cycling but matured; there's a difference there.

As for cyanobacteria (BGA) it's caused mostly by too much light and lots of nutrients. You can spot treat it with potassium, SeaChem sells a bottle of just Potassium that you can get and use a dropper/turkey baster to treat it. That and a 3 day black out may help get rid of it; manual removal is always a fantastic help to your plants even though it's a pain in the rear end! I'm trying my best to avoid cyano as much as I can; I'll take any other algae over cyano lol


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Man, all these things I've never heard of/thought of before. I have soo much to learn >.< I'll probably try the black out method as I don't fancy covering up a problem with another substance when I'm the one causing the problem. I'll lower the lighting hours to 6am-3pm I guess. I have a bad habit of leaving it on for the entire day as I use it as a desk light! Maybe 3pm-10pm would be more convenient.

Also, I'll probably try to let a bit of sunshine through the window to make the babies transparent. Going to take a pic of that and hopefully I'll be able to understand this whole "pineapple" thing!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah, there's a lot to fish keeping when you get down and dirty in it! But it's not impossible to learn all of it thankfully ^_^

Potassium won't 'cover' it up, it will help remove it.

My girl Pineapple was just a see-through fish since she's yellow (that's the last layer of color so that's why most yellow fish, you can see the organs) so that's why I used her as an example. You could pretty much see her ovaries which are cone shaped behind the circular stomach/intestinal area.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 19/20:

I got lazy yesterday and didn't post a new entry. So, nothing new aside from feeling bad for skipping a day of water change. I'm trying to reduce lighting times as well. I will be testing the PH again today to see if removing the rock impacted the levels at all.

Sebastian still won't eat, so that's still a bit worrisome. He denied delicious bloodworms!

And ohh lilnaugrim I see. I don't think I've ever seen that product at my local store, though. They don't seem to have a large selection of the more "fancy" brands. That's a shame, too :c I love large selections!

Oooh boy, can't wait to bomb another SAT this Saturday<3 There goes plans for visiting a new pet supplies store. That test saps the life out of you. I also checked out a new Walmart last week that opened up. Their fish section is actually quite impressive because it's so clean...they have decent tanks, too. What amused me was the gravel in there. It's literally printed on to some plastic material and stuck on to the bottom. Some of the products there were tetra/jungle varieties.

I don't know if it will last very long, though. They don't have a very good rep in my state since they're usually very dirty. 

My 5g is done drying. However I'm not so sure if it smells right- it smells toxic! Plus, the silicone was smudged everywhere and it looks very messy. I'll probably scrape it off and clean it up a bit and give it another day of drying just to make sure. This weekend I'll probably fill it up and see how it goes. I'm not sure if it's worth cycling as of yet. I'll be changing it almost daily, anyway.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

It's normal for them not to eat for a while, Rembrandt in my avatar pic took a whole month before he wanted to eat! He's still alive today and well a year and a half later so I'm sure Sebastian will be fine!

Good luck on the SAT! I did pretty bad on mine too, still passed but my math score was absolutely horrible! So yeah >.< good luck all the same!!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 21:
Welp, plopped them into the 5g. I noticed both of them biting off the silicone... How they managed to rip it off is beyond me. I'll probably fast them until I see them "go". 

Cherry is flaring too much at just about everything. She ripped all of her fins with either tiny pinholes or slight tears. Hopefully AQ salt and a bigger tank will remedy this.

The snails/lettuce I ordered are waaay late. Just my luck to find out snails are left outside for a night before they are shipped :/ 5 days in the mail seems a bit much. Hopefully the amount of extras placed inside will cover the losses. The lettuce was supposed to come 2 days ago as well. Hopefully that survives! Maybe this is normal, I'm just used to packages coming on time since I usually don't order things on Ebay >.<


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 22:

Alrighty, so the babies in the 5g don't seem to be affected by the silicone I used and they pooped out the ones that they ate. I threw some more floating plants in from the 10g and I never realized how much gunk was on the plants! It all floated down to the bottom

It's much easier to get a picture of the two lil' ones now!
I don't know what I want to name the lil' no name... I'll figure it out soon enough. Anyway, can someone point out the ovaries? I'm having trouble finding them, LOL. That white blob looks more like a stomach. Gosh I'm so bad at this!

I caught a blur of her in the sunlight

















I also caught Sebastian! His fins looked interesting- almost like they disappeared in certain areas~ Now that I look at him, the orange does look a bit weird. It adds to his charm!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 23:

Finally got the water lettuce/snails .. very late. Opened both up and was not surprised to see that I didn't receive the amount of snails mentioned and the ones there were mostly dead. Not to mention that all the water lettuce was rotting. Goes to show that you don't buy live things off ebay :c Silly me. Welp, made my case to them and will see how it goes- wish me luuuck~

















^ is what I managed to salvage from the rotten mess :/ Surprised the duckweed is still alive, LOL. Lil' extra got mixed in with the order I guess.

All fishies are settling in nicely. Sebastian ate ONE whole pellet! Not much, but it's an amazing progression for him. The other two are lil' piggies.

Edit: Seller messaged me back saying that I was going to receive the plants of that size. Never mentioning the fact that they're rotten and I had to simply ship it back to him. The thing I don't understand is- how am I to ship something of mush back to someone? It will cost more for me to ship back compared to the price I bought them for.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Excuse the double-post. Plus, apologies for my passive-aggressive tone >.< I contacted the seller and there were misunderstandings between the both of us. He didn't realize I mentioned that they were rotten. I was annoyed that he didn't mention it. Sent pictures of the product and was refunded. 

As for the snails- seller made a slight accident and was willing to reship. 

Despite the little mishaps these sellers were excellent with their quick responses!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Glad you got the refund! Stinks when that happens. I've bought off ebay before, it all depends on the seller really, always looked at the customer reviews first ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yeah I did and it was the usual "99.8%/100%" so I figured it was okay! I guess I was just in the other .2/0%~ Also, lilnaugrim, would you be able to look at the previous date(journal date) and point out where the ovaries are in the first pic? I would greatly appreciate it ^^


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

I can't actually see them in that picture, most likely due to the fuzziness or lighting but here's a picture I'm working on for female anatomy. It's just in the rough stages but you get the idea:


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ohh, that looks awesome! Thanks for the visual o-o7


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Thanks! Does that help you?


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yes it does quite a lot! Looking at the two side by side- Lil' no name appears to be a boy~ He only has the ball of intestines shown in the picture- nothing else can be seen on the lower portion of his body aside from the spine and "eggspot".

I'm going to start stepping up my game and bring out the fancy camera(why didn't I do that earlier) since I'm looking back at these pictures and don't like the low quality. Ah, I'm so excited c: Nobody can fully appreciate a journal if they can't properly see the fishy buddies!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yay nice pictures! Can't wait to see them ^_^ I tend to over post pictures when I have journals lol. I've also found out that you can only have 50 pictures per each post lol


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Boo-hoo worthy news: I don't have a macro lens :C. My webcam can pick up closer pictures with slightly better quality than the fancy cam can. I don't feel like putting down that kind of money >.<

Either way~ This is about the quality I can snag with the webcam at the closest distance possible.








Tooootally in love with those colors<3








She looks so grumpy, LOL.
I'll probably play around with it a bit more since I could probably get something of a little more higher quality.

Edit: Forgot to add Journal portion

Day 24:
Waaaah, almost a month of these babies. Much more care required than an adult by far! Daily water changes are definitely not something I've become fond of. Let's see... Cherry keeps splittin' her fin and so does the lil' no name. Sebastian won't eat still. The snails that are alive have been stuck to the wall full of brown algae- I thought they wouldn't eat that stuff. This is also just random babbling so don't mind me. The wisteria that is growing new bits of leaves is so thick! Initially bought these plants with spidery thin leaves and now they're very wide- I like it! The duckweed that I got seems to be doing much better than the pitiful water lettuce. I'd be seriously surprised if it managed to pull through. It's sooo yellow.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh and that water lettuce may not survive, not just because of the shipping issues but because that type of water lettuce is supposed to be outside in ponds. The one that you want for inside is the Dwarf Water Lettuce which is much different.

Love the second picture of Cherry! Yeah, I love their colors too! Reminds me of my late girl Firestar ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oh, sorry for not being specific ^^! It is dwarf water lettuce. I'm not so sure it will survive even then since it can't properly float and the only greenery is really the bud of green that it had come with. Hopefully that will take off and some roots will develop~


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh okay! It didn't look like it from the pictures! Probably since it wasn't so happy with shipping lol but okay! Well in which case, I hope it grows for you!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 25:

I'm not great at diagnosing at all, but I think lil' no name has a bacterial infection :c










White fuzz hanging off ventral. It's really hard to see but think of a tiny wisp of cotton stuck on to a toothpick. It's trailing around with him as he swims around.

I was going to add a bit of aquarium salt, but I don't think that will do much at all. I have API general cure on me, but I'm kind of sketchy on doing dosage with powder packets made for 10g.

Everyone else is doing fine~ Sebastian had a little bit of a fight with a snail. He was like "What is this? -nips-" Both of the babies are eating very well. A little too well if you ask me! Such lil' piggies. Sebastian still won't eat, but hopefully he'll give in sooon.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

She's fine, it's a bit of slime coat that is shedding. This happens often after a water change or the fish is stressed and then becomes unstressed or the keeper was recently using medications/salts on the fish. It will come off soon 

As for dosing, just for a future reference: you can take a cup of water in a container, dump your whole packet made for the 10 gallon and mix it up. From there there is roughly 48 teaspoons in 1 cup which means for dosing 1 gallon you would use 4.8 teaspoons or 5 will work. 

What have you been offering Sebastian and how often?


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Wah, silly me >.< I feel like one of those overprotective motherly figures that freaks out over little things!

And that's a fantastic way to do that- thanks!

As for Sebastian, I've been offering him NLS all-purpose pellets. I've tried skipping 2 days without feeding and tried feeding at around 3-ish(about the time I'm home). Now, I just offer around 8pm a single pellet to see if he gets interested (daily). Nothing! 

Edit: He's still very active and flares. He's just ignores the food even if he looks at it!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Do you have any frozen foods to possibly offer? I tend to try the bloodworms and dangle them with my plant tweezers; then it looks like its moving and alive and the fish usually go for it pretty quick since it's more interesting than your regular pellet.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Gosh, snails are so cute. I've been watching one nibble at the algae for a little bit. It looks like an elephant eating with it's nose >.<!

Also, I do have bloodworms that I had offered before. I dropped them in and he had shown interest, but when he got close he freaked out and swam away, LOL.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Try wiggling them around with a pair of tweezers, hold it and make him follow it so he might thing that it's alive.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 26:

All my advances have been denied :c Sebastian is so fussy. 

