Leaderboard

Just a heads up to everyone that ACO just became an affiliate for Dan’s Fish. Use promo code “AquariumCoop” for 5% off. This is a literal dream team for the hobby.

Dan has a lot of cool fish, very interesting selections AND an amazing livestream. If you're curious, it's worth the watch just to have that knowledge shared. I'm sure some people will make their way there. I cannot imagine a better partnership in the fishy industry than Co-Op and Dan.

Just as an FYI, here are the Purigen directions: https://www.seachem.com/purigen.php

Fish for sale at Aquashella Bettas already starting to sell out. This is the Badfish booth: a sister store of Aquarium Co Op. My friend bought a betta from Badfish. Here is another booth selling bags of fish hung up. Trust me. This setup is good. Also each bag had ammonia removal sponge. (Friend bought a trio of bumblebee gobies from here) Some booths had bags of fish in bins. Sorry, but that was a hot mess. All the customers were picking up the bags to look at the fish; the fish were freaking out; then the customers put the bags back down; the next customers would come and do the same. So much stress for the fish. I bought my fish out of the clear bin next to this one. I asked the shop to hold my purchase until I was leaving. They bagged the fish and kept the bag in the bin for me. Easy peasy. Display tank at entrance Coral frags

No idea how old, I suspect around two months now, clown killifish fry. It is the size of a grain of rice and the black blur in front is the parents hard to photograph but they are absolutely cute, little bumblebees

We lost my sons betta in the last month. She (Mrs T) was most likely lost due to bloat or fatty liver, she’d been in with some African Dwarf Frogs and their high protein diet caught up to her. It’s my bad and poor husbandry on my part in retrospect- she fasted a lot in between feeds. Tragedy begets opportunity and we needed to find some protein loving inhabitants for this 10 g cube tank. My local in the Coop and I’d seen some Lagos Red Killis a few weeks back. Needless to say when I went back this last week I saw them and realized it’s a good match. With a water change they’ve really colored up.

Appears that way. Drain fly larvae. These flies are rather small and mostly nocturnal so they can slip by undetected. They are rather indiscriminate about where they lay eggs, hence the name sink flies. A puddle in or under a sink can harbor the larvae, which feed on detritus and other debris. same is true for aquariums especially in cool areas.

I did a test fill of my 125 that I re-did the inner seal on!

First section set up...got pump from AOC, the awesome piston powered one, today. Have all the airline, sponge filters, PVC pipe, etc to build the air system this weekend. Got my first fancy tank for the room put together, Waterbox Eden 40. It seems a really well built cabinet and the tank is super fancy. Will be getting another Oase Biomaster, as I really prefer them to Fluval after having both. It will be the future home of Black Philip my rescue angel fish from the big living room tank that survived the bullying of the Philippine Blues. Will scape and set that tank up this weekend I hope before beginning work on the air system. Once all that is going, I can work on scaping specific tanks for breeding and keeping others prepared for clean bottom or quarantine tanks. Here are a couple snapshots!

My entire container turns from brownish orange to very bright intense orange. If it still has a semi brownish tint I know they are not done. Not my photo it a web photo but this color orange

That's sad. Most folks here can be divided into one of a few groups: people who've made similar mistakes; people who haven't made similar mistakes YET, and people who have made similar mistakes but won't own up to it. 🙂 So basically we're all in the same boat. You should be grateful the response was so immediate. If it had occurred 1 or 2 or however many hours later, you might never have seen it. What would you do different next time?

I have and always have had mts in my tanks. I love how they maintain the substrate, they are the reason why there are no decaying gas pockets, they never touch the roots of plants, they help maintain the wood. I would never add them to a tank with stones in some shape or some hard scape, as they can level whole tank like that was designed in a way during a night 🙂 overfeeding make cause a population explosion but when you don't feed, they disappear. At most points i even thought i didn't have any mts until I took a sieve and checked substrate. They are that good at staying hidden 🙂 other burrowers you may consider is faunus after,but you have to feed it to not eat your plants. And same for certain rabbits (like the sp.)

The downside is, they are extremely hard to control their population if anything goes wrong. They bury, their babies are extremely small, and they give birth to live babies directly. I had to leave town for 1 month and left my tank to care of my parents. When Im back, there were thousands of them. In fact, babies didnt even care if lights are on or off. They didnt even bother to bury like adults do. It was really unpleasing to look at the tank. And I am a huge snail guy. I have all sort of "pest snails". These guys are probably the only one I know if they are in a tank, there will be never going back until I restart a tank from zero. Just fyi. Oh I dont dislike them btw. But I would never intentionally introduce them to a display tank for sure. Id rather go with bigger snails if Im introducing any intentionally. They barely eat any algae I think btw. They are just a good cleanup crew for uneaten food but all it does is boosting their population. And they turnover the sand but I don't think this is even needed maybe except when you have a quite thick very fine sand.

