Why? They cant even get aid without it being drugged. This is fucked
This is a living dinosaur known as an African butterfly fish. Wikipedia Entry These guys have been around for some time and are the only surviving species of their genre. The closest living relative is an Arowana and these guys have a similar looking mouth and body structure.
As for Behavior they don't actually do much. They spend a lot of time pretending to be a leaf and hiding and waiting to Ambush pray as their Ambush predators. They're wild caught when you buy them from the store as they are extremely difficult to breed in captivity. It can be done but it is rare.
Since the Wild Caught you'll probably need to start them off on a diet of Live Food if you intend to keep them. I started mine on crickets and I was able to switch him to a form of cichlid sticks that are used to feed arowanas that float. They are picky about their dry food though so good luck on that.
Overall I've had them for a year and have found him to be really forgiving despite my newish aquarium mistakes. He has survived both massive general hardness increases and massive pH drops. They are unbelievably tough.
I don't know if you can see this but those fins are made for flying. You need a tight fitting lid or they will jump from the tank. They're also both a weird contradiction to kind of own. They need a lot of cover near the top of the water line but they like to have spots of Open Water. So you cannot just put in floating plants and call it a day. You need to remove enough of them but there's open spots of water for him to poke his head out to eat food. He also has a very hard time eating when there are floating plants around him.
Here in this picture he's waiting for food because it's feeding time. They are very intelligent. He does not run for me anymore when I stick my hands in the water to try and feed him as long as I don't spook him.
He's one of my favorite fish I've ever owned. Currently he lives in a bog Style fish tank with a ton of floating plants up top but lots of open spots of water for him to poke his head out. The pH in this tank is around 5.5 with a KH level of 0 and a GH of 5°.
I don't mean this to sound crass but 2% unemployment sounds lovely. The United States is normally around 9 to 12% unemployment.
You're right we definitely do have more open positions and a lot of those jobs, But ultimately I think it kind of washes out by the fact that everything here is so expensive and that unless you're paid extremely well in your field it's really hard to make it.
Anyway this has been really interesting hearing about some of the issues going on in the netherlands. I have some research to do. Your government tends to be a lot better at governing in mind so I'll be interested to hear what the solution that y'all come up with.
Little mini pond with rice fish sounds awesome! That's when I'd like to do. They don't need a heater because they're cold water. They breed on their own and they're beautiful to view above. I really like fish that are kind of understated like Japanese rice fish. Although I've seen some really gorgeous ones that beat out even the prettiest Guppies.
As far as advice goes for your little mini Pond I would recommend using the walstd method. I keep a tank that's unheated and with no filter myself and really the only two things that are required in my opinion are a sand or gravel bed. If it's gravel it needs to be deep enough to hold nutrients underneath it.
I typically prefer sand. Then you can add snails like Malaysian trumpet snails or assassin snails which I think can handle the cold. You could probably even get away with nerities but they turn the substrate and help pull mulm underneath it and it keeps the tank cleaner.
If you're doing a mini Pond you can get away with using all sorts of terrestrial plants, I've seen videos of people using peace lilies as like the main Center Point and Main vegetation filter, I really want to try something like a money tree because in the wild where they're grown they actually grow in a bog like a mangrove and can be grown in straight up water without rotting. Plus the fish will eat whatever rot's there and so will the snails if you choose to add them.
A lot of people are going to be like don't add Malaysian trumpet snails, they're pests, yeah they can get out of control if you overfeed the tank but I find they control themselves really really well and if you have something they can dig into like a sand substrate you don't hardly see them they're normally underneath the substrate. They're awesome nocturnal so they don't come out at night and they're super good at cleaning algae and turning your substrate. So for me they're one of my favorite snails to include in a tank that has a sand substrate because it helps keep the tank clean.
Past that it's a lot of fun and I think you're going to really enjoy it. Just get ready to do a lot of testing and have a way to react if you do need to change something about the pond. So you know get good aquarium test kit. You only needed to check ammonia, nitrates and nitrates, but the pH test is necessary and can inform a lot. And I find the gh/kh test also be very helpful for diagnosing what's going on. You be surprised how often it's not the ammonia causing problems it's the ph and the lack or excess of GH.
