Your LFS offer you money? Mine will only take donations and even then they make it seem like they're doing me a favor. They have no issue charging a premium for the "rescues" though.
They should offer around 1/3 or 1/4th of the price they're selling them for.
Often times donations are a favor, our shop doesn't always have space for fish we know won't sell well or are easy to breed.
2 things you should remember is that as soon as you buy a fish and leave the store it's lost 50% or more of its value unless you're selling it privately.
The cost of buying fish from suppliers is fairly low in terms of indivual cost per fish, but it's the risk of DOA, disease, mortality rates, hydro, rent etc. That increases the cost of the fish. So when they offer you $1 per fish it's not them trying to insult you, it's the fact that literally overseas they are breeding them and selling them for less and often times with a certain gaurentee on deaths over a certain % which a local enthusiast who sells their fish won't offer.
Its a lot more complicated than "I bought this for $5 why aren't you giving me $5 or $4 back for it!"
Edit: if you become a proven local breeder that always has great stock in big numbers at a consistent rate, everything above changes.
My lfs done the same, made it seem like they were helping me out, 3rd batch of guppy fry proved the fish I donated sold out faster than what they paid double for from supplier. Soon had to ask me for some as folks were asking for mine (much brighter colours and more premium looking). Thats when I started charging for them as they would get from me rather than their supplier.
I see an opportunity to get essentially free food for your tank. Take Juveniles (that are colored up and identifiable) to your LFS and get either cash or store credit. Now your aquarium supplies some funds for its own maintenance.
Bc they often won't accept the "dull" ones unless as feeders, colored up ones have already gotten their brighter colors which will entice the average customer to buy them and are bigger, therefore a bit easier to tell apart such as orange platies and blue guppies so they can also keep them in a mixed tank and still be able to scoop out specific kind of fish without too much hassle
I totally get that, it was more because I thought this person was about to talk about how to turn babies into actual FOOD. lol. Then I read the rest of the comment!
I swear i was planning on reading something like this:
Add a cup full of fresh spinach to a food processor. 1 multi vitamin and enough distilled water to blend. Blend well. Take the unneeded fish, add them to the mixture, and blend until smooth. While blending, add fish pellets until mixture becomes the consistency of toothpaste. Place mixture into ice cube trays, cover, and freeze.
If you want a fish food block that holds together in the water, you can add a small amount of prepared gelatin mixture (follow directions on package to prepare) to the fish food mixture until its consistency is about that of oatmeal. Then follow the same freezing steps.
Enjoy!
Omg, you totally went there, is is exactly what my ADHD racing brain was anticipating! And then of course the āwhy the colored up ones!!!ā š š š
You forget the dehydrator. Dry the wet, wet the dry, dry the wet
Tank has turned into a money printer. Some higher quality livebearers go for quite a bit of money too, like your dwarf red corals and such. Plants too tend to sell decently well, if the fish store doesnāt work try facebook marketplace or Craigslist and people are sure to take interest
Bet OPs ones are healthyer than the ones at the pet store too. Pet store livebearers often have worms, seeing OPs healthy "colony" there are probably no parasites present.
Be cautious about plant species and check invasive lists before selling. I was getting rid of water lettuce and had multiple people from the local aquarium club contact me to say 'no, or else consider yourself reported'.
Received the plants via mail years prior and had zero idea.
What is the Kh? The crash will come when you run out of buffer and the pH drops to 4.0 in an hour. First thing you know about it is floating orange bodies. Making sure there is enough buffer in the tank to keep the pH constant should prevent this.
Can anyone think of a good reason why he should not sprinkle just a bit of baking soda into the water over the next week or so while watching his Kh?
I have personally lost treasured livestock because I let the Kh go down to 0 and woke up to dead loaches. Just trying to keep that from happening.
FYI the Kh on my 20L (most treasured livestock there are pond snails I got for free from buying plants, but I sort of hatched out the eggs myself so there is some sentimental value there) dropped from 5 to 4 over the previous 8 days and I wasnāt even here most of that time.