I don't understand how people manage to keep 50+ of these babies in one tank. One day and the bottom of my baby tank is covered in a ton of fish-poo! Maybe I'm feeding too much. 

I've also discovered something that looks particularly disgusting:









Are those baby snails? Or some sort of funky planaria...^^?

Anyway, babies are doing well! I can't seem to find a name for lil' no name. He's also very "emotional" since one second he'll be fine and a few seconds later he goes pale with a fat stripe either vertical or horizontal. Gawsh, he changes moods faster than I can as a woman!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Uhhhh I have no idea what that picture is of


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

It's a picture of the recent snails I bought  if that's what you mean. These things were all hanging off a large one. I'm half-tempted to remove them, lol. They just look so.. unappealing


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh...I've never seen anything like that before so yeah, I'd say you could remove them. They aren't babies and they aren't poop or nothing.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 27:

Loving the whole keeping of a journal~ Gives me something to do and not feed weird over taking pictures of fish-related things ^^!

Another week has passed, and everything seems okay aside from the funky stuff popping up in the 10g. I seriously need to get a bigger bucket. It's very annoying to be doing water changes with a 1g cube, LOL. I wanted to do some aquascaping on it, since glass cubes look awesomee~ 

Some pictures of the babies~
















Snail babies :3









Ooh, here's a pic of the plants that I had bought earlier:








They're definitely looks a lot better. Most of the yellow leaves rotted off, though. At least there's still a bit of green growth.

Wish I could snag a picture of Sebastian but he moves around too much!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 29:

Soo exciting ^^~ I got Sebastian to eat TWO pellets today! He did spit a bit of the first one out, but the second one was held down much easier. I also tried my hand at doing a dirted tank. Oooh boy, it's so fragile. The second I started pouring water on top of some paper towel- woosh! Came a cloud of dirt >.<









Definitely had too much water in the dirt before I put the sand~ At least I know better now, lol.

As for the fishies~ Lil' no name decided to be a bit of a nut and tried to eat the anacharis root. He managed to get about 2cm down his gullet before realizing he was stuck. Poor boy was flailing around. I panicked and slowly pulled it out- hopefully that didn't hurt him! He's still trying to see how high he can jump when it's feeding time. So far his record is about 1.5 inches high and 3 across the water! Now, I don't see why he jumps when the food is already in the water 

Cherry is just being a lil' terror~ I had placed a snail(MTS) in her area and she kept nipping at it! Poor snail is probably traumatized. Speaking of MTS, that funky stuff on the snail from a previous entry is probably poop? I noticed it leaving a trail of it while going about in the baby tank.

Here's a picture of Sebastian~ Sorry, he'll never sit still!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh lol, you're supposed to put the sand down before putting the water in XD But looks good! Make sure to poke the substrate every so often so that gas bubbles don't build up and hurt your fishes ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I did put the sand first~ I had put too much water on the dirt while trying to soak it a bit so it would hold together. So when I put the sand layer some of the dirt came up >.<! I knew I put too much in the dirt yet I insisted on finishing the water in the cup, LOL.


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## KatNDog292 (Apr 10, 2014)

yeah you got a big dirt cloud there lol


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh, yeah no I wet the soil a teeny bit but never so it's floating at all. But you know now ^_^


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## winterdock (May 3, 2014)

I purchased a baby just over two weeks ago 

She is thriving, extremely energetic in her 2.5 gallon , filtered ,heated betta bow 
The filter is low flowing and the heat is a consistent 83 degrees F
I change at least 15%- 25% of the water daily . It takes ten minutes 
I would do a gravel vacuum once every 1 1/2 - 2 weeks 50-75 % water change 
Feed small amounts of a variety of crushed pellets and flakes 2-3 times a day 

My girl has noticeably grown and has recently developed distinct colour markings on her tail and fins

PS
I sent a photo of her
Don't mind the backdrop , It is simply a photo of a baby smallmouth bass that was taken at my cottage 
I taped the printed photo on back of her bowel for decoration effect


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ohh, she is very cute indeed! Having a little one is a valuable experience since we get to watch them grow and develop their personalities ^^! I haven't seen your journal around here yet. (I tend to stalk* all* the baby betta journals c: I always use them as a reference because experience from others is soo valuable) Would be awesome to see your baby growing, too!

I'll be honest, I was surprised at the background for a sec, lol. It seemed too real >.<


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

No real updates for the other two for the past few days. Although lil' no name is the one ripping up his fins now. Cherry just stopped caring about other fish being in her "bubble of comfort" ^^~ However, Sebastian is eating regularly now! It makes me suuuper happy because I've been worried he'd be starving himself to death. Now the problem is how many pellets to feed. The whole "stomach=eye" thing sounds a bit weird. Since, we stuff babies fullo' food until their stomachs bulge, and then we don't feed adults nearly as much! I guess I'll just stick to the baby schedule and do 6 a day throughout a few feedings.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

The stomach is the size of the eye but it stretches as you guessed! I feed mine until their tummy is nice and round much like a babies only I feed my adults generally once a day.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Don't think it's worth keeping track of days anymore. Anyway, I've noticed a bad behavior developing by little no-name :/ He's got a tendency to attempt to swallow the anacharis roots whole and getting stuck. Guess I've got to be careful with the plants that I have within his side and trim the roots that I see growing.

Plus, who knew Sebastian was such a little piggy! A cute one, too. Earlier in the week I had placed the ADF's back in the tank and he didn't seem to care one bit! However, he did freak out when the ADF tried to climb on him and pretty much kicked him in the face. Poor boy.

The dwarf water lettuce is growing well, now. I'm starting to see those beautiful roots!

Also, just a little thought: is there always a "runt" in the group? ? Not sure how to explain it but lil' no name doesn't seem to be doing as well as Cherry is. In fact, he seems like the "sickly" child, but he's not sick at all. His appetite is far better than hers, but he just seems "off" all the time! He's pretty much always pale(I've seen him color up), and his colors haven't developed as deeply as Cherry. Seems like a slow grower compared to how fast Cherry grew.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Careful with those ADF's, they are known to bite off long finned Bettas' tails. I've dealt with too many of those cases and I really don't recommend them especially with HM's, just so you know.

As for being a "runt" yes, whenever you have more than one baby housed near each other whether they can see or smell the other baby pheromones, the larger one will excrete the Growth Stunting Hormone and try to stunt the other baby. Here's a quote about the stunting hormone that I love and will have it in the PetCo baby Care Thread:

"Well, we have a scary message...they grab a bite to eat but are totally stress that Bubba is going to whack them ALL THE TIME. In the wild, urine messages left by big cats are designed to stress other big cats into leaving an area. Could we have the same thing with no place to go? Although they eat some, our babies may not be able to utilize all the food they consume because they are so stressed. It would be like trying to work with someone yelling at you all the time!"


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yeah, I've got to do something with those ADF's soon. My father was going to give them away to a wanting worker since my sister kind of dumped them on me >.< I have a funky idea for helping the lil' runt:

Place the 1g in the side that lil' no name owns and plop him inside that so he can still get the heater and not get affected by Cherry's stuff. And cover up Cherry's side as well! So they won't "smell each other" or see each other ^.^


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

I'm a little confused on how you would set this up I think lol. They would still be able to see each other though, correct? It works if they can see each other and if they can smell by being in the same water. It's a chemical but it's also a physical thing too, if he can still see her there is still a chance. You could double up the divider though and that may help some.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oh, I did explain it awkwardly. Sorry~ Okay so: I was thinking of doubling up the divider to reduce vision, then place Lil' no name in the 1g. So it's essentially a "box within a box." I thought that both babies would produce that stunting hormone, so even if were to be produced, lil' no name would only have to be worried about his own rather than get hit by Cherry as well. I figured it would only be temporary until they grew up a bit more.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Okay, that's what I thought but I wasn't quite sure lol. Yes, he will still be effected by his own, it may work if you reduce their vision but I can't guarantee it will is all. Once they start to become stunted it's usually irreversible as far as I know and have seen.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Alrighty, I will try to do this when I'm home I guess. Thanks! However, maybe it's easier to just triple layer the divider and increase the water to a full 5g's. Since diluting the hormone should work, plus daily water changes.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Alrighty ^^ done! I put a ton of anacharis so lil' no name could get some more cover. The changes seemed almost instant, if that doesn't sound weird. He's actually one solid color across his body for more than a few minutes now, lol! No stripes horizontally or vertically. Tempted to add some more plants to make it more dense >.> I feel like lil' no name would prefer that more.

Mini plant forest~ With a lovely colored fishy:

















The way the 1g is in:


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Nice 

well vertical stripes are fine, both stripes are normal for babies who are divided together. It's just their physical emotions so to say; letting the other fish know that they are stressed or submitting to the other or being more assertive. But that looks effective the way you have it ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I believe it's about time to name lil' no name~ Maybe Charles? I dunno, that sounds a bit bland for him. It needs to be somewhat prissy c: That's totally his attitude. I suppose my goal today will be to get him a proper fitting name!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Hmm ^~^ I've settled on a name! He will be Ciel~

I decided to go on a picture spree since I haven't taken too many for a bit :c
Here's Ciel looking not too hot. I want to get his color to be as fiery as Cherry's. I suppose it's just a matter of waiting to see if he improves








His personal forest!








Cherry's always so active and zipping around. She always likes to put on a show whenever I'm staring at her c: For some reason her dorsal tends to wag like a tail since she can't managed to keep it straight and it folds over like so
















Sebastian coming up to inspect me!
















^That pattern is just so beautiful to me!


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## nclnchls (Mar 18, 2014)

Aw I love the name Ciel! And my baby's dorsal does the same thing! I wonder why.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Ummm well....Ciel is a girl and Cherry is a boy XD Notice Ciel's eyes are small compared to Cherry's which is a trait for girls (small eyes) and boys with larger eyes. Cherry looks fantastic though!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Waah QAQ you've changed her from a woman to a man! No problem, jokes aside~ Now I have to rename them! I'll be honest, when I read that I was like "Oh my god my boy is a girl and my girl is a boy." As long as they keep growing healthily it's all gooood with me.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Haha, sorry! Sometimes it's hard to tell when they are younger but I'm very certain now with those new pictures! I think the names still fit though, I couldn't see calling Cherry anything other than Cherry, it's a rather unisex name I believe, same thing with Ciel but of course it's up to you ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yeah it's definitely pretty hard to tell with little ones xD I've got no problem with changing the names, I've just gotta wait for a moment when I'm "struck" with a name idea!


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## scififan523 (Apr 5, 2014)

What about ember or flare and mey-rin as replacement names?


