More critters for my tanks...

JohnHuff

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We were at the local Petco and saw some crabs and frogs and decided to add some to our tanks to create a more diverse environment with different creatures in it and not just fish.

The frogs we saw were African Dwarf Frogs, which appear to be pretty benign. They're pretty tiny and only about 1 inch long. The only drawback seems to be that the water is pretty dirty and I don't know if that has to do with the frogs or something else.

The crabs that we wanted were Red Claw crabs. The assistant there gave them a good recommendation and so did a bunch of websites. But I found a page of reviews and found that they were very dirty and would eat other denizens of the tank and were best kept alone. So after reading that, I decided not to buy the crabs.

So right now we have fish, bottom feeding fish, snails, shrimp and frogs. It's a lot of fun watching them .
 
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John,

When I was back in Junior High and High School, I kept a nice 30 gallon freshwater aquarium full of all sorts of fishes. Some store bought ones like guppies and neons and the like, but the best fun our whole family had was in keeping native fishes that I or someone in the family happened to catch on the river.

One of the most interesting by far was a long nosed gar. I caught it in a shallow pool of water that had become land-locked by sandbars. It was only about 2-3 inches long, but grew to about 5-6 inches in the tank.

I would take a needle and thread and string a very small piece of raw liver onto the string all the way to the end of it so that he could pull it off easily and I would dangle it in the tank. The gar would navigate very slowly and stealthily over to it from the other side of the tank, using just his pectoral fins for motion. He was very slow and methodical. Once he got near to the liver, he would sit and eyeball it from the side, then he would THRASH HIS WHOLE BODY SIDEWAYS in one quick motion, grip the piece of liver in his long beak and rip the liver from the string, then dart off quickly for a secluded area of the tank and eat it on down!

An exceptional show!

Here is a pix of what these gar looked like, not a bad looking fish.

Gordy
 

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JohnHuff

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Thanks for the post. You learn something new every day. Until I read your post I had never heard of a gar before. They look like some long lost prehistoric something.
 
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Yup, they are definitely prehistoric relics which survived the blast and the ages! There are at least three unique species of gar that I know of. The short nosed gar, the long nosed gar and the alligator gar. The alligator gar grows the largest by far.

I read somewhere, whether it is entirely accurate or not I am not certain, but they have survived as a prehistoric species akin to crocs and gators because they have air sacs that allow them to "breath" out of water to an extent, rather than relying solely upon gills to exchange oxygen. They are able to actually "gulp" air from the surface of the water and thereby survive in very poor quality water with little O2 content. Definitely a survivor!

Back in the pioneer days, the farmers used to use their hides to wrap the front of their plow shears (the shears akin to those pulled by a mule) in order to extend the life of the shear. Their hides are so tough and durable that you can ruin a knife if you try to clean them like a normal fish. It is almost like they have an exoskeleton, but it is just tough hide.

Here is a video to show off the "alligator gar". It might make you think twice about where you go swimming.... Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water!

Jaws!


Gordy
 

JohnHuff

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So we went to the petstore this morning and told them we weren't going to get the redclaw crabs. We decided that neither tank would be safe from them.

Instead, my son is suggesting some kind of Thai blue crab and I just saw some freshwater clams online. Will be looking into those two.

Assassin snails seem to be doing a good job of clearing the tank of unwanted snails. I see quite a few empty snail shells and the number of nuisance snails are down. I no longer see a humongous mass of them. And one morning I saw a baby Assassin snail who was so cute.

Our lone cherry shrimp seems to have disappeared, haven't seen him for a couple of weeks.

Our Amana shrimp in the small tank is doing well, but he is so small compared to the double-in-size Amanas in the big tank. And the little Amana has not grown since we got him.

Dwarf African Frogs are doing very well, swimming quite a bit right at the front of the tank. Not sure what they eat since I've never observed them eating anything.

Saw our Otto today after cleaning. I thought he was a goner since I hadn't seen him for weeks. In contrast, our pleco seems to have disappeared since cleaning.

At the petstore we saw a Betta in a community tank, which seems strange. But he brought a lot of color and my son is researching to see if we can keep a Betta in our community tank.
 

addy1

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Neat! I need some assassin snails, I know there are a lot of tiny snails in that tank. My dwarf african frog seems to eat left over food. It does fine. But if you want to have some fun get some frozen blood worms when it comes to the top use some tweezers to hold then near its mouth. It will munch down on the worms and learn to come up and eat them, when you get near the tank.
 
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Bettas certainly can be kept in community tanks. Just depends on what tank mates they have :)

I currently have a female betta in a tank with guppies and a bn pleco. And a tank with a male betta and an african dwarf frog. No problems at all
 
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John, I haven't found the ADF's to be particularly dirty.

They do have a hard time finding their food though. It may be best to try and drop it right in front of them or feed in the same spot so they know where to find it. When I feed blood worms I use a pair of rounded tweezers and hold the worms right in front of the frogs face (which I do for my bettas as well)
 
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all this talk makes me want more critters!

My ghost shirmps are all dead but one, it's so hard to keep them alive longer than a week. I bought cherry shrimps and they too died in a week. I want to have shrimp but they are expensive and totally hard to keep alive! Do you have any tip?
 

JohnHuff

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all this talk makes me want more critters!

My ghost shirmps are all dead but one, it's so hard to keep them alive longer than a week. I bought cherry shrimps and they too died in a week. I want to have shrimp but they are expensive and totally hard to keep alive! Do you have any tip?
I don't know either. My longest living shrimp are big Amana's (about 2 inches long) from Petco, seems the bigger they are, the stronger they are.

I would say make sure they have plenty of food. Feed the bottom feeder algae tablets and make sure they have a lot of places to hide if they're in a community tank. We've had cherry, amanas and ghost shrimp and the only ones alive are 2 big amanas in the big tank and 1 small amana in the small tank. We have 2 ghost shrimps in the small tank until we introduced 2 small amanas there, and we think the amanas and ghosts had a battle and the single amana is the survivor. So I think making sure there are no predators or competitors is very important too.

I've got some pics. Here my my frog, pic, taken inadvertently, when taking pics of snails:
25855kz.jpg


And here is a baby assassin snail. He is about 3mm long. A real cutie.
j8igr8.jpg


And while we were looking at him, we found another assassin snail, even smaller! He's only about 1.5mm long. A real baby!
wtt9h5.jpg

Those little white things are grains of sand so you can see how small and cute they are!!!
 

addy1

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Hope my froggy is ok, they have not seen it recently. But it did that to me too, hide come out hide come out

Cute lil snails..........................nice shot of your frog
 
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I have a coconut hut in the tank with my ADF, they like to have a place to feel safe.

I find it hard to keep the ghost shrimp alive too but mostly because they eventually are eaten by my bettas. Some day when I have the space or an extra tank I would like to try and plant and shrimp tank only.
 
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Does plants/shrimps only tank needs filter/water circulation?

I had a nature pond (filed with plants and water lettuce) where I started off with no pump but then I had to add pump for a few weeks, then I didnt need the pump later on and the plants took care of treating the water. Wondering if it's ok for plants/shrimps tank only to be similar...

I love the baby snails, John. Been looking at the frog for a long time but decided I cant have it :(

My snails just died off, most of them, dont know if they got eaten by my shubby (while I was away on vacation and hubby took care of the fish) or what, I used to have like 20+ and now only 2-3 left. I saw some new snail eggs patch so I know i'll have some babies soon if the fish didnt get the eggs first :)
 

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