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Hi everyone! Here's the new stock for this upcoming week after they are cleared from quarantine. Most fish are ready to go by Sunday/Monday (depending on how quarantine goes). All fish are sold on a first-come first-served basis. If you have any questions on these fish or other questions related to the store, please email us at: store@aquariumcoop.com ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Frogs, Shrimp, and Snails African Dwarf Frogs Blonde Leucistic African Dwarf Frogs Cherry Neo. Shrimp Orange Neo. Shrimp Red Rili Neo. Shrimp Blue Velvet Neo. Shrimp Small Amano Shrimp Asst. Nerite Snails Assassin Snails Asst. Mystery Snails Blue Wood Shrimp Bamboo Shrimp Bettas Asst. Halfmoon Males Asst. Crowntail Males Asst. Plakat Males Cichlids Albino Pearlscale Angelfish Assorted Small Angelfish (Locally Bred) Assorted Medium Angelfish (Locally Bred) Bolivian Rams Small Blue Turquoise Discus Small Pigeon Snakeskin Discus Small Red Cover Discus Small Yellow Melon Discus Small Red Turquoise Discus Corydoras and Other Catfish Panda Cories Albino Cories Sterbai Cories Reticulated/False Julii Cories Pygmy Cories Albino Bronze Cories Habrosus Cories Adolfoi Cories Orange Laser Cories Plecos Common Otocinclus Small Long-finned Super Red Bristlenose Plecos (Locally Bred by Christine0 Assorted Small Bristlenose Plecos (Locally Bred) Loaches Kuhli Loaches Reticulated Hillstream Loaches Tetras Neon Tetras Green Neon Tetras Cardinal Tetras Rummynose Tetras Ember Tetras Lemon Tetras Black Neon Tetras Silver Tip Tetras Marble Hatchetfish Flagtail Prochilotus Barbs Danios Rasboras Chili Rasboras Exclamation Point Rasboras Other Cyprinids Long Fin White Clouds Rainbow Sharks Badis Gouramis Sunset Honey Gouramis Chocolate Gouramis Livebearers Asst. Fancy Guppies (Locally Bred) Asst. Endlers (Locally Bred) Asst. Mollies Asst. Platies (Locally Bred) Rainbowfish Kamaka Rainbowfish Boesmanni Rainbowfish Yellow Herbertaxelrodi Rainbowfish Killifish Clown Killifish Goldfish/Koi Ricefish Oddballs Indian Striped Peacock Eel Sales (While Supplies Last): -Buy 1 Get 1 FREE End of Season Sale on Comet-type Goldfish -40% OFF All Non-Aquarium Co-Op Branded Rimless Tanks -Buy All Cory's Long Fin Neon Tetras (10) for $99.99 Photos 1. Angelfish 2. Flagtail Prochilotus 3. Orange Laser Cories 4. Indian Striped Peacock Eel

@Zenzo @Biotope Biologist Here is a pic.

Thanks for the advice on hillstreams, I like guppysnail’s idea on Pygmy Corys and have another discussion on that

For a 9 I don’t recommend pandas. They will be fine when young but they get a touch to big and are to active for a 9 plus they breed like crazy. Pygmy I would do a group of 10. I kept 10 in a 10 and as they bred it went to 20. They didn’t have an issue but at 20 they became so active I upgraded them.

@nabokovfan87 don't be sad keyholes are like little kittens bringing joy to all. They just love to play with each other and while another aquarium i have 20ish orange lasers and 30 ish pygmy cory in their aquarium bringing the total between the two aquariums to around 80 cory !

For the sake of recording keeping.... Heater added to the tank today. I set it to 73 and I know all of my heaters I need to keep an eye on things getting too warm. Some might be broken or aging out of use. Hard to say. I looked at the tank today and everything was pretty good. I don't see a ton of milk or mess or issues. I added a half gallon of distilled water I had set aside and ferts and left it at that for this week's maintenance. The females that have eggs should be laying and molting, so this just helps reduce stress. As always, the only real struggle right now is trying to decide and how to best feed Riddick and to keep the shrimp happy. They absolutely aren't afraid of her in any capacity. They do their own thing and I believe she's been focused on worms in the substrate more than anything. We'll see how things do as worms die off or small shrimp are born, fingers crossed and think positive. I really would love for her to do well long term with the shrimp!

