Spawn of the Juvies

I have 7 juvenile half-wild silver angels in the 125 Buddha tank, along with 8 Denison's barbs, an orphaned black neon juvenile and 3 Otocinclus. I have plans in the future to sell the angels and stock with clown loaches, but in the meantime I want to grow out the angels a bit. The orphan black neon came from a Rena Filstar filter I was cleaning out on the deck, and I found it in the canister. The Buddha tank was the closest so I popped it in there. It is still pretty small so I suspect it was from a spawning in the 150 and the fry got sucked into the filter where it hung out for a while. Remarkable!

Over Thanksgiving my husband had a hunting accident, requiring hospitalization and a series of surgeries, and when we finally got home from the hospital I was on the phone with the surgeon when I happened to notice eggs on the valisneria leaves! I almost dropped the phone. "Sorry, Doc, I gotta go - my angels are spawning!"  No, I actually did finish the important conversation (husband doing fine now, by the way) and after hanging up I saw that two leaves were covered in eggs, and the pair were fanning and in the process of laying and fertilizing more. They were chasing off the other angels who approached, but nothing too nasty.

I was surprised, since these fish are only 3" from nose to tail, and have a bit of growing up to do, but I suppose it isn't too unusual. I guess they're happy!

In the video you can see they don't pay much attention to the barbs, but focus on the other angels. They did a pretty good job and kept the eggs going for about 4 days (not sure how long the eggs were present before I noticed them - I was in a hospital with my husband in Harrisonburg for 3 days) before they finally disappeared. I'm sure they'll have several more spawns before they actually get it right. It reminds me of the "Pregnant at 16" TV show - the babies are trying to make babies, lol.

Otos and Pearls

Sounds interesting, right? Actually, I've had a monster diatom outbreak in the 125, which otherwise houses 7 juvie wild-cross silver angels and 8 Denison barbs (adore these fish!). I'm not interested in keeping a pleco in this tank, though I've got plenty in my 150 and could spare at least one. Deborah was looking at the tank, and I was complaining about the diatoms, when she suggested a troop of otocinclus (Otocinclus vittatus, most likely). What a brilliant idea!

This tank is somewhat sparsely decorated, with just a few pieces of wood and rocks, and the Buddha sculpture dominating the back wall. I want to leave plenty of swimming room for the angels as they mature, though I may want to create more areas for them to claim as territories. At any rate, otos did not occur to me, but YIKES there is a lot of diatom algae! I added 5 and they're not exactly "going to town" on the algae like I had hoped, but you can see where work is being done. Fingers crossed.

These fish are notoriously tricky to get established, and, like cardinal tetras, they either die off soon after getting them or they live a nice long life. They are rumored to be collected using cyanide gas in the water to slow them down, which can certainly cause lasting damage, but whether or not that is true they are certainly likely to be somewhat starved while being shipped and kept in a dealer's tank. There is not much to eat for them in these (typically) pristine tanks, since they need algae, which is not usually present. I tried my best to pick some of the more robust of the fish available.

I also obtained a trio of Trichogaster leeri, or the pearl gourami. These fish are in the 45 gallon, recently vacated by the juvie angels. This is a pretty heavily planted tank with a large vertical planted driftwood structure at one end of the tank, going all the way to the surface, and this is ideal for any gourami, since they like to orient themselves next to a structure as they move from the top to the other areas of the tank. Chuck at Azalea Aquariums was able to choose a male and two females for me, and after getting them home I'm sure that's what I have (thanks, Chuck!). They are typically shy and these are no exception. I'm sure they'll relax a bit more in the coming weeks but they colored up beautifully and are very attractive specimens. They are one of my favorite gouramis. I've been wedded to South American species for a good long while now and I wanted to branch out to some Asian species, and that's why I have the Denison barbs as well. I'm not terribly worried about keeping a biotope in either the 45 or the 125, though the 150 is an approximation of one.

I'm hoping my new additions will settle in well and thrive, and I'll try to get some pics and video of these tanks to show off my new additions.

My plants are not doing that great in either setup, though the 45 is having better luck. The 125 is new, so I know the plants need a bit of time to settle in, but I don't think the light is strong enough. With a tank that deep you can't use the typical "watt per gallon" estimation of how much light you need. I'll see how things go after I get through the new tank diatom phase and see if the plants perk up. They're not dying, but they're not growing, either. I have jungle val and regular valisneria, anubias and java fern/moss. The usual suspects! I'm still not sure if I'll add any geophagus or other cichlids to the 125.

