Zookeeper Gabe's Animal Thread V6.0

faustian said:
Words cannot describe how much I hate snakes
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Yea when the Iguana turned and burned down that beach the snakes came out of the rocks by the dozens. His escape was pretty miraculous.
 
Zookeeper Gabe said:
This is Susie my favorite chicken, she's rad as shit. She will hang out in my lap but doesn't really like anybody else.
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Birds have such diverse personalities. This man was able to teach his turkey to do tricks such as stay sit and come. She was the only one out of his flock.
 
Here's a video about aquarium fish collection and conservation in Hawaii from the hobbyist side. It's kind of long, 15 minutes, but it covers a lot of great info on the hobby.


I picked up a couple of indian dwarf pea puffers today. They usually stay shorter than an inch long and have the personality of a full grown puffer. I've got them in quarantine now but I've got to get them trained on snails. They're captive bred so they've never had live food before.
Eventually they're going to go into the snail tank, their food, and live like kings.

Not my pics
5357e7eb65608.jpg


For size reference
3a1363e2a054c179df2fb70dcf7bec45.jpg
 
jefferz said:
I've got them in quarantine now but I've got to get them trained on snails. They're captive bred so they've never had live food before.
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How do you train a fish to eat certain food? I'm curious how it goes, please update us.

EDIT:
I asked because I caught a 0.5inches grouper last year, yes that's 1cm, tried to feed it brine shrimp, bread crumbs but it refused. After two days, I decided it's best for it to be back in the wild.
 
MusterX said:
Yea when the Iguana turned and burned down that beach the snakes came out of the rocks by the dozens. His escape was pretty miraculous.
Click to expand...

If that lizard could talk, he'd probably have gotten so laid off of that story.
 
5crew said:
How do you train a fish to eat certain food? I'm curious how it goes, please update us.

EDIT:
I asked because I caught a 0.5inches grouper last year, yes that's 1cm, tried to feed it brine shrimp, bread crumbs but it refused. After two days, I decided it's best for it to be back in the wild.
Click to expand...

Please don't do what you did with the grouper again, I'll explain at the end.

There's 3 tiers of food. #1 is for the most stubborn eaters and 3 is what most aquariusts try to get their fish trained on because it's the easiest.
1. Live food - ghost shrimp and rosey red feeder fish
2. Frozen food
3. Flake, pellets, etc.

Depending on the fish and if they're wild caught or captive bred. Most captive bred fish are already trained on prepared flake food.
Wild caught you might be able to get away with a frozen food, maybe even flake.
If they won't eat those, you go to the live food. You feed the shrimp and feeder fish with certain foods for extra vitamins and such, just like you gut load a cricket for lizards.
Start with gut loaded fish for the first couple months until he's settled into the tank and healthy.
Then you start feeding them every other day for a week, get them a little hungry. They'll be fine. Then you introduce a little frozen one day and watch. If he eats it, try some more. If he doesn't, go back to live every other day. A week later, try frozen again. There are products out there to put on the food also so it's more enticing.
Then you do the same thing from frozen to flake if you want to go that way.
Sometimes they won't go from live to frozen. Then you have to make that decision if you want to try to starve them out for a couple of days and see if they'll switch over or just keep them on live, which gets expensive.
You always feed in the same spot of your tank so they get trained that anything that hits the water in that spot is food.
Puffers are a bit different in training them when they're captive bred.