All of the least killis are upstairs now, in the James River tank. I’ll have to restock it with scuds and make the vegetation a little denser, so they can still hunt, which they seem to love to do. The bottom detritus of the 3 pond tubs I emptied last week has finally settled into a 5 gallon that is now full of teeny red shrimp and a bunch of scuds, along with an army of snails. There might still be an endler fry or two. But now I can put a trio or a couple pairs of fish into it, who will probably enjoy that environment. The group of Redtail goodeids might be perfect for that, there’s only a few of them, and they’re growing. And the tank they’re in is just unsuitable. I’ll have to lower the heat in the 5 gallon, and leave it on 70. There is still one tub outside, with a heater, but it’s going to get below 50 this week. I’d really like to bring it in. I’m curious if a tub can overwinter inside, and what that might be like. It’s the exact tub that Dean from Aquarium Co-op used as an indoor pond-tub, so it can be done. That might be my only hope of breeding more Longfin white-clouds, which I adore. So now the Cube is broken down, and needs a new purpose. I could try breeding white clouds in it. The Redtails are perfect for the 5 gal, while they’re still young. Although I took a lot more than 8 fish out of that tank, sooooo. I guess Mama Redtail is dropping fry. She will be so, so much happier in the new digs. River’s fins are red enough, and her tail too, that I can see the blue spangles on them. What a glorious little fish she is. Setting up a series of 1 gallon jars to isolate male guppies in for 2 months, and see how they grow out, and make sure that it is safe for the mamas having fry. I tried to set up just empty environments, with maybe some duckweed and an almond leaf. But then I remembered that I keep extra little 3” squares of filter media in many of my tanks, and started adding them (and replacing with new squares)… They all got some pond salvinia with a 99% possibility of scuds, and a turkey baster of seed shrimp. These bottles are supposed to be temporary and easy to break down. Clearly I misunderstood the assignment. I continued adding little improvements today, and tested the water, adding some bottle-bac to help them along. Six new pint-jars are on the windowsill, each with a couple tablespoons of sand, a type of plant, a bit of leaf litter, the inevitable duckweed, a snail or two, and some seed shrimp. I’m trying to add scuds, but less sure I managed that. If I don’t start to see them in the jars in the next week or two, I’ll try again. The blue dreams are doing well in the 2.5 tank, Gallifrey, as it shall now be known. I saw one rather large berried female tonight, as I was adding a bit of white sand to the tank. I was going to put the Tiger Teddies there, and still might, but I’m concerned about the predation on the blue dreams.

after some drip acclimating the shrimp have been added, they are happily swimming around munching at mulm and algae. Ill add some cuttlebone in, in a few minutes.

shrimp arrived from @Guppysnail today! Big thx to @Guppysnail. They have been temp acclimating for 20 minutes and i have them drip acclimating now:

Hey all, first time forum user, long time coop buyer!! I'm Paul from thornton colorado. Currently running a planted 40 breeder with some Cory's, red serpae tetras, Scissortail rasboras, a pair of blue flame dwarf gouramis and a raphael cat(for now). There's also a 55gal brackish tank that's housing Cheeto, cheeto is a beautiful ceylon puffer I adopted from the father in law(who has all sorts of cool tanks and fish). Cheeto decided to go on a killing rampage of the very large monos he was in a tank with one day so I brought him in to give brackish a try. Looking to setup an awkward 55gal tall tank I just acquired, not sure what my plans are for that yet, and there's also a 125gal that will more than likely be a grow out tank of sorts once we move! Oh and there is a 3.5 gal on the kitchen counter with a very long fin betta that is the laziest fish I've ever seen! He was in my 10gal med tank for awhile and just didn't do great, moved him into the 3.5 and he started living his best betta life.

I cut up some red wigglers for the kids. I was going to get videos of the curviceps and dorsigera also but they sucked them down so fast I couldn’t even turn the camera on 🤣

I’m going to second @Biotope Biologist on hillstream loaches needing at least 20. I have 3 young juveniles that are still small in a 10g growing out. I do a lot of water changes and had a spare canister and high flow HOB for 30 gallon tanks as well as sponge filters. Even now at still juvenile size they are ready to upgrade. They also live on soft algae and microorganisms biofilm etc as their natural diet. They eat a lot and what I need to supplement them at this point pushes my ability to keep pristine water. My Asian stone anchor cats were super fun in a 10g. They even bred. Pygmy, hastatus or Habrosus corydora are great fish for a small school in that size tank.