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I've seen that you've caught on to what I've been doing for names, scifi xD I'm probably going to leave them without names for a while longer. I'm also curious as to what their tail types are. My inexperienced eyes tell me combtail and veil tail~


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Looks like VT for the girl and PK for the boy.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Awesome, thanks! c:


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Hm, something amusing I found ^^~ The "oil slick" on the top of my tank was so thick that I found a snail trailing across it!









Sebastian came up to nip at the webcam!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah, small snails can slide across the top of the water regardless of slime or not, it's a balance they create between the surface tension and their foot ^_^


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## scififan523 (Apr 5, 2014)

Ohhh, or Cherry could be Grell... ;-)

Currently watching Black Butler, so...


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I did want to use that name earlier when I thought that he(she at the time) was a he, scifi! He's just not red *enough* for it c: Black Butler was an awesome show~ There's rumors S3 will be soon-ish! Hopefully those are true~

Some updates on the 10g: Got some light fixtures, now I just need to get some proper lights. 








Waaah, that looks so ugly. I'll probably fix it up later when I do the weekly water change. It also looks like I've got too many snails! Soon I bet I could start up a business with how many I've got, ha!

The babies:
















Taking these pictures so closely. I can see the un-even growth on the anal fin. Ooh, that bothers me. Not that it makes him any less adorable! I've just got a peeve for that~
















Ha, she's just like "Hey, what's up?" Makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong. Her color just isn't filling in. Temperatures have been 80-82. Water changes 20-75% a day depending on how I'm feeling. Plus *three* feedings! Such spoiled little ones ~.~


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You're not doing ANYTHING wrong! She's just barred up is all so you won't see her color until she wants to get rid of the bars. It's part of trying to be alpha against the boy, it's very normal. She may not color up as much as the boy, that's also normal for females not to be as bright as the males even though we've bred them to be so!


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## scififan523 (Apr 5, 2014)

I had heard that it was going to be a remake type, kind of like fullmetal alchemist and fullmetal alchemist brotherhood. Trying to stick a little truer to the manga, I think, starting with the noah's Ark circus arc.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

@lil - Thanks ;; all of the females I've had before have never acted so... fussy. Even when they saw other males! This one's definitely a keeper, lol!
@scifi - Ooh, alrighty. I have a tendency to skip out on manga or just drop it mid-way once I found out that there's an animated version of it. -guilty- 
So I pulled out 11 or so MTS ^.^ I wanna try a mini-project with them since there's mainly two types of 'em. Opaque-ish and zebra-striped. Can never have too many snails!(Oh, you totally can... they're covering a wall pretty well in my 10g :c) I'm kind of aiming for a completely dark-colored shell or nice and pale without marks~

The 10g looks like it needs a major replanting. Too lazy, though. Probably in the summer. I also need something to do water changes with a bucket that's not .5g's. It's soooo slow. I also need to disinfect the other siphon instead of using airline tubing all the time!

Everyone's doing wonderfully as of now. The appetites are pretty good!


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## scififan523 (Apr 5, 2014)

Is okay, I'm guilty as well. Or I'll not read the manga if I really really like the anime. But yeah, new anime adaptation of Black Butler was green lit in March of this year with all the original cast signed on (or at least the Japanese cast).


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Err' body is doing great! All of them are wonderful little piggies. However, other fish are not doing so well. I've got a fish from the 20g(don't know what type) with camallanus. I've started treating it with General Cure but apparently it's known to fail. Levamisole is very effective, apparently. It's soooo hard to find though. Unless I'm willing to throw down 20-30 USD for a large portion :/ Other than that, I just have to be careful to not infect the other tanks. Letting stuff dry out before I use it again >.<


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Mini update:

Went to petco for food and whatnot ^~^. Hating shipping on ordering medications online(that I still can't find, LOL). On my petco trip I guilted myself into picking up 2 other babies. I need to stop. Like, just stop. I don't even have room for them. Anyway, they look like veiltail choco/MG. Will get pics up if they survive the week! The conditions I found them in were pretty darn nasty. All of the cup this week were full of algae and other dirt. It's such a shame. I found 4 EE bettas dead. Ton of money lost right there >.> Even if they don't care for the bettas health, they should at -least- try to save some money. I'm sure changing water for a few cups isn't hard. Most of the time (at least in my local store) the employees are always just chatting around with each other or on standby.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ah ^^".. I don't think one of the new babies will make it through the night. Found him clamped and floating at the top. Thought he was dead so.. I poked him. Probably a bad idea since he freaked out a bit. The other seems to be a bit more active. Both are spitting out most of their food. Temp's at about 84. Bracing myself for emotional impact :c


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Wow. Who knew the lil rascals could dig. Don't know how long they were together but one broke into the other side and the two were going at it. I scooped the other out and plopped both into Tupperware floating in the 10g and 5g. Gonna put a bit of AQ salt to sterilize wounds, hopefully. They're both probably very stressed :/


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh, I did! lol my friend Lucillia, all of her Bettas dig and get through dividers so they can't live with each other any more which sucks. Make sure you only add a teeny bit, like .25-.5 per gallon for babies as they are much more sensitive.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yes ^^! I roughly put somewhere between those. Man, I need to find some sort of larger container for the other baby. Anyone have any ideas? 
This is currently his jail cell:








I regret not buying another similar container used in the 5g from the dollar store :/ I thought I had another at home. This must be like a .1/.2 gallon...

The other baby has a better container hanging in the 5g:









Also, both are swimming around okay. Certainly not active, but not "I'm dying on the gravel." Gonna work on getting clean water/building up their appetite.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Nice, you could get some food containers; sometimes they have some nice big ones you could use. Or sometimes they have large plant vases at walmart, like the cylinder ones or the round ones that are like 2-3 gallons!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yeah I saw some of the larger containers- but they weren't translucent. Unluuuucky! Looking for that type to reduce vision and stress ^~^ So I found my old siphon, but I'm a little worried about using it since I abandoned it after I had a fish with gill flukes(Oh.. Gloria.. :c). I have Ajax bleach for washing clothes... but I'm not so sure on using that for disinfection! It looks relatively life-threatening for fish.

Aaaanyway, the babies did make it through the second night! It's water change day for all of the tanks~ The are showing some interest in food now which is great, but they're still just picking at it every so often. Most of it is ignored. I also think "Cherry" had a growth spurt! "Ciel" also grew a little bit as well. Maybe I'll get pictures if my webcam can reach the tank. Sebastian's fins also seem to be messed up. It looks like they were nipped at some point and the fins curled inwards, creating an unappealing ruffle.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Ah okay.

And yes you can use the bleach but you just have to dilute it to a 5% solution. We use 1 parts bleach to 19 parts water roughly and you can soak the whole gravel vac for an hour in it. The. Rrinse very well under hot tap and then you can let it so ask for a bit in regular tap and rinse again. If it still smells of bleach rinse some more. Its safe to use after that.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Awesome, thank you c:

Did water changes on everything except the 10g which will be done tomorrow as I have no strength for it. I'm melting from this heat. 90 degrees is no joke when you're used to 50's! Gosh this must be how fish feel with temperature shock. 

Both new additions are eating okay now. The one with the injured anal fin chases the falling crushed pellets! The one in the .2 gallon is now pecking at his food more often, as well! It's a good sign that their appetites are building up. ^.^ Hopefully they grow big and strong!

So it's apparent that my webcam can't reach the 5g now. I'll have to reorganize my cables so that it can reach  I also recently ordered a breeding box that I'll be using for observation/quarantine needs. I'll probably make some adjustments to it as needed so that it won't share water from the 10g. Hello clear silicone! You are a wonderful product!
Also, unless it's just me... are these random links popping up in threads to key words now? Like, amazon, ebay, etc.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah, they do that some times. The forum automatically does it for convenience and I think also it has something to do with our sponsors but not sure about that part.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 4:
Will be doing water changes today. I'm very worried the baby with the chunk missing from his anal fin will get an infection or something. I kind of want to remove the eco-complete from his tub, but I don't want to stress him any longer until he's healthier. There's... probably dead snails in there from the AQ salt :/ And eeee! Their appetites are growing! Plus, they're swimming more actively now! No more resting on the bottom. It is a good sign~

As for the names... Maan, I'll be sticking with Cherry/Ciel. They've both tooootally had growth spurts! I will try to get pictures up later today as I don't feel like getting up from bed. If anything, I'll be going back to sleep soon. So weird to wake up early in the 3am's and then just go back to sleep at like, 9am or something.

Ooh, when I woke up at 3am... I was staring at the 5g since I didn't see Cherry swimming about. He likes the mesh tube I made! It seems to be his "bed". Though I will admit it worried me a bit at first since he was "floating" near the top of the water. I don't think I will get used to a sleeping betta's form, lol. Too close to one that is sick.

Anyway, how cute would it be to have betta jumping competitions ^~^? Although I wonder if that would hurt their health. I'd assume it would be equivalent to a belly flop into water(ouch.) That would certainly hurt a human after a while. For most even the first one!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Sadly I can't manage to get the webcam to reach the 5 gallon. But here are some pictures of the new babies instead^.^!

Sorry they're frosted looking. That's the downside of the tupperware 
















This is the boy with the injured anal fin. I've been seeing some clear growth. But then he freaks out at his "brother" that's like, 3-4 inches away, and rips a bit of it again in another area( look to the left rip). He originally had a black lining on the entire fin.









This one's super feisty! He and Sebastian have been flaring at each other on and off!

On the topic of their fin-type and color. The one with the injured fin looks like a veiltail...? If I got the ray count correct. It's quite tough to figure them out just by that >.< The other I have no idea since I can't clearly see his fins. As for color.. I -want- to say chocolate or MG, but who am I to know for sure! Looking for an experienced eye! Please and thank you much~









Sebastian showing off~ Do you see what I mean about those ruffles? Pah! Oh, well. He's still such a cutie pie.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah they both look like VT and both MG's since they have the black/blue outlining band to their fins ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ugh. Found one of the two ADF's dead. Gonna end up transferring the last one into a betta cup and float it in the 10g. He's so skinny.. maybe I'm not feeding him enough? Either way, he's going to be in a mini-quarantine in that cup until I see him fatten up. He's got an hourglass figure, and a frog shouldn't be like that :c

It's most likely my fault as I usually just chucked food into the 5g that they were in. I should have been more careful and made sure they ate it :/ being practically blind and all would've made it tough to get food.


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Wow! you have alot of baby bettas. I have a real soft spot for mgs. Every time I see one I want it soooooooo badly. I am saving alot of money to get a tank. I hope i find my mg and your fish fare the best treatment they deserve.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ooh, I've never had MG's before. So this is a new thing for me ^~^ I don't mind the amount of betta's. (Pssst, I still want more!) It's just the space problem! 

