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Just finished this next one, I’m starting to really love this medium.The species is Brochis Splendens. Also, if any of you have any recommendations for me to paint, I’ll definitely consider them!

I vac my tanks. My microfauna is so heavily entrenched it’s not funny. Most of this stuff is invisible in the substrate. That’s why it’s perfect food for new hatch fry. I see mine in my yuck bucket. If I need more I use a white bucket and let the yuck settle. I shine a light on it for a second and gobs of tiny seed shrimp and copepods are bustling about. Yes the adults will munch away. But that’s good for conditioning to breed. Unlimited access to natural foods helps them realize they do not need to conserve energy. If they feel they are limited in food they don’t breed because that means sharing their limited resources with more fish. Here is my thread where I cultivated the seed shrimp so I had enough for many tanks to seed heavy enough the adults would not wipe out populations before they thrived. When I added them to my tanks I squirted them under moss held down by a plant weight on the ground. I did not vacuum that area for a month. Once I started seeing the critters in my yuck bucket I knew they took hold. Here is the video instruction I used to cultivate them. Ok I can’t find the video I used but here is one. I put in a small stick, a handful of dirty gravel. I scooped with a cup (avoid planaria tanks they will eat your seed shrimp) You want the yuck and need the beneficial bacteria. These guys are the best at breaking down excess in substrate. If you want to do it easier put moss on the floor in the tank and block it off so adults can’t eat them all and squirt using a turkey baster underneath. Also live grindle and white worms. The grindle live 2 days in my tanks white worms up to 10 days. I use white worms in hospital tanks because they live 10 days in salt water so do not foul the tank.

@Elodie Rose wanted to rehome her CPD last week of September so I adopted them. Last night I saw a handful of fry scooting about. Appear to be a few weeks old 🥰

Hey guys. Check out this Bolivian ram artwork (watercolor) by @Zeaqua!

Hello All, This is the first time with planted tank. The tank is under cycle for 4weeks. I have 2 white skirt , 2 black skirt and couple neons. My tank has some algae issue. And most of the plants in the fore ground melted. Currently all my ferts are from seachem like ( flourish, flourish excel, iron ). Initial setup which had some glossostigma and some dwarf hair grass almost all of them melted. week 1 After a week of cycling I did a water test and found out I have hight ph of 7.6 and ammonia. Unfortunately I had to go on a trip for three weeks. So no water changes and ferts for three weeks. I have put the light fluval 3.0 in 7 hours schedule and auto feeder for one a day. week 4 After the trip, below is the status of the tank. Kindly ignore the ph test I messed up. On Thursday October 26 I did 50% water change and the following Sunday i did the test again for ph and ammonia. Also attached is the light intensity and during I am running. Below are some of my assumptions and questions where I think I am not doing it correct or missing the steps 1) not planted the tank fully ( I have ordered some plants ) 2) may be the ferts I am using, is not feeding the plants I choose. Do I need a root tab ? 3) should I reduce the light intensity? 4) should I add more fish ? I want to understand what are mistakes I did and how can I correct them to make this planted tank working. Appreciate your help in advance !!!

German blue ram eyes in eggs way to many apisto caucatoides babies

Love your spilotus! Thinking of getting some eventually. I too have some Pygmies, as well as some future fry - a clutch of standard bristlenose.

I have 32 surviving hatchling. I'm not keeping many, 2-3 MAX! I have a 20L that they will move into. My LFS is taking most of them in a few weeks and a friend is taking 4-5. They eat Crab Cuisine & Hikari mini algae wafers right now. I was thinking of tossing a green bean in there tonight.

Omg congrats!! They really needed just the environment you gave them! Those babies are the cutest 🥰.

I think a Hanna or similar electric test will be your best bet for this application. If the $80 is too rich for your blood, you can break it down into you have to buy $14 nitrate kits every 8-12 months, after ~5 years the Hanna will have paid for itself. They last a long time with very little maintenance required. Then you might just carry it around and zap random bodies of water, muttering “interesting, interesting results” to yourself and never using that practical knowledge anywhere 😋

Bravo! 👏

Both of those paintings look great!

I make a lot of invert videos and not many fish videos. So here’s the gang. The pristellas are over a decade old.

So it was recently my birthday and my husband got me a second light for my 75. I’m pretty excited because that opened up more options for planting the back and front of the tank! Other than that not a whole lot going on. I have an algae problem in the Monte Carlo in my cube. I want to try treating it with peroxide and shrimp, but I can never seem to make it to the shops when they have amano in stock. Might have to order them online. Also gave the cube a slight trim and replant. I’m pretty blown away by how red the rotala oj is getting in this tank. I’m also kind of stumped by how low the lily is staying. It’s been like that for a couple months now, wondering if it will ever get tall again. Before trim: Behold, my army of snails! after trim: And a cute little kuhli coming out ready for food!😃

Thank you all for your kind words! I really appreciate them! @nabokovfan87 Here’s a soft pastel discus I made a bit ago, again with crappy lighting. This was also my first time using this medium, so it’s definitely not as good, but I was recently gifted a set of oil pastels, so I’ll likely do more with those. I’m nearly done with another watercolor painting, this time of a certain colorful armored catfish. I’ll post that here once I’m finished!

