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Hello! I'm a young aquarium hobbyist who has been interested in fish keeping since my dad bought me my first tank for my 8th birthday (he was kind enough to maintain it for me). When we went to the pet store, my mom wanted us to get a goldfish in a bowl, but my dad was set on a "real" tank with a school of tropical fish and everything they needed. Since then, my family has kept tanks on an off, and I eventually invested in a 20 gallon and set up a community tank. After taking it down and giving away the fish because of a move, I finally got back into the hobby this summer (probably because I've been spending a lot more time around the house : ) and am working on building a heavily planted tank. My water is very hard and I didn't want difficult fish, so I settled on White Cloud Mountain Minnows (a yellow type from Vietnam, I think) after watching Cory's "Best Beginner Fish" video and doing a ton of research. They just went in a couple of days ago and I'm already loving their color and movement. I'm a huge fan of Aquarium Co-op's videos on YouTube (hence the White Clouds) and I also love Irene's advice over at Girl Talks Fish (hence my frogbit setup). I just joined this forum because of a question I had about a betta tank, but I think I'm probably here for good. The idea of a forum specifically about fish keeping that prioritizes caring and respecting others is right up my alley. That's all! Can't wait to be a part of this community!

Here's my breeding setup for my rainbow shiner 10gallon Sponge filter with a directional flow Temp at 70 Ph 7.3 ish This setup will only work if "she" is ready. It may take more than 1 try. I wouldn't leave them in their for more than 2 day, since the male can rub her side open. Separate the male and female. I start by pumping up my female with quality food/dry food for a few days to weeks. When she is fat with eggs, I'll place her with the male in a plant basket with a few good size rocks that night. Spongefilter flow will be pointed into the basket. They should spawn in the morning and be done soon after. I'll remove the parents and collect the eggs. I treat the eggs just like how you'll do for rainbow eggs. The whole idea is to have a setup where the parent have no chance of touching the eggs. In the wild theyll be swimming upstream and when they spawn the egg is blow downstream immediately. In a home aquarium most hobbies will breed them in large group so the fish that aren't breeding is eating the eggs.

40 Gallon South American themed with neon black tetras, panda corys, a breeding pair of Nannacara anomola and a bristlenose (Rio Ucayali locality). 29 Gallon Bristlenose breeding tank (once the itty bitty long fin green dragons grow up). Currently also housing a couple honey gouramis, black neon tetras and some otocinclus. 10 gallon betta tank with one Betta splendens and 6 cardinals. 10 gallon shrimp tank with 9 shrimp and 12 chili rasboras (so tiny!) 5 gallon betta tanks with just the single betta. I'm not feeling so sad today. Pretty grateful that we have the room and resources for this many aquariums as it is. 🙂 By the way, my son is drooling over your gobies!

We are going to try to talk you into live plants!

Just change water until it is clear, and if you haven't already please get yourself a test kit or test strips--you wont be able to test for nonspecific toxins directly, but if the pH has changed dramatically that would be a good indication there is still a problem in the tank. Many chemical reactions will alter the pH of water as part of the mechanism. Do also watch that the dye hasn't disrupted the nitrogen cycle. Beyond that, the water changes should do the job, but adding activated carbon to the filter for a week would be excellent insurance as well.

Bred over 400 fish and culled almost half These are farm stock and they carry deformity. Such a shame for a native fish to have this much deformity being in the fish trade. Top photo..top 2 was cull due to having a short face Bottom phot..top female was kept and bottom female was culled I didn't notice at first but alot of the fry had weak dorsal which came from one of the breeding female. She won't be breeding for me next year. bottom photo..the bad female is at the bottom with a weak dorsal. On top of her is a older female for comparison

I'm the opposite, I have many tiny fish. I keep fast growing plants like Val and water hyacinth, the fast growth of the val leaves and the hyacinth roots keep their environment in a state of slow constant change inbetween trimmings. I do feed baby brine which IMO is great nutritionally but not "challenging" since they are easy to catch and stay free floating, but I try to give them a workout with dried foods. I put a small pile of food on a mat of duckweed and they have to poke and work at the duckweed to bring the food down, seems to liven things up a bit.

I finally mounted the TV in my bedroom. Quite the relaxing view.

