Alex's Shellie Tank (N. Multifasciatus)

[Autumnsky]

That is crazy... there are a couple ponds in Boulder which are numbered in the around 300-500 and that was this spring. They didn't want people down there and they suggested they might dispose of them and give them to a someplace like a wildlife rehabilitation place for birds of prey...but people - don't go there and catch them! These were ~6-8" or bigger it was on the news. This is Colorado and it freezes pretty hard sometimes.

The Shellies are funny, my friend has them and there are disputes between males. I think the extra male needed a new home too.
There were a bunch at the Aquarium Society auction last spring, and I bet there will be a bunch more in the fall auction!!!

Congrats on the tank though it looks nice. Heck yeah, a 40G breeder would be the best - most square inches for the bottom, in only 36" width. $1 per gallon sale. Whoot.

 

[Fishperson]

It was a matter of time before any bird spotted that comet.
Ultra clean tank fishperson! I've never owned shellies, so I'm looking for info. Can a variety of shells be used in the scape? I'm lso wondering about dw going to the surface to try and break up territorial disputes?

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Thanks! Actually there are some diatoms on the rocks and shells but you can't quite tell from the picture. That's to be expected though.

The shells should have an opening of about 1 inch by 1 inch preferably. Escargot, whales eye, and shark eye are the shells that I've heard work well. Turbo shells also I think. I have escargot in here and they work well and contrast the sand nicely. But as long as they have a 1 inch diameter opening then they're good.

Driftwood may not be a good idea. They prefer hard water and driftwood softens it a bit and lowers pH. If you use aragonite or crushed coral sand to raise pH then the DW may be fine, but it might look unnatural. Using rocks to break it up could work better.

Unfortunately IME, there isn't much you can do to prevent aggression except change the numbers. If you buy them from a LFS then you can try to determine the sex of the fish you get. In a small tank (10 gallon footprint or so) 1 male and ~2 females will work well. In a 20 gallon long footprint or larger you could try multiple males. I've heard that, similar to mbuna, if you have enough fish the pecking order will be spread enough that one male won't run the others out of the tank like mine did.

The safest option, it seems, is to get 1 male or maybe 2 if you have a large enough footprint, with 1-3 females per male, and let them breed. The fry are allowed to live on their territory and that way you can have a colony with minimal aggression. But it might take time.

These are really awesome fish, as close to a "wet pet" that you'll ever find in a fish this small. If it weren't for the aggression issues they'd be perfect fish.

Start a thread, if you want, so I can see the specifics of your tank.

Hope this helps

 

[Fishperson]

Where do you live? I just saw you caught a net full of comets! Where are the Blue Herons?

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Raleigh, NC. They were caught in a drainage pond in my neighborhood. There is the occasional heron there and some geese but the fish seem somewhat skittish. The water is also very murky so I don't think a heron would have success there. The picture there was when i cast the cast net on a spot where they were swarming at the surface, feeding I assume. I'm not sure what they eat though.

Even when I just cast randomly, not aiming for anything at all, I caught 1 or 2, so there must literally be a thousand of them.

 

[Fishperson]

That is crazy... there are a couple ponds in Boulder which are numbered in the around 300-500 and that was this spring. They didn't want people down there and they suggested they might dispose of them and give them to a someplace like a wildlife rehabilitation place for birds of prey...but people - don't go there and catch them! These were ~6-8" or bigger it was on the news. This is Colorado and it freezes pretty hard sometimes.

The Shellies are funny, my friend has them and there are disputes between males. I think the extra male needed a new home too.
There were a bunch at the Aquarium Society auction last spring, and I bet there will be a bunch more in the fall auction!!!

Congrats on the tank though it looks nice. Heck yeah, a 40G breeder would be the best - most square inches for the bottom, in only 36" width. $1 per gallon sale. Whoot.

That's cool. Yeah as I said to tbox the water is too murky for herons to catch them unless they dive bombed them from above. When they swarm at the surface they are very visible but so skittish that they might swim away if the heron came near.