I've had my cold water tanks set up for about 6 months which is kind of like a mini pond. It doesn't have a heater. It doesn't have a filter it only has a light. I did add a small AirStone just to keep scum from forming on the top. I really didn't have to do much after I planted it and put on the sand cap and let everything settle. It's been going strong. I have had to correct some things because my water is damn near distilled and that's causing issues with some of the fish I want to keep which need much harder water than what I keep. So if your water is very low on GH or KH make sure you get argonite which you can get at any Petco or PetSmart to help buffer your water. It's the same thing as crushed Coral but you don't have to order it online and it's easy and accessible.
You can also save a ton of money by going and getting a lot of your supplies from the hardware store instead of From aquarium stores so You can get like black diamond blasting sand if you want a black substrate. A lot of people use pool filtering stand for a pure white substrate. I like to use coarse sand that people use in concrete. Where I'm at it's $6 for a 50 lb bag. The equivalent aquarium substrate is over $100 for a 50 lb bag. Generally it's $30 for a 20 lb bag. Just make sure to rinse it well before you use it. This is also the place where I get my lava rocks and then if I need bigger forms of lava rocks I glue them together with super glue. You can fill in the gaps the with sphagnum Moss and superglue. It works a lot like the paper towel method but looks a lot cleaner. Huge bag of lava rock is like $5/$6.
You will hear some people complain about how rocks can interact with the water and cause pH changes. And I will tell you that I have tried to use this on purpose and it is a lot harder to do than you think one or two rocks that may mess with your pH isn't going to really have an effect on your pH even over a long period of time. Think of it this way your tank will consume the GH and KH of the tank and you need some way to replenish that over time otherwise the pH of the tank will crash and you could lose some of you're more weak or sensitive tank inhabitants. By the way these rocks that can interact with the pH are typically white rocks. It's marble, limestone, argonite, different forms of calcium carbonate. If you were to just buy the random rocks from the hardware store that aren't white the likelihood they'll interact with your water is practically zero. If your super worried about it that's why you have the KH/GH test and you can test daily if you want.
I'm sure you know about Gathering materials from nature too so I'm not going to go into that. But I do find that the hardware stores often overlooked as an excellent source of cheap resources.
Last bit of advice is that sometimes when you're getting fish initially it can feel really awful if they pass away but a lot of the time these fish are very sick and you don't have a good way of treating them. If you're in the US you have access to a lot of medications you can start them on kanaplex which is a really good General antibiotic for initial use if your fish look sick. If they have parasites you can use Metroplex and a combination of prazipro. It's really good at treating most parasites but if they have worms you need to get another medication called Expel-P. That medication is light sensitive so you need to turn off your lights after you give it and it's best given at night.
If they're not getting better on kanaplex or you think you need to boost it mix neoplex into some frozen food that you can get at Petco/Petsmart.
Just used one scoop for one Ice Cube. Most of the frozen foods that you can get at Petco or PetSmart are in ice cubes about the same size.
After you get your fish in through the quarantine. And they're about 2 months old you can stop worrying about if they're going to die from infection at that point the only thing that will kill them is tank stress. So just worry about keeping a good tank and they'll be fine. Obviously when you're dealing with live readers you're going to have a lot of these little fish and you'll notice that some of them just die. That's not anything you can do the sometimes just have bad genetics because they're just aren't predators that are able to eat these fish and they use large broadcast rates. Since you're trying to keep these fish I'm sure you know this and I don't want to sound patronizing I just want to reiterate it because I have wild type guppies Which do really good but occasionally I do lose one or two here and there.
Have fun friend if you're not having fun in this hobby you're doing it wrong 🤘
From my personal experience people in the US don't have a lot of different jobs to choose from but we really don't. Unless you have the education and connections for the most part you're relegated to retail. It's hard to even get into management nowadays. Sure there's job growth but for the most part it's for minimum wage retail jobs or salary jobs that are for Dollar General where your work 80 hours to the Bone.
Most of my family Works Blue Collar construction jobs because they pay more consistently and they're easier to get into then the white collar stuff that I work in
Would you mind expanding on how there's a limited job market in the EU? I have the standard American perspective of the EU of being this nigh utopian place of freedom and competition even though I know it's actually not like that. The EU does definitely help with those type of regulations. The United States answers to the people with the most money typically the companies. That's why the iPhones would never be USB C if it was up to Americans.
