ah right on. I have my medical card and personal production license here in New Mexico. I'm allowed 4 flowering (mature) plants and an additional 12 plants in veg. Idk how you could keep 12 plants in veg and only flower 4 at a time. Still trying to figure all that out. Maybe i could start 4 at a time like 1 month spaced out? we shall see i suppose.
ah, does your water report give you more info than the one they handed me? or did i miss that? aha. WHered you come up on that kit? looks expensive
I grew aquatic plants and bred fish of all sorts for many many years. Water testing is very important in doing so. It was about $100. Not needed for hydro but I do use the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test to verify how well my denitrifying bacteria are performing and that they are present. I do this because I run a live system and beneficial bacteria help keep my root systems healthy and eliminate ammonia.ah, does your water report give you more info than the one they handed me? or did i miss that? aha. WHered you come up on that kit? looks expensive
Okay, what fish? I did angels for 5 years and developed a black fish with a turquoise face. Started with a black and a gold. Bettas were also a fav and I had shelves in my hall full of males in 2 liter bottles. Killies were also a lot of fun and beautiful fish. I've kept fish most of my life. Today I have two feeder goldfish in a 20 gal half wine barrel with a solar pump floating on top. They're eating several hundred mosquito larva a day. Changing 25% of their water 2-3 times a week and using the dirty water for plants. Magical stuff.
Hundreds of cichlid including many varieties of discus. My favorite was cuckoo catfish they are a parasite breeder that use mouthbrooders to reproduce. They swoop in and distract the mouth brooders when they are fertilizing thier egss and. Eat them and drop thier own. The mouthbrooders get confused and pick up the catfish eggs then raise them like their own. Really cool to see. I did substrate spawners like jewels and all sorts. At one point over 20 tanks with my biggest being 180gal.
Yes, of course. Would love to read it. I had a 180 full of chiclids. Back in the early 90's I co-founded COAST Aquarium Society with 3 others. Served as prez for 3 years. We did several shows per year. Won a ton of awards. Too much work to continue. If i ever do it again it would be with tilapia for food production but I don't have a pond (yet). I've got 3 bath tubs I'm thinking of putting White Cloud tetras in as that's one of the few species that can tolerate our heat and use their water for plants and maybe grow some aquatic plants in the winter.
Love It! I tried salt a few times but keeping the top clean of salt build up was a pain. I had many friends want to give me discus to breed and while I did have an RO unit I prefered using tap. I had a hose on a faucet pump and could do my water changes in under an hour. I had build my fish room in my garage. Had almost a 1000 gallons of tank space and two 55 gal drums for treated water. Made a few bucks on those angels and shipped bettas all over the world but for the amount of work it wasn't worth it.
Yeah i sold to local pet stores and through the local aquarium club. Yes i am/was a fish nerd. made probably 4-500 a month after expenses on it but quite a bit of work even though as a hobby it doesn't feel like it. An selling aquatic plants is just not profitable in my findings but i loved the challenge.
Yup. I've owned them in the past and install several dozen a year. Big waste of water but you can set up the waste water to drain outside into a flower bed or garden or even save in a bucket (you'll really get an idea of how mush waste there is) and use it elsewhere. My wife dumps cooking water in the flower bed next to the back door and waters her kitchen window plants with it.
Yeah i haven't had issue with up to 200ppm but like you say it's the makeup of that ppm that is the concern. I find you can easily use RO in ratio with tap to bring it into ideal levels instead of just using purely RO but nothing wrong with using 100% RO and it's a little more fool oroof. When I used to use RO it was in large quantities so I found mixing to be of much more importance due to cost/waste. On the water bill, replacement filters etc.
Yup. I've owned them in the past and install several dozen a year. Big waste of water but you can set up the waste water to drain outside into a flower bed or garden or even save in a bucket (you'll really get an idea of how mush waste there is) and use it elsewhere. My wife dumps cooking water in the flower bed next to the back door and waters her kitchen window plants with it.View attachment 875269
She's doing something right. I have nothing to do with growing these. She has several colors but this is my fav. Sure wish I could get her to grow a few plants for me.
My girlfriend at the time had a 70 gallon or so aquarium...maybe 170...it was huge. I liked cichlids and bought her a few, which promptly interbred and before long, I had a zillion cichlids of all types. My buddy, who also raised fish, said that one of the crosses was pretty rare and ended up buying them all. Back in 86!
What killed me was no time off, no vacations. As you well know fry need daily care and you can't leave them alone so couldn't even run away for a weekend. Not to mention hatching brine shrimp and caring for all the live food. It was a great experience but we all need a break. I guess that's why I haven't kept any in the last decade. My two goldfish will be fine even if we were to take off for a week or more and if not, oh well.
Nice I tried to prevent cross breeding and cichlids are notoriously known for it. That's why I has so many thanks. I would get my credit for breeding then sell and move on to another for some of my tanks. The more popular ones I kept for sale.
I raised most of my fry on micro worms. Always had cultures going and for sale. Eazy peasy.
I used a mashed potato and yeast mix for micro worms. I also had vinegar worms and fruit flies, mainly for the killies. Brine shrimp was the Angelfish fry staple. I would collect the shrimp in a net then soak it in a vitamin solution then feed. I could get those angels to quarter size in two months and ready for sale. Even made my own shrimp hatcheries out of two liter bottles and tank filters from sponges and 1/2" pvc pipe and had a blower to run all the tanks. Sure glad I'm cured of ever wanting to that again!