Don’t measure ambient measure water temps. Water is a thermal insulator. It does not swing temperature as much as air does. I would say most fish are fine with temperature swings of 5 degrees between night and day. I don’t use a heater and I like my house cooler. Air temperature measures at 65-68 Water temperature measures at 68-70 sometimes 72 if the sun is strong enough. My fish prefer colder water. But there is not a huge difference between night and day temps.

I did raise the temp w/ the garlic. Smelled like an Italian restaurant 😂 My husband literally asked me if I made spaghetti. I told him yeah, but I already ate it.

@Schuyler has been doing a riverbank setup; maybe you could scale it up?

Great response and what an amazing fish! I really have a thing for the kitties...they are so awesome and once they get use to you, they do start to venture out more. Well bar my Gold Lasers...the fry that are now juveniles are very brazen and come out, never get spooked. But the big mama and the boyz, they stay reclusive in the back of my OG tank. The others I got next for my all Kitty Tank, they are super reclusive as well. Sterbai def are more active and are hilarious to sit n watch. Also, lemons stirring up substrate?? You don't say? I have I think 8 between 3 tanks...the ones in my all kitty tank, they are constantly sparring or whatever and kickin up substrate. I think I have one female and two males in that tank. Hoping your breeding project goes well and please take pics, share of the new tank! I wish I could set up something for a real big tank, but atm, I think my max weight on the stand I bought will limit me to no more than 100. You should really get some soon...they are super fun to watch! This group stay in one large one and break into small sub ones constantly all over the tank. They also seem to have made the whiptails come out more.

5 water changes done today and 2 loads of laundry. Mission accomplished. Not much to report on today so here is some pics and a video. Don't mind the sound in the background just watching celebrity ghost stories.. https://youtu.be/jmI8lBuRmXw?si=yH-Hoo5X0Z89eKM5

It's been a quite a while since I've last given an update. Unfortunately there's both good and bad news. The Bad | The group of Samurai Gouramis did well for about a month, but we got hit with a heatwave out of no where towards the end of August that was pretty devastating for me (I lost a lot of Non-Photosynthetic Corals from my Saltwater tank due to the temp spike) and unfortunately a majority of the group didn't survive. I still have 1 (Male I believe) that's doing okay but he definitely needs a group. Hopefully I'll be able to introduce some more to finish off the stocking of this tank sometime before the end of the year. Thankfully that's all I have for the bad news. Good News | Tank is still running well for the most part. The mulm bed and biofilm have skyrocketed which is nice to see. I ended up taking off the black background to see what it would look like, and I think it looks better this way, the lighting in the pictures looks a lot better. Somehow (I say that since I thought the heatwave would've effected them) I still have most, if not all the Sundadanio. I counted 13 but they're so fast its hard to count. The Tannins have actually settled down so instead of the dark murky brown, it's now a light gold tint which is what i was wanting and because of that, you can truly see the iridescence on these guys now. It's so cool to see them school when I'm at my desk doing school work. I've actually got some top dwellers coming this week that I'm very excited about. A species I've been wanting to keep for a while and they came back in stock this week so I had to grab them. As much as I was thinking about doing a species of Khuli Loach or Bumblebee Goby (like the new Brachygobius sp. 'Ocelot' that have been coming in recently that seem to be fully freshwater) for the bottom, I think these guys are so much better. P.S. I did upgrade to the Sony a7iv a little after my last post and this camera has been a beast. The AF is insanely fast and sharp and has allowed me to finally get some decent photos of the Sundadanio in the tank. Still a WIP cause of their speed but I'm getting there haha

Yeah nothing to major they do get fired up for food mostly. Then they feast and find a nice a nice spot to grow.... and repeat tomorrow

Got a few fish when I bought a new to me tank. Thanks to you guys I got to ID few of them. I lost one fish to unknown reasons, but I also did a deep dive into the electric catfish, maybe, maybe not because of the catfish. Either way move it out to its own tank for now till I can find someone that wants it. Within 30 seconds the catfish got himself stuck. Figured people could use an easy laugh.

