Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

hi.
a couple of days ago i had one red cherry swimming around.
could it be due to a female wanting a mate ?

does the female need a mate before any eggs can be seen ?

im also in the process of changing how my aquarium runs.
the latest thing over here is to change 50% of the water atleast once a week which i want to avoid and some people i have talked to about this screams loudly and claims the animals will die within weeks, one guy i know is good with aquariums and especially plants claims a good setup can run for years without water change for example.
at the moment im aiming for a 20% change every 25th day and use pmdd for the vegetation.

is there anything i have to think about regarding the red cherries ?
the fishes manages very well the vegetation even better and all problems with algaes are gone.
i do have a good biological filtration has been untouched since summer and cant even see a hint of no2.

Regards
Raven

Raven wrote:hi.
a couple of days ago i had one red cherry swimming around.
could it be due to a female wanting a mate ?

Hi Raven, it's usually the males that swim around looking for potential females to mate with (I couldn't quite understand if you were saying the one swimming around was a female).

does the female need a mate before any eggs can be seen ?

Can be seen in the ovaries or on the swimmerettes? Either way, no, a female does not need a mate for the eggs to be seen in either location. However, if the eggs are on the swimmerettes unfertilized, she will drop (lose) them.

I personally don't recommend weekly 50% water changes. 10 - 20% weekly is much better for general maintenance. Occasionally, if a problem comes up, one might be forced to do some extra changes, but that is an exception.

As to aiming for 20% change every 25th day, that's up to you; sounds okay if your water is clean and in good condition. You didn't mention any info as to tank size/load, so you'll have to decide if that's good for you.

I don't know what pmdd is; hopefully someone else can add additional comments/suggestions.

-GB

PMDD = Poor Man's Dupla Drops (or sometimes, Poor Man's Dosing Drops). It is a trace element and potassium fertilizer for aquatic plants. If used as directed, I doubt it will harm your shrimp unless they are specifically sensitive to iron.

GunmetalBlue wrote:

Raven wrote:hi.
a couple of days ago i had one red cherry swimming around.
could it be due to a female wanting a mate ?

Hi Raven, it's usually the males that swim around looking for potential females to mate with (I couldn't quite understand if you were saying the one swimming around was a female).

as i understand it a female needing a mate sends out pheromones which get the males alittle crazy and my cherrys never swim around but this one did it for one day so thats why i wondered.

does the female need a mate before any eggs can be seen ?

unfortunaly i only got 2 big cherries left due to my cat destroying one of the cover glass and i hope its one of both sexes but i can not see any eggs on any of them so that question is connected to the first one.
some animals impregnates the eggs after they have been made but red cherries are born like miniature copies of their parents so they might do what we humans do.
impregnate something very small that then grows and then comes out.

I personally don't recommend weekly 50% water changes. 10 - 20% weekly is much better for general maintenance. Occasionally, if a problem comes up, one might be forced to do some extra changes, but that is an exception.

i can change 80% a day if i want to without problems got very good water quality its just that 50% a week sounds very much to me considering how aquariums was used to run in the past and the fishes didnt get hurt by it.
ph is 7.4 and has been for a long time so its stable and no2 is 0 everytime i test it.
going to buy a no3 test too.
i have about 0 ammonium too.
ammonium spikes algaes to grow and i got nearly 0 algae growth.

As to aiming for 20% change every 25th day, that's up to you; sounds okay if your water is clean and in good condition. You didn't mention any info as to tank size/load, so you'll have to decide if that's good for you.

the aquarium is 37L big with 2 big shrimps and atleast 1 minor shrimp i see from time to time and 11 smaller fish, some of them is going to find a new home soon and one amano shrimp also finding a new home soon.

There is more to water than just water. Large water changes change the nutirents and micro organisms in the water. Pure water is lethal. A 50-80% water change is just about like starting from scratch, and the water temp swing is usually pretty bad too. if you have a good under gravel filter a 10-20% change one a week is fine unless you see water quality problems.