But the reason I said don't do that again is because odds are you committed a federal felony if you live in the US, depending on the species that could have gotten you 10+ years in federal pound me in the ass prison.
Groupers also get huge, most get over a foot. The tank size required for one would be enormous, something only public aquariums have. A 180g wouldn't even be big enough and we're talking
7ft x2ft x2ft, the tank would weight at least 1500 pounds. And that's the only thing you could have in that tank, you couldn't keep any other fish.
When you take them home and throw them in a bucket or a tank you haven't cycled, it's the same as you going and living in a room that's on fire and you're constantly breathing in that smoke. All wild caught fish also have parasites. When you put a fish in bad water, their immune system starts to get compromised so the parasites gain strength and kill the fish.
Also, SW fish have a lot of parameters to pay attention too and are a lot harder to care for. When you don't have a filter, cycled tank, or anything like that the water gets bad very, very quickly.
I'm not trying to chew you out, just please don't do it again and if you see someone doing it, step up and say something.
 
jefferz said:
Please don't do what you did with the grouper again, I'll explain at the end.

There's 3 tiers of food. #1 is for the most stubborn eaters and 3 is what most aquariusts try to get their fish trained on because it's the easiest.
1. Live food - ghost shrimp and rosey red feeder fish
2. Frozen food
3. Flake, pellets, etc.

Depending on the fish and if they're wild caught or captive bred. Most captive bred fish are already trained on prepared flake food.
Wild caught you might be able to get away with a frozen food, maybe even flake.
If they won't eat those, you go to the live food. You feed the shrimp and feeder fish with certain foods for extra vitamins and such, just like you gut load a cricket for lizards.
Start with gut loaded fish for the first couple months until he's settled into the tank and healthy.
Then you start feeding them every other day for a week, get them a little hungry. They'll be fine. Then you introduce a little frozen one day and watch. If he eats it, try some more. If he doesn't, go back to live every other day. A week later, try frozen again. There are products out there to put on the food also so it's more enticing.
Then you do the same thing from frozen to flake if you want to go that way.
Sometimes they won't go from live to frozen. Then you have to make that decision if you want to try to starve them out for a couple of days and see if they'll switch over or just keep them on live, which gets expensive.
You always feed in the same spot of your tank so they get trained that anything that hits the water in that spot is food.
Puffers are a bit different in training them when they're captive bred.

But the reason I said don't do that again is because odds are you committed a federal felony if you live in the US, depending on the species that could have gotten you 10+ years in federal pound me in the ass prison.
Groupers also get huge, most get over a foot. The tank size required for one would be enormous, something only public aquariums have. A 180g wouldn't even be big enough and we're talking
7ft x2ft x2ft, the tank would weight at least 1500 pounds. And that's the only thing you could have in that tank, you couldn't keep any other fish.
When you take them home and throw them in a bucket or a tank you haven't cycled, it's the same as you going and living in a room that's on fire and you're constantly breathing in that smoke. All wild caught fish also have parasites. When you put a fish in bad water, their immune system starts to get compromised so the parasites gain strength and kill the fish.
Also, SW fish have a lot of parameters to pay attention too and are a lot harder to care for. When you don't have a filter, cycled tank, or anything like that the water gets bad very, very quickly.
I'm not trying to chew you out, just please don't do it again and if you see someone doing it, step up and say something.
Click to expand...

What's the reason for it being a felony? Like fish-napping?
 
fightingrabbit said:
What's the reason for it being a felony? Like fish-napping?
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Disease is the biggest issue. If you catch a fish in this area, go 10 miles down the coast and release it the fish there might not have that disease yet, but they do now. Or someone might introduce a predator that isn't from the area and it will wipe out the local population. Even simple stuff like plants, which actually do more damage, can fuck up an ecosystem.
Here's what floridians are allowed to collect. Even if you go down to florida and catch your own stuff, in most states it's illegal to bring back with you.
http://myfwc.com/fishing/saltwater/recreational/aquarium-species/
 
@jefferz a friend of mine has a real bad algae problem at the moment,any suggestions for getting rid of it?
 
neverwas said:
salt water and its green over everything.
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like this?
maroon-red-algae.jpg


It's likely cyano bacteria, not actually an algae. High phosphates usually cause red slime. It feeds off of nitrates. So his nitrites and ammonia levels are probably 0. The bacteria is eating up all the nitrates before they can complete the nitrogen cycle and turn into nitrites and ammonia.
Phosphates come from a couple of things.
1. Most often, it's the source water, the water he mixes with his salt mix for water changes.
2. over feeding. He could be feeding his fish too much. If he's using frozen food, he shouldn't be dumping the thawed juices in the tank.
3. stagnant sand bed. He should have some nassarius snails, a sand goby, or something like that in there to stir up the sand bed or he should be stirring parts of the bed manually during water changes.
4. poor water flow. Water flow not being able to reach areas and the water stays stagnant in that area.