Shy Fish

I am accustomed to wild-caught species of aquarium fish showing a tendency to be shy. I believe even domestic discus can be shy as well, rushing off to a corner or turning to face the back glass of the aquarium when the tank is approached. My own wild leopoldi angels got over this, at least with me and my family, though they never showed themselves when I had guests.

Recently I hosted a meeting of my aquarium club, the Central Virginia Aquarium Society, and a good group was in attendance. My normally gregarious and frantic-for-attention orange-head Tapajos were sedate, almost tan in color, and were not looking like they usually do - this went on the entire time I had guests. I knew my leopoldi angel would hide - he always does, but I did not expect the geos to act this way. They didn't hide, but they did not look as glorious as usual. They appeared mildly stressed.

Last night I was looking at them, and the males had iridescent blue/white mustaches, vivid orange heads, iridescent blue stripes mixed in with the deep red stripes on their fins, and the sub-dominant males and females had the spangling and stripes one associates with this species - they were stunning! The mustaches on the males looked artificial - like they had been painted or lit from within like a neon sign.

I wish they'd had this appearance when I had company, but mainly I am intrigued by their response to visitors. Most aquarium fish seem quite oblivious and you assume they don't recognize you, their keeper, but maybe they are smarter than we realize. My wild angel is certainly very discriminating when it comes to being in open water versus hiding in his special cave formed by driftwood pieces. People who don't live with me but are very frequent visitors, like my sister, get to see this beautiful fish. Anyone else can only glimpse a stripe or two in the dim cave in a rear corner.

This is why I need photos and videos to showcase these amazing creatures!

My goldfish, my half domestic angels and my puffer do not seem to discriminate - they never hide or seem shy in the least. They're just always hungry so any being with thumbs is fair game for begging. My Denison's barbs, the lone occupants of my 125 currently, seem to recognize me and come up to the top corner where I usually feed them when I approach, but it took them a bit of time to figure this out. They do not seem to do this with visitors, but rather continue their endless cruising in mid-water.

Maybe it has to do with how many generations away from wild the fish are, but I'm almost certain the Figure-8 puffer was wild caught, since I don't think they're typically bred in captivity, though I might be wrong about that. He's just so desperate to eat that he doesn't seem to care who is doing the feeding, and will shamelessly beg. He's in a very busy part of the house, the kitchen, where two hallways intersect, with frequent foot traffic close by his tank, and I definitely think he prefers this to where his tank used to be, in my office, where there was much less activity.

The Angel Shuffle

Yesterday I added 3 juvenile angels, 50% wild x 50% domestic silvers, to the 150.

The single leopoldi angel rushed out to see, obviously excited to see angels that look similar to him. He has been interacting with them in a semi-aggressive manner, rushing toward them but never coming in contact. I think he is checking them out to see what they have in mind. They pretty much completely ignore him! They continue to poke around, eating voraciously, and don't seem to mind this giant angel getting into their business. I'm still watching things because this wild angel, who has been the only angel in the tank for quite a while, may not take kindly to conspecific interlopers. It might help when I add the extra two tonight, bringing the group of newcomers to 5.

I will then add the rest of the angels from the 45, which will be seven, to the 125 to grow out. Incidentally, when I used an aquarium volume calculator I determined that the 120 is in fact a 125 gallon, so I'll go back and edit my previous posts for continuity. I've got a SCHWEET piece of driftwood, a stumpy, branchy thing, soaking in my pool and I'm eager to get it waterlogged and in place in the 125 as a central feature. I really like how it looks now:

However, I simply must have this stump in the tank so this temporary scape will have to go. I never planned on keeping this arrangement, but was using the rocks from another tank as seed material, and the driftwood along the back is very nice that I collected from the James River, so I'll keep that, and some of the plants. I'll post pics once I get this stump in place.

I'll be adding Acarichthys heckelii (threadfin acara) to the 125 for the bottom. I was going to have them, then I wasn't, and now I think they'll be a good choice for this setup. I'll give up on the rooted plants, I think.