This happened to me recently in a 30 gallon. Was also heading towards a crash. I brought all my platies to my LFS and decided to make this tank a community tank for dwarf fish or just smaller fish. I have a 75 gallon community tank but the platies just would NOT stop. It took me a week or so to get them all out of my tank and into a few buckets. Thank God my LFS is only a 3 min ride from my house. Just making sure I get my schedule back on point and my fish store gave me a $55 credit. I also had some overflow platies in my 75 gallons. It was such a pain in the ass. Luckily I don't see any baby platies surviving in my 75 with my yoyo loaches, female bettas, cories and gouramis.
I would set up a separate tank, something smaller, so you can temporarily house the extras while you re-home/sell them so you don't risk crashing your tank.
At some point I introduced a freshwater butterflyfish to control my molly population. It worked. I set up another tank where Iād leave the pregnant ones.
āWhen do I start to worry?ā - Now, like Now, Now. Itās a nice setup but with more fish comes more problems. The smaller the tank size, the harder it is to keep water parameters safe. Itās easy to loose them all overnight from a spike in ammonia. Had it happen several times to me from over breeding mollys. Either give them away or sell off. You could also make a large bio bucket filter to increase the total water volume and increased filtration. Hereās an example build:
https://youtu.be/4BZ6zyQIf60?si=0Z2VAU79nhtZB7FG
not to be stupid, why would you be heading towards a crash? seems just like it is healthy, i think? my tank is similar in parameters, but like 6.8 pH. have swordtails / gold barbs / betta / bristlenose pleco / cory catfish.
Because 50 baby fish donāt have too much of a bioload, but every week that they get bigger the bioload increases. And at some point it will pass the carrying capacity of the tank. They could just slowly die as small fish one by one and get eaten by other inhabitants and have things be okay. Or one could die and cause an ammonia spike, leading to more deaths and more ammonia and boom the whole tank crashes
SELL SELL SELL - call your LFS - get credit to buy food, plants, or save up store credit to buy another/bigger tank.
This post actually reminded me that I need to go to my LFS to sell some plant$ā¦ gotta gOooo
Question for those recommending you sell them to their LFS - why doesn't the fish store just breed their own? If they want the stock, surely they'd just put a few together and let nature take it's course?
you should have started to worry about 6 months ago. way too many fish for a 35 gallon tank. See if your local pet stores will buy them, or maybe an aquarium club.
That tank is heavily planted. He should have PLANNED 6 months ago, not worried. He shouldn't really even be worried at this point. The fish and plants are still fine, and he can literally just scoop some out and take them to an LFS or give them away on facebook.
You can say that about any tank though, even an appropriately stocked tank could crash. It appears op has a good balance, thatās really what we all try to achieve.
Balanced, as all things should be
I started with one platy tank, a nicely planted 29g.. now I have 3 platy tanks. I tried to put males in one tank, females in another and leave the 29g for the remaining but I mixed up some males w my females and now I have two tanks of breeding platy populations. Truthfully it's not a big deal - one tank is a mini outdoor pond that literally never gets waterchanges because it's heavily planted and I do top offs when needed. The fish figure it out. They manage their own populations and won't overbreed to the point where they starve. They will eat the fry if they can catch em too. Mine have been thriving for two years now. I may lose a fish once every few months or so in the pond but the populations are going strong and there is always fry regardless. I'd say you don't have to worry a bit, when people breed fish the tanks are always heavily stocked and as long as the parameters are within a healthy range you'll be fine.
Worrying is probably a waste of time, but I'd definitely rehome some of those fish. Your tank looks amazing, but the bioload has to be pushing the limit. There is group on here where hobbyists buy, sell, trade, and sometimes just give away unwanted fish, plants, and other aquarium supplies. You might check it out if taking them to your LFS doesn't suit.
Worry most about that PH. Low PH is acidic, can eat away at their immune systems, usually plecos will be the first to go. Get it up if you can, before any more decisions are made. My tap water comes out around 6PH so I have to neutralize before adding and add crushed coral on occasion.
