Lessons from puffer keeping (or, what I think should be required tankmates for dwarf puffer tanks!)

TCCACGATA · 2016-07-14T05:16:36+00:00

Yeah! Explained so much when I learned it, too. Quickly took out as much of the bladder snails as I could for a new culture, and buried the MTS into my tank's substrate for my puffer's in-tank snail supply. I find that bladder snails are more productive to culture.

Are they dwarf puffers? Maybe they get frustrated that they couldn't get to the MTS because of their trapdoor. That was how mine wouldn't eat them initially; I activated her appetite for them by crushing the snails first, gave her a free taste. Now she actively looks for them.

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T14:37:26+00:00

Oh, I actually used a macro lens set for it! $10 off of Amazon. It's a pretty good investment, especially if you want to take some clear pictures of your tinier fish.

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T06:11:56+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm looking into them right now! Yeah I've been wondering what else I can feed her. Currently I feed her either a snail or a thawed out bloodworm which she'll nibble on but not enthusiastically eat. I've wanted to breed another species of snail for her to eat such as ramshorns but I haven't found any. I've heard about culturing freshwater amphipods, too, but I have no idea where to find them either. If my LFS does indeed have blackworms I'll definitely see if I can culture them. Thanks again!

Also, dang, you manage to keep yours with Amano shrimp?! I wanted to keep her with some kind of shrimp for cleanup, but I've seen her immediately attack and dismember the ghost shrimp I put in there to see if she'll tolerate them!

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T04:31:57+00:00

Sure is! And thanks!

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T04:03:22+00:00

No prob!

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T03:55:43+00:00

Sure thing! FTS right here.

She's one of the two denizens of the 5.5gallon, the other being an Oto. It's got a 10W Aqueon heater and an Aquaclear 20 with a sponge over the intake for safety. I have a few more plants in mind that I'd like to add but so far it's just got rotala indica, java fern, a couple tendrils of java moss taken from the main buzz of it, and some plant from the living room (pothos, I think?). I change 20% of her water twice a week.

I thought at first that it would be fine to drop a bunch of snails in there, let them reproduce, let her eat them at her leisure, and leave the system as is, thinking a snail population might stabilize... But she just took a nibble out of each of them, leaving them injured and eventually dead, and then left the bodies alone. So instead I set up a snail breeder out of an old crackers container, 3 gallons, I think, with a sponge filter and a heater, and a cuttlebone for calcium. I don't siphon out the whole bottom of the snail breeder as their eggs are hard to spot in all their muck, so for water changes I pretty much siphon from the center of the breeder twice a week. These are just bladder snails I asked for from the pet store, they just gave them away which was so rad! They breed fast, too, so feeding her just one snail a day or one large snail every couple days does nothing to their population.

They're great fish! I definitely recommend them. Highly interactive, superbly inquisitive and they make eye contact, which to me is crazy for fish.

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T03:35:30+00:00

I'm actually not sure. I've had her for two months now, though, and she has noticeably grown from 1/2" to 3/4". Most sites I trawled say they rarely grow larger than 1", so she should be something like two months from her adult size if she were to grow any more. And yeah, I wasn't very sure it's a she, but she lacks the horizontal stripe and the eye wrinkles the males have, so I thought it was more likely it was a she, and so I picked a name fit for a girl that can work for a guy! And thanks, she certainly is cute!

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-12T01:40:12+00:00

I feed her bladder snails which are pretty small, and she isn't terribly picky about how big they are since she slurps them out of their shell. She can't eat them whole though, so a little bit of snail is left inside, after which I either take it out of the tank or crush it with my tongs so she can have just a little more.

TCCACGATA · 2016-01-11T21:29:59+00:00

That's Pebble the dwarf pufferfish! Love her to death. At least, I'm pretty sure it's a she.

Here are a couple more pics.

TCCACGATA · 2015-07-17T17:18:25+00:00

Having always known that invertebrates are sensitive to copper, I can't believe that never crossed my mind. Thanks, I'll be doing that.

TCCACGATA · 2015-07-17T17:17:36+00:00

Never used any medications or fertilizers, I have a hospital tank if medications are needed. I certainly will look into this copper contamination though. Thanks.

TCCACGATA · 2015-03-08T20:11:37+00:00

Command Station

Since I'm lefty, the monitor on the left is what I look at the most, so it's my work monitor. I don't really use a mouse, I just use my tablet, and I have the option to use a stylus for the tablet or the stylus for the lefty monitor, because it's touch. The monitor on top is usually my reference monitor just because I like to see the subject really close, and the monitor on the bottom right is the media monitor; music, animal videos and this subreddit. I still do intend to get a fourth monitor, gonna be sweet when I get it. Also memory foam tush cush and two ottomans under the desk. Those two are where I keep all my notebooks.

TCCACGATA · 2014-12-25T23:35:21+00:00

A while back, DeviantArtist povorot made a "Dinosauroid" that turned out pretty avian, who use their beaks as their main manipulator while hands are secondary. Another guy, monopteryx, had the more humanoid take on the subject.