I think you could do a cube for pea puffers, but keep in mind, they are a species that pretty much requires live foods of multiple different types. I have no less than 10 types of live foods that I raise now, which all started because of pea puffers. You don’t absolutely have to have that many unless you plan to breed them, but you will want to keep at least 4-5 different types on hand. Mine will never eat any dry foods, even the ones I raised from the eggs. They barely ate frozen bloodworms and frozen Daphnia and brine shrimp were both a hard no from them. Wingless fruit flies were met with utter disdain like I had contaminated their tank with them. You could potentially breed a pair of very small plecos, like my L519’s that only get to 3.5-4”long. But that’s about the max for pleco size for a 20 cube since a cube has less square footage than a lower height tank. My big blue eyed lemon bristlenose boys are tearing up my 100 gallon, mostly nanofish tank right now. It’s been silted up for a couple weeks since they’ve both decided to dig wallows under my driftwood and I made the mistake of putting a thin layer of high iron, heavy clay dirt under the sand never dreaming these guys would decide to dig down almost 2” deep. They’ve been in the tank about 2.5 years now and only started digging like this recently. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I really love the look of a bigger school of small fish in a cube like this. It makes it feel like it’s a whole little world in there. One school of tiny rasboras is a great idea. You could also have a school of one of the dwarf Corydoras species with them. Some Neocaridina shrimp, too. Maybe a smaller shoal of some very small tetras, too, for a bit of contrast. You can add more fine detail in your hardscape in a tank like this so it looks different from every angle, like the pics @Lennie posted. You could also switch up and do some forced perspective tricks where you use bigger leaves towards the front and smaller leaves towards the back so the eye thinks the space is deeper than it is. This works best when only viewed from the front, so keep that in mind when scaping - where is the tank going to be viewed from? The species you like will determine what substrate you do (or don’t) use, what filter(s) you will use, what plants, what hardscape, etc. I sometimes design a tank, then plan fish around it, but I usually pick fish, then design the tank for those fish.

Howdy, pardners! Cranked out another round of maintenance today. I’ve been really putting in some work on these tanks the past couple of weeks and it’s paying off. I’ve never been one to keep my tanks absolutely spotless, but it feels good sprucing them up. Took quite a few pics today, and I feel like I got a couple good ones! The 29 blackwater tank just keeps getting better and better. I put in a healthy serving of botanicals yesterday, and woke up to the tank finally getting dark. It’s taken weeks and weeks, but we’re getting there! The new packs of botanicals I bought each came with a bag of acorn caps. The summary sheet said they release a TON of tannins, and the tea was super dark so I believe it. Both caps went into this tank to help darken it up, along with a couple other new pods and 4 giant Catappa Leaves. I’m really, really enjoying this tank. I also took the time to clear out a good chunk of the Hydra today. Going to keep at it over the coming weeks until I have it all. The 20 long continues to impress as well. Removed the internal HOB and rearranged the filtration to avoid any further floods. Poly Fil on the bottom, ceramic bio rings on top of the Poly to help keep it pushed down, and I cut a new (bigger) piece of sponge and shoved that on top. So far, so good. I’m going to keep an eye on it tomorrow to ensure the medias aren’t rising up the filter, but I’m pretty confident this could be the winning formula. Sweetgum Pods! Super spiky, super fun. I’m going to only put them in the 20 long as I don’t want the Cory’s in the 29 injuring themselves flying into them. My girlfriend is from the South and these grow naturally there. She’s going to see if her brother will grab me some and ship them over! Would be super cool if he’s able to do that. Another new type of pod with a CPO crawling on it. Got super lucky with the timing on this photo. Love the Lotus Pod in the background, too. Chili Rasboras looking great! These guys are super hard catch a decent photograph of. Definitely the best one I’ve gotten yet. Green Neons present in the background with the ever tangling and winding Pothos roots. I dig it. Pea Puffer tank! Really digging the internal filter. I scraped the algae on the back glass today and the filter did a great job catching the debris. Still playing with the angles (both up and down and left to right) on the spraybar attachment to dial it in. Tank still needs more plants, but I haven’t found them yet. I need to harvest the Swords in the other tanks and 2 of those bad boys will probably go in here, in the back, and we’ll see what happens. Got a pretty good shot of the Murder Beans! I love the eyes on the one towards the back, locking onto the target and ready to strike! My girl’s shrimp tank is doing well. Originally, I thought only 1 of 10 of the original group was a female but I believe I was wrong. I’ve seen a couple berried females at the same time and being the same size tells me they’re the original group. Last time I counted at feeding time, I counted at least 42 shrimp. We’re moving in the right direction with the colony! I like these guys. They’re not LRB’s super straight Blue Dream line, but we still really dig em. My girl was well aware that she’ll need to cull them to keep them looking nice, but she actually wanted to do that. We’re letting the colony establish before we start to remove shrimp, though. Coming up last, but definitely not least, my male Bristlenose was out and looking rad. He’s gotten pretty big and his Bristles are continuing to grow! Enjoy your tanks, my friends. The possibilities are endless. If you’re feeling not as stoked as you used to be, don’t be afraid to switch some things up and see what you like!