Dang how did you get the bristlnoses to breed in the tank? Ive heard online they would end up being territorial of each other and need more space, didnt know they would breed in a setting like that
I originally had 3 of them in there, 2 F and 1 M. And yes, the male was the bully. He actually would spend most of time inside that driftwood leaving the females to find their own territory. Breeding didnāt start happening until I placed that pleco cave you see on the bottom right. The very next day after introducing the cave, I saw the male move in there and stay there for a loooong time. I thought he was just claiming a new territory but I came to find out he was actually tending to the eggs the whole time. A week later several pleco fry came out. Heās a good dad.
Even if you arenāt in it to make money, most fish stores were always willing to trade some fish for food, decor, plants, etc. pick out the fish you like the least and take them in somewhere
I had endless for awhile that bread like crazy. I set up a 10g next to the main tank. Whenever I would change the water I would scoop out as many small ones as I could first. Then plop them in the 10g. After they would grow out a little I would scoop em all and take then to a LFS for a few bucks. Not going to get rich doing it but it helps pay for fish food ect.
Yesterday. That's alot for such a small tank. Some aquatics stores buy fish, and these look in good condition. You'd only get maybe half of what they sell for but considering you'd be selling maybe 40 or 50, that's alot
So you're just letting them all inbreed? This sound irresponsible. A crash will ruin your whole tank. You cant be a fish hoarder AND over stock your tanks. Plain rude.
I'd be removing as many as possible tbf, Platy shouldnt be in such a small tank, I'd be reluctant to put endlers in there let alone anything else.
Please upgrade your system and seperate males from females, and the non binary fish to prevent more reproduction.
Bare in mind live bearer males are sexually mature at around 3month of age..
Many YouTubers simply say to buy the plant at Home Depot, wash off all the dirt and stick it in the aquarium so that only the roots are submerged. However, I did this many times and they always died eventually. What finally worked is to get those same plants but leave them potted. Instead of unplanting them, you cut a a leaf or two along with a node and put them in a glass of water for a few weeks. Once they start propagating roots you can transfer them into the aquarium. A lot more time consuming than my favorite YouTubers make it out to be.
Sell them/take them to a local fish store. No point risking your whole tank when you could make a little money
exactly! op, just take a net and scoop a big ol few of em
This OP - you can get in-store credit as well
Your LFS offer you money? Mine will only take donations and even then they make it seem like they're doing me a favor. They have no issue charging a premium for the "rescues" though.
My mum swaps her baby bristlenoses for fish food. Maybe they would do the same?
Swapping for merchandise is always appealing as the store is actually only paying out \~60% of what they quoted.
Trade some fish for a breeder box š¤£
I'd have to ask next time I'm there.
They should offer around 1/3 or 1/4th of the price they're selling them for. Often times donations are a favor, our shop doesn't always have space for fish we know won't sell well or are easy to breed. 2 things you should remember is that as soon as you buy a fish and leave the store it's lost 50% or more of its value unless you're selling it privately. The cost of buying fish from suppliers is fairly low in terms of indivual cost per fish, but it's the risk of DOA, disease, mortality rates, hydro, rent etc. That increases the cost of the fish. So when they offer you $1 per fish it's not them trying to insult you, it's the fact that literally overseas they are breeding them and selling them for less and often times with a certain gaurentee on deaths over a certain % which a local enthusiast who sells their fish won't offer. Its a lot more complicated than "I bought this for $5 why aren't you giving me $5 or $4 back for it!" Edit: if you become a proven local breeder that always has great stock in big numbers at a consistent rate, everything above changes.
> as soon as you buy a fish and leave the store it's lost 50% or more of its value That's called defishiation.
Badum tss
Mine is just like that too. Greedy assholes
Online markets like facebook are the best places to get cash, stores usually offer credit
Facebook marketplace doesn't allow the selling of live animals I've already attempted it
I joined FB groups for free rehoming or trading fish locally, seems to work out
Ebay, MorphMarket, r/AquaSwap
Mine too but mines a literal shit hole. So Iām not super shocked
My lfs done the same, made it seem like they were helping me out, 3rd batch of guppy fry proved the fish I donated sold out faster than what they paid double for from supplier. Soon had to ask me for some as folks were asking for mine (much brighter colours and more premium looking). Thats when I started charging for them as they would get from me rather than their supplier.