I’m going to keep MISC journals about Livebearers here. I’m growing out Swordtails spawned outdoors last summer… They have some NANF tankmates - Gulf Coast Pygmy Sunfish (egg layers)… The adult brooders are in a separate aquaponic set up… They also share space with a different NANF species, the Bluefin Killifish (also an egg layer)…. Also enjoying an ongoing breeding group of “Precious Metals” Guppies…

I have been out of the loop for awhile working 2 jobs my seasonal job at the Wa State Fair besides my regular job, but now I that my extra check has arived I have a little spending cussion. Last weak, I cleaned out my cansiter filter for my 65g aquarium and my nitrate are out of wack again. what Co-op products should I order to get things back in order again. I have a decent amount of plants, but I would like to get some that target nitrates more. Currently I have several anubias plants which are slow growing, about a month ago I added 2 African Sword plants and they are starting to get some nice new growth, and some Java ferns, Wisteria and I am developing a moss wall with Java moss and an other variety of moss. I'm usually pretty good with plants, but I managed to kill my dwarf Chain sword and my Pearl Weed from the Co-op. In a video from the Co-op I saw you could leave the plants in their pots and they would spread from there, latter i saw they cut the bottom off the planter pots don't know if that would of helped. The sword didn't like being left in the pot at all and fadded away. The Pearl Weed was doing very well, but I tried getting it to root in the substrate by putting some gavel over it...bad idea. I finally pulled that pot out and there were a cupple of tiny green leaves still there. I'm trying to revive it in a sperate container. Does anyone have trouble with a few zebras, dandios and penguin tetras getting along with guppies? The guppies are gone now, but the other 3 are doing great together. Well that is my aqua adventures for this post, have a good week, Cisco C

So about a month or so ago I noticed ONE blue with spots ramshorn snail in my small army of brown ramshorn snails. I pulled it out and tossed it in my other low tech tank. It wasn’t long before it got busy laying eggs and almost all of them have been blue! So now I have a tank full of blue ramshorns! Every once in awhile I see a brown one, and I just pull it out and toss it back in the cube. All that to say earlier today while I was trimming the blue snail tank I noticed a ramshorn with a very red body and a white shell. And in my other two tanks I managed to find three more of the same colored snails. So I set up a jar, pulled all four, and got them set up with some plants and wafers. Hopefully I’ll have a similar situation with these guys as with the blues and I can get another little colony going! I’ve been wanting red/pink ramshorns for a couple years now so I’m pretty excited. This will also be a great opportunity to see just how much I can abuse pearlweed haha. The jar is only getting spill-over light from my emmersed plant experiment and ambient light from the kitchen window. These guys also glow under the blue light, so I thought that was pretty cool.

They seem pretty great, but I can’t order from aqua huna because I live in the east side of wa state 🫠 ——- Although I did do a thing this morning and ordered a shrimp starter kit from a different vendor! I didn’t get amano, but I got other shrimp I’ve been wanting for awhile. Paid less for the actual shrimp than if I bought them at the closest actual fish store and shipping was less than a tank of gas & lunch and dinner. It’s about a 5-6 hour round trip if I’m not in a hurry.

Hi @nabokovfan87 Thanks for sharing your insight on various aspects of the tank. 1) I have already copied your light intensity and scheduled it for 5 hours to start with 2) Filter alignment - I am not sure if i can re position the filter now . if that is not possible i will try adding a wave maker to the other side of the tank and remove the pre filter in the Tidal 3) Fluorite Black is the substrate Flourish Excel daily before light Flourish Weekly twice Seachem iron Seed by aquavirto - for live bacteria seachem prime during water changes

Sure was! And a 20 gallon would work just fine. They are ready for breakfast! The other tetras are black neons and head-and-taillight tetras. I got those by mistake. I was trying to buy more pristellas but LFS just got their shipment and everyone was pale. In QT they developed their color and I was like ummmm… these are not pristellas! But I kept them anyway and they fit in with the group just fine and school with them.

Well.. I made a cookie graveyard

Update: this afternoon she was much more active, swimming around. I got a pic of her even. The fuzz looks mostly gone, and I can see the damaged skin underneath. This evening she is hiding in her cave and seems in a very bad way. I know it’s the last day of medicine, but I did an extra water change. I don’t know if she’ll make it through the night or not. She’s currently sitting on the bottom of the tank not moving. She perked up during the water change and then settled down in her corner hiding spot. We’ll see if she makes it through the night… If she makes it, I may give her a few days and then reevaluate course of action. The treatment seemed to have worked, but I’m not sure she’s strong enough for it. And now her fin is starting to show some fin rot.

Hi, sorry for this being so late got pretty busy with school but the gh seems to be 89.5ppm how high should it be? i also have the option to just put the baby tiger barbs in a separate tank to i would like to know the gh for that too, thanks!