Yea was thinking of using crates of some sort along with aquarium safe foam.

i like bottom wafers, the cat scrapers are a different ingredients. Honestly first my mind went to "thats the fish food i have" then i thought about it ingredient wise.

Isopods arrived today, big thanks to @Guppysnail I got P.Pruinosus Powder Orange. I added them in the wet side in the sphagnum they arrived in, they immedietly started exploring, i didnt realize how small these guys are, which makes sense why people keep them in small containers. I also put a xtreme wafer on one of the cork hides, and i spotted a few munching on it, i did not get a good picture unfortunately. Update, got a picture of Isopods munching on Xtreme Wafers. (i got the xtreme wafers in the large size so i have plenty, and ive heard that isopods like fish food. Plus the wafers have pea protein as a first ingredient, so it should be good for the isopods.

Full tummy happy puffer but still wants more food

Ohhh, I’m interested in knowing your rock guy in CO! I’ve been trying to find a good place to buy good stone! You can message me if you don’t want to monopolize Oaken’s thread, haha! Thank you!

I have a small army, and have traded off an additional small army. In my opinion, they’re just big shrimp with claws!

I’ve kept Platies for years and would also highly not recommend only males. I’ve also experienced aggression between female Platies. Having a lot of plants and sight blocks and a bigger group of Platies tends to cut down with the aggression.

Most nano schooling fish, like rasboras & smaller tetras. Endlers!

I'm definitely interested in seeing how you approach it. I'm not sure if my 3D printed version would be realistically viable at that scale but maybe the egg crate and foam could work. I have a bunch of reference videos in my Cameroon Biotope journal if you want some ideas

The King of DIY has done a decent video on this subject (although arguably he has much bigger tanks)

If you can't coax them out, my answer would be very lightly, and very gently. which means its probably not worth doing, unless it's really mulmy, in which case a gentle swishing in a bucket might get the worst of the mulm out. But i wouldn't squeeze it. I've never tried this but I've always wondered, if you manage to connect running water (pump, tap, whatever) to the top of the uplift tube, could you run a sponge in reverse and blow debris out that way? If this worked, it could also be a tank refilling baffle (although there are already a million effective solutions for that issue).

All of my racks are made out of 2x4 and I use the dado type, racks. Here is one from Dan's Fish YouTube channel, and I think he has more as well. Mine are made the same way.

