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Gettiing ready for bed and decided to search my blue dream tank for babies. I didn't even have to search- 5 babies were out in the open! Fortunately on the rocks since they can blend in well to the black sand! A happy end to my night!

Bnp (blue heart) mystery snail (purple trophy)

I call this a "tree" very loosely. The goal was not to create a bonsai-type looking thing, but to achieve the same kind of shape while keeping it natural-looking. I got a large and flat piece of rock from the store, along with a few pieces of driftwood, KwikWood, and super glue gel. Everything went pretty smoothly, just needed to allow a lot of drying time for the super glue since I used way too much. Everything holds really well, and the ugliness is hidden in the back of the tank, along with some strategically placed anubias nana. The rock serves a couple of purposes, mostly to lower the center of gravity to keep it from tilting over. It also gave me a couple of extra inches of height so that I could bury the tree in the substrate but still have it come to the top of the tank. I'm really pleased with how it all came out!

@Guppysnail and everyone else: I got some freeze dried Tubifex worms to feed my cory fry. Problem is getting the cube stuck to the glass close enough to the bottom for them to find it. I find if I don't get it to stick well, it float merrily away, to be found in the filter media. If I don't get it low enough, the snails find it before the fry do. The new RAZZLE DAZZLE trick? Wet the chunk and stick it to a dull butter knife or the back of a spoon and put it worm side up on the bottom of the tank. (The crowd goes wild, but they are fish, so you can't hear them, oh well) Now I no longer have to stand on tippy toe and soak my short sleeve to get in stuck to the side in the deep tank. No more watching the worm float off toward the filter. When the fry have licked it clean, it can go wait next to the tank until you feel like giving them another treat. Put it close to the glass when feeding, so you can inspect the fish as they all gather round, even the little ones. Note: thrift stores sell a mish mash of use flatware cheep. No need to sink you own flatware. P.S. @Cory You might like to add this trick to your description of the freeze dried Tubifex worms ACO sells.

I'm arriving a little late, but I thought I'd mention this in case not. Since RR kills algae by a dramatic shift in the pH, you could also use any common alkaline water as the second bath. One of these would increase the degree of the pH shift that seltzer to water had by about 100X. Although @Guppysnail has more experience and she finds a second RR session will probably do it. In any event, any of the below would work as Bath-2:

Bolivian ram (blue heart) goldnuget pleco (purple trophy)

I'm one of the lucky ones who lives close to the Co-Op's store and spend way too much time there. I recently set up a 55 gallon after being out of the hobby for a couple of decades, and it's great to see how far things have come. Here are some older pictures, don't have anything super recent.

Guppysnail said somewhere in this topic that the dead algae will still cling to the plant after RR. And indeed I found that to be the case. No problem though, as all my shrimp and some snails had a feast and remove it all in about a week.