From their scarlet color I thought they might be swordtails but it also freezes here (NC) sometimes and i didn't think swordtails could withstand that. Once I caught them it was clear they were goldfish of course.

Yeah shellies are pretty great. If I had room for a 40B that would be a great tank to observe them. There you'd have room for multiple males and you could really see them interact.

I find mine are very skittish around me (although they are either wild caught or F1) so unless you buy tank raised fish they may not be great in busy areas.

 

[Fishobsessed7]

The tank looks very nice!


Fishobsessed7

Money Can't Buy Happiness, But It Can Buy Fish Which Is Pretty Much The Same Thing

 

[Tbox]

They're probably eating mosquito larvae. At least it's an enclosed drainage ditch. Any real water system, and predators would pick off those orange meatballs pretty fast. At least I hope they would.
Is this a cool looking drainage ditch that you could turn into your own pond
Someday I'll get a shellie tank going. It will be a while though. I've had this 29g going for 6yrs now. It will be a Tang tank someday. It's fully stocked with 'Juice Box' Metriaclima mbweca and 'Shooter' Neolamprologus buescheri gombe.





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[Fishperson]

The tank looks very nice!


Fishobsessed7

Money Can't Buy Happiness, But It Can Buy Fish Which Is Pretty Much The Same Thing

Thanks!

 

[Fishperson]

They're probably eating mosquito larvae. At least it's an enclosed drainage ditch. Any real water system, and predators would pick off those orange meatballs pretty fast. At least I hope they would.
Is this a cool looking drainage ditch that you could turn into your own pond
Someday I'll get a shellie tank going. It will be a while though. I've had this 29g going for 6yrs now. It will be a Tang tank someday. It's fully stocked with 'Juice Box' Metriaclima mbweca and 'Shooter' Neolamprologus buescheri gombe.





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Well it's not a ditch it's a large pond. Retention pond I guess? It's connected to the sewer system or something with 2 large pipes, and there's another "vertical pipe" (not sure how else to describe it) that acts to prevent overflow. But it's pretty big, I'd say 100x50 yards.

Yeah if I released a bass in there (I wouldn't, and even if I wanted to im not enough of a fisherman to catch one anyway) they'd be gone quickly.

Juice box and shooter? Explain...

 

[Tbox]

Haha sewer huh? Yeah comets would like that.
Juice Box or Lunch Box (Gold Zebra) seemed fitting for his steroid like outbursts when Shooter Mcgavin would torment him during his digging ritual after I do pwcs.

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[Brookster123]

I'd atleast move a big snapping turtle that way.. nature has a way of dealing with such things..

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[keegster803]

Well it's not a ditch it's a large pond. Retention pond I guess? It's connected to the sewer system or something with 2 large pipes, and there's another "vertical pipe" (not sure how else to describe it) that acts to prevent overflow. But it's pretty big, I'd say 100x50 yards.

Yeah if I released a bass in there (I wouldn't, and even if I wanted to im not enough of a fisherman to catch one anyway) they'd be gone quickly.

Juice box and shooter? Explain...

If you moved a bass in there, it would probably help the pond more than hurt it


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[Fishperson]

If you moved a bass in there, it would probably help the pond more than hurt it


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Probably. But maybe the people who released the goldfish thought that too. A little hydrilla in a local lake can't hurt either can it?

Nah, I don't know what I'm doing so I'll just leave it. It probably wouldn't hurt though. Maybe it will just cause herons to stay.

 

[Fishperson]

Update time!

Where to start...

Little update on wild plants:
I went to a lake and collected hydrilla and Ludwigia repens. I also saw what looked to be a Val or dwarf sag and what could have been DHG?:





Ludwigia Repens growing in the shallows of a lake:





Also went to a different lake... Found more there. I've been to 2 lakes and 3 ponds and there's been Ludwigia repens in all of them!