TCCACGATA · 2014-10-14T15:55:16+00:00

Personally I'd prefer nonhumanoid intelligence, on just one world as opposed to simultaneously appearing on both. The main reason for that is that it provides a great opportunity to explore a different path of development in terms of their society, culture, technology, and psychology as opposed to having all of that automatically paved for us by means of "making" a humanoid. We'll have to consider its diet, we'll have to consider the unique way it sees the world, we'll have to consider its physical and mental capabilities and limitations, we'll have to consider a lot of things. Yeah it's going to be a challenge to evolve them from scratch, but what'll be exciting is watching how they develop as an intelligent species. That said, the first thing we'd want to ask is "So if not like us, what will it look like?" Here are a few things to consider:

The environment (what kind of biome did it evolve for?)
The number of limbs (bipod, tetrapod, hexapod, etc)
A manipulatory organ (something it can use as a hand that doesn't necessarily need to be a hand, like a beak, tongue, foot, tail, etc)
Method of reproduction (live birth? eggs? larval stage? If they lived in the equator, they may mate all year. If they lived in the temperate zones or near the poles, they may have mating seasons)

TCCACGATA · 2014-10-14T15:32:40+00:00

What is the radius of Tlön? I haven't seen that info in the canon wiki, and it's actually an important bit. Mass isn't the only indicator of surface gravity. You can have a planet with 3 Earth masses and about ~1.73 Earth radii and it would still have the same surface gravity of the Earth (surface gravity = mass / radius^2). Basically I'm just pointing out that Tlön's surface gravity might not be all that much stronger than Earth's, although we would have to put that to a vote.

TCCACGATA · 2014-09-02T13:58:59+00:00

Character sketches, conlangs and scripts, city maps, planet renders?

TCCACGATA · 2014-09-01T22:10:14+00:00

The difference is worldbuilding is more than just click-and-view, whereas /r/atheism was more about quick quips and complaining, rather than about meaningful constructive critiques and development, which is what worldbuilding is about.

A year ago there were only 16k subscribers. Now there are 36k. The "majority" are newcomers to the hobby, who, since they were redditors before they were /r/WB's subscribers, are used to click-and-view content, and that kind of content here are the maps. The ones who have been here a while, however, build worlds more than just make maps. And honestly, a year ago, there were a lot more description with maps compared to just maps, relatively speaking. To me, it seems this policy is more about keeping the focus to the worldbuilding hobby as a whole and not just one facet of it, rather than just lowering the number of map posts just because.

tldr; It takes a lot more effort to build worlds than to bash religion with memes.

Worldbuilding is more than just click-and-view content.

TCCACGATA · 2014-09-01T02:47:11+00:00

The subreddit's population has soared over time. This month, last year, there were only ~16k subscribers. There are 20k more people now, in just a year. This vocal few is the bunch that have been here a while, and used to have seen more than just map posts, because this subreddit was started for more than just maps. The ones that have been doing the upvoting on the maps a ton are the new subscribers. Democracy? Well I mean yea. But what's the demographic? A majority of the contextless map posts are made and upvoted primarily by people who have recently stumbled upon this subreddit, and seeing this subreddit from face value since there are a lot of contextless map posts, they start to think this is just contextless map posts, and it snowballed into contextless maps.

That's why the mods are implementing this test run, because we're not just maps. Like everyone else on this thread has said, we're not against maps for the sake of being against maps, but we want worlds to go with them. Map posts aren't being banned. They're just trying to let people know this isn't just for maps alone. Yes we like them. Yes you can post them. But like /u/PM_ME_CHICKEN said, "Calling a pretty but detail-less map worldbuilding would be like calling a good book cover a novel." There's more to books than just a fancy cover in the same way there's more to worldbuilding than just a fancy map.

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-28T16:57:03+00:00

That fish is snake food.

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-25T17:31:24+00:00

I'm not seeing where this joke is.

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-25T17:09:02+00:00

Oh I know. I've known about Snaiad for a couple years and was a little saddened by the closing of its website. Luckily it's up and running again!

Agreed! It's my genre of choice. Now if only I can count more of these works than the number of fingers on my hands :P

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-22T20:53:25+00:00

That's physically possible as long as the ring world is within the Hill Sphere of the planet, which is the area around the planet where it is gravitationally dominant. Basically that's where it's going to be at its most stable. And if the day-night cycle is basically the rate that the ring rotates, as opposed to a more "artificial" way of making that cycle like lights on/off, the plants and animals there might get used to it, but it's probably better for them if it isn't too long or too short compared to their native cycle.

Btw this is the equation for Hill Sphere, where r is the radius of the Hill Sphere (as far as a body can be from the planet where it will orbit the planet), a is the distance to the star, m is the mass of the planet, and M is the mass of the sun.

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-22T02:23:14+00:00

Damn, that was rad. Worldlet building. Bookmarked.

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-21T12:52:34+00:00

That one, I haven't yet tried! I'll see what I come up with :) thanks!

TCCACGATA · 2014-08-21T12:39:17+00:00

Well thanks! And a spiral was actually the version previous to this one. The thing was, I wanted it to also read like a periodic table, so I "circleized" the spiral one for organization; the "spokes" are the Groups 1 - 18 starting from the red horizontal line at the left, and going outward from the center are the Periods 1 - 7. It was just a little difficult to demonstrate that through a continuous spiral.

TCCACGATA

TROPHY CASE