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This is in no way a useful suggestion but it is the first thing that came to mind. I don’t really see anything practical you could do other than what you are already doing.

My provocative and biased two cents on Walstad tanks. I run only Walstad tanks (6 currently), I have started with Walstad tanks as beginner and never got into other methods. I found they are hard work for the first two months and harder the smaller the tank. After the initial period they are cheap to run and to mantain and that is a big why! I know my plants have all the nutriments they need and they can filter the water without relying heavily on water changes. I don't gravel vacuum as the accumulation of mulm is the way to keep your soil rich after the 1-2 years mark. The drawback is that once you set them up, there is very little you can change, a kind of set-and-forget aquarium. It will run for months with only the chore of triming plants and feed the inhabitants. This is a two-fold drawback: 1) you cannot move plants, 2) you stop working on the tank ... and we know we like to be busy. So actually the two months of hard work is the most rewarding part of the process and then ... you need a new tank. My main reason to go Walstad is to have a system as self sufficient as I can, which gives the most healthy and natural environment to my shrimps/fish/snails/plants. The idea of having just gravel and being forced to bury root tabs, dose fertilizer, and vacuum dirt out is upsetting, not for the cost but for the artificiality of the process. Let me this analogy, any non-Walstad tank is like brown sugar: you extract raw sugar, you separate the molasses from the sugar, you refine the sugar into white sugar and you add back the molasses. You get what you started from, just more palatable but in the process you had to create a sugar refinement plant with the obvius impact on environment. Pointless? Let me last confess that I am also in indoor hydroponics, maybe the top of artificiality: I use LEDs instead of the sun, rockwhool and feritlizers instead of dirt and ... I do like brown sugar!

So when to a get a bigger tank? These are the variables I use. N = number of fish T = number of tanks D = Cost of larger tank $ = Bank Balance Equation = 2 N x T*cos(D*$)². If this number is not zero, and if a 29 gallon aquarium looks about the same to your spouse as a 40 breeder (substitute appropriately depending on spouse). Then it is time to get a larger tank.

Here is the ROUGH equation I use for a general idea. NOTE that the waste habit of the fish can change this. Also I use this for a single fish in a tank. If I have multiple fish, their aggression has to be taken into consideration. The more aggression, the less fish the tank can have. Here are variables: Adult Length of the Fish (LF), Adult Width of the Fish (WF), Length of the Tank (LT), Width of the Tank (WT) Length: 10*LF = LT Width: 3*(LF+WF) = WT Waste: This is usually set to 1 for most fish. However for fish like carp and koi, I set it to .5 or if the fish is a very messy eater I might set it to .25. For small fish, like ember tetras, I set it to 2 or 3. Equation: (LT+WT)/Waste = Needed Tank size. I know this is solution is math heavy and is not perfect because it does not account for surface area for oxygen exchange. But I hope it helps.

Hey, I’m new to fish keeping only been at it for a few months how can I make my tanks look better?

On my intro thread, someone asked for pics of all of my livebearers. There are quite a few here in the fish barn. Here is a start, I will update as I get more pics done.

Gotta keep the crew caffeinated. ☕☕

Removed the thermometers and switched to black tubes

Yeah, I forgot to say that, but I do weekly water changes. Hope that makes more sense 🙂

Bio-load is highly subjective and is dependent on clean water, not filtration levels. This just tells us you have a filter which can make nitrates faster than most. IMO, the indicator of whether a bio-load is too much all comes down to the maintenance, not the filter. This tells us you are not overstocked. If you are changing your water to keep the nitrates down to acceptable levels at a frequency that you are willing to live with, you haven't exceeded bio limits. But as soon as you have to make more frequent water changes than you want to in order to keep the nitrates down, your bio-load has crossed the line. For some of us, two fish can be too much. Adding plants reduces your need for water changes, and effectively buys you more bioload. For myself, I am committed to 50% water changes weekly on all my tanks. I have automated enough of the water exchange process that I can live with the 2-3 hours of effort every Sunday. So I stock more heavily than most. But five years ago, I had to struggle to motivate myself to change 25% monthly on one tank. And I was behind the rate of increased nitrates. So that tank was overstocked, even though it had only a handful of fish. Remember, it's about clean water, not about excess of equipment! Bill

It seems like you’re doing the right things to prevent infection. Maybe make sure you have some salt on hand just in case? Gotta love those pirate fish~ 🏴‍☠️

Some cute trespassers.

Should not need to do much really other than monitor water quality. If it is a well established (seasoned) tank there will initially be stuff growing in it for them to eat. If you feed flake foods just grind some between your fingers when you feed the adults.

I have a few bronze Cory missing eyes. They're doing just fine, the eye sockets healed over. I suspect it was an aggressive yoyo Loach attacking them.