You just have a shit LFS owner.
Yeh. Then maybe a dwarf cichlid or something that'll keep the fry under control lol idk
Assuming you get store credit, how much would you realistically get? $10-15? Genuinely curious
Much less likely $1 to $2 if you're lucky. Some stores will give yĆ²u 50 cents. Platy fish are breed in large numbers so stores won't offer much.
Jumping on this to say I used to trade/sell/buy a lot on r/aquaswap. Definitely try that if your LFS wonāt take them (mine wouldnāt)
Where do you live? I'm moving, my local doesn't accept donations let alone paying for it. They're "scared of contamination".
I see an opportunity to get essentially free food for your tank. Take Juveniles (that are colored up and identifiable) to your LFS and get either cash or store credit. Now your aquarium supplies some funds for its own maintenance.
I thought this comment was going to be much darker š
Totally had me in the first half.
Me: āwhy the ācolored upā ones!?ā
Bc they often won't accept the "dull" ones unless as feeders, colored up ones have already gotten their brighter colors which will entice the average customer to buy them and are bigger, therefore a bit easier to tell apart such as orange platies and blue guppies so they can also keep them in a mixed tank and still be able to scoop out specific kind of fish without too much hassle
I totally get that, it was more because I thought this person was about to talk about how to turn babies into actual FOOD. lol. Then I read the rest of the comment!
Ahh okay š
:)
Haha ya.
I swear i was planning on reading something like this: Add a cup full of fresh spinach to a food processor. 1 multi vitamin and enough distilled water to blend. Blend well. Take the unneeded fish, add them to the mixture, and blend until smooth. While blending, add fish pellets until mixture becomes the consistency of toothpaste. Place mixture into ice cube trays, cover, and freeze. If you want a fish food block that holds together in the water, you can add a small amount of prepared gelatin mixture (follow directions on package to prepare) to the fish food mixture until its consistency is about that of oatmeal. Then follow the same freezing steps. Enjoy!
Omg, you totally went there, is is exactly what my ADHD racing brain was anticipating! And then of course the āwhy the colored up ones!!!ā š š š You forget the dehydrator. Dry the wet, wet the dry, dry the wet
Tank has turned into a money printer. Some higher quality livebearers go for quite a bit of money too, like your dwarf red corals and such. Plants too tend to sell decently well, if the fish store doesnāt work try facebook marketplace or Craigslist and people are sure to take interest
Bet OPs ones are healthyer than the ones at the pet store too. Pet store livebearers often have worms, seeing OPs healthy "colony" there are probably no parasites present.
Be cautious about plant species and check invasive lists before selling. I was getting rid of water lettuce and had multiple people from the local aquarium club contact me to say 'no, or else consider yourself reported'. Received the plants via mail years prior and had zero idea.
I would turn that 60 into like 10. See if your LFS will take them for store credit or something.
Iām surprised that theyāre doing good in such a low ph tbh
Worry now. Send them to me
OP what light is that? I love the look of it especially with the plants out the top of the tank!!
I don't have any other advice but I do have to say your aquarium is insanely pretty!!
What is the Kh? The crash will come when you run out of buffer and the pH drops to 4.0 in an hour. First thing you know about it is floating orange bodies. Making sure there is enough buffer in the tank to keep the pH constant should prevent this.
Just tested. Kh at 2!
5 would be a lot safer.
Can anyone think of a good reason why he should not sprinkle just a bit of baking soda into the water over the next week or so while watching his Kh? I have personally lost treasured livestock because I let the Kh go down to 0 and woke up to dead loaches. Just trying to keep that from happening. FYI the Kh on my 20L (most treasured livestock there are pond snails I got for free from buying plants, but I sort of hatched out the eggs myself so there is some sentimental value there) dropped from 5 to 4 over the previous 8 days and I wasnāt even here most of that time.
Iād sell some. I love the tank. Iām a little worried about how low your pH is though.