Very cool! Love the Brochis, you really captured that male orange coloration on the rams!

These work great for lucky bamboo

Thank you both! Perfect - I was figuring I’ll have a lot more than I need for the houseplants because I have also been using tank water or de chlorinated water with a bit of Easy Green in it. 🤪

Honestly the more I think about it, I'm 63 and don't want make RO in my basement and haul 6 or 7, 5-gallon bucket for water changes. So, I'm trying the water softener/Angel/plant option first. If that does not work, it's likely the plants that die and not the fish, so I'll lose the plants and it that fails, I'll just go the hard well water and go with Ciclids.

This looks like the fossil of an African dwarf frog. 🙂

Tiny fry are not afraid in the Endler's tank. 🙂

If you were in the Seattle area, I would be heading to your house with a bucket right now... 😉

Thank you @Guppysnail, I wanted to get a good mix. It’s simple but this is the set I have for the BN parents. I know I don’t have it 2 females to 1 male. It’s 2 and 2. One older pair and a younger pair. I might separate them though so I don’t float my house with BN fry, and or over work my male and kill him.

they weren't shy at all in my tank and they spawned within months. Lovely fish but due to their lack of color somehow not such a popular fish. But I love them still and I am sure one day I have them again.

Your big tanks look amazing.

Plants are looking pretty good, and you seem to have hit the right balance with the ferts. What’s the stocking plan??

the small size from Aquahuna might be the go-to. You get a good amount, fair price, affordable shipping, and the co-op discount code helps out! I got some otos/amanos from them.

I added sand and started blocking out where roots will go

Been waiting on these to drop from Imperial Tropicals as they said it would be around Halloween AND I GOT A PAIR!!! Soooo stoked!! Red Devil Koi Angels! 🙂

it is a superfood. You can make fish food out of it for veggie eaters.

Finally got around to finishing this. Was trying to keep it simple and cheap but I couldn’t help but trying to make it look a little nicer than planned. Now I just need to figure out what’s going to go into this tank.

October 2023 Well, it’s been a quiet month in the aquarium. The snails are well, the only female old enough to have babies right now (Trapdoor), has had two that I’ve been able to see. The nine babies born when I first got them are growing up well. They’re all brown right now with a couple of the very tips being tan maybe. The trumpet snails are fine. If they’ve had babies, I haven’t seen any crawling around. And of course the bladder snails are doing great, 🤣 I have set up the jar trap again. I know I am over feeding but I can’t help it - it’s the only time I get to see the shrimp. 🤭There’s a lot of good biofilm, almond leaves & some green ?algae I guess, on the side so I only feed every three days. But I think it could be even longer if I didn’t want to see them. Seven of them are still alive for sure, and maybe an eighth, out of the ten so I’m very happy about that! 😃 This is the jar I use for snail catching. I tried to get a close up of the shrimp to post here, but it was too blurry. It’s a beautiful true blue. This pic just doesn’t show it. The lucky bamboo is almost up to the light now. I want to cut the top off when they get there and try rooting them to fill out the whole back area eventually. Also I don’t want them to touch the light. If anyone has any experience cutting them back, I’d love to hear about it! I haven’t been able to keep the stems in place except with the floss. Kinda unsightly, but it works. 🤪 The water sprite and Anubis’s seem to be very happy with their growing conditions, so I’m content to leave things be for now. Future plans include a HOB, Mostly because the box filter floats for a while after I clean it. When I weigh it down with a rock, eventually the rock falls off and I’m afraid it will squish somebody! I want to get more shrimp and I keep going back & forth whether I want to keep this shrimp and snails only or add a few fish. I’d also like a few rooting plants. Things to look forward to! 😃 And finally: duckweed. Now I totally understand the love/hate feelings! 🤣 I love the look of it but I hate having to put my hand in the tank, even after I move it off to one side I always end up with it all over. Here is this months harvest. I dry it out on a plate and then put it in a baggie. When I get enough, I’m going to add it to my houseplants.

If you can photos would help. A lot of time we never plant stems deep enough and so maybe just trust them to grow and be ok. It should be very accepting of being planted and then grow out of the substrate accordingly!

My growing pseudomugil fry

Supposed Zebra Danio fry looking a lot like neon tetra fry. 🤷‍♂️

So, talking about snails reproducing, my 10 shipped today. Hope they double quickly as I have other tanks, I want to put some in. 😛

Thanks @Schuyler, I do like that idea. Someday I’d still like to have a betta which got me researching in the first place. In fact I think that’s how I found this forum. 😃I would have a 5 or 10 gallon dedicated to just him/her and a couple of friends. My idea of a “big” aquarium (for me) is no larger than a 40 gallon. Not sure if that would be considered on the smaller side after reading about some projects here! 🤪

Congrats! I had to look them up to see how they looked 🙃:

Here’s what I built. And hung here

Hi what is your gh now? If you are using replenish it’s probably fine.