I am collecting what I will need for the 3 tanks. Pool Sand and crushed coral with root tabs for standard tank number 1 - ordered Eco-complete for standard tank number 2 - not ordered yet Walstad tank will not have John Innes No. 3 as this isn't available in the USA, so I will have to come up with something else Lighting will likely be Finnex Stingray LED lights Sponge filters maybe? I am leaning toward no filter.

The first metric is water quality, when your filtration and maintenance schedule can no longer keep ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, ect in check something needs to be changed. Second would be quality of life, if they're negatively impacted by the size of the aquarium, which is subjective and depends on setup so maybe someone else who knows more about those species can comment.

Might try some microworms if you get your hands on a starter culture! All of my livebearers (both adults and fry) love the variety of live foods that provides. Additionally I think it's a really easy culture based live-food to maintain for the average hobbyist. Video on culturing and feeding microworms

Hmm, you can probably just check your water quality for ammonia and nitrite spikes or high levels of nitrates to determine when to change water. When I was raising honey gourami fry (which are a lot tinier and more sensitive than livebearer fry), I used to do a 15% water change every 1-2 days until they got a little older and hardier. My current grow-out tank is chock full of plants though, so I hardly detect any nitrogen waste compounds and I just do weekly water changes out of habit. It's also become an algae farm, which is great for the fry to snack on but unpleasant for pictures. 😅

Yup! I just dip the end of a chopstick in the powdered food, shake off the excess, and then tap the chopstick over the tank. If you have fry from bottom feeders, then it helps to swirl the chopstick in the water so that the powder sinks faster. My dwarf red coral platies gave me 59 fry in the past month or so, so I'm also feeding and hatching out BBS right now as we speak! 🙂

How fun! I always love new fish babies. If you want to get them growing fast and big (so that they'll have less chance of being eaten), I highly recommend hatching out live baby brine shrimp (BBS). Lots of good protein and fat in their yolk sacs, and the fry can't resist the wiggly, swimming motions of the BBS. Other good fry foods include Hikari First Bites, Repashy gel food (even just the powder), Sera Micron, and Easy Fry food. I like to feed several, tiny meals all throughout the day (really, whenever I'm near their tank) so that they always have access to food. Keep up with the water changes, and you shouldn't have much trouble! P.S. What kind of guppies are they? Would love to see a pic if you get the chance. 🙂

How about if you just send them to me and I'll be able to tell my wife I actually didn't buy any tanks when I redo my fish room?

I still think it's nice, I've bought a couple audio books through it, but to your point my life is typically pretty habitual as far as shopping goes. Google only cared to ask me a few times if I went to Jewel AGAIN..... Glad you guys are cleaning up with it.

I've been told that baby daphnia moina are a good alternative to BBS i.e. good for raising fry. I've yet to try moina myself, but I'm looking for them. I find that daphnia magna are good for a variety of juvenile to adult-sized fish including pseudomugils, rams, and angel fish.

Results may vary, I've been at it for over a year and have gotten far less. I got a lot of surveys at first but now I only get surverys about once a week.

I wrapped my Rubbermaid tub in this reed fencing material from Home Depot: https://www.homedepot.com/s/reed?NCNI-5 (non-affiliate link) It clips pretty easily with shears or heavy scissors. By cutting the fencing a little too tall and angling it, it pretty much stays where you put it. 🙂 I think it was less work than painting.

I think there is a thread on this here: It has lots of calculations, and some numbers direct from the manufacturer that might help.

@Cory thinks these are for plants. Oh no. These are for my secret Pea Puffer breeding program. 🤓

You should probably count from the 98% water change. That could reset you. I think adding a little at a time is a great plan. Add some, wait a week, test before the next water change, repeat.

I can't agree more with you here. Don't chase your PH with chemicals. First and foremost, it's unnecessarily expensive. More importantly, it puts an unnecessary burden on yourself... i.e. "I better keep up with my buffers or all my rainbows are toast". Not relaxing at all, much easier to either just keep species that do well with your water or balance the tank with natural solutions. With different woods, rocks, sands, substrates or coral you can raise or lower the PH without constant maintenance or the risk of crashing.

Dan from Get Gills got his Amazon puffers to eat a mix of Repashy's Grub Pie and oyster shells (like the kind you give chickens), and said it did a really good job of keeping their beaks short. I don't know how hard it would be to get them to eat it, but maybe it's worth a try? Trimming their beaks is the reason I've not kept them, though I'd love to have them; way too anxious about beak trimming.

Back when I first stepped foot in the warehouse. Cold and empty. It's come a very long way.

This is better than the way I keep doing things...forgetting which profile I'm using on which browser so that I keep paying twice.