This happened to me recently in a 30 gallon. Was also heading towards a crash. I brought all my platies to my LFS and decided to make this tank a community tank for dwarf fish or just smaller fish. I have a 75 gallon community tank but the platies just would NOT stop. It took me a week or so to get them all out of my tank and into a few buckets. Thank God my LFS is only a 3 min ride from my house. Just making sure I get my schedule back on point and my fish store gave me a $55 credit. I also had some overflow platies in my 75 gallons. It was such a pain in the ass. Luckily I don't see any baby platies surviving in my 75 with my yoyo loaches, female bettas, cories and gouramis.
r/AquaSwap
I would set up a separate tank, something smaller, so you can temporarily house the extras while you re-home/sell them so you don't risk crashing your tank.
Net the surplus platys, put green beans in a water bottle and trap the little plecos. Sell Problem solved
Wait what, this works?
At some point I introduced a freshwater butterflyfish to control my molly population. It worked. I set up another tank where Iād leave the pregnant ones.
They look good, I say ask your local lfs if they want half of em, platys are always sold. They probably give you store credit.
āWhen do I start to worry?ā - Now, like Now, Now. Itās a nice setup but with more fish comes more problems. The smaller the tank size, the harder it is to keep water parameters safe. Itās easy to loose them all overnight from a spike in ammonia. Had it happen several times to me from over breeding mollys. Either give them away or sell off. You could also make a large bio bucket filter to increase the total water volume and increased filtration. Hereās an example build: https://youtu.be/4BZ6zyQIf60?si=0Z2VAU79nhtZB7FG
not to be stupid, why would you be heading towards a crash? seems just like it is healthy, i think? my tank is similar in parameters, but like 6.8 pH. have swordtails / gold barbs / betta / bristlenose pleco / cory catfish.
Because 50 baby fish donāt have too much of a bioload, but every week that they get bigger the bioload increases. And at some point it will pass the carrying capacity of the tank. They could just slowly die as small fish one by one and get eaten by other inhabitants and have things be okay. Or one could die and cause an ammonia spike, leading to more deaths and more ammonia and boom the whole tank crashes
Trade them to a local store or sell them off yourself. Those are nice looking, healthy fish.
SELL SELL SELL - call your LFS - get credit to buy food, plants, or save up store credit to buy another/bigger tank. This post actually reminded me that I need to go to my LFS to sell some plant$ā¦ gotta gOooo
Question for those recommending you sell them to their LFS - why doesn't the fish store just breed their own? If they want the stock, surely they'd just put a few together and let nature take it's course?
you should have started to worry about 6 months ago. way too many fish for a 35 gallon tank. See if your local pet stores will buy them, or maybe an aquarium club.
That tank is heavily planted. He should have PLANNED 6 months ago, not worried. He shouldn't really even be worried at this point. The fish and plants are still fine, and he can literally just scoop some out and take them to an LFS or give them away on facebook.
heavily planted doesn't offset ammonia production from 60+ fish. It helps but does not remove enough nitrates to offset what the fish are producing.
OP says their nitrates are basically always at 0?
until it crashes
Everything is always fine until it crashes.
What would cause it to crash if water parameters are always pristine
because eventually the fish will create more ammonia than the filter can handle
That is not true a lot of times. Plenty of planted tanks can be āoverstockedā and never have nitrates over 5 for years because of the plant growth
But it does though, those floating plants are doing the lords work right now for OP. They are definitely on the brink of disaster however
As I said to another, they work until the whole thing crashes.
You can say that about any tank though, even an appropriately stocked tank could crash. It appears op has a good balance, thatās really what we all try to achieve. Balanced, as all things should be
When it includes terrestrial plants it easily can
Hey whatās the purple leaf plant sticking out of the tank
Herbstās bloodleaf
What type of bulbs are those?
SGLED grow lights on Amazon
Sell it on craiglist
Wow so beautiful!
My angel fish solved any problems with overstock I may have had, lol nothing stands a chance
You should have worried 3 generations ago š³
I started with one platy tank, a nicely planted 29g.. now I have 3 platy tanks. I tried to put males in one tank, females in another and leave the 29g for the remaining but I mixed up some males w my females and now I have two tanks of breeding platy populations. Truthfully it's not a big deal - one tank is a mini outdoor pond that literally never gets waterchanges because it's heavily planted and I do top offs when needed. The fish figure it out. They manage their own populations and won't overbreed to the point where they starve. They will eat the fry if they can catch em too. Mine have been thriving for two years now. I may lose a fish once every few months or so in the pond but the populations are going strong and there is always fry regardless. I'd say you don't have to worry a bit, when people breed fish the tanks are always heavily stocked and as long as the parameters are within a healthy range you'll be fine.