When I set up a new tank I rob water from my other tanks so that I only add about 20% new water to a new tank. Everyone else gets a 20% water change. I rob some of the gravel too as it takes a while to build up the good bacteria that breaks down the bad stuff.

badflash wrote:There is more to water than just water. Large water changes change the nutirents and micro organisms in the water. Pure water is lethal. A 50-80% water change is just about like starting from scratch

dont agree on that.
last time i had no2 in the water i did 6 waterchanges in one day 50-80% each to get it down to 0.8.
after 10 hours it was down to barely over 0 and after that zero so saying big water changes are lethal is wrong as far as my experience say.

as i said earlier got very good water here its perfect to most fishes right out of the tap.
i have made extensive research on the tap water i have and i have seen several laboratory testings on it and it contains very little waste.
chlorine isnt even used to clean the water for example.

the nutrients in the water is of no concern because i add nutriens to the water through pmdd and the plants grows alittle to good even with no co2 added.

and i dont agree that a big water change means im starting from the scrath either.
the water itself contains very little bacteries, all those are in the gravel which i never clean except dead parts from plants.
using an undergravel filter with a 180L/H waterpump on it.

, and the water temp swing is usually pretty bad too.

not if you use a thermometer to check the temp.

these 3 species manages very well with both alot of waterchanges to very few waterchanges.
Xiphophorus maculatus
Paracheirodon axelrodi
Gymnocorymbus ternetzi

im trying to find out if the red cherries requires something the fishes dont.
the only i know at the moment is they dont like metalls, mostly copper.

at the moment the cherries seems to be content.
one of them is veryvery deep red the other one is also very red not as much as the first one but still very red.
the younglings only gets bigger and bigger.

badflash wrote:
There is more to water than just water. Large water changes change the nutirents and micro organisms in the water. Pure water is lethal. A 50-80% water change is just about like starting from scratch

dont agree on that.
last time i had no2 in the water i did 6 waterchanges in one day 50-80% each to get it down to 0.8.
after 10 hours it was down to barely over 0 and after that zero so saying big water changes are lethal is wrong as far as my experience say.

as i said earlier got very good water here its perfect to most fishes right out of the tap.
i have made extensive research on the tap water i have and i have seen several laboratory testings on it and it contains very little waste.
chlorine isnt even used to clean the water for example.

the nutrients in the water is of no concern because i add nutriens to the water through pmdd and the plants grows alittle to good even with no co2 added.

and i dont agree that a big water change means im starting from the scrath either.
the water itself contains very little bacteries, all those are in the gravel which i never clean except dead parts from plants.
using an undergravel filter with a 180L/H waterpump on it.

It depends on were you live and how your water is treaded though...

TKD

THere are usually only 2 main things to be concerned about with tap water and aquaria: added chemicals, and the mineral balance (called variuos things, like GH, KH and TDS, depending on who you are talking to). Of these, chemicals usually have the most pronounced effect on organisms, and need to be filtered out (preferably) or treated. Chlorine, chloramine and heavy metals are the more problematic additives or ions in tap water, stuff like PCB's, pesticides and the like are secondary.

Dissolved minerals determine the pH and chemical stability of the aquarium, and how well things will grow, due to trace nutrients. A proper balance of minerals and trace elements is crucial to aquatic organisms, but this balance differs depending on what kinds of organisms you keep. It is a fallacy that "pure" water (distilled, deionized[DI], reverse osmosis [RO]) is inherently deadly. Water is an excellent solvent, and in its pure form, it will dissolve or dilute minerals more strongly than if it has minerals already dissolved in it. Thus, if you add too much, you can cause osmotic shock from the minerals in organisms getting "sucked" out of their tissues.

That said, most areas in the US have hard water, so doing large water changes often raises alkalinity, pH, GH and trace nutrients dramatically, sometimes to dangerous levels for aquarium fish or inverts. Even if the changes aren't severe, even small changes in certain levels can disrupt the aquarium, as Badflash pointed out.

Bottom line is, the closer your tap water is, chemically, to your aquarium water (assuming your aquarium is optimal for the organisms you have), the larger the water changes you can make without causing problems. In plant tanks (like many of us have), water changes are not all that necessary, except to replace trace elements (which can be replenished adequately with a liquid fert) or to clean the substrate.

If you are changing water to get rid of NO2, you are not going about things the best way; your biological filtration shoul d be getting rid of NH3 and NO2. If you dilute it with water changes, you are prolonging the nitrification process.