Hopefully they grow up big and strong c: Good luck on your search!

Day: 5

I don't like the ugly frosted look. I cannot appreciate their beauty! Oh, well. I want to try bloodworms but I haven't used them in quite a while, plus I'm not sure if I wanna introduce possible foreign bacteria into the babies. They're still pretty weak. I also thought the one with the injured fin had ick this morning! Turns out it was just crushed pellets sticking to his body. 

Going to feed the ADF again once I'm home. He's more active in the cup than he was in the 5g. I wonder what's up with that? Maybe it's because of the toasty 82 degrees. I want to get him a buddy since I hear they are healthier in groups, but I specifically did not want ADF's in my tanks >.< I would adopt this one out if someone paid for shipping, but I do not have any idea on how to ship properly. Maybe I'll do it once I learn how and he's healthier. My local petco also would not take him in, since they've never sold frogs in their tanks. Or at least, I've never seen them sell ADF's.


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Muah hah hah. I must convince some people it will be a good thing to get bettas. Some don't really like fish. Others once had a 15 gal. community tank. Saving up the money and will talk with them tomorrow.


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Maybe ship the frog to the Pet Stop in NY (and perhaps one of the Mgs. Sorry,I love them and are jealous) Still they are good and will give the frog to a good home.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Probably won't ship the frog there, since I'm not familiar with the place c: I'll just hold on to the survivor and see what'll happen with him for now.

I do plan on giving one or two of my babies(when they're adults) to either someone I know or putting 'em up for adoption on this site. Since I won't really have room for them once I go to college. (Assuming none die) I sure as heck won't leave them in my home. The fish my parents own are not taken care of all too well ^^".

I've also recently found out my mothers blue VT is an avid fin biter. He bit off an entire ventral... My gosh. It's just a little stub. His tail seems to be doing better, though. He looks so old! He is perhaps 3/4 years. Which is pretty darn amazing for a fish that hasn't had a heater until a few months ago and is on cheap wardley's food. Plus, he used to live in a .3 gallon vase! I'd say that's unfair, lol!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 6:
Did water changes and whatnot. Certainly more bearable now that I can do ONE whole gallon each run, lol!
For some reason, I want to name the two new additions Rodger and Clark. I'll probably give them a permanent name if they hit a month.

The baby with the injured fin almost has the entire area filled with a clear growth- almost! Just 1mm left I think ^^~!










Toooo much water conditioner. Top of the baby w/ fin injury. I've gotten lazy and just kind of blindly pour in some of it x3 Doesn't seem to do any harm

The other baby seems to be in very good health, which is a bit weird. He's always got his fins spread and is somewhat active. I want to get him out of that .2g.

I also did something silly while doing a wc. I had my NLS can opened and had dropped a few bits of water in it while siphoning. I then used my feeding tweezers to gently lift the ball of clumped together pellets. Now I have it drying on a piece of paper :/ Maaan, and I told myself I wouldn't make silly mistakes like spilling or goofing up the insides of my fish food cans again. I was wroooong.

I snapped some quick pictures of Cherry and Ciel! Sorry for the blur ^^ I'm not exactly flexible enough to easily take a picture of the 5g and hit printscreen on my keyboard! Sad webcam life.










Right to left timeline
















Ooh, side by side it's practically no difference. Just slight increase in fin length and he looks more..big-boned? Eh, fat.






















Same pretty much. Just looks a bit more fat! And.. she didn't retain the color :C like on her first few days home(right pic) Pretty sad about that. Those colors were stunning!

Maybe they're just hitting the ugly teenager stage. ^~^


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Nice!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Sorry for the spam today ^~^

Went to the dollar store and picked up a new tub for one of the babies! The tubs are lessening the light hitting the bottom of the tank. So I aquascaped one of 'em half-heartedly. Which was more like dumping plants and shoving a plant in the middle.








I bought the tiniest clump of microswords ever (heck expensive...) to see how it would go with high lighting. I hope the investment is worth it!








Just dumped some cuttings in here for some cover.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 7:
I'm thinking about going into the DIY root tab route. Seems far cheaper over the long run compared to seachem ones. Gonna check out the local vitamin shops and see if they've got cheaper gel capsules compared to Ebay ones. Thinking about using Dynamite veggie fertilizer. I hear great reviews about it for aquarium use ^~^

Anyway, the babies are doing well! Cherry and Ciel are doing well, too! I'm pretty sure they're now upgraded to "teens". I feel like I'm feeding them too much, though. I hear people feeding their fish 4 pellets a day and they become bloated. Yet I feed like 2-3 pellets per feeding 3x a day for the teens. Their stomachs barely protrude and just looks rounded. The babies are fed 1 pellet per feeding currently. 

Sebastian seems to act like a nosy police. Look at this!









The two babies are always flaring at each other, then Sebastian comes in flaring up a storm right in the middle of them and they both stop! I do wonder if the flaring will take a toll on the babies. They do it quite a lot. It's also majorly surprising how the one w/o injured fins hasn't blown his fins in the slightest- not even a tiny pinhole.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Those fish who get bloated off 4 pellets are either: 1) not being fed the right stuff or 2) they have digestion issues most usually from a deformity. Also, same as humans and any other animals; growing babies need a lot more nutrition and food than older animals do. Think about what a teenage boy can eat compared to an old man, it's quite different! Same thing in all animals including fish ^_^

Also you can use Jobes plant sticks from wal-mart and break them into thirds, 98 cents a pack!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I actually managed to get Osmocote plus(4.5lb) for free from one of the local gardening stores. Just bought 500 or so gel capsules of size 00 on Ebay for 6$. A bit much I'll admit, but I couldn't find any less for a better price! So I'll probably do the DIY thing on that. 

Jobes sticks~ I've also never heard of that- sounds like a much easier way to do it rather than filling up hundreds of capsules! 

Ooh I see, now. Guess I can go on my merry way and continue fattening up my young fishies then c:


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

They are so cute! I want a baby now. (but I have to wait until I get more experience and more tanks.I only have one empty one(my only tank)))


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 8:

Nothing new, really. Everyone's doing well it seems! I am a little worried about Ciel, though. She seems "under the weather" if that doesn't sound weird. She's not the little bundle of energy she usually is. Noticeably less active and whatnot- still a huge piglet. I'm wondering if she's just not getting enough environmental stimulation. So I took off one of the dividers between her and Cherry. She sees him and moves forward to his side and stares at him. Not much else goes on >.<

The frog seems to be doing better! His hourglass figure is lessening into a more oval shape. 

Plant-wise the micro grass seems to be yellowing in the slightest. Maybe I shouldn't have purchased it just yet :/ I don't seem to be able to provide the lighting/nutrition it needs.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Day 9:

Oh boy... BGA is back with a vengeance :c Oh the poor plants! I feel like trying the blackout method, but I'm afraid the plants might die! I hear it did not work for certain people as well. I looked for potassium by seachem- I think it was out of stock this week at my local store. Could have sworn I saw it before. Ugh, the roots on the water lettuce are totally taken over. Maybe that's why they've started yellowing in certain leaves? Who knows. I would rather deal with a bunch of other algae than this one.

Babies are doing well! I needed more room to stick my hands into the 10g so I put one of the baby containers into the 5g. I want to also start making my dividers, too! It's a bummer I can only find packs of 100 or so for the report card binder clips. So I went to Staples to check and they want me to buy whole packs for 10 dollars! Sooo not going to happen. 

Gosh, it's a messy tank week. I keep moving stuff around and I'm not satisfied with results >.<

On a side note. The red devil worms in my fathers 20g seem to have gone! Yay! (Pssst.. thanks lil'naugrim c


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Good luck with your plants!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

;-)

As for the roots, you can just give them a trim. Generally won't harm the plant, it's kind of like getting a haircut and usually stimulates new growth. You may get a bit of leaves dying off but nothing should be too dramatic!


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

I have had good luck using Seachem Excel (along with Flourish) for algae control. Just be very careful not to overdose. I only dose every other day.

I also limit the time my light is on to about 8 hours.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yes, I have thought about using Excel but it would harm certain plants of mine. I definitely need to reduce the lighting times. 

Before I go chopping up the roots I will try a 4 day blackout method. Within a day the myrio developed a film on at least half of them! My bacopa is now officially dark blue, as well. So I'm not sure if getting rid of it manually will work this time. I wonder why it's so vicious this time around?

Maybe black plastic bags and a few towels. And some tape to hold it together ^~^
Sebastian should be good for 4 days without food if I give him a nice sized meal the day before. I'll also move the baby w/ injured fin to float into the 5g as well.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

And the blackout begins ^~^ I will open up and see what's happened Monday afternoon!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

So ^~^ I got the capsules and decided to fill a bunch!









In other news~ Blackout progress looks as if it is going well. A bit worried, though. It's completely sealed... what about the oxygen supply? :c


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

The fish will be fine, the air that is in the tank is supply enough for ages for those fish! They don't drink up THAT much oxygen ^_^ besides, oxygen can get through the towel no problem.

Capsules look good!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Awesome! Thanks c:

Such a lazy week. There's not much to report~ 

Have to do 90% wc on everything since I've been lazy the past 2 or 3 days. Shame on me :I I have to be careful and do a blackout on the little .5g tubs as well since there's BGA in there too. I have a bad habit of just plopping plants from other tanks into other tanks without doing anything to them!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Well... I opened it up earlier since I had a bad feeling that something was up. And what do ya know... :c









I found him heavily breathing on the bottom and all faded. Look at his tail... it's completely shredded! It's red at the tips as if it's bleeding. I'm going to start with a 50% waterchange on the 10g. I have him floating in a breeder box because I've got nothing else to use.
Edit: I also see the tiniest specks of white on him.
More Edit: Going to switch him out with one of the babies .5's so I can dose the water with meds and AQ salt


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

So..mini-mini-update:








Sorry for the horrible picture, that's the bummer of tupperware! Anyway, his color has come back. I put in 3 drops of Pima fix and .5 tsp of AQ salt. He's also totally more active now and ate well. So it looks like a good sign c:

It appears that 40% of his dorsal is gone. The redness is definitely still there- it wasn't just me bein' cray!

I wonder if he was afraid of the dark? Or maybe he wanted human attention? Either way that tail must be fixed!

If it gets worse I'll probably pick up a more effective medication. Since I hear pimafix is equivalent to neosporin on a cut.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

So treating Sebastian with some AQ salt and daily water changes for now. He made a tiny bubble nest in his cup :c I ruined it while pouring in salty water.