Then I'll have the 45 to empty out and redo. Am thinking about loaches and/or gouramis for that tank, since I have not had an Asian setup since my dwarf puffer tank. I know there are Denison barbs in the 125 (for anyone who is even remotely paying attention to this....) but I still consider the 125 to be essentially a SA tank.

More to come..

Flirting with Ferts

I've decided to start dosing my low-tech tanks with some simple ferts. I have no plan and am only using what I have on hand, which includes:

Seachem Root Tabs
Seachem Flourish Excel
Seachem Flourish Iron

I'm using the package directions and we'll see if I can detect an improvement in plant growth. My tanks have good lighting and no algae problems, so we'll definitely be able to determine if the ferts cause an algae outbreak or if the plants suddenly respond with new growth. I'm too lazy to calculate exact ratios of each specific nutrient and mix up a batch custom for each tank, so we'll see what happens.

If it seems to be helping then to save $$ I will likely need to go back to bulk ferts that I mix up myself in specific ratios, like I used to do when I had high light CO2 injected setups. That was a bit of a pain and, obviously, I gave it up for the time being, but we'll see. I'd like to see my plants look just a bit healthier.

The Trouble With pH

There's no trouble with pH, just kidding!!!

Well, sometimes there is. When you're importing your wild caught Altum angels you're probably going to be using R/O water and keeping your pH at 4-5 because these fish will keel over at the mere mention of neutral pH.

All kidding aside, some species, especially those collected straight from the wild, need to have the pH matched to their habitat to maintain them comfortably or to have them spawn for you, but oftentimes they can adapt slowly to the pH of your tap or well water.

However, for all the rest of us folks who mosey down to the LFS and admire the offerings, with plans to add them to our tank, or to set up a new tank with them, we don't have to worry about pH. I very, very rarely even test for it. When I was dosing CO2 into a high light, heavily planted tank I did measure pH as a way to monitor my CO2, but otherwise I don't test. I don't need to. I do plenty of weekly water changes (see the end of my last post for details about water changes) and this helps avoid Old Tank Syndrome, so I'm not worried about my pH dropping over time. It WILL drop over time in the presence of nitrogenous waste, and our tanks are a nitrogenous waste factory. Keeping up with the debris and excess nitrate will prevent a buildup of decaying material that acidifies the water, dropping the pH, and rendering the tank unstable. We do NOT want this!

So often I hear at pet stores or read it online that people need to adjust their pH. A customer will bring in a water sample to determine why the fish aren't doing well, and they always test the pH. The conversation goes like this: "Oh, I see your pH is at 7.4. We need to get that down to 7. Here's a product you can add to your water and it will take care of that for you. This is your problem." I have to speed walk out of there when I hear that, because I just might blurt something out involuntarily.

On the web I have read this type of thing as basic instructions for setting up a tank, or doing water changes. "Prepare your new water going into the tank with water conditioner for chlorine and chloramines, and then use your pH adjuster to get the pH to 7."  Click. I'm out.

Most currently available species of fish you'll find at the pet store or from your local hobbyist can do just fine in whatever pH your tap water might be. Honestly.

Years ago, in the early 80's when I was new to the hobby, I was told upon arriving at my new home in South Florida, with my fancy goldfish in the Coleman cooler after a 14-hour journey, that the tap water there was moderately hard and had a pH over 7, so it was not good for aquarium fish and would kill them. Wow! I had no idea! I collected 3-4 plastic 5-gallon water cooler jugs (the water was not safe for people, either! Wow!) and even used one glass 6-gallon carboy to tote water home from the grocery store water dispensing machine ($$). I am strong like bull and I did that for 9 years. I actually sold those goldfish when I moved back to Virginia, them having come from Virginia with me originally. Great fish. What I didn't know was that most aquarium fish are bred and raised in Florida, and, in fact, the water in Richmond, where I came from, is moderately hard and has a pH of ~7.4. Boy. I feel like a real dummy now, but, as mentioned in a previous post (kids, brace yourselves) there was no internet in 1984 and I relied upon the information provided in books and from the LFS. (People also did not carry cell phones back then, but I don't like to overwhelm anyone with prehistoric facts so we'll move on)

So, the upshot is, use your tap/well water and see how it goes. You'll need to test it for things like Nitrate (NO3), since excess nitrate is not uncommon in many water systems and even in wells that are close to farms, and that can cause algae problems and even health problems in the fish if it is at high enough levels. The pH is probably fine, and if it is on the alkaline side more's the better, since it will be easier to keep it there. When you start adding pH reducers then you're what we like to call, "chasing the dragon" and that means fighting the natural tendency of the water to creep up to a more alkaline level. Unstable and variable pH is harmful to fish, much more so than a steady higher pH.