Let's kick off my fish room journal with an entry/update on my Blue Gularis breeding project for the Coop. What I enjoy most about operating a fish room focused on breeding is that there will be people in the store that see my fish, get excited, and want to take them home. Call it silly, but it's just something that really drives me, knowing that someone is going to enjoy my fish and bring them happiness. So, that being said, I asked @Cory what fish I should work with to make available in our retail store. His response was the Blue Gularis. I have kept Gardneri in the past and had great success breeding them, but the Blue Gularis is known to be more difficult. Well, I am up for the challenge. I started off by sourcing 30 eggs from Aquabid for the Blue Gularis "Loe" variety. The eggs arrived with instructions to sit on them for 7-8 weeks from the date of collection, which was about 1 week prior if I recall collectly. True to my self, I let my impatience win out and tried to hatch 10 eggs about 3 weeks in. Let's just say you should follow the seller's advice. 😆 From that botched attempt I wanted the remaining 4 weeks to hatch the rest. After putting the eggs in a shallow tupperware it took about 48 hours for the first fry to hatch. I think I got maybe 2 more natural hatches. I then used the vial pressurization method to force hatch the remaining eggs - picked this up from Gary Lange. The remaining eggs went in a vial with a little bit of water. Put the vial in the bottom of a 40 gallon breeder and loosened the lid to allow water pressure to enter the vial. From that, I had one more egg hatch. With several more eggs unhatched I decided to try the other method Gary talked about and that is to leave thee vial in your pocket and simply walk around. Sure enough this did the trick and all remaining eggs hatched. I raised the fry on BBS (via Ziss Brine Shrimp Hatcher) for the next several months. Currently the Blue Gularis are spread across several tanks in the fish room with only one tank having multiple occupants, 1 male and 3 females. I will probably spread these out too. The attached image is a shot from today (7/22/2020) of one of my males. Even if I don't have success breeding on my own I feel accomplished getting them to this point. Their looks certainly are worth it alone.

We got my kiddos fish tanks this summer. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I love research so I’m really enjoying it! We finally cycled the ranks and are slowly adding fish. My daughters 15 gallon has cardinal tetras and snails. Our quarantine tank has newly acquired panda cory’s and two more cardinal tetras to add to my daughters tank. My son’s tank has snails and a new blue and red Betta named Optimus Prime. Glad to be here and learn more!

Hello Henry. Yes I understand why you have a question... How I resolved this for my own peace of mind. Is using my trusty Python No Spill system and a “high sided flexible tote” Walmart, I place a pond pump inside the tote, add the measured amount of dechlorinator to the tote, an amount needed for the whole volume of water in my tank. Put the Python in the tote fill it. Doing my best to match the temp. Attached to the output of the pump, same sized tubing and a hook, (Also from Python) to hang on the tank to fill the tank. (Getting that hook is worth it.) Wa lah! It’s really a lot easier to do than to type about it. That way I know for sure that the water pumping into my tank has no chlorine. I don’t trust the tap water. I wish that I had room for a large RO system. Only my nano tanks get that. Best of luck to you. Dawn

When using buckets, I added dechlorinator to each bucket. I've been using a python for the last few months so add dechlorinator just before flipping the switch to start the flow. So far so good.

I almost always pour prime into my tank, then use a python strait from the tap into my tank. i haven’t had any problems that I know of that came from doing this, and my fish don’t seem to care how I do it lol.

I've done both methods in the past and never had a problem with either. If I'm using 100% tap water, I'll typically just dose Prime to the full tank volume and add directly to the tank first. For added caution, I typically pour it in roughly the same spot that I'll be adding the new water (via Python) so that the current of the new water forces it to mix. I've done 50%+ water changes this way on a 125 g without issue, although I've since upped my plant game so large changes like that aren't necessary any more.

I use the python system straight from the tap. I usually do 50% water changes, and I add a full tank's worth of prime right before or during the fill-up. I've never had any problems. My tap water, according to my city's quality report, has as much as 2.2 ppm chloramines.

Agreed, on not chasing the water parameters. I find that any fish I can get at my LFS I don't worry about it, unless they are applying special parameters, like discus.

You’ll be fine. Most Apistogrammas like their water warm, think Discus warm. In their own tank I keep them at 82F but they’re equally happy in my Discus tank @ 85F. Good luck.

