What a Week!

blue2fyre

blue2fyre

Blue Fish
Oct 7, 2008
4,440
3
0
43
Wisconsin
Real Name
Ashley
It has been just crazy around here! Dealing with the mbuna disaster (all fish are healing now, no more illness), the auction I went to on Saturday, trying to get a date and time settled to pick up my new 20 Long, and the multis I found on craig's list and picked up last night :)

I'm picking up the 20 long tomorrow morning so it should be all set up this weekend. I will include lots of pictures. As I said I picked up some multis last night. I got 6 of various sizes. He tried to talk me into a beatutiful adult male afra, but I knew my white top hara would NOT be happy with the addition. My poor multis are now crammed in my 5.5 holding tank with my calvus and baby OBs. I am going out today to buy some more shells. The mutlis are out and about and seem pretty fearless, as a result my calvus are starting to come out more as well!

Now that the 20 Long is mostly together (besides me not having the tank yet), it's time to turn my attention to recovering the mbuna tank. I have 2 acei left and it looks like 1 is a male and the other a female. The female is very dark and nice looking. The male is a petsmart acei so he's pretty pale and part grey. I'm going to rehome the male and get a group of dark colored acei for my tank. Sadly it will be a while until they are the size of the ones I lost but I am happy to finally be getting nice dark colored acei. I heard BlueGrass aquatics has dark acei, even though their website picture is a light colored one. Dave's Rare fish has some too but they don't have the snow white socolofis I'm looking for.

I briefly thought about replacing my acei with something else, but they really are my one of my favorite mbuna. It was heartbreaking seeing my beautiful dominant male pass away.

So that will leave me with my
white top haras
dark color acei
snow white socolofi
And my punk of a demasoni

Should be a nice set up!

Also I'm beginning to think my petricola are actually dwarf petricola. If so I'm going to be adding 3 more to the group. As soon as I can find some that are not bite size.

Pictures will be coming soon.
 
Well I went over to the LFS and asked about getting some shells. They didn't have any freshwater cnails shells but had 2 5 gallon buckets full of saltwater snail shells. Let me say they were some pretty sad buckets. One had shells that had already been bleached and cleaned, the other had shells that were not as clean but didn't have the snail bodies. I picked out a lot of nice shells for my shellies. I got them all for FREE! I did get some that were not cleaned. I have them soaking in a bucket. The guy said to bleach them but I'm worried about bleach getting stuck in the shells. the ones that were clean, I rinsed them in hot water then threw them in. They look pretty nice. I was really hoping for smoother shells but free is always good.
 
Hey blue,

I look forward to seeing new pics.

About the bleach, the active ingredient is chlorine which you can nutralize with Prime. What I do is to soak them in a 10% solution and rinse thouroughly. I might even let them sit in some super hot water just to be over cautious to make sure I have killed anything nasty. Then you can soak them overnight in a pale of tap water and a double dose of Prime.

Russ :)
 
I use bleach-water to clean everything that has brown algae residue like my fake plants and ornaments about once a year. Mostly becasue scrubbing doesn't work but soaking really allows all of the yuk to rise off. I also use bleach on new rocks I find outdoors and used filters that haven't been cleaned.

I know shells are particularly capable of carrying some hidden bacteria but if worried about bleach then using a lobster or tamale pot and boiling is the only other way I would go.
 
I read online I can soak them in a baking soda solution. I think I am going to do that since it turns out that i don't even have any bleach! Then I'll just boil them and call it a day. I get the 20 L today. I will take lots of pictures of the set up!

Also I'm going over to another fish club member's house. He has quite a fish room with many african cichlids. I might come home with a few goodies. My poor QT tank is going to be busy!
 
SO funny story...I broke my glasses! So no computer until I was able to halfway make them work. Sadly no pictures until tomorrow, my fish are sleeping.

The msobos are not great quality but I'm all for free. Hopefully with the water and NLS I have they will color up a bit more. I'm going to get a few more when I put in my order for more acei and socolofi.

But wait.. won't that give me 4 species??

Oh yes it will, which will be fine when I UPGRADE to a 72 gallon :D I talked my husband into replacing my tank with a 72 gallon bowfront. He likes the way they look. It will be a while because I need a new computer first but an upgrade will happen before next year!
 
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