I have kept, and still keep to this day, wild caught Leopoldi angelfish from the Rio Negro in Brazil in pH of 7.4 to 7.6 without any problems. I know they won't breed for me at that pH, and that's fine, but it does not affect health or vigor. They were adapted over a period of months and it went just fine.

At this point in my life, with young children at home, it would be too much of a pain for me to try to maintain tanks with low pH, with R/O systems and mixing vats, etc. It is doable, and plenty of people do it with great success, but I don't have the time to fool with it. Right now I am able to maintain 6 large tanks at home and 3 at work with straight tap water PWCs (Partial Water Changes) and everyone's happy and healthy, with an easy regimen that does not take me very long at all.

That's why I'm so glad that I can keep most available species of fish in my tap water just like it is without worry. You probably can too. This is the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Silly.

Feed Those Hungry Bacteria

I was doing a search on the web recently, trying to collect data about the exact process of seeding a new tank with bacterial colonies. I wasn't looking for information on HOW to do it (I've been doing this for many years) but specific measurements of when and if ammonia and nitrite are measurable, or do they never show up at all, and how many hours/days before nitrate shows up in a new tank that's been properly seeded. We all consider this to be "instantly" or "silently" cycling a tank, and I've never bothered to actually measure the process and see if I can measure anything happening, or if it is truly and indeed silent. My fish don't seem to be affected negatively and the tank seems to be cycled right away, and off I go.

I came up empty in my search, however. There was an abundance of information about seeding a tank, why it was a good idea, and how to do it, but no data collected in the process after it is done, and how long it can take.

What prompted this post was some disappointing advice I found being given over and over on general advice sites like Ask.com, and it is something I have run into frequently on the fish forums I frequent. People new to the hobby who are setting up a brand new tank have enough information to know that the tank has to be cycled, and they know the probably should not do it with fish, and it is at this point they are told to "seed" their new tank. Friends who have aquariums offer to help, and the new person will announce that their buddy is giving them a sack of gravel from their tank and they will pop that sack into their new tank, wait a couple of weeks for the bacterial colonies to grow, and then add their new fish. Another advice site had a person giving out lots of recommendations, since she said she had quite a few aquariums, and she said that you needed to set up your tank and let it run for a couple of weeks without fish to allow the "bacterial colonies" to establish before putting the fish in. She assured the reader that if they had any questions at all about their aquariums she'd be more than happy to help. Bless her heart.

I don't pretend to know everything about the freshwater aquarium hobby. Far from it. The more I learn the less I seem to know. I have killed a lot of fish from pure impatience or ignoring what I know to be true, thinking that maybe this time I can fudge the natural progression of a tank settling into stability. The good thing for me is that there was no internet when I was new to the hobby so I could not embarrass myself too badly on the worldwide web with my ignorance, because I'm arrogant enough to spout off at the mouth without really knowing what I'm talking about. Now I do it on my blog, where I'm allowed to spout whatever the heck I want! LOL!

However, I do know a few things, and one of the few simple truths about an aquarium is the nitrogen cycle. Ammonia produced by fish and inverts or decaying food will foster the colonization of bacteria that consumes this ammonia, which is extremely harmful to fish. The waste product of those bacteria is nitrite  (NO2), and another species of bacteria colonizes to consume that nitrite, which is also harmful to fish. The waste product of those bacteria is nitrate (NO3), which is harmful to fish but less so at low levels, and it is the NO3 that we control with water changes.

So we've got two sets of bacterial colonies that we must wait on to get their act together and make the tank inhabitable for fish. Every established tank you see, with fish swimming happily about in good health and eating well is loaded up with bacteria that render the fishes' waste harmless to them. It can take quite a while for this process to finalize itself - in experiments I've done it has taken as long as six weeks for a fishless cycle to complete. There are other factors, such as temperature and pH that affect the cycle, and different bacteria colonize in brackish and saline environments. It can be frustrating to wait, looking at this glass box of water that has no fish and no apparent purpose. If you don't have a source of seed material then a fishless cycle is the way to go, and that's what I'd do if I found myself with no other tanks and no friends with tanks. Just settle in and wait, and it will eventually happen, dosing the tank daily with pure ammonia. Ammonia is food for the bacteria and is mandatory for the cycle to happen.