Figured there would be no better time than now to jump in and start logging my progress with my introduction to the hobby. The prologue To start, I've always wanted a fish tank. But never really pushed into the hobby. Last year, at a trip to the local petsmart, my kid (3 years old at the time) got really excited about the pink fish on the wall (glofish). Upon subsequent trips, after playing with the kittens in the adoption area, her next stop would always be to look at the fish. We decided it would be a great thing to do, having something that both me and her can be invested in and share between us. We bought a fluval flex 32g during a black friday sale and hid it away as a Christmas day surprise. The beginning A lot of the main tank decisions have been primarily driven by the interests of my kid. Therefore we initially built out the tank with glofish in mind, and wanted to 'simplify' our care requirements by not introducing live plants initially. We got everything set up, and the water flowing, and just let it sit like that for a couple weeks to make sure everything functioned. Kiddo started getting impatient, and I had been dragging my feet on actually cycling the tank, so I made the decision to cycle the tank with a few danios. I work from home, and knew I could monitor chemical levels at breakfast/lunch/dinner until we were 'cycled', and could do water changes any time they creeped up. We decided to purchase 4 glofish danios, and let them hang out in the tank. The Glofish We originally had a green, blue, orange, and red glofish. When we got home, we noticed one of the glofish had a little concave dimple just behind it's gills on its belly side. Within the first 24 hours, we noticed the fish weren't settling down really, and every time the air clam opened, they would dart around the tank. Bad decision #1 identified! We removed the clam, and they started to settle down. As the days went by, we noticed we didn't see the blue one much. He started hiding inside the house in the middle, and any time he would venture out, the red one would chase him down. The red one also kept everyone corralled into different sections of the tank. Orange had to stay in the top left, green had to stay in the top right, and blue had to stay in the house, generally. Then one day, red just started swimming frantically around the tank. Up/down/sideways... and then stopped. The only real assumption we have is something happened to his swim bladder. After red departed the tank, everyone seemed to get comfortable and found new places to hang out in the tank. It was around this time that we noticed orange stopped eating. Orange would also hang out right above one of the two return flows almost constantly, and was looking very very emaciated. Bought a breeder mesh, isolated orange, and tried to feed. Orange departed within hours. Since we were down to two, we went to get more danios from the fish store, this time opting for zebra danios. The store had a tank of 'assorted longfin danio", and we got 5 from the assorted tank, and one more red glofish (kid really likes that one), for a total of 6 danios to go with the green and blue glofish danios still in the tank. Parasites? Shortly after, green started to stop eating, and hanging around filter intakes. Blue started having similar indentation in the belly as the orange. Frantic research time. Came to the conclusion that we must have some kind of an internal parasite infection, as I could not identify any outward signs for them getting sick. We isolated green and blue with a breeder mesh, and they departed shortly after (couple days) as well. Down to 6 danios. Dosed some coppersafe, and did some reading on common danio parasites, and stumbled up information suggesting danios commonly get sick with internal nematode infections, and the symptoms seemed to fit. Bought some Expel-P and before it arrived had a confirmation of a contagious parasite of sorts, as one of the new danios stopped eating and started hanging around filter intakes. Did the breeder isolation dance again, and this one departed the day before Expel-P arrived. Dosed the tank with Expel-P, and prayed for the best. So far, it seems the one dose took care of the issues. Stabilized As you can see, the landscape has also changed a bit. We have pulled out the large house in the middle, added some bushier artificial foliage in the corners, and put in a Stargate and a large air stone. Also added a powerhead in the back corner to add in some higher water flow, as I read danios really like faster moving water. You can also see the lovely diatoms growing, telling me this tank is starting to age successfully. This shot was taken just before we left town for 3 days, with the topfin multi-day feeder brick there in the white. This thing really clouded the water, and we haven't really gotten clear since. BUT the fish survived us being out of town, and are still thriving. Diatom Explosion Diatoms started growing and covering everything. I wiped everything down a couple times, but I'm lazy, and I didn't want to have to keep cleaning everything all the time. Queue decision to add our next set of fish! A cleanup crew of some sort would hopefully help keep things under control without me having to obsess about it. Went to petco, grabbed a 10 gal quarantine tank and a sponge filter, and started doing a tankless cycle. I really didn't want to introduce something else after going through the parasite episode. Did someone say shrimp? After doing some research on cleanup crews... I gravitated towards shrimp for some reason. (Ok, blue shrimp was the reason). I did a little research, and realized I could also add them directly to the tank instead of quarantining them with minimal risk of cross-species issues. Went to the LFS, and bought 6 shrimp. 2 blue, and 4 red. I was going to do all blue... but... blue shrimp were expensive! Introduced them to the tank, and they have subsequently found their expert hiding places for their game of hide and seek with me. I know at least 2 are still alive, as I've seen a blue and a red one around the tank in the past day, and everything in the tank is starting to look ever so slightly cleaner over time. I ordered some java moss from Aquarium Co-op as well, to hopefully give the shrimp a place they'd feel more comfortable hanging out in that would be more visible. But, I want more blue shrimp! I really wanted more, so I did some searching around and found aquahuna. They had the shrimp for a fraction of what I paid at the LFS. I ordered a pack of 8 blue shrimp and waited. Yesterday, my shrimp came in, and I got way more than I bargained for. All 8 shrimp arrived alive, and inside the bag I had a hard time making out what looked to be some kind of belly growth. Seeing some posts about parasitic algae, I decided to dump the shrimp into a clear container and take a good look. Turns out, two of the shrimp were berried! Not only that, but I could see baby shrimp swimming around! I got way more than I bargained for. (the small black spot with a tail just above and left of the sponge) "Breeder" tank So, I had to change plans, because I didn't want to waste the potential of having more shrimp. I've been getting slightly obsessed with shrimp anyways, and now really really want to do a shrimp only tank when the time is right. Time to turn the quarantine tank into a breeder. I dumped the quarantine tank water (has been at 2.0 total ammonia and high nitrate as I was fishless cycling the tank.) I had already started drip acclimating the shrimp to the main tank when I decided to do this, so I took 2.5 gallons of fresh tap water, and 5 gallons of main tank water, and filled up the tank and put the java moss in it. I also threw some zeo-carb I had on hand and some of my filter floss I'd had in the main tank that hopefully also has bacteria on it to help with the bio load. I moved the drip acclimation over to this tank and let it continue, and the shrimp seem to be settling in well. One of the shrimp have molted even, although I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing at the moment... So, that's about it. I have some fun trial and error info I'll share in another post as I get time to write it up, and will try to keep the updates coming as much as I can.