Cherry and Ciel are doing well c: I can't wait until my binder bars come in! I want to get them into the 10g soon-ish.

As of now one of the babies is in the 10g. He doesn't seem to be doing too well as he's been heavily breathing since last night. I checked my water and it's at the usual .25 ammonia. I did a 50% water change last night. Doesn't seem to have any effect. Additionally, he seems to have a thing for planaria. He's been eating them every time he sees them~

The other baby seems to be doing fine- I'll be doing a water change on his cup too. His fin seems to have fully healed!

I will put up picks when I'm done with cleanings ^~^


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Oh man sorry about Sebastian's tail and dorsal. That stinks. Good luck with the algae black out.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Thanks ^.^

Going to quit taking pictures of Tupperware. It hurts to look at.

















Too bad there was a smudge of dirt on this pic~ You can see that pretty turquoise!

Just some lil' snips I took. Since I can finaaallly see him~ Still worried about the heavy breathing, though. We'll see how he goes for the rest of the week!

As for Sebastian- I'm seeing some clear growth(suuuuper tiny) but it's there! The redness has receded to the tippy tips as well.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

My gosh.. is it tail chomping week? Ciel just bit her tail and the top half is gone :c Put AQ salt...

Probably because she's sharing the same water with Cherry now. He seems to just be cool with it. At least now I know she won't be a candidate for placing in the split 10g.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Hmm ^~^ clear growth on all the lil' nippers! Red spotted areas seem to be "melting" though... So I'll keep an eye on that for now.

I found an uninvited guest!








Can you spot this new snail?  I believe this one came from one of the plants I placed in the 10g this week. Not sure what it is, yet. It also came with a strand of baby tears that is most likely to die off, soon. Tooootaaal bummer, I'd love a carpet of the stuff! Absolutely beautiful~


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Mini-mini rant~

I think my cycle crashed or something after the blackout. Before I did it I had 5ppm of nitrates. I did a water change when I was done with it. I tested the water today and everything is at 0ppm except for .25ppm ammonia and 7.6PH... To top it off now I have staghorn algae, LOL. It's certainly not the worst thing ever, but... I waited soooo long for my tank to cycle QAQ! I wonder what I did to break it? Anyway, I'll just keep track of the ammonia levels since I have Lewis in there. He's the lil' baby w/o ripped fins.


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Good luck! I hope everythig recovers.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Alright ^~^ So I bought some ghost shrimp a few days ago to see how they were (It was a buy 4 get 2 free)
Needless to say it's not going very well. I checked the water before and after- turns out the test before was just a bum test! Nitrates are at 5-10ppm! Everything else is fine. Anyway, 3/6 dead so far within 2 days of purchase. I guess I'm just not cut out for the shrimpy life :c total bummer- they're so cool lookin'. Currently watching one get in touch with their cannibalistic side- figured it was extra calcium.

This is also just rambling to procrastinate my last set of finals tomorrow! There's no set order to what I'm talking about~

My bacopa seems to be doing far better than it was before- I'm seeing growth that looks young and "fresh" if that makes any sense. As in, they don't look old and yellow. It's cool! I'm trying to learn how to "prune" my plants to make them bushier as well ^~^ Other plant news... My anubias are yellowing along with my swords. Java fern also looks just darn sad. I guess after my finals are done tomorrow I'll pop over to home depot or something and pick up dirt and start the whole "NPT" battle. My myrio also has melted back completely and is showing little sprigs of green growth all around! Very excited c:

As for the whole NPT thing.. I need to find a way to (for a lack of better wording..) get rid of a whole ton of snails. There are far too many in my tank that they're making a snail army on the sides of my tank. Even bladder snails are becoming noticeable! I don't think boiling water would get rid of them. I don't really understand how their population exploded. 

Additionally, I'm going to be splitting the 10g into 3's once I start the NPT! More concerns would be that I feel as if I'm lacking in light for the 10g. I mean, I feel like staghorn would be a good indicator that says I'm overdoing the light. It just feels like the plant growth is somewhat slow for 2.-something watts per gallon. It's really all I have to go by since I don't have fancy PAR ratings. I wonder if someone who can measure that stuff would compile a sheet full of bulbs at some point. That'd be cool!

I will post fish pictures much later. Since I'm already taking up too much time! I will also be posting many questions in the planted sections later~ I'm going to try and make the NPT transition as smooth as possible for me!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Huh, I think Sebastian likes smaller housing. He makes bubble nests daily in the .5g container whereas I've only seen once in the 10g. How weird is that! Starting my final now ^~^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oh my goodness, I never expected to be so tired after taking down a tank and then putting it back together again. relocated the fishies that were once here elsewhere c:
















^From the top.

Is what I've got so far! I used some organic dirt my father had bought for fruits and veggies. Most of it is just kind of stabbed into the dirt randomly as I got tired midway, LOL. This is totally a workout.. plus my room is a mess!

I'll probably do a 50% waterchange on it tomorrow morning. I didn't attach the fern/anubias either- just having their rhizomes sticking out.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Did some water tests after a few hours.

It seems.. normal.

PH - 8
Ammonia - .25
Nitrates - 5
Nitrites - 0

I expected to see some horrifying ammonia levels and messed up PH- guess not!
I'm a bit iffy on the dirt for some reason. It was practically 30% woodchips. I also didn't put in the dividers which I regret. Didn't have all the supplies~ This is what I get for rushing x3 It looks great so far, though! I can't wait to make the first trim! Apparently that's supposed to be done after a week.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Actually with new plants it's best to leave them for six weeks approximately, this gives them time to acclimate and build up a root structure before you chop them up. While it's generally not harmful to the plant, they still do have to make up for the chopped limbs so then you wait another six weeks and they should be fairly established by that point and you can trim when you need to.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oh! I see lil', thank you! c:

In other news, a neighbor of ours found a feral kitten without the rest of it's litter or mother. So, now we've got a kitten since 2 days ago. She looks to be about 4-5 weeks old.

My other cat Sammy doesn't seem to fancy it at all, but at least she's not attacking. If anything, she's becoming a little more relaxed around the little one every day! Sure as heck won't let them be in the same room without my supervision, though. It would be torture to the kitten! Poor thing probably thought she was the mother, since they both look so alike. 

Just feeding 2 tbsp of some random canned kitten milk we bought with some wet cat food mixed in per feeding(3x day). It's like a nasty smoothie!

The behavior seems so different from kittens I've dealt with before. The first day she was afraid of me (obviously) and would hiss/run away/cower. Sammy just swatted at her while growling up a storm during the first introduction. The main thing I've noticed-* constant meowing.* It was torture- kept meowing until 4am. Goodbye sleep. 

The second day was a bit better! We decided to name her "Minnie"(like the mouse!) and realized she is extremely clingy. She cannot be left alone unless you want to hear meowing for 10 minutes straight and then she may fall asleep or start another cycle of meowing. It's cute, but I feel so bad for leaving her alone all locked up. I decided to start socializing her by just awkwardly spending time in her area(which is the bathroom) for maybe 1-2 hours a day. Bathroom floors are cold. Anyway, she started to play with my fingers(which I know is a bad thing to do, but I wanted to get her to realize that I'm not some scary monster ) which is a great sign!

And the third day(today!) was a mini-breakthrough! Sammy didn't growl when I put them together! She did swat Minnie a few times and put smacked on her back- but I didn't see actual violence. Just some generic "You're in my territory- this is my place!" Slowly but steadily they'll get used to each other. As for feeding- Minnie eats very well! She's not burped, though. I'll try tapping a teeny bit harder next time. She's also very interested in elastic hair bands! She's in looove with a blue one that she rolls around with.
----
Sorry for the wall of text ^~^ Now for fishy news!

My mother's 3 year old blue veiltail has got a nasty case of popeye. She doesn't want me to medicate it, but I put in some epsom salt in hopes that it would reduce the swelling. Both of his eyes look like they're about to pop out of the socket...

I now have the patience to do daily water changes! I'll have to do a 90% one today since I haven't been able to do the 5g for the past few days. I threw in some prime those days- hopefully it worked >.< At least, it seems like it did. They look lively!

Sebastian's tail is growing back well- slowly though! Still keeping up with his wonderful appetite!

Cherry is doing well, too! His new "apartment" mate is now Clark! Or Lewis.. I forgot which one is which since they look so alike. That's bad. I'll call him Clark, anyway. Clark is just a little bundle of energy!

Where is Ciel you ask? She's now in the 10g with 2 ghost shrimp! It seems the 2 adult shrimp lived whereas all the younger ones died. The water was fabulous- I guess I'm not cut out for shrimp after all :c


Lewis is floating in my mothers 5g tank in his own little cup-thing. He doesn't really seem to have improved much from the day I got him. Still heavily breathing with low energy most of the time.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

It's picture day ^~^ since I just did water changes and decided to snap a few!
Progress of the 10g- I took out the heater and it's sitting at a toasty 78-80!
I'm also seeing some new growth-healthy and green! My bacopa stems are turning a bit red at the tops, though and the leaves have a slight red to them.
Huh, I'm also seeing a lot of air pockets developing under the gravel. I see huge bubbles coming up every now and then.










It seems to be going very well! tannin's are leeching into the water from the wood I think. Ammonia has not gone above .25. Yet Ciel seems to constantly display a fat stress stripe unless she's feeding! I wonder if there's a funky chemical in the water bothering her? I don't think so since shrimp should be extremely sensitive to things like that. The two I put in there are still kicking!










Here's Ciel a little more grown up ^.^ She's gotten a bit darker and a little more thicker. She's a little more than an inch now! (Including fins)










I actually caught Lewis flaring at one of his "roommates". What big fins he's growing~









Cherry doesn't seem to have grown at all, lol. Still a voracious appetite though!









Lastly is Clark- his colors are developing so nicely! He's got a royal blue iridescence on top of his black body- looks beautiiiiful. Shame I couldn't catch it in the picture. I also love the way his dorsal is patterned ^.^

No pictures of Sebastian because my webcam couldn't stretch any farther, sorry!

I plan on getting the kitten pictures up at some point, but I don't want to wake her up yet. The little cutie meows just way too much for me to be patient with it. The vet won't do a check up on her either, apparently she's too young. I totally call bs on that >.> many kittens have been brought to vets to be checked up on.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Some updated pictures on the plant growth in the 10g:









The anacharis changed quite a bit! It looks nice and full with vibrant green leaves! I never knew improved lighting did such a thing x3 Other than that, no idea what's doing it! It used to look like this:









Lil's plants have begun to grow back from their melt!








All those lovely little puffs of green growth~

The dwarf water lettuce is looking pretty awesome too!

