What people with more than one tank have done for years is to "seed" the new tank with bacteria from the old tank. The bacteria in the filter of an established tank is a precious commodity, and we take care to protect it. We clean out our filters carefully, avoiding sterilizing techniques and being sure not to use chlorine-laden tap water to rinse out our sponges and pads.

I'm very glad to see lots of advice being given on the web about seeding a new aquarium to avoid New Tank Syndrome. This is great, and I'm glad this bit of news is getting out to newbies right off the bat, since it used to be you had to learn the hard way.

When I started keeping fish in the very early 80's as far as I knew there was no such thing as a "cycle," and ammonia removing chips were my friend. I was constantly battling ammonia spikes, cloudy water, and fish gasping at the surface. The advice I was given at the pet store was the following:

• You have to remove the ammonia with Ammo Chips in your filter. There's no other way to remove it, and if you don't your fish will die (this part, at least, was true).
• Don't do too many water changes - just top off the water when it evaporates for best results. Changing water screws up the natural balance the tank has achieved.
• If your water is even slightly hard out of the tap you can't use it for your aquarium - it will kill your fish. 

So, times have changed and the information has slowly tricked out there, so even though I'm still hearing pet store employees advising people to use pH adjuster to get their tap water to 7 (that is for another post, please don't get me started on that now....), for the most part new people to the hobby are starting out with more knowledge than I did.

What's wrong with the information provided about seeding a new tank? Well, the very important fact that the bacteria needs to be fed to stay alive. It will die (I wish I had a reference for you) within hours without a source of ammonia. When you get that sack of gravel from your buddy be sure the gravel was collected from only the surface, because lower than a few centimeters you've got anaerobic bacteria (reference goes here) and the bacteria we need for cycling a tank is aerobic bacteria (reference goes here). Once you get that gravel it will be better utilized, since the bacteria is aerobic, to place it in a filter, or at least hang the bag in front of the aquarium outflow, so water flows over it. Lying in a lump at the bottom of the aquarium, in a corner where there may be very little water flow depending on the filtration and flow you have in your tank. it will likely do you no good, the bacteria dying without access to the ammonia in the water column.

This is why the advice to set up your tank and run it for a couple of weeks to let the biological bacteria accumulate is nonsense, because in the absence of ammonia, which I presume is the case in a newly set up aquarium, no bacteria will grow. Bacteria needs to be fed, and if you don't have your fish at the ready that seed material is going to go to waste. High or low temps will kill it as well, so be careful when you transport it from one tank to the other.

Think of it like a heart transplant - have the needy patient (your new tank of fish) ready and willing to accept the gift of the new heart (bacteria) and while no ambulance or police escort is required, put the dirty filter material or gravel seed material in a cooler or other container that will maintain the tank temperature and conditions until you can get it into the new tank, where it can go right to work oxidizing ammonia. If you've got your own established tank then you can just walk it over to the new tank and get it in place quickly for the best results. You can start your new tank filter on an established tank for at least two to four weeks to get it seeded, and be sure the filter material has brown goop on it - that's the good stuff! I tend to run at least two filters on most of my tanks so I can mix and match, swap and reap the benefits of bacterial colonies at the ready.

I know that as long as there is the World Wide Web there will be all kinds of information supplied, and it is up to us to do our own research and determine whether the source can be trusted. I'm sitting here polluting the Web with my own opinions and experiences and some may disagree with me (please comment if you do - I'm a big girl and can handle it, and it would let me know that someone out there is reading all this crap I write), but I have achieved some degree of success by doing a few things:

• Protect your bacteria - it can be delicate. Feed it and provide the proper environment for it to thrive and don't disturb the tank much at all for a few months after the cycle is complete. A well intentioned gravel vac on a brand new setup can cause a mini-cycle. Even your betta bowl is cycled, so when you dump it out every week (yes, every week, the betta will thank you for it) don't scrub the sides or the substrate too much. Your bacteria is there doing God's work for you. 
• Change your water. Every week. Even if it is only 10% do it regularly. Once I began doing water changes like clockwork my tanks became very stable, without illness or water quality problems of any kind. This might be the best thing anyone can do to maintain a healthy tank. 
• Overfilter
• Change your water.
• Be patient in all things Aquarium. 
• Stock carefully and pay attention to your fish and their behavior with each other. Remove anybody causing problems. When you remove this troublemaker now you can set up another tank! Yay! 
• Change your water. Every week.
• Plants almost always help keep a tank stable, if you have fish that won't eat them. There are several species of plant that don't require substrate and are hard to kill for all you people out there who think they have Black Thumbs. I'll bet you can do it. Try, anyway. A little bit of fluorescent or natural light and some fish to provide nutrients and you're probably going to have success with plants like Java fern, Java moss, Anubias sp., water sprite and even duckweed. Crypts are pretty easy too, with low lighting requirements for the most part, though they are heavy root feeders and need a good layer of gravel or sand. 
• The final recommendation, if you do NOTHING else, change your water. 

The Silent Cycle. Sort of.

My plans are coming together and it is time to put some fish in the 120. I will start with some Gambusia, or mosquito fish, which were collected locally and live in a large tub on my deck, eating mosquito larvae. This has definitely made a dent in the mosquitoes we encounter outside.

I put 7 full-bodied females in the tank, and the next day I took the gunky Filstar XP3 off the goldfish tank at work, which is a 45 gallon and houses 5 fan-tailed goldfish about the size of walnuts or ping-pong balls. I figured the filter, which has not been cleaned in a while, would have more than adequate biobugs for the Gambusia. I brought it home and removed one of the clean XP3's off the 120, swapping it out for the dirty one from work. I then put the clean one on the 45 at work for the goldfish.

Typically in a well established tank you can literally replace the filter completely with a brand new one without showing signs of a cycle. I would not do this on a tank that was set up less than 6 months ago, though, because it is easy to cause a mini cycle by this type of disruption. I have even created a mini-cycle by being too aggressive cleaning substrate in a tank that was younger than 6 months. The 45-gal at work has been set up and stable for a year.

Cut to 12 hours later and I tested the water. I typically don't do this when I seed on a massive scale like this (using the whole filter off of an established tank with a heavier bioload than the new tank), but I was having a discussion about silent cycles and seeding new tanks on the CVAS forum, so I wanted to document how a silent cycle might progress. To my surprise, I found 0.25 ppm NH3, or ammonia. There was zero NO2, or nitrite, and 5 ppm NO3. The fish appeared perfectly normal and happy, and the water was crystal clear.

12 more hours pass and I'm getting the same readings. I started to wonder about my so-called "silent" cycle, and was surprised that I was seeing the ammonia, though a low reading. I don't like seeing ammonia at all, since any exposure at all can be permanently damaging to the gills of a fish (Reference Here). I decided to take action, though I could have waited another day, perhaps. I think this kind of thing is typical, but since when I do my usual seeding procedure I never test the water and everything works out peachy. I go by the appearance and behavior of the fish, and have never had a problem to date, so it never occurred to me to test the water right after the new tank is seeded.

Anyway, I took some gunky filter sponges off my snail tank filter (AC30) and squeezed that goop into the 120, which clouded everything up, of course, but, lo and behold, 12 hours later I was showing zero ammonia, zero nitrite and 5 ppm nitrate. The cycle is done!

However, this is not the time to stock willy nilly. Patience is required, especially at this delicate point. The tank is very vulnerable to a mini cycle now and I must be careful not to disturb the decor, substrate or filters for several weeks, at least - the longer you wait the better. I will add stock, though, since I'm not going to keep the Gambusia in this tank - they're needed back outside. Our warm weather can linger well into October so mosquitoes will be with us for a while to come. I'll be replacing the Gambusia with the Denison's Barbs soon, since the ones I'm looking at are about the same size as the Gambusia, and will have almost identical bioload.

After they're settled in for a couple of weeks I'll add a few angels, but I might add about 6 angels at once and add more seed material at that time for insurance. These angels are still small, about quarter to half-dollar size in the body, but when it comes to cichlids they can be territorial, so adding one, then another, then another later on might be a bad idea - the newcomers will almost certainly be bullied by the ones already there that have set up a territory.

Since I have so many established tanks up and running right now it won't be hard to get more seed material when I add the angels. MTS is paying off!