It could be a number of things but I’d say being that close to the tv might be stressful. I had a tank across the room (about 12ft) from the tv and sometimes my fish would watch tv with us. I have noticed the bettas get a bit more stressed out than other fish with commotion in the room so I’d often put their tanks in less trafficked areas.

It’s just so frustrating I’ve never had Bettas die so easily on me before. My other Bettas are fine. So I guess I have to move the tank lol BTW you are the reason I got back into fish keeping. I binged watched your videos during the winter of 2021-2022 and realized everything I was doing that was harming my fish in the past and also making my life so much harder (for example my maintenance equaled emptying and scrubbing everything) 🫢 I cringe thinking about it now.

Ha! Super cool! It looks JUST LIKE a hang on side breeder box I use, the air pump isn't super strong of course so it just exchanges out the water. Neat!

Was in the LFS and saw Kratoses. Next thing you know I’m picking one up for a friend who geeked out when I texted her.

Can confirm although I wanted to steer clear of saying it directly because the density of LFS and chain pet stores is largely determined by your area of residence. And the quality of such even more so. I had the privilege of working at the top chain petstore in the region. All of us cared about the animals we sold and the people we sold them to. We had regulars who would come in just to hangout on slow days and talk about fish and animals. We had a user manual on fish medications from a university telling you exactly when and when not to use certain medications and we required water tests before purchase of medications. Having that been said I don’t even know if the one I worked at can still be held to that high of standards. The variability between them is just alot. And I don’t think you can judge them based on the passion of the workers if you only have 1-2 in your area. Rest assured regardless the stock is still decent and the health of the fish is insured by a 14(?) day return policy. Fish with high mortality or losses have been removed from the stores. They are acutely aware of such things at corporate.

My Sister in Law is the Regional Manager for Petco in her area. She says that the quality of fish is largely determined by the store itself, and how they keep their tanks. She has Betas which tend to live for 5 years for her ish. She gets hers from the store where she was a manager and she still goes in to help feed them when they are closed. I have been into some LFS that are disgusting and some Petcos and a particular Petsmart that is pristine where the department manager loves her fish and knows them all and won't keep certain stock. If you can, try to talk to their department managers and see how they care for their fish and what their fish education level is. Hardy fish will probably be fine!

Yeeeeees. I have a 10, a 20L, and now a 55 and a 6 and a split 5/5 (probably chili rasboras, it has a hole for them to go back and forth in) So clearly I need plants and things.

@dasaltemelosguy thanks for that! I think I'm going to try another soak in Seltzer water tonight. The algae has progressed to being a little darker but stubbornly hanging on to the leaf. I would like to see what a second soak does, sadly though I won't have alkaline water available this time but I will keep that in mind. I think if it doesn't work the 2nd time I'll just be cutting off the affected leaves.

So, I have been very intrigued by dirted tanks recently and decided to set up a 3 gallon cube in this way. I am not using any filter in this aquarium and I don’t plan on putting any fish in it as of now, but that could always change. I started with a mix of potting soil and dirt from my yard Next, I capped it with a thick layer of sand to keep the dirt from getting into the water column. Lastly I added a few struggling crypts from my 75 to see how they do. If anyone has suggestions or comments on this setup, I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance!

I worked at one of the chain stores in college. You can ask what day they receive fish and plan for 2-3 days after that to go in. Usually by then those that came in sick have been quarantined and the healthy ones will have put on color and started eating. I really don’t think you could go wrong with what fish you get. Barbs, tetra, danio, and minnows are all bright and active.

