BBR in the shallow moss

Being couch potatoes getting fat.

Spray paint

Rustoleum Painter's touch gloss black for the bottom and Brilliant blue for the back.



A painted tank with beach sand.


Just make sure the tank is clean. I clean with acetone. If done well you'll easily get 5 to 10 years provided the adhesion was good and you don't get a lot of leaks drips and salt creep. Make sure the glass is clean dry amd warm. Occasionally you get a tank that peels but its few and easy to fix.

Pretend you're painting a car thin even multiple coats without drips and it will last for years.

Switch Plate

Boundless Joy Arising

By Sybil Shane.

Home depot disposable oxygen

I bought this valve as a beer wort aerator. The bottle of oxygen is $8 at home depot.

The valve has traveled with an empty box, a bottle was purchase, fish packaged and the valve and fish shipped back.

Here is the best deal I've found but I did not purchase it from them:
Oxygen valve for disposable red tanks from Home Depot.

All mine came from craigslist. Both the beer version and the real cylinder/regulator. The later is much more cost effective in the long run but you can ship or travel with the little valve and get the oxygen at any hardware store.

For the main tank I got one of these (minus the regulator):
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/1120/Air-Filling-Kits

Here are the two individual pieces:
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/1116/Air-Nozzle
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/2464/Oxygen-Hose

This seems to be the easiest/cheapest ($60) plus you have a cutter/brazer if you're into that sort of thing:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202185043/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

DIY goldfish net

I made this fry net out of an oak dowel, stainless steel wire, fish net and polyester thread.

Formed the wire around a baby food jar over lapping at the handle. Turned down 90 degrees along the handle then again into a hole drilled into the handle. The legs are about 1/2 inch different in length to provide stability to the loop.

A double wrap of wire twisted to lock the legs of the loop into their holes.

No need to buy from Japan.

Should last for many generations of fish.

Simplicity.

Form and Function.

See all my other nets here.

BBR Itoh and Hattori

I sorted each group into two equal lots based purely on structural quality and I just noticed all the a grade fish in each group are still black and the b grade have all demelanized!

I love seeing patterns.

Itoh a

Recirculating Systems

 Here's the basic concept of a recirculating tank at work:

All the tanks are plumbed to one of several sumps. Unfortunately it is virtually impossible to get pictures. I tried this morning but there are tanks and tubes in the way. That's why I posted an old photo of the rack. Where I took that picture several years ago is not a 300 gallon Cube tank.

The basic concept is a tank is plumbed via bulkhead to a drain that leads to a sump. The sump is where your filtration is which leads to a pump and UV. The water is pumped from the sump to the tank, overflows the bulkhead and returns to the sump.

Here is a goldfish tank I installed for someone, I built the filter out of a 29 gallon tank:

http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidLains/JoeSGoldfishTank#

This is my main filtration sump which is plumbed to drain so it can over flow. Water can be added to any tank and the sump over flows to drain:

All my larger tanks (and sumps) are plumbed to a system out one bulkhead or to drain with the other. This allows clean or dirty fish to be isolated or the fish to be kept on system or in a large water change style.

Here’s the main sump when it was being installed:

A bunch of pictures of the last major addition a year or so ago:

http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidLains/GoldfishGarage02#

And a few various pictures of a trout tanks system and etc:

http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidLains/FishProjects#

Shallow BBR Tank

20 gallon long, 4 inches deep, java moss, box filter, and central recirculating water.

The shallow water tank is on my welded 20 gallon long rack which holds 6x 20s per shelf for 3x shelves holding 18 tanks with a 150 gallon tank on the top.



On the right is the full depth stand pipe with perforated pipe covered in fine mesh. This set up can allow newly hatched goldfish to be raised on recirculating water without them going down the drain. On the left is the shallow water BBR drain which is installed vertically and is simply perforated pipe and a cap.



Here it is just after installation. Each tank has air, recirc water and draining to central system. In this picture it is still missing a few tanks on the bottom and has the old 29 gallons on top which have since been replace with a 150 acrylic tank on top.

I reviewed the slides with our fish pathologist and their conclusion is that the white cells here are mucous cells and not adipose.

This is what likely causes pimples on the wen, extra mucous builds up and becomes a home to microorganisms occupying the crevese in the wen.

I found an interesting zebrafish paper where the essentially made "wens" or papillomas all over the fish.  There are some great pictures here:

 

Ethylnitrosourea (ENU)-induced hyperplasia and papillomas (gross). A, Multiple papillomas (arrows) in a fish with a total of 22 papillomas (Fish W). B, This white plaque of epidermal hyperplasia (between arrowheads) obscured the normal melanophore pattern of the zebrafish stripes (brown dot pattern, left and right) (Fish K). Epidermal hyperplasia obscured the pigment pattern, because melanophores are near the epidermal basement membrane, deep to the thickened epidermis. C, Early sessile papillomas (arrows) frequently occurred at or near the distal ends of scales (Fish I). D, Two sessile papillomas (arrowheads) on the dorsum, midline, of Fish O. E, A pigmemted pedunculated papilloma. This papilloma was 1.5  1.2  1 mm and had a narrower 0.4  0.3  0.1 mm stalk (Fish N). Cells with melanin pigment were present histologically (see Fig. 2F). Scale bars: 1 mm.

Microscopic appearance of epidermal lesions induced by ENU. A, Normal epidermis of body scales is thin and is composed of keratinocytes (k), mucous cells (m), and club cells (c). Keratinocytes (k) are squamous epithelial cells that are red, slightly smaller than club cells, and that have intercellular desmosomes. Mucous cell nuclei are pushed to one side. Mucous cells stain light blue with hematoxylin and eosin after formaldehyde fixation (shown), and deep blue after paraformaldehyde fixation (not shown). Club cells are pink, with central nuclei and occasionally scalloped edges. Scale bar:10 mm. B, Hyperplastic epidermis was thicker than normal but was composed of the same cell types as normal epidermis. Scale bar: 100 mm. C, Sessile (broad-based) papilloma composed of keratinocytes (k), mucous cells (m), and club cells (c). Scale bar: 100 mm. D, Pedunculated papilloma. All except two pedunculated papillomas were composed of keratinocytes (k), mucous cells (m), and club cells (c). Medium-sized vascular spaces were lined by a thin endothelium (arrowheads). Capillaries (*) contained red blood cells which have dark nuclei and red cytoplasm. Scale bar: 100 mm. E, Pedunculated papilloma. This is a section of the largest papilloma, which measured 8  4  4 mm, and was attached to the dorsal surface of the head between the eyes of fish H by a 0.3  0.3  0.1 mm stalk. The papilloma and eye are shown; the remainder of the body extends to the left. Histologically, keratinocytes and mucous cells, but not club cells, were arranged in solid, nested, papillary, or glandular patterns. Vascular spaces were present. Scale bar: 1 mm. F, Pigmented papilloma. This papilloma variant was composed predominantly of a uniform population of keratinocytes that flatten towards the surface and that are arranged in cords around circular areas of dense collagen and basement membrane material. Numerous melanophores account for the dark brown spotted pattern seen grossly (see Fig. 1E). Scale bar: 100 mm. G, Whorls of squamous cells (squamous eddies, arrowheads), occurred at the distal end of spiny rays of some fins. Scale bar: 100 mm. Hematoxylin and eosin.