You can easily run air to any outdoor pond or tub with this cheap combination of tools. A USB powered air pump run by a small solar panel with USB outputs is all you need! The video below shows my setup running on my 100 gallon guppy tub - which you can read about here.
Setting up Solar Powered Pond Aeration
These little USB air pumps can drive a steady stream of air to the bottom of a 2.5 foot deep, 100 gallon stock tank.
USB Nano Air Pump
Such small air pumps use very little power, so a single solar panel hung in a sunny spot can run one for most of the day. While this setup won't provide aeration at night, it will increase air exchange during the hottest part of the day. This helps prevent the tub from becoming stagnant and keep the water oxygenated for the fish.
Look for a cheap 20 watt solar panel - like the one shown below - that has USB ports as its power output. Then you just have to plug the air pump into the panel, and place it in a sunny spot. I hung my solar panel on the side of shed, and it powers the solar pond air pump for 10-12 hours a day during the summer.
Solar Panel / Air pump
Start backyard tubbing with your own 100 gallon stock tank! These are great for small outdoor ponds. The rubbermaid construction will last for decades, and they are much cheaper than a similar size aquarium.
Known commonly as the Neon Dwarf or Praecox Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia Praecox are a small, colorful rainbow fish from New Guinea. They are an interesting schooling species that is best kept in larger groups of 8-10+, with at least a 1:1 ratio of females to males. An excellent community fish, they do well in peaceful setups that are heavily planted.
I keep 20 dwarf neon rainbows - 10 males and 10 females - in my 90 gallon rainbowfish community tank. The neons share this aquarium with other larger rainbowfish species and they get along with everyone. Praecox are active swimmers and will go after most foods pretty aggressively once they're settled into the aquarium, which makes them fun to watch.
Sex can be easily determined based on size, body shape, and fin color when the fish reach adulthood. Both males and females will have shiny, iridescent blueish bodies. Adult male Praecox have red fins, while females have orange/yellow colored fins. Males will also have a larger, taller body shape with a more pointed head while healthy adult females will be smaller than the males.
Male and Female Dwarf Neon Rainbowfish
Setting up a Breeding Tank
Breeding Aquarium
A breeding aquarium for Melanotaenia Praecox should be kept 73-82°F (23-28°C), and at a PH slightly above 7.0. As in most cases, aiming for stable parameters is better than aiming for perfection. A tank with a sponge filter is ideal for this because the fry of this species are incredibly tiny at birth.
Dwarf neons are egg scatterrers, so the ideal setup is a bare bottom aquarium with a large portion of java moss or a spawning mop. I have used both as egg laying substrates and the fish readily spawned in both the moss and the mop.
The purpose of the spawning mop is to give the eggs a safe place to stick to that can be removed and transferred to a rearing tank if desired. You can make your own spawning mop using wool string, or buy them pretty inexpensively.
Selecting and Preparing Breeding Stock
Before moving fish into a breeding tank you'll want to make sure you have a few healthy, well fed adult specimens ready to breed. As with any fish, a high quality diet consisting of a good variety of live, frozen, and dried foods is ideal to get them ready to breed. Females need to eat well to produce lots of eggs, and males will display their best colors and breeding activity when well fed.
Look for males with a nice tall body and colorful fins. Females should be grown out and well fed before being selected for breeding. I have had good success just selecting one pair and placing them in a breeding aquarium together.
The pair may take a couple of days to settle into the tank before they start to show breeding behavior. The male will display for the female and the two will swim through their chosen spawning site, which should be a spawning mop or moss portion. Eggs will be deposited over the course of a few days, so dont pull the pair out as soon as you see eggs.
Praecox Eggs
Praecox eggs are very small so they can be challenging to spot. Once the pair has spawned, they can be removed from the breeding tank and the eggs will hatch within a week. You can also carefully move the spawning mop or moss with the eggs on it into a fry growout tank with a sponge filter.
Caring for M. Praecox Fry
When dwarf neons hatch they are tiny. Like, crazy small - less than half a centimeter. Because they are so small these fry need very fine powdered fry foods, cultured infusoria, or live microworms to feed on. I would recommend having a combination of very small foods ready before your fry hatch. Even newly hatched baby brine shrimp will be too large for newborn M. praecox to swallow.
After a week or two on starter fry foods the young should be large enough to take baby brine shrimp, which you should know how to hatch yourself if you want to breed fish. Baby fish should be fed multiple times a day for optimal survival. They have very short digestive systems and no accumulated body mass to live on, so they need to eat frequently.
M. praecox fry should eat readily and will put on some decent size in just a few months if well fed. These fish are amazing to watch in large schools, so successful breeding is very rewarding.
This DIY LED Bucket Light was inspired by a similar build by The King of DIY on Youtube. It only cost about $15 to make, and the entire project took less than an hour.
This light hangs above my 40 gallon Lake Tanganyika shell-dweller aquarium. It uses a single LED bulb, which puts out plenty of light for a shallow 40 breeder layout with no plants.
LED Bucket Light
Materials
All materials needed for this build are listed below, with links to buy them on Amazon.
I had all of the hanging hardware and the LED bulb laying around already. Most of these materials can be swapped out for something similar. For example, you could replace the bucket with a plastic pot.
How to Build a DIY Bucket Light
1. Take apart the clamp light:
First remove the clamp. They are usually held on to the base by a thumb screw and come apart easily. Unscrew the metal reflector from the light as well, so that you have just the light socket base and the power cord.
2. Drill a hole in the bottom of the bucket
just large enough for the light socket to pass through, but not as large as the black plastic base. Insert the light socket into the hole as show below. Screw eye bolts into the base of the bucket.
3. Assemble the light:
Insert the metal reflector into the bucket and screw it onto the plastic base. Install an LED bulb appropriate for the wattage and size of the light socket. The light is now complete.
Inside of Bucket Light
4. Hang the light.
This step is pretty straight forward. Attach the chain to the eye bolts and hang it from your ceiling or wall.