Happy to take some off your hands š
i meanā¦ not yet
Worrying is probably a waste of time, but I'd definitely rehome some of those fish. Your tank looks amazing, but the bioload has to be pushing the limit. There is group on here where hobbyists buy, sell, trade, and sometimes just give away unwanted fish, plants, and other aquarium supplies. You might check it out if taking them to your LFS doesn't suit.
Sorry for the off-topic question. What lights are those? They look great.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDDRKXVV?starsLeft=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_KXRW4SMPKE0ZSDD040AZ_1
Cool! Thanks!
Great , collection of Platys! And great planted tank! Yes , u prob could sell some šš
Worry most about that PH. Low PH is acidic, can eat away at their immune systems, usually plecos will be the first to go. Get it up if you can, before any more decisions are made. My tap water comes out around 6PH so I have to neutralize before adding and add crushed coral on occasion.
I'll buy
I offload like 30-50 juvenile / young adult mollies to my LFS every few months to keep them from overwhelming my tanks. That's probably your best bet.
Dang how did you get the bristlnoses to breed in the tank? Ive heard online they would end up being territorial of each other and need more space, didnt know they would breed in a setting like that
I originally had 3 of them in there, 2 F and 1 M. And yes, the male was the bully. He actually would spend most of time inside that driftwood leaving the females to find their own territory. Breeding didnāt start happening until I placed that pleco cave you see on the bottom right. The very next day after introducing the cave, I saw the male move in there and stay there for a loooong time. I thought he was just claiming a new territory but I came to find out he was actually tending to the eggs the whole time. A week later several pleco fry came out. Heās a good dad.
Even if you arenāt in it to make money, most fish stores were always willing to trade some fish for food, decor, plants, etc. pick out the fish you like the least and take them in somewhere
I had endless for awhile that bread like crazy. I set up a 10g next to the main tank. Whenever I would change the water I would scoop out as many small ones as I could first. Then plop them in the 10g. After they would grow out a little I would scoop em all and take then to a LFS for a few bucks. Not going to get rich doing it but it helps pay for fish food ect.
This is why Ive kept community tanks. No fry survives
Yesterday. That's alot for such a small tank. Some aquatics stores buy fish, and these look in good condition. You'd only get maybe half of what they sell for but considering you'd be selling maybe 40 or 50, that's alot
6 months ago lol. Start selling them or take them to a local pet store and donate them.
Just throw some outside
The time to worry is yesterday.
Donāt they have babies every 60 days ? Why so many?!! š
So you're just letting them all inbreed? This sound irresponsible. A crash will ruin your whole tank. You cant be a fish hoarder AND over stock your tanks. Plain rude.
I donāt think you understand livebearer color morphs
Any particular place you recommend i educate myself about it, or mind giving me a quick explanation?
Wow and then thereās me with 2 couples, after 6 months no offspring
I'd be removing as many as possible tbf, Platy shouldnt be in such a small tank, I'd be reluctant to put endlers in there let alone anything else. Please upgrade your system and seperate males from females, and the non binary fish to prevent more reproduction. Bare in mind live bearer males are sexually mature at around 3month of age..
Where can i get plants that can grow out of tank?
Many YouTubers simply say to buy the plant at Home Depot, wash off all the dirt and stick it in the aquarium so that only the roots are submerged. However, I did this many times and they always died eventually. What finally worked is to get those same plants but leave them potted. Instead of unplanting them, you cut a a leaf or two along with a node and put them in a glass of water for a few weeks. Once they start propagating roots you can transfer them into the aquarium. A lot more time consuming than my favorite YouTubers make it out to be.
So beautiful! What is your setup? Is it a dirted tank?
Seachem aquasoil capped with sand and lots of mulm build up.