Yooooooo, Here’s where I’m at the night before maintenance day: The annular eclipse was pretty cool this week! According to an interactive map, I was at about 77% totality. I didn’t get to witness the Ring Of Fire, but I did get to witness the sun going away for a bit. It was ~10:30am at peak eclipse, but it felt like 7:30-8:00am due to the sun being shaded. Felt weird, but was cool to witness: I simply hold-punched a piece of paper a few times and was going outside about every 10 minutes to watch the moon cross in front of the sun. Pretty cool. Definitely enjoyed nature for a bit in the morning that day. Panda Angels are wigglers/baaarely free swimming. Will do a 50% water change on the tank in the next day or two when they’re actually free swimming. I’ll siphon out all the fungused eggs, drop in the seasoned sponge, add some Java moss, and begin to slowly feed when the yolk sac is gone. I’m excited to grow out some fry, but I also hope the LFS doesn’t get the fish in that I’ve been waiting for as that could pose a bit of a problem. Fingers crossed my timing is good! We’ll see. Also boiled up some botanicals, “harvested” the tea, and added the botanicals to the blackwater tanks: This is 7 medium to large Indian Almond Leaves, and some new pods/seeds mid boil The concentrated blackwater extract after a 15 minute boil and 45 minute steep. The entirety of the extract I’ve collected over the past few boils. It’s daaaaark and I like it. I think I’m gonna switch up the internal HOB in the 20 long. I had a bit of a flood this week due to the new/more dense Poly Fil I used… Not fun, but the more I think about it I’ve come to the following conclusions: 1. I know for a fact that the tank doesn’t require the additional media/flow to be functional. The small sponge filter handles the load of the tank. That’s been proven, and all I want this filter for is polishing the water 2. I can stuff Poly Fil on the bottom, and should be able to use the ceramic media over the top to “hold it in place”/keep the filter from flooding again. Even as the Poly swells/fills up, if it’s in the bottom and the ceramic bio-rings are holding it down, I shouldn’t have the same problem that I did. Might cut a new piece of sponge for the top that is tighter to discourage shrimp from going down into the filter. We’ll see what tomorrow brings for us! The only real downside is that the filter will require being removed from the tank to swap out the Poly, but if that’s the price I need to pay to avoid another flood I’m all about it. I just hate lifting filters from tanks. It’s so awkward, I can never move slow enough, and I hate the inevitable mulm fluff that is bound to happen. Regardless, it’s better than a flood so it is what it is. I used half the amount of layers of Poly Fil tonight (2 layers instead of 4) to clear up the water going into maintenance tomorrow. That should allow me to clear up some of the fine debris, lift the filter out of the tank using a catch cup to not allow water to flow down/out releasing all the debris back into the tank, reset the filter, and test over the coming days. I’m pretty confident the plan will work, but you never know until you actually try. I also want to switch up the pre filter sponge on the 107. I read somewhere on here, maybe from Guppysnail (not tagging on purpose, but thanks for all you do for everyone!) that a medium ACO pre filter sponge fits well over the strainer basket. The next time I make an ACO order I’ll throw one of those in there and see how it goes. Right now, the sponges I’m using are simply too small and a little too fine to where they clog up and I have to change it twice per week. Once on maintenance day, and another time midway between the week. I don’t even want to maintenance that pre filter every week on maintenance day, but right now that’s better than what I’m currently doing. I don’t need to order supplies for a bit, so the order will wait until it’s needed. It’ll be a big one, so I’m not necessarily looking forward to it, lol. I’ll need most if not all foods I use (shrimpee pellets, Krill flake, Spirulina flake, nano pellets, and brine shrimp eggs), the pre filter sponge, a back up bottle of Easy Green, and a back up bottle of Complete. Much like the botanicals I just bought, I prefer to buy in bulk to get the best possible price. My wallet needs to recover a bit from the Tool tickets I bought for the lady and I today before I place that order 😅. Enjoy your tanks my friends and don’t be afraid to try new things (within reason, obviously). Catch you guys tomorrow post maintenance!

I have fed fruit flies to fish and baby tarantulas. There is a trick to it: 1) Hold the container and tap it against a flat surface while holding the lid. This will knock them all down from the lid and sides of the container. 2) If you don’t want to use up all the flies, immediately take off the lid and pour them into a separate container with a lid. If you just want to feed them all, skip this step. 3) Stick the container in the freezer for 5-10 minutes and this will make the fruit flies “go to sleep”. This won’t kill them, but makes them less mobile and easier to feed. Once they start warming up, they’ll start climbing all over the place again.

Plenty of space above - 10 foot ceilings. I decided on getting a stand and moving the tank elsewhere. Going to go with something 20G or below for this space.