Based off observations in my own tank... I think a lot of people would be surprised how quickly something can go from dead to being completely disintegrated by the creatures in your tank. I've seen hillstream loaches go from alive (when I checked my tank right before going to bed, 9-10 pm), to not much left besides a backbone in less than 24 hours (the next afternoon when I returned from work, 3-4 pm). I have a lot of shrimp and malaysian trumpet snails. I ended up just leaving the spine of the fish (by that point, any ammonia spike was already going to happen as most of the biomass had been consumed by others), and by the end of the next day, I couldn't find any evidence of it. A healthy tank will "digest" dead material a lot faster than most of us expect. If I have a fish disappear with no trace, I assume nature took its course, and there's not much for me to find. I have a lot of inverts and a lot of plant matter so there likely won't be much for me to find, and the plants can likely very quickly take care of any ammonia spikes.

Well, well, well, I just found that little squirt, whew thank God it's in the tank, some how or another it found a way to get out of the basket & into the aquarium that the basket is in, smart fart. Now to catch it is going to be a chore with all the plant's & other stuff in the tank & not to mention it's a 75 gal aquarium at that so that's going to be fun & while I'm at it I may as well try & get the 3 danio's out & put them in the basket or other tank.

I don’t see anything in the pics that looks like parasites. There are some fibers and one looks like a strand of algae, but parasites will look like they have “stuff” inside them that look like structures - their internal organs. The bluish fibers don’t have any kind of structures inside. The algae has distinct cell walls with a dark center inside each one. I see bits of scales, flecks of what might be skin, but no parasites. If you are seeing red worms protruding from a fish’s vent, then that is almost certainly Camallanus worms. Expel-P is a good option but fenbendazole (the “dog dewormer”) is also a viable option at the right dose. Since Expel-P is made for fish, I usually recommend that since it comes with appropriate instructions and makes it easy for most people to do the treatment. I would also like to hear more details about the tank, the water parameters, the fish, the treatments you’ve already done, etc. Pictures would be excellent.

Sleepy pea puffer. Lights came on a moment earlier but it took a few before she woke up.

@Odd Duck due to my health problems, I don't feed fish regularly. Instead, I seed tanks with blackworms and microfauna, and plants like duckweed. I believe underfeeding/not feeding during a birthing boom in a new tank trained endlers in one tank to eat duckweed. Their offspring will eat duckweed (learning from elders, maybe?) Meanwhile, I have several tanks that grow duckweed faster than I have use for... Separate strains of endlers who never learned that duckweed could be food. However, I am selling duckweed to aqua farmers, because it is one of the few plant sources of complete protein. My dogs and turtle eat duckweed, I clean it and use it in place of sprouts... it's even decent in green smoothies. Not my favorite on salads, but a good addition in stir fry and soups. Who knew our aquarium nemesis was being researched as a solution to world hunger?

That sounds lovely. I go with whichever seems to have the best quality. That alternates at times in my area. I don’t know anything about barbs. But if you can’t find those or the quality is questionable… Zebra danios have one of the highest activity levels when in a group. They are also extremely hardy and easy to care for.

I would just wait a day let it soak in water for one day and then drop it right back in reverse Respiration and maybe hit it 18 hours

Have you seen it used one of these.Do think it works? If so why did it die off. I have seen these brand before but never a different brand.

How very dare you! Now I have to bring more money lmao.

nice set up. great to meet you electronically

Big development today! There's at least a few fry munching on baby brine shrimp. And I was just watching them chew on them which is kind of funny to watch. Hard to see them eat vinegar eels, but their bellies are big and clear so I am guessing they have been eating those too. Still feeding fry powder, vinegar eels, and now will out in a tiny bit of BBS a couple times a day.

The Betta seems happy, and the shrimp seem alright: they're molting, and I've actually seen a few babies. I've got a pothos trailing into the tank, and I'm sure they're heavy feeders since they're houseplants, so I might move it. I have been dosing weekly with Flourish, but I wasn't seeing much growth, so I recently ordered Easy Green. I've only used one it once, though, because it just came in last Saturday.

People share on youtube, either listed or unlisted, and copy paste their youtube video link here

The zipping around I call Kuhli zoomies and is normal behavior. The skin is very hard to get a good look even on the video. It could easily have started as scrapes because even tumbled, lava rock is rough. Kuhlis like to hide under things and the fish could easily have scraped itself. There’s one angle where it looks like the spots are a bit fuzzy, so I would continue the columnaris treatment, for sure. It’s a good sign that the fish still wants to do the Kuhli zoomies.

The coop has some vids about which fish to get at petco/petsmart, but most importantly watch their videos quarantining fish

Think you will ok. There is not much you can do about the quality in those stores. It is what it is. Just stay away from the neon tetras. For me I hardly go there but that due to them not have any fish in stock. I I did take home a one eyed bleeding heart tetra that has lived for awhile and been very healthy. You may want to stock with a couple of kinds of tetras and some corys. Danios would be good as well.