Have him get a test kit or take a sample to his local mom and pop fish store to get the water tested. He needs to test his tank water and the water he mixes with his salt when he does water changes.
test kit
www.amazon.com/Seachem-MultiTest-Phosphate-Test-Kit/dp/B000255RF6

There are phosphate removal products out there but you have to be careful with them. There's 2 types, one uses ferric oxide and I don't remember the other one. One of them will allow the phosphates to leach back out, I don't remember which so google will be your friend their.

If he's got coral, he needs to get on top of this asap.
 
jefferz said:
like this?
maroon-red-algae.jpg


It's likely cyano bacteria, not actually an algae. High phosphates usually cause red slime. It feeds off of nitrates. So his nitrites and ammonia levels are probably 0. The bacteria is eating up all the nitrates before they can complete the nitrogen cycle and turn into nitrites and ammonia.
Phosphates come from a couple of things.
1. Most often, it's the source water, the water he mixes with his salt mix for water changes.
2. over feeding. He could be feeding his fish too much. If he's using frozen food, he shouldn't be dumping the thawed juices in the tank.
3. stagnant sand bed. He should have some nassarius snails, a sand goby, or something like that in there to stir up the sand bed or he should be stirring parts of the bed manually during water changes.
4. poor water flow. Water flow not being able to reach areas and the water stays stagnant in that area.

Have him get a test kit or take a sample to his local mom and pop fish store to get the water tested. He needs to test his tank water and the water he mixes with his salt when he does water changes.
test kit
www.amazon.com/Seachem-MultiTest-Phosphate-Test-Kit/dp/B000255RF6

There are phosphate removal products out there but you have to be careful with them. There's 2 types, one uses ferric oxide and I don't remember the other one. One of them will allow the phosphates to leach back out, I don't remember which so google will be your friend their.

If he's got coral, he needs to get on top of this asap.
Click to expand...
he's got some of that,but its mostly green algae,like fine hair.
 
jefferz said:
like this?
maroon-red-algae.jpg


It's likely cyano bacteria, not actually an algae. High phosphates usually cause red slime. It feeds off of nitrates. So his nitrites and ammonia levels are probably 0. The bacteria is eating up all the nitrates before they can complete the nitrogen cycle and turn into nitrites and ammonia.
Phosphates come from a couple of things.
1. Most often, it's the source water, the water he mixes with his salt mix for water changes.
2. over feeding. He could be feeding his fish too much. If he's using frozen food, he shouldn't be dumping the thawed juices in the tank.
3. stagnant sand bed. He should have some nassarius snails, a sand goby, or something like that in there to stir up the sand bed or he should be stirring parts of the bed manually during water changes.
4. poor water flow. Water flow not being able to reach areas and the water stays stagnant in that area.

Have him get a test kit or take a sample to his local mom and pop fish store to get the water tested. He needs to test his tank water and the water he mixes with his salt when he does water changes.
test kit
www.amazon.com/Seachem-MultiTest-Phosphate-Test-Kit/dp/B000255RF6

There are phosphate removal products out there but you have to be careful with them. There's 2 types, one uses ferric oxide and I don't remember the other one. One of them will allow the phosphates to leach back out, I don't remember which so google will be your friend their.

If he's got coral, he needs to get on top of this asap.
Click to expand...
Or - Propagate cyanobacteria and discover the origin of life.
 
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