Hello My name is James I’m 16 and I have kept tanks since I was about 9 but there have always been at least one tank in our house. This I’m my 40 Gallon tank I recently planted thanks to aquarium co-op and my local fish store. this is my dads 75 gallon tank I take care off mans this is my mini fish room! Sorry it’s a little messy. anyways I love fish and I’m always wanting to try something new! I hope I can learn from this forum, and thank you aquarium co-op for this resource.

In my opinion they should be able to thrive in your water. My advice would be to maintain consistency in water parameters rather than chasing a certain pH or other parameters. You may be able to keep a group of some corys depending on the adult size of the ones you want. I wouldn't do rummynose AND corys since they both need to be kept in a group of around 6+ so the bioload on the 20 long may be heavy. If it were me I would just do a pair of Appistos and a group of pygmy corys and plant up the 20 long. Good Luck I love my Appistos.

This went from a perfectly normal single tank to madness super-awesome level pretty fast for me too. It is a better coping strategy than some, but instead of my family putting on the brakes, I infected them so far. They make fun of me while egging me on. Still, focusing on the tanks we have and making them awesome-er is also a very cool strategy! 🙂

I have Macmasteri and Cacatouides in a ph of around 7.8 with much harder water. They are well and healthy. I thought I had 2 female triple reds, but one turned out to be male. They just paired up and are trying to spawn. Not sure anything will come of it in such hard water, but the fact that they're trying tells me that they're happy enough. I can't advise on tank mates though as I have mine species only, but the 2 that have paired up have become extremely aggressive towards any snails that come near their cave.

Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that! My endlers had wasting disease, and it was rough. Levamisole ultimately saved half of the population though. 👍

Yeah, all fish can thrive in that water because is easy to raise the hardness with coral or aragonite. In a way, I feel like I won the jackpot, because you can make any water you want with out an RO system. It will just take a little tinkering and a test kit.

Sorry, looks like you have a test kit, missed this line.

So I have some tanks that are kinda low for starting a siphon into this 32 gallon brute trash can on wheels, and to be completely honest I'm pretty horrible about starting a siphon from the start. I used to work on car washes and have found these auto priming pumps to be pretty sweet. I picked up a Shurflo 2088-594-154 which flows 3.3gpm/12.5lpm using just 104 watts max. I opted to equip it with a mesh strainer on the suction side from the same company as it was recommended by them. I picked up 1/2" Clearbraid® K3150 Series Hose to use on the suction side to avoid collapse, and regular 1/2" hose that came with one of my siphons on the out. I picked up the right angle barb fittings from the sprinkler area at the hardware store and unions and straight barbs from the plumbing section of the hardware store. This setup allows me to swap between the homemade python hook and a vacuum head for a siphon. I made sure to glue my homemade hook on all parts but the down tube into the tank; leaving this removable allows me to change the depth I will drain a tank and avoid cross contamination by switching pieces if I think a tank is diseased. I had to add a plug for a wall socket which wasn't a big deal for me. Overall I don't think this is ideal for constant gravel vacs since it is a diaphragm pump, but to remove water quickly while not having to babysit a gravel vac is awesome. How are you removing water from your aquariums?

Neat that is a cool idea. I have few but large tanks so my water change system is to put a pump in my 450 gallon snapping turtle tank and drain it outside for the garden then I will start a siphon from my 300 gallon hill stream tank to my turtle tank I want the hill stream to have the cleanest water. My 800 I have a filter that I can back flush so it makes water changes easy I just pump the poop water to a drain. To get water back into the 300 and my 800 I just use the same pump that I use to drain the turtle tank and put it in a bucket in the sink run the water and let the tanks fill

Nice selection of fish and tanks!

What are your 4 tanks? If I was you I would trade tanks after a year so you have the chance to get all the things. I have the limitation of space I can only use the basement for my pet room and I get one "show" tank in my living room. I went big so I have a 300 a 450 and an 800 in the pet room and 90 as the show tank. If I were you I would get one "big" tank for your planted community a 125 or 180 Would do fine and give you the chance to have some bigger tetras, rainbow fish, corys, and all the plants you could ever need. Then you could have the three others be between 10-75 depending on your space and when you got broad of a tank you trade it out for the next cool thing. Once a year or so take the tank that you don't like the most and trade it for something you like more at that time. My 300 is a hill stream community this is a few pics I think you might like.