I found what I think is bacopa in a local pond. This is it, in a windowsill glass, with Ludwigia behind it:



The bacopa is interesting. I didn't expect to find that.

About the tank:

I put the hydrilla i collected in between the rocks. The fish love it and it breaks territories well:



Of course having a noxious weed that costs millions every year to remove from waterways in my tank isn't optimal, so I'll switch it out for anacharis eventually.

I built a floating plant capture thing out of airline tubing and tape. It's connected to the tank with a smaller loop of airline tubing through it Thats tied to the tank. It seems to work well so far:



With my finger for size reference. Also crossing fingers that the plants don't find their way out of it. The tubing is somewhat rigid and some areas stick up more than others so the plants could almost slide under them. I hope they behave.

I'm also getting some dwarf water lettuce to add. Floating plants are addictive.

This is the view from the side of be tank:



I put some black background over the corners to help keep the fish from being stressed by movement. It impedes the left side of that picture a bit. I'll get a better one later.

And lastly, a teaser pic:

 

[Autumnsky]

That is nice to shop at the lake for plants! Yes, that looks like some nice Bacopa to me. I need to visit more lakes/rivers, etc.

Like the teaser pic DW!

 

[Fishperson]

Bought some anacharis at Petsmart to replace the hydrilla. It's floating right now in the breeder box.



My mom found some hornwort in a lake. Cha Ching. Floating in a jar now because I don't want any nasties getting in the tank. This is me washing it at the sink with a finger for size reference.

 

[Fishperson]

I've noticed the fish flashing a decent amount since I've gotten them. I think this is due to the water being very soft. My city (raleigh) has never put up very good water reports but because we have great breweries here (apparently) they decided to put up a whole section of their water quality reports dedicated to that:

https://www.raleighnc.gov/services/...alityReports.html#FinishedWaterQualityReports

I'm not complaining, because they provided this farther down:

Calcium 6.01 mg/l
Sodium 33.00 mg/l
Magnesium 2.50 mg/l
Potassium 2.60 mg/l
Hardness (as CaCO3) 25.00 mg/l
Hardness (grains per gallon) 1.47
Alkalinity (as CaC03) 27.8 mg/l
pH (SU) 8.42
Sulfate 46.7 mg/l
Chloride 12.4 mg/l

So my water has the perfect pH for multies (yay) but its suuuuuper soft ( ). Apparently 1.47 grains/gal converts to 1.4 dH (german degrees?), and wikipedia calls 0-3 dH "soft."

I do have hardness-raising rock and sand in there. I don't have a test kit for hardness but I do for pH, and I'm about to test the pH.

I never thought much of the fish flashing after reading that many african cichlids do this occasionally. I don't see any other symptoms and the fish seem to be eating fine and behaving normally.

After testing the pH, it is around 8.1 from my tap and slightly higher, around 8.2, in the tank. This is with the API kit, so I'm eyeballing it.

Too bad I can't test the hardness.

Since the flashing has been going on for at least a month, with no progression, I assume it is something to do with parameters or stress. I don't think it's stress, so it's probably hardness. This means I should do more frequent, small water changes right?

 

[Fishperson]

Time for a little update.

FRY!!!!





Sorry for the bad pic quality. They're super tiny. I'm not sure if what I'm pointing to with the arrows are the fry but I think so. I've seen at least 3 so far but I can't take any good pictures of them.

I rehomed another male, now there's only the bully left.

I'm surprised I never saw the female go into her shell. I heard she will do that for a couple of days to protect her eggs.

Maybe she did it over Wednesday-Friday when I was away for thanksgiving.


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[Freakgecko91]

I literally never see my females in shells anymore lol


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[Fishperson]

I literally never see my females in shells anymore lol


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Yeah, mine are waaaay more outgoing than male. He hides whenever I come too close to the tank and takes nearly 5 minutes to come out of his shell.


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[Autumnsky]

Congrats on the little ones!