I have a tank with a little bit of soil and a sand cap with Malaysian trumpet snails. I lightly feed this tank as the only other creatures are 9 shrimp and 1 betta. For the most part the shrimp eat algae and catappa leaf. The betta either eats floating pellets or Repashy, or I will feed frozen foods with tongs, so it never even hits the substrate. I barely see the snails because they like to burrow. If there is leftover Repashy I don’t see the snails going for it, but the shrimps do. I heard the snails are nocturnal but I don’t stay up to check back after lights out. They are so small, I don’t see any issue with bioload, especially since they burrow most of the time. I test the water weekly, and never get any ammonia readings due to soil disrupt, etc I can’t speak to your other questions, only these topics based on my personal experience. P.S. When I had them in the shrimp tank they never competed the shrimps for food. They just kinda did their own thing. They are most interested in burrowing.

Made a trip to LFS and found the lowest price on a Pink Flamingo that I've ever seen locally! I had to get some for my tanks since the one I've had for a year hasn't really taken off enough to be divided.

I seriously want answers of why I can never find awesome cool wood like these

I'm very tempted by these: https://dansfish.com/product.detail/5738/Green-Leaf--Algae-Eating-Shrimp,-4-pack-(Caridina-sp.) 🙂

Lol it’s alright the info seems still beneficial in a way bc they love live worms and the caves provide line if sight breaks/ hiding places for the rest to get away from my aggressive dominant male… can’t hurt

Fresh Cory eggs in a tote I set up during the week end. I didn’t think much of it at the time… tho the ~50 eggs are a bonus!

They’ve got so many cool tetras I can’t find on this side of the Atlantic!

Hello. I’m Miss May from Annapolis,Md. I’m new to the aquarium world. I have a 10 gallon with gravel and artificial plants. I have 2 platys, tetra, and 2 Cory. I’m working on setting up my first tank (8)with live plants. I look forward to learning a lot 💜🔵

There are little fry in the Glitter Limia tank!!!! Yay!

I'm sure it has a height limit, but it's pretty far up there. I have corkscrew val, which as I understand it doesn't get as tall as the regular val, and it reaches the top of my 65 gallon tank and then lays over, so it's probably 36" or more.

Yikes!

I put mine in a small tote to spawn at room temperature. If they’re well fed I tend to get 50 ish eggs within 2 days or so.

@Guppysnail I have some tiny terracotta pots for caves for now and a ton of live worms, lacking plants but hornwort it is I suppose thank you so much gonna try to set up the tank using this advice

Got in touch with my friend today, he found a guppy breeder willing to donate some fish to the school. Normally guppies wouldn't be my first choice but as they are from a local breeder they will probably be much easier. Ill go in today at lunch and make sure the tank is ready, then he'll drop off the fish this afternoon. He also got us a mystery snail, which will be fun for everyone to watch. The tank should be nice and cycled as im using a established sponge filter. Today im bringing a siphon, and some fritz complete to live at school. Im also bringing some more val and guppy grass and possibly a fake plant to get the tank nice and planted.

@CJs Aquatics for Badis badis the key to passive breeding these is live worms. I know some folks transition them to commercial food but it does not curb the instinct to hunt. So if their fry are the only thing live and wiggly they eat them. My adults don’t even find live bbs interesting. White worms keep them full enough they don’t bother the fry They are also cave dwellers. I have these rock caves lining the entire floor plus a log cave. their preference once sexually mature is to never be in the open. They snake through from cave to cave. And through dense plants. Mine are in a community tank with honey gourami and fry still survive.

To add to what @EL2 said, not all water conditioners are created equal. Be sure you have the one that detoxifies ammonia. Prime or Fritz Complete are examples. You must redose daily until you get your ammonia test kit, because the detoxifying effects do not last…

One of my YouTube followers said (re: my pristella tetra) : 11 years, is that old for these fish? And I was like, good question. Let me look up their lifespan. It said 4-5 years! 😯

It could be a mast in tissue caused by a foreign body or bacterial infections can cause some growth's it's difficult to say for sure it's a case of wait and see to see if it progresses if it gets worse gives use @ShineOn75

@CJs Aquatics has been wondering about passive breeding of these guys.

I’m finding it really cool how you’re able to give your 40g a certain visual depth.

Picture taken with my phone on full zoom and through a magnifying glass: There’s also ca. 30 in the spawning tank. I’m starting to get a bit nervous about these guys. Hopefully they’ll take sera micron 🤞.

The fry are similar in size to betta fry - tiny! @Lowells Fish Lab did a great video on these guys :

The wolf of Wall Street:

My .02: If you can't test for ammonia as @Chick-In-Of-TheSea mentioned consider treating for it, add appropriate amount of water conditioner just in case. If you can test awesome, may not be ammonia. I also wonder about what @dangerflower mentioned, disturbing the substrate causing issues, water changes and water conditioner might help. I ran into that early on with my