I have this tank too! I'm currently using it to house a single betta. It's not ideal for a betta but he seems to be doing great. All I did was beef up the sponges and ditch the carbon for the filter. I'm also housing a small heater in that back compartment. I have mixed feelings about the lid. I like that I can just slide it back to feed, but I'm noticing evaporation problems. I don't change the water weekly since, with one fish, it doesn't need it. But after two weeks the water drops significantly. I should probably worry more about Rowan escaping, but there are a lot of floating plants at the top so I feel like jumping is unlikely (knock on wood). Regarding the pedestal, I use it. My understanding is that it absorbs any small irregularities of the surface where the tank sits. Mine is sitting on a smooth counter surface but I figured better safe than sorry. I like the way it looks too. You could get away with some scrap yoga mat or something similar if you don't like the look of the pedestal.

Didn't realize that when I installed the tank it would be so difficult to plant and fertilize the plants. Your invention solved the fertilization problem. Planting is still challenging. Bought 27" JBJ tongs on Amazon and smeared some silicone sealant on the hard plastic for a better grip of the plant. This mod is working well so far.

I have this tank! I didn't hot-rod it as much as you; I ended up leaving the filter pump in the back and fill that area full of foam pieces and plastic pot scrubbers. It's also a good place to hide a heater. I found that the glass top is designed to fit only one way. If I line up the curved front of the lid with the curved front of the tank, there is no gap in front, and the black plastic piece covers most of the space in the back. I love pedestal tanks; I have three! The pedestal is nice because it allows me to slide a towel under the "drip-edge" all around the tank prior to maintenance. Cleanup around a pedestal tank, for me, is always much faster than the regular ones. I also found this tank's light to me inadequate. I picked up a cheap NICREW clip-on from Amazon and it is SO much more powerful. My Portrait is planted very heavily, and houses a pea puffer. Great little tank!

So young white cloud are born with a strong blue lateral line and lose it as they age. Anyone working on keeping the blue on the fish?

No, I prefer the deep tension that comes with really knowing someone enough to skirt around mutual areas of disagreement. But I do love watching my snails creep across the top of a tank upside down. When I was a kid my mom told me horror stories of tanks overcome by snails so I was charmed when I discovered they were not only adorable but useful pets/puffer food.

Back from vacationing. . . Yesterday I delivered a bunch of midnight rams, gold rams, orange medaka rice fish, and L333 plecos to Aquarium Co-op.

I probably own 20 or 30 of them, but most of them torn open for various uses. I love em too. Using as grass between the rocks on a hill: Bonsai tree:

PEA PUFFER. Coolest 5 gallon ever

Pygmy sunfish would be a fun native. They are similar in size and temperament to scarlet badis.... Which would also be fun. Both look awesome.

I'm going to try to my new otos in quarantine. Thanks for the tip.

I should warn you, this forum is full of kind people, who are full of good ideas.

I see people saying they do this for all sorts of things, but they are treating a symptom instead of solving an imbalance that causes the problem. Which usually leads to "I do this all the time with no problem". Well yeah, you didn't fix the problem so you're repetitively treating the symptom. Personally, I only carefully spot treat with peroxide or preferably in a hospital tank. I also try to treat whatever is causing the issue that requires peroxide use.

Thanks a lot I’ve been having a lot of fun keeping them outside in tubs on my balcony.

I got a guppy and mystery snails tank on the way to that level, but damn that is a lot of snails.

Welcome Debra, great looking tanks! You've learned and accomplished a lot for only starting out 6 months ago. Can't wait to see your 60 tank fish room next year! 🙂

Tinky, ripping up her new llamacorn.

A cat’s life described in one word, lazy!

I happened to be up past midnight and saw our leopard gecko Dax climbing around her enclosure. Love my baby crocodile! 🐊

Today, and yesterday, I painted one of my walls black, got new dressers for the aquariums, and got a new desk. First, I had to get rid of the old cabinets and move the tanks somewhere else temporarily. After that I painted the wall, put the new dressers and desk together, and put the tanks on the new dressers. And lastly, I put all my stuff in the drawers.