I mean that's kind of the Crux of the issue though. The mom and pop shops really want minimum wage to stay low so they can stay competitive with the big box stores.
But those same big box stores also drive out the mom and pop shop by driving prices much lower than the little shops can and then they suffer because people stop going to the shops because they're more expensive.
Regardless voting with your wallet is not necessarily a viable choice and I don't generally think works well. United States has been pushing to buy from small business for over 20 years and yet small businesses still keep on failing. The United States only really helps out big business. Small businesses are left to fend for themselves and often don't make it. Honestly even if the public is really small business oriented unless the government is also small business oriented it's kind of like swimming against a tidal wave.
The United States right now has a a social system that's threatened very close to Bare Bones and is often non-existent for the poorest. Even to make it work it's a bureaucratic nightmare that involves multiple departments and could involve months of legal business wrangling.
So I can see for you why maybe this minimum wage doesn't make a lot of sense for the Netherlands but in the material circumstances surrounding the United States I think this minimum wage increase makes a lot of sense especially considering that we haven't had a significant wage increase since 2009. The median minimum federal wage should be $22 and that allows the poorest communities in the poorest parts of the United States to have a living wage. For anybody else that's living in poverty that's still not enough especially in the blue states where most of the social services are located. Even in New York City $30 an hour for minimum wage it's going to be hardly a drop in the bucket.
I'm not sure about the Netherlands housing crisis but what adds insult to injury and a lot of Sting that ours is that ours is self-induced. It's literally being created by companies like Black Rock and other hedge fund in stock portfolio businesses buying up residential houses and keeping them empty until the time is right to rent them out to maximize their profits. Currently there is roughly 2 million or so empty houses in the United States and there's only 600,000 homeless people at Last count.
No I appreciate what you're trying to get at though and the perspective you offer even if the rest of the community did not. I'm not saying it's your job as a foreigner to worry about any of this. United States politics is complicated and honestly it really it shouldn't be up to people outside the country to fix it. Perhaps the Netherlands will show us a way out of the mess that we've dug ourselves into with solutions to the problem that you guys have because we also have those problems. I kind of feel like they're more Universal problems though at this point
Oh I've seen some people keep these things in some really cool tanks with plants like the peace lily in small outside ponds. I think these would look gorgeous like that and I think they would do really really well. As long as I could keep the temperatures correct in the water in good condition.
Thanks for the advice friend!
Oh I see so we're coming from a very different places. We don't have nearly the type of safety net that you guys do out in the Netherlands. I'm sure you guys definitely have your problems and your fair share of issues but to Americans it feels like the United States is literally collapsing around us.
Like most of us if we lose our job we're probably going to lose the place we live as well. It's not uncommon to have to move back with your parents to couch surf after you lose a job. The minimum wage in America doesn't even cover like a car payment for a decent car. It's not nearly enough to live on it's being basically given change all day and then ask to live on it on top of the fact that you're treated like absolute crap. You have zero say in your work and how it's done and if you have problems with your boss your boss can just fire you because they feel like it. As long as it's not one of the discriminated categories with of which there are only five they can fire you for anything up to and including the color of your shirt at any time without notice. And in many places in the United States if you get fired you may not qualify for unemployment or any of the state assistance.
The absolute only way to make it out here is to get a job that pays enough money so that you can find a place to live and have Private health insurance. If you can get on the Medicaid system it's actually not bad but they'll take it away from from you over getting things like a bonus or maybe a dollar in raise.
We live in a capitalist hell hole where we can't hold anybody to account. We can't hold our politicians to account. We can't hold our police to account. Nor can we hold our justices to account.
The government has determined we all just have to grin and bear it and pray they don't alter the deal any further to take more from us.
That's why you're going to see a lot of business apathy from those in America because we've been screwed most of our lives and are tired of it. It's very blatant and very obvious
Ooh I'll definitely be looking into these when I have more room. Not for breeding I just like looking at fish. I'd be a terrible breeder I'm so forgetful.
Big oof. India seems to be doing much better on their minority policy than even United Kingdom is. Seems the West may not be the Bastion of so-called Freedom anymore
I was going to say that's still better than the Lemmy scene.