I like the tank too, it's pretty great. :-)

A lot of times you tend to see the same 20-30 fish over and over depending on store size. I would honestly visit, go in and check the fish, just check on things. If you see a ton of dead fish constantly, then expect issues. I would tend to prefer to order online at that point. I will mention aquahuna as well as other online stores. There is a coupon code you can use on the ACO website for aquahuna. Shipping is very affordable as well. A lot of the fish I have kept were from Petco/petsmart. I also have some from aquabid as well as aquahuna, and from the forums now! 🙂 Anyways, there's always things to do, but my recommendation would be to find a store you're happy with care first, go from there. If you can't, then don't feel forced and know there are other options available at similar price.

If the Betta swims around happily and the shrimp are healthy then it's possible it's cycled or the plants are consuming it all. I'm curious if you add any fertilizers to help the plants? In time the Nitrate should show something. Welcome in and what a nice setup you have. It must be nice to look at daily.

How large is the tank? I’ve had good luck with Petco near me. I bought my gold White Cloud Mountain minnows there. They are a good choice for price, ease of keeping ( don’t need a heater) showing up well, and getting along with other species. If you go with tiger barbs, there may be challenges in future if the library wants more fish; they’ll be limited to those who can live with the barbs. I love the looks of tiger barbs but haven’t kept any myself so I’m not sure how limiting that would be.

IME (always different schools of thought) You're going to want to see at least a little nitrate and no nitrite/ammonia. I like my kh to be in the middling zone but some fish keepers don't care too much about kh. However, kh will help with ph stability in the end. A tank with no kh may be prone to ph swings.

I have had 2 years with 30 fish surviving from Petco but before i'd buy CPD's and a school of neon's and half died that night. After a water test my nitrate was low and ph nearly the same so i felt it was the fish being stressed. Now i pop in right when they get a shipment, if what i want is rare/hard to find buying it rolling the dice can work but i usually wait 2 days if the store has more than a few tanks with 1 fish dead. I buy from Petco yearly and i'm usually happy. They keep doing tank sales so i remember to pop in.

I've purchased mystery snails, zebra danios, fancy goldfish, corys and black skirt tetras from my petco. They were all really healthy. I've also purchased neon tetras from Petco, and half of them died of presumably neon tetra disease. think it probably depends on the individual store/ fish. If I was tasked with this project I would probably get glowfish tetras. Tiger barbs sound like a good idea, but I've never kept them before.

I think my 3 inch clown pleco is loud just imagine a 2foot wood eating catfish!

This is my feelings about this as well. I know that it was originally stated that they didn't want to change filtration but this seems like a square peg, round hole kind of deal. The multis are gonna dig and given that the under gravel filter sucks all the debris into the gravel its gonna cause a mess, the easiest solution would be to change filtration. It doesn't have to be a sponge filter either. A HOB would work and so would an internal filter that sticks to the wall.

I don't think I'd be worried about it from a beneficial bacteria standpoint. You'll still have a BB colony in the existing filters, and all of the other decor/sides/etc. I'd be more worried about them rooting around in all that waste and stirring it up. To be honest, though, you're kind of asking to stop a fish from doing what it does... I'm not sure how to make that happen. If you've got substrate they can fit in their mouth, they're going to move it. Could you maybe put some bigger gravel on the bottom that they wouldn't be able to move so easily? Or some sort of mesh barrier that would still allow waste and water to settle through it, but not allow the fish to dig in it? Just spitballing. That might create even more issues.

I just tripped over this and I know it is old but I can tell you that I don’t float them and why. the first time a fish was shipped to me I didn’t know about breather bags yet, floated them, and within a couple minutes all the fish were on their sides. They were all fine again within a couple minutes of me pouring them out of the bags into a bucket. The second place that I ordered fish rub with aqua imports and they have a big sticker on top of their box that says don’t float them and that is how I learned about breather bags and made an educated guess about what happened the first time. I was curious how everyone else acclimate them so I did a search just now and this came up, I wanted to share for the next person who comes across this page searching that question.

One of the places I order fish from uses breather bags. The instructions that they send with the fish are float to temp open pour fish and water through a net and put fish in the tank. I’ve not had any issues acclimating CPD, panda or Pygmy corydora I’ve received from them this way. Edit I float and add to a qt tank not main tanks.