Over the last 6 months I’ve stepped back from the hobby in many ways but my passion and interest remain. I think even when we’re not emulating the FishTubers and obsessing about our hobby we can still be innovative and interested in advancing our hobby. It’s taken me 29 pages of this journal to write that and it’s ok. I’m really still very in love with the hobby. That makes my heart glad like it did when I was 10 and got my turtle tank which begat a goldfish tank and a koi tank and an African cichlid tank and on and on. Of late my FishWife has made it clear that the way I approach the hobby needed to change. I have had this idea that money would buy me happiness in my hobby. I also used it to try to buy my way out of problems. Instead it brought many poor and rash decisions on me, my fishwife and my fish. So I decided a few months back to focus on 1) if I’m buying only local, no shipping 2) if at all possible rehome and repurpose 3) utilize my club, online forums and other ways to keep my hobby and interest going. This led to my most recent connection with a hobbyist we’ll call L. He’s moving and he’s had about 4 beautiful setups in his office that he was looking to take down 3 of them. Initially it was a 22 long 3 weeks to a month ago and now it was a beautiful 120 P ADA tank. This was fish and shrimp as well as plants, equipment etc. Panda loaches x 4. I get glimpses of them chewing on biofilm and hanging in the flow of the powerheads in the corners. Gorgeous patterns. I’d say as babies and juveniles they’re pandas but this is a more leopard like pattern which is very handsome. I couldn’t say no to a community puffer. Tetradon schoutedeni or the Congo Spotted Puffer is a truly special fish. Smart, social, handsome and just magical. We’ve had her for 2 days and the boys are in love. Her colors have improved each day and she munch on some blood worms and some snails - it’s an impressive pop when she gets a ramshorn. My 60 g breeder has been housing a group Of diamond tetras since the summer- once again someone was breaking down their tank and posted on the club page. To my amazement in the last 2 weeks I’ve been seeing babies! Guppies guppies guppies! I’ve had a group of Santa Claus guppies for awhile and I really like them. Part of this latest gall of fish are Japanese Blue Guppies. The metallic colors are intense! I am enjoying how my 60 gallon display is growing in. I ran it as high tech but I stopped the c02 as I couldn’t keep up with the maintenance. Have fun everyone!

Baby shrimp on the back glass this morning. It feels like forever since I've seen that. The shrimplet is colored up a little bit so it's at least around a week or two old. I was checking on them last night and tried to feed Riddick, but ended up with all the shrimp taking her food again. 😞 I did see 3 females all together, all berries, so we should have some new shrimp soon and we'll see how they do with these new filters!

Not going to happen; i'll have 30 hastatus; my colony of a. pucallpaensis (approx 14 right now); some otto (around 15) and a group of wavrini when i can find them. That's it for this aquarium. Oh and lots of plants. I should take a picture of my upstair aquarium at some point - it has the most adorable group of keyholes; that aquarium is only 72x30 (inches):

My critters, snails & shrimp, do not like banquet blocks. Try calcium chips from Crayfish Empire. Shrimp foods and crab foods contain calcium also. (Ie: Hikari crab cuisine) This probably wasn’t funny at time time, but it sounds so funny when you describe it. 🤣

@Zenzois what got me interested. I stole his cinderblock idea to make the sandbar. @Biotope Biologist Thanks for the feedback! Russ

Id stick to mollies. I have never kept mudskippers, but from everything I have read and heard they are highly territorial. @Zenzo has mudskippers and they are featured in a few YouTube videos. Perhaps that might be a good place to look for inspiration.

the temp outside is cooling down significantly (finally) and so is my house temp, so i need to add a heater to the 2gallon. I have a 10watt 80degree heater that i use for this tank, and i just put it in behind the matten filter. I will say, although the matten filter design im using is sub-optimal, im really like the fact that i can just throw my heater behind it and there is no risk of fish getting stuck by the heater, and i dont need to look at the heater, it does hide things well and all i see is a blue background (not ideal, but its not a display tank).

Alabama Rainbow Shiner F0 brooders looking 🔥 as temps drop in my basement…

A grand total of 2 have been spotted.

Call me a newbie but I’m still marveling at the DIY filters. 😅

Only if you indoctrinate them about the virtues of fish keeping 🤣.

Does spending time with grandchildren count?

I slowly lift the sponge filter (or prefilter) to the surface, then quickly pop it out and into either a pitcher or one of the handled cups that hang on my rolling water mixing barrel. They are only used for the tanks. I always clean the sponges before siphoning or I’m lifting them out while trying to aim the siphon in their general direction by catching the gravel vac or siphon hose on something adjacent or pressing the hose to the glass with my body for the big tanks. 😆 I’m sure some of my fish tank cleaning or planting related contortions would be comical for anyone else to watch. 😂 🤣