As promised:








My little Minnie ^.^ She's quite the cutie. She's uncomfortable with me coming to her! Though she seems to have no problem nuzzling up close~
You can also see one of my test kit vials missing. I may have broken one while cleaning it with cotton on tweezers~


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I found something totaaally adorable while picking out pellets to feed the gang!








Do you see it? Call me weird but I'm saving this piece forever, lol!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Whoa! That's totally awesome! I love how the pellets are all in that picture too, leading straight for the heart! I would keep it too!! I could see like a little shadowbox memorabilia type thingy with that in it and a little sculpted fish or something!!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Haha thanks! I'm probably going to put resin on it or something so it won't snap x3 I never knew of shadow boxes before! Looks kind of like scrapbooking-for-frames, it's cuuuute.

For fishy stuff, it's a complete and utter "D'OH." moment for me. I was wondering where the nasty black hair-like algae was coming from and why it was carpeting my plants. Turns out, I need to put my lights on a timer and not 6am-11PM. Much disappointment. I think I'll do 8 hours of lighting.

There's a bunch of methods I've seen to treat it! I'm leaning on the h2o2 since it seems cheaper to do. Yet I've seen warnings that tanks with high PH can make it dangerous for fish/shrimpies and kill bb. Excel would massacre a few of my plants. There's also manually pulling off- noooope. I would have to throw out the entire plant! Lastly, apparently a blackout also works. A few of my plants wilted away after the last time I tried. It worked, but I don't want to deal with the consequences in that way, lol!'

MTS keep uprooting my not-so-rooted stems QQ I'm probably going to let the floating pieces root a bit.

Additionally, am I the only one that giggles at bad jokes?


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

hehe, I giggle too! I love bad jokes and terrible puns!

Yeah, I've seen an increase in use of h2o2 for getting rid of algae lately! Seems to work so just use as many combinations as you can and it should go away pretty quick!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Some major updates that I'm very excited/sad about!

We found -another- kitten! I believe both of the kittens are manx (oooh.. those stubby lil' tails get me every time.) This time it's an all black one with 1" of a tail! She is so so chill. Let's me pick her up and falls asleep on my chest. However, hisses at me when I come at her. That totally doesn't make sense to me. we decided to name her Kiki!

As for Minnie, sad news is that we will be giving her away to a father's coworker :/ I would've loved to keep her since she gets along so well with Sammy, but my parents aren't too fond of her wild personality. They prefer a more chill cat. (So do I!)

For fishy news - I snagged a 10g from PetCo's 1$/gal sale! I actually split it into three this time x3 Gonna have to get mesh. I wanted to get the free filter that's supposed to come with it, but I don't really know what's going on with that since my local store said it wasn't being offered. Can't wait to give them an upgrade in room! 

I've really been slacking on the water changes... Like, extremely terrible. I must have stunted my poor babies even though there's no "dangerous" ammonia in the water since I've been dosing prime every day. Gonna start doing super water changes again >.< 

Piiiictures will be up when I get rid of this headache! It feels like a sinus headache. I feel like I'm the only person that sleeps with a headache and wakes up only to have it be worse than before. Totally sucks.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Baaah. Headaches coming back. It's been here for two days :/ I got it by smacking the side of my head on the corner of a tall speaker trying to get a cat from under the couch. 

Anyway... p-p-picture attack!









The 10g after I did some trimming and removed the water lettuce and dosed 20ml of h2o2. Did a 30-40% water change after dentist appointment today because I oh-so-graciously forgot I was siphoning my 10g this morning into a 3g bucket only to realize about an hour later. So I lost my patience for doing water changes on it today, lol. Everyone was OK though!
























These are a top-view of the tank after trimming and planting the trimmings. I've been trying to thicken up areas so it will look nice and bushy once it grows in ^.^








Shrimp molted!


























I moved all the dwarf water lettuce from the NPT to the bare-bottomed 10g. The lighting makes it look ugly... oh well. I wish dwarf water lettuce grew to look like mini-water lettuce instead of wannabe frogbit!








This is my lil'... Lewis? Gosh I'm so bad with names. Either way- look at those fins! None of the pictures from today's post are of flaring fish. Too hard to get them to do it. I'm a lil' confused about his tail-type though. Look more delta-ish to me.








This is -probably- Clark! Such a handsome one so it must be true c: I couldn't catch the dark blue iridescence on his black body. Look at the color on his fiiiinsss~ So beautiful! He seems to be the veil-tail since he looks like a roundtail when he flares. Idunno, I'm at a loss since I'm no expert. As long as all my babies are healthy who cares! (I still care. ;








Cherry doesn't seem to have grown at all. Plus, is that a combtail I see? Maybe his fins are still growing! I want to put him into the 10g that Lewis is in once I get 2 pieces of black mesh. Hopefully the sizes(Small squares... why. why.) will be juuuust enough to fit! I'll probably sneak in a pre-cut paper and compare them while I'm buying x3








Ciel seems to be doing pretty fine in the 10g with her ghostshrimp enemies. Enemies, I do say! The shrimp like to swim up to her to steal her food :/ She does the same. I have to trick her every other day so they get to eat. A little handful is what she is!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Didn't update Sebastian until I got his tank upgraded a bit. He's apparently developed into an avid nipper.








I'm going to try putting him in a more active area. My desk! Where I tend to bump, drop, and kick things all the time! Plus, he gets an exclusive view of my face for a good 16 hours a day!

Before I had him on a very non-traffic-y night table with no light in a .5g. Maybe he just doesn't like being alone? Now he gets to see Ciel too, so I guess I'll see how he goes with this setup.








It's a bit ugly looking, but I just threw stuff in there ^.^ Fingers crossed!

As for 10g news... The day I dose ferts 1 shrimp dies and the other slowly fading away- totally thought it was dead but it's kicking its tiny feet. Gah. Welp, going to put in some root tabs later.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Sebastian felt like greeting me in the morning!








His head looks so spoon-y here!''

Ciel seems to have smacked her head on something.









This bit of plant seems to not have appreciated the h2o2..








I see some teeny-tiny green though! There's still hope~

So I've had a few thoughts lately about what to do with the tank- what do you(Whoever reads this journal ;P) think about:

Trimming down unsatisfactory leaves on swords until pretty ones grow out. This has had some funny looking leaves lately!








I don't really understand why my plants have changed so much compared to when I bought them... For example, when I bought this particular sword it looked something like this except with far shorter stems:








My bacopa now:








Before: (Some random google pic)









Changed maybe because of nutrients/light deficiency combo, lol? Combination of that and being grown emersed prior to my purchase? Idunno about the bacopa though, it looks pretty... pretty the way it is now ;c

Maaan, don't even get me started on the wisteria! I haven't pinched it yet but now it's growing -better- leaves









Ooh, the hair algae is also turning gray! Not sure how to take it off aside from scrubbing!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

That's just what they look like as babies and as they mature, they can sometimes take a bit different shapes. There are different species of Swords though and that doesn't look like a Bleheri Sword (Amazon) but something else, not exactly sure which one.

The Bacopa doesn't look much different to me, but depending on where you got it, it probably was grown emersed or with co2.

Wisteria will always change, when the leaves first come out they are more broad and solid and then as it gets older it will become more lace like. It also depends heavily on light and nutrients as you suspected.


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

When I bleached my decorations I couldn't get all the hair algae off, so some of it was still attached and turned white. After a short time it just disappeared, or fell off and was pulled out by the filter.

The Bacopa looks fine. I don't have swords so I can't comment on that.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Not much else to say aside from
he. bit. even. more.









Did he decide his dream is to become a plakat? What the heck ;c My next plan of action is to try him in a larger tank. Going to put him solo in the NPT 10g.

And thanks for your thoughts ^.^ @Dayton/lil' It's certainly changed quite a bit(The sword) Guess I'll just wait and see how it'll look when it's older!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Ugg I'm dealing with TWO fin biters right now >.< it's so frustrating!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Right?! Such beautiful tails and they take out frustrations of some sort on them! It's so difficult to figure out just what's triggering it.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Huh, lesson learned. I did the h2o2 treatment with the filter in the tank. Effectively ruined my cycle. Good thing I took Ciel out a few days ago... 2ppm ammonia and 0 nitrates. What the heck ;c Totally is not a botched test. Guess I'll start new ~.~ It's a shame stores around here don't sell those seeded filter media. Gives me a reason to buy more tanks, lol!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh wow...I thought it was supposed to be safe for everything. How much h2o2 did you use if I may ask?

I wonder how well seeded material can last in the mail...I wouldn't mind sending you the hunk of sponge I have in my 3 gallon since it needs to be replace anyway, might as well go for a good use, you know?


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I did 2ml per gallon. I didn't want to do 2.5 because I thought that would be too much. I mean, it -did- get rid of the algae, but it also got rid of my cycle lol! Next time people, remove your filter media and temporarily put it in a bucket with some airline tubing connected to it or something! Lil, I hear the bb tends to die in a few hours if there's no current. Wouldn't know for sure though;3


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

next time, try a spot treatment instead rather than dosing the whole tank; safer in my opinion and you can use less. You would use a small eye dropper or pipette to directly apply to the algae spots and you don't need much of it either. 2ml isn't much either but the algae will soak up more of it than will be floating in the water so I feel it's safer; maybe just my imagination but I think it makes sense at least lol.

If the bb die without a current then none of my tanks are cycled! ;-) Nah, the BB will only die if 1) there is no food source at all to speak of and even then it will take days or weeks for them to die off because as they die off; they create ammonia (that's generally where the ammonia comes from in a Mini-cycle) and so that feeds the living BB but their colony will shrink still because the food source has become smaller. 2) they will die if everything dries out, takes around 3-4 hours if you take it out of water completely, rough time estimate. 

Yes, they do prefer the faster current which is why they will primarily colonize in the filter but they do not need a super amount of current to be happy. They're happy in my sponge filters without much current, but yes they will always chose the place that has the current in it to colonize first but if they have to; they will colonize elsewhere as long as there is a food source primarily.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oooh, that's awesome! If that's the case then I can cycle my other tanks without buying filters! Maybe I can even move the filter out of my NPT and make a super tiny one out of an air pump so it won't show an ugly block! Oh gosh the possibilities~

Yeah, I'll try the spot treatment next time  Much, much safer.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Some minor updates:

I uprooted the 10g and replanted things because I don't know what I'm looking for in terms of "How2MakeTankLookVisuallyPleasing". Totally not an aquascaping person. I would love help, but I want to get my plants to grow out first ^.^ 

I'm also afraid of the recycling process ;; someone hold my hand! (Kidding.) I am just totally unhappy about having to deal with bacterial bloom making my tank hairy and possibly ruining plants again. Then the dreaded brown algae. Allow me to just go EUUUUUUUUUUGH. Okay, done. 

I wanted to put Sebastian in the 10g this week, but I guess not. Fish-in cycles are not my forte. Maybe I'll try to avoid it all together by cycling a bucket..? I vaguely remember there being a thread about cycling the smallest of tanks just by adding a filter and letting it stew for a while. Maybe that's just my memory being silly. I guess I'll try it! Not like I'll be using the filter for anything at the moment. I wonder if I can avoid the cycle by doing daily water changes, lol!

Ciel is doing just fine in her 3 way 10g with Lewis! They stare at each other and flare for a bit every day. Lewis is getting huuuuuuuge. PetCo babies seem to be just fry that are already stunted or something. Of the babies I've got, the only one at a normal size is Ciel. The rest are just.. tiny. Maybe I'll try doing daily water changes at larger amounts. Maybe 60%!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You can totally look at aquascapes online and just find a layout that you like and then work with the plants that you have to recreate that look! I like using this: http://tropica.com/da/ site and they have a bunch of layouts that you can look through and sort! Or you can go on google/yahoo/whatever and look at all the images of things that you might like!

If you plants are growing at least, they will keep your fish safe so....that's up to you still.

And lol, you can't avoid the cycle! You can do the daily water changes if you feel like it and it will take longer to cycle but Sebastian would be able to be in the tank at least!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oh lil, that's a wonderful site! Their inspiration tabs are full of such beautiful ideas! And aww, avoiding the cycle with water changes would've been nice! I hate hate bacterial bloom. 

I've actually been trying to start a little bacopa wall like this:


















Need to trim often and make a dense wall >.< 
I'm going to try making a thick wall of plants! That seems like a fun idea actually!

Also, tiny myrio








It's about the size of a penny c: quite cute!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You're welcome!

So you're basically going for a Dutch Aquascape then! Look that up to see some pretty awesome pics ;-)

Your plants look fantastic so far! They look pretty healthy to me! Myrio should start taking off soon too now that it's acclimated to your water chemistry :-D


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Just felt like throwing some update pictures. It is SOOO HARD to catch them in a flare. I gave up after 15 minutes or so ;; None of these are flare-pics.








Lewis has tooo much fin on his plate! I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be a biter later on... He's also developing some translucent white dots on his face. I'll keep an eye on that.








Ciel is the ooooonly one who seems to look her age! She looks like a normal PetCo girl minus the "I'm dying in a cup." look!








Cherry is lookin' a bit weird without any sunlight on him. Cherry is also a funky name for a dude. His form looks nice.. but who am I to know that! 








Clark the ever-handsome and non-picture lover. He just can't stay still. I took like 10 failed attempts at him just staying still in general. This was the best of them, lol!









...Sebastian ate his tail again right after it started healing ;;... I can't put him in the 10g because I simply don't want to be changing out water every other day in a large tank. It's easier for me to wait until it's cycled and keep his 1g container clean. I can experiment with dense plant forests to see if that helps while he's in his 1g!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You wouldn't need daily changes on the 10 gallon, just whenever the ammonia gets over .25 ppm.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

You're right lil' x3 If it's not cycled I tend to get over worried and change water like cray(.25ppm from tap). Bad habit of mine I guess is what I could call it! >.< 

Speaking of cycling- the dreaded diatoms attack has begun! Apparently getting a sponge from the dollar store and cutting it in half works to perfection when it comes to scrubbing it off the walls! Who needs expensive algae scrubbers!








Am example before I cleaned! Behind the tank is a white curtain, sooo... You can see what I mean!

I also got a filter from Petco x3








It's sitting in the other 10g! I love how clean it looks~ 

The 5g Below it!








I took out the ugly divider and have Clark goin' solo! Trying to revive some anacharis that I may or may not have forgotten in a bucket in the bathroom...

Lastly is Sebastian's updated decor. He's more active for some reason in this setup:








All I've got in it is a pinched bit of wisteria and a bunch of stem cuttings


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Wait, you're not using a kitchen sponge are you? Any sort of kitchen sponge with or without the brillo pad side, it's still going to have chemicals in it!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Nah, it had a packaging that said "Chemical/dye free". I wish I could get it for you but I put out the garbage already since I used it with bleach to scrub down another tank that'll be put to use. :c Maybe sponge was the wrong term, lol! It was kind of floss-y. Kind of like a loofah ball but more condensed..? My gosh my explanations are horrid!









Think of this but in a circular shape!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Oh okay, okay! Phew, that stuff is good then lol


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Came back from a trip and found some interesting plants ^.^









Looks to be some sort of ivy! Found it crawling up a rock. Going to plant it at some point.

This looks pretty cool!








The bulb portion is a verrrry deep purple- so are the roots!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Those last ones look like regular pond Water Lettuce, much larger than the Dwarf versions we have ^_^


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

So I've decided to just let things get messy and grow out for a while x3 For some reason the bottoms of the myrio suddenly went brown and decided to melt away. So I cut the tops off which were perfectly fine and planted them. The wisteria suddenly browned as well and melted away a little. I wonder what caused that o-o it all happened within a small area of my tank. 

So there's this houseplant that I have no idea what it is...but it flowered! I snipped off a single flower as they were all in a bunch and this is what it looks like~ I actually thought it was fake at first since I've never seen it flower before. The flower itself is quite hard and has fluffy feeling when you touch it because of the hairs. 









This is a cutting of the plant I have floating in my 10g.









Since I noticed that the waterfall thing I've got going on from the tetra filters is too strong- I decided to try this:








It looks ugly but works like a charm! Barely any flow at all!

I caught Lewis giving me some sort of half-flare. It looks like a delta tail, I swear! For some reason I don't get the veil vibe from him. I thought they were supposed to develop a round tail of some sorts as they grow.










Lastly here is my lil' Sebby!
















He's very curious and swimming around actively ^.^ Makes me happy to see that he' moving around. Hopefully this will deter his biting .
He seems to enjoy the 10g! (Pssst.. it's all cycled, now! Or at least.. as close as I've ever gotten it to cycle. .25ppm ammonia 0ppm Nitrite 5ppm Nitrates)


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

That's because Lewis is a DeT lol, I see his rays are splitting at the end so most likely he's the result of a VTxHM or DeTxHM spawn ^_^ Love his colors!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Hellooo again everyone ^.^ I haven't disappeared! I didn't really have much to say for a while. Nasty hair algae attack, so I'm waiting on excel to come in. Sebastian's tail is growing back nicely- it's like... half the size it used to be but just as ruffled! 

Aaaanyway, went and picked up some tetras. I wanted some sort of schooling fish to test in the 10g. I believe they're black neon tetras! They don't seem to be doing so well (acclimating them right now) because they are resting at the bottom of the bag :/ I'll probably keep them in the breeder box until tomorrow to see if any pass just in case. Also, am I the only one that doesn't enjoy it when workers practically twirl the bag to tie up bags of fish? It certainly doesn't hurt to be a bit more gentle.

I also did some light research and apparently these guys prefer soft water and waaaay lower PH. Some say it's fine if they're acclimated well to the water, but I still feel like I should return them once I get the chance ;c (If they even live). My water has a high PH and is pretty hard, darn it! All the pretty fish will never be mineeee~</3

I will put up some pics probably tomorrow as I don't want to freak out the newbies by blinding them with light >.<

///EndRant!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Unfortunately all tetras like softwater but they should be okay. Black Neons get larger than regular Neons too. I don't know if you like that at all but Glass Catfish like hard water along with livebearers of course and cichlids


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Oh, I've seen glass catfish at my local stores before- they look aweeeesome! The pricing on them >.> wasn't too cool though. They were near 5 dollars each last I checked. They usually rotate their 5 for 5$ deals, maybe I'll see one that is for them one day! -fingers crossed-
--

As for the newbies...they made it through the night! They did try to eat the NLS pellets (too big) but they fell to the floor. Sebastian decided to be a vacuum and eat it all- now he's bloated and laying on the substrate -.- Lil' piggy. I'll make sure to crush them up next time and feed at different corners. ..After he poops out all the stuff he ate >:c

I want to name them, but I can't really tell them apart unless I stare at the fat black stripe differences they've got! Oh, well. They also don't seem to be schooling.. they're all just swimming around the tank and occasionally pairing up.

As I type this I can still see Sebastian digging around for more food. That's cute.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Fish don't school unless they feel threatened or unsafe, or at least school tightly. The only Tetra I've seen to school at times is the Ember Tetras, the others will sometimes stick around each other but for the most part they sort of just go off on their own and do their own thing. So it's common to not see them school, is what I'm getting at


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

@lil - Oh, that's cool, lil'! It's nice to know they're not horrified of anything in my tank x3!
--

Awkward. Sent my pictures to someone in a PM by accident for a different forum, LOL. Anywaaay, here you go!








The dwarf water lettuce is lookin' fabulous! I love how the leaves are so close to each other, so it looks like a head of lettuce!








For some reason these plants in the back don't seem to well..Mm, gotta love that hair algae. Let's hope the excel takes care of it >.< If it doesn't work out, I'll probably end up looking for a different plant for the background. Anyone have any favorites?








Progression of my tiny bacopa wall! I cut it down a ton and planted the stems to make it a bit thicker, now just to let it grow in~








Look at that tail ^.^ It's growing back nicely! One of the tetra's missing from the pic, dunno where he/she is. One of the bigger tetras seem to shy away from the group...hopefully it perks up soon and pops in with the others! So I guess Sebastian prefers the 10g to stop his nipping!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Ugh, so I've been thinking about putting up three of my PetCo babies up for adoption. Nobody around in my area is willing to take them so I'd have to ship or give them back to PetCo (Nooo way.) I feel like I've got so much going on, but I really don't! Anybody have those moments where you feel like you could have done so much more but didn't? If anyone's interested... The lil' puppies that I'm thinking about putting up for a new homes is Lewis, Clark, and Ciel. They are definitely stunted from their situation prior to my purchase, so please take that into consideration. Shipping/Adoption fee applied. I will have to check the shipping fees and weather before any action is taken.

Lewis and Clark are brothers for sure. Both are super feisty and love to flare at each other ^.^

Ciel is a girl with an attitude! If she doesn't get her way with food, bam- hissy fit for a few days!

Having my wisdom teeth removed doesn't make me feel any better. Gosh, I love food. I would marry an infinite bacon mac n' cheese with extra bacon and cheese if I could. Just so I could eat it forever. The problem is that I can't eat, lol. Literally no enjoyment from swallowing food I can't taste. It's been 4 days since extraction...absolute nightmare. I know I'm being dramatic, but not being able to eat properly and not having something enjoyable to taste is practically torture. Food is for your body and mind! I've been eating jello soup. Yes. Soup that is blended and solidified. Disgusting? Absolutely. I've been eating about 1/2 cup of it every meal. I have such an appetite but I don't want to eat food like that, isn't that kind of funny x3? 