This has got to be one of the dumbest betta fish I've Ever Raised. Can't figure out where the food is but I know he can see things and he's just kind of bad at eating in general he likes to jump out of the water. To be fair this is the first I ever got from like a reputable breeder normally when I keep Petco bettas
Full tank shot:
I just found like 5 minutes looking around on Google this was one of the first results: https://www.epi.org/blog/most-minimum-wage-studies-have-found-little-or-no-job-loss/
I understand that this would eat into your profits and would probably eat into the amount of money that you can make off a business like this But if the business is not viable Paying a living wage where the minimum should be 30 an hour then the environment is not correct for that business and the business isn't viable.
I don't want to sound cruel but for a long time businesses have gotten away with paying people pennies for work that they should have been paying dollars.
Who cares? Study after study show that stores and corporations can swallow these costs and even when passed on to the consumer the increase is much less then thought.
Besides as long as people can afford groceries I don't think people will care if restaurant and fast food are a bit more expensive
I really like their personality. They're kind of like smarter Guppies. They are very all over the place in the tank I really like their behavior and I think it's really really cool to see. the ones that I've been taking care of for a really long time seem to know who I am And don't fight super roughly if I'm trying to get them out.
Fish are cool man so I swear they're really conscious and actually recognize us and what's going on in their little worlds
Yeah things will get worse in some ways and things will get better in others. Not that it balances out but it's not like there won't be objectively good things that happen in the future.
I have hope. We shall see what the future holds for us
Highly recommend. I could give you some advice to help save as much money as possible if you're interested.
Setting up aquariums is really really fun just make sure you know how to cycle an aquarium before you do so otherwise you may go through some heartbreak with your fish.
Oh and Fritz bacterial products are no joke.
I think things are getting worse for white people exactly the way you say. I think for minorities though it's kind of always been this bad or even worse made by people being far more racist.
Things are still pretty systemically racist but there has been somewhat of a correction and that probably does result in things being a bit better for some minorities.
Ultimately I think that means that We live in better times today because they're more accepting than we did Even 20 years ago.
As far as getting by I think things have been like this for a really really long time and people were patient and sold a crock of shit and with covid it's forcing a lot of these things to come to a head.
Not only that Trump himself is a governmental crisis and when there's chaos in the government there's absolutely chaos in society. Simmering tensions tend to get exposed.
One of the tanks I am working on and intend to post pictures of when I can get some good ones is my "cold water" no filter walstd tank. I designed it specifically for a community of dwarf crayfish to live alongside Rosy Red Minnows and zebra danios. Thought you guys would appreciate a better picture of one of these crayfish who is in good health.
Here are some additional behaviors of these guys interacting
Picture of mating:
Pictures in the tank
Oh I don't give a crap about their "savings".
Even if self checkout is more expensive to the companies I still prefer self-checkout for personal reasons rather than economical ones.
Besides the issues and opportunities for theft that self checkout creates means that it's probably a wash as far as how much money they're saving.
I definitely understand though not wanting to like scan your own groceries or deal with the whole system it would refer somebody else to do it. That's why they should have both available.
He was dying. He had been on his back for 24 hours. I picked him up out of the fish tank and he could barely move. I dropped him in this fish tank in the pipes so that he could find some protection from the mollies.
And he bounced right back. He's still a little slow but he's making his way around the tank on all of his legs now. And he's able to give off enough of the threat display that the Molly's leave him alone.
I really need to go through and figure out all of the parameters of this tank.
Got these guys about a month ago and have tried to move them to a couple of my various tanks in my house and they always struggle so for now they live in the magic quarantine box that keeps everything alive.
I also got a dwarf crayfish I threw in my cold water tank where there are other dwarf crayfish living. And it started having serious struggles so I put it in this tank and it popped right back up and seems to be doing okay.
The secret is apparently a tablespoon of sea salt for every 3 gallons of water....
Stupid magic mystery box that seems to keep everything alive.
Never seen a nerite snail eat pre-made fish food. These come from NorthFin which I heard quite a few people in the aquarium Community claim is some of the best food and in my mind this is confirmation because I've never seen nerite snail eat anything other than tank algae.
Thought you guys would just appreciate!