Let's seee... what else to rant about in this journal? Oh, yeah my mother broke my divider in my 10g by dropping a pole on it, lol. She was trying to change the curtains and it hit the divider, luckily no fish was hit!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah, I hear you on the food business. Same way when I had my tooth extracted for my implant, except I didn't get stitches, they just left it open to heal up so I had a huge hole in my mouth for a month and a half, food always got stuck in it lol. lots of mashed potatoes and Wendy's frosty's lol.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Just sharing what I've been up to for a while ^.^

I decided to put Cherry into the 1g since I figured he wasn't going to grow any further and he's stunted as heck from the funky conditions I got him from as a baby :c I was thinking of doing some scaping with a few carefully placed rocks, but I'm not so sure if I should. I kind of just threw cuttings in the tank and it happened to look pretty to me >.<

Sold off a bunch of cuttings and basically mowed down the entire tank to fugly. Stopped caring about the tank so green hair algae bomb hit me since I forgot about lights. Surprisingly all the fish are doing fantastic. Well, if you ignore Ciel who jumped to her death :I so there goes the adoption for her... THEEEEN... I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned the worst of it off and bought a new plant to celebrate! I'm not quite sure what it is- super pink, though. Hopefully it grows and I can use it as a background kind of plant. I believe the package said scarlet temple. It was one of those blue petco packages.

Gaaah..now I have to work on the 10g and 5g next. Not so sure how I want to go about cleaning the 5g. I've literally got a green algae lawn. I'd say that's funny, but not so much because I have to clean it lol!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

oOh, I do like the 1 gallon! Sad about Ciel though :-/

Yeah, looks like Alternanthera Reineckii Cardinalis which is also referred to as Scarlet Temple too. I have some from that package too, though mine are older a bigger at this point.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Thanks!

Ohh, do you have any pictures of your mature ones on hand? ^.^ I'd love to see how they look once they grow!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You can just google it, there are two kinds; the regular and the Cardinalis which stays smaller than the regular one. I think I actually have the regular one but they basically look the same minus I think the regular ones have larger leaves.

But here they are, sorry they're behind my dwarf hairgrass lol. But it's the red/yellowish one, it's actually green but my lights make it look yellow.


And a close up, technically of my frog but you can see the plant there too.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yeah, when I looked it up there seemed to be so many different types of it! I hope mine ends up like yours x3 I love love love the pop of color it'll give once it grows in!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah! it's a great plant, it needs lots of light and Excel for sure to really thrive, CO2 would be even better. ^_^


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

It's nice to see you back. Sorry about your jumper. 

The new plant is very pretty. I saw that at the Petsmart also, but I don't think my lighting would be enough for it.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Thank you Dayton! Yeah, I'm pretty bummed about that. Didn't expect her to ram the plastic mesh off the cup I had her in- she was a strong fish!

Speaking of that new plant- it seems like something is missing, or it wasn't grown submerged. I definitely know there's nothing wrong with the lighting. Dosing daily with excel as well, but I know that's no replacement for co2- it should help though! I'm leaning on the submerged since the leaves and chunks of the stems are melting so quick. WELP- there goes 7 bucks! Gonna go look for my receipt >.<


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Yeah Alternanthera likes to melt and melt bad when it does. The one I have right now that I showed you pictures of was the first of four different batches that I've tried before. One from my LFS (theirs melted too), two from PAC at different times and then one from PetSmart which I'm actually seeing new growth now! It's taken over two months for it to acclimate to my water apparently but it's starting to grow pretty well now! So I'm hoping I can propagate it and sell it off when it really takes off! Supposedly it's an easy plant but my experience hasn't been so great with it lol.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yeah I picked it up because I thought it was an easy plant and super colorful! I may just look around for another plant that's pink/red/bushy if I do end up returning the mush if it doesn't pull through ^.^


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

You can try Ludwigia broadleaf, that has a nice yellowish color under bright lights with a red/purple underside. Not as intense as Alternanthera but much easier to grow. Or basically any of the Ludwigia's are pretty easy


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Mm, that's definitely an option- it looks super pretty in the pictures I've seen online. Ludwigia doesn't seem fond of my water parameters if that doesn't sound weird. It grows beautifully at the tops (sometimes it likes to grow deformed- that's okay!), but then the older leaves tend to droop and look dull! Then it likes to grow dark roots in random places on the stem, lol! 

I'm actually considering saving money up for a co2 steup instead! Just for a single 10g. Most setups look so expensive... Will definitely look into it more so I can get the best deal possible. It looks quite complicated with all the bits and pieces needed >.<


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

That happens with most stem plants when the bottom leaves are shaded, it happens in my tank too. You can clip the roots if you don't like them, that's just generally where I snip the plant at the trim and replant that part since it's already rooted 

You could look at the Fluval mini CO2 system, it's relatively cheap actually! I'm not sure if it's compatible with regular CO2 tanks because you could instead just get a regular tank after you use up the regular one and hook that up since it'd be cheaper to fill the normal CO2 tanks at a store.
http://www.amazon.com/Fluval-Mini-P...id=1411516833&sr=8-1&keywords=fluval+mini+co2


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

-Wipes off dust from thread-

Halloo~

So I've been twiddling my thumbs over tanks and new setups as fishies have come and gone these past months (stupid accidents... more stupid accidents..and a hungry pet >.>)


Current fishies I've got in my room are:
Sebby - My lil' buddy that still refuses to respond to meds >.> now he's developed fungus. Tried what lil's recommended but he simply isn't responding. Been thinking of putting him down just because he looks so pitiful. He can't enjoy his fishy life :/ 

Charley - He's the newbie marble ct I picked up. His fins are a little funny looking, but I picked him because he had pretty colors! Very unique compared to some I've seen~

Cherry - Doing well, but has lost some spunk. He's not too active lately despite the once a week protein punch with live foodies and whatnot.
I wonder if this is just a petco baby betta thing.

Oh, I did however order up a finnex fugeray planted+ fixture, it looked pretty darn good when I looked at all the reviews. I also ordered a glass top for my tank to reduce the darn evaporation! 

I was thinking of dirting another 10g and setting it up fresh with the new lights and glass top. I just can't decide between sand or gravel. Then I'll just move the fish over! Oooh, I can't wait for this little project~! I even got my first smartphone, despite it being an older model. It's just so convenient! Plus, the quality of the pictures is quite decent. 

I will throw in some fishy pictures tomorrow~


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

I just got the same light and it is really nice. I hope you like it!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Sorry for the wait.. Issues came up.

Scholarship applications - mid process - THEIR website goes down and I lose over 2k+ essay answers. "You must answer everything on this site" "It will not be saved at any point so it must be completed in one sitting".
Absolutely wonderful. Thank you. It was silly of me to think a website would not go down whilst I was hitting the apply button >.> No matter what.. back up everything people.. who knows what will happen. Sooo frustrated right now. 
Plus, the application is only valid for today through tomorrow.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Yes Dayton, I'm suuuper excited ^^~ Can't wait to take so many pics!
Didn't want to leave you guys hanging. So I just took a couple of quickies. The quality isn't half bad considering I just kind of swung my phone around and hoped it would catch something pretty... it did!









Certainly not the prettiest quality, but it captured his colors in motion! He's like a rainbow!








And this is him all grouchy- He's stuck in my empty 5g for now until I get the fixture and clean up the 10g for a bit.

And to make matters worse I found Sebastian dead. Well he's not suffering a poor life anymore, so I suppose it's better for him in the long run :/


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Got some new babies from PetCo today. It was a chilly day and I got bitten by the guilt gremlin~

This one was definitely the odd one out, so I snagged him/her in a heart beat! 









This lil' one as well!









Sorry for poopy quality :/ It's surprisingly hard to catch them when they zip around! Barely time for the camera to focus! lol


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Poo, I can't see the photos!!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

I uploaded the usual way this time~ I believe it is visible now.

This was the how the lil' one looked in the store! Pretty- right? ^~^








Under my big ol' lamp









Other lil' one
Not stressed!









Stresssed.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Ahhh now I can see! Beautiful little ones!


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Thank you 'lil ^~^

Okay!
So plans for a new dirted tank is under way!
What I've got so far today
* New organic dirt soil... thing. (Not so sure about this one since it has 50-60% of moss in it or something.)
*New bags of black sand
*Some pygmy chain swords/creeping jenny (At least that's what I thought they were)
*Nuking plants every other day in a hydrogen peroxide dip for about 15s to get rid of the depressing string algae

I plan on washing out the dirt in the 10g currently to salvage the eco-complete. Gosh, why'd I buy the stuff.. >.< Feels like a waste.

The babies are doing well!~ I will provide some pictures as I start taking apart the tanks and whatnot.


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## Kaffrin (Apr 1, 2014)

Wah wah wah. Exhausted.
Who knew taking a tank apart and then putting it back together would be so... tiring, LOL!

Anyway~ I took some progress pics as I went. (Minus the bathroom as it's now black... in comparison to how white it once was- I flung dirt everywhere!)









I took all the plants out and salvaged some of the eco-complete and put it into bins. This is the leftover dirt. And holy geez was the smell a killer. I felt like I was sitting in a room full of poop. I ended up dumping most of it because I just couldn't take the smell e.e








The motel for the moved inhabitants~ Currently I have 3 tetras, a guppy, and Cherry in it! Ooh he's in need of an updated pictures but I don't wanna get up for another hour or so. That, and I will probably leave the new tank empty for a bit to see how the levels of ammonia and whatever else are before I stock.









After the cleaning and harsh scrubbing to get the nasty algae of all kinds off I filled it with some dirt and capped with black sand. So far it was pretty good!









So, it's needless to say I can't aquascape for my life, so I just threw things together and thought that once everything grows in it'll look quite pretty!

What I have in there is little bunches of monte carlo, some bacopa springs I salvaged from the last tank (I kind of killed most of my plants >.<.. let's just say I accidently dropped something I shouldn't have in the tank) 2 types of crypts, pennywort (I think?), swords, tiger lily, and water lettuce!

I also read that somewhere you neeeed a lot of plants so there's no algae bomb- so I shoved a houseplant in it.










Lastly... some pics I snapped earlier of the babies:


































Booo. I still need to do water changes on the babies, now that I think about it. QAQ!


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Okay, the little white one is definitely a female. Can't tell about the blue one though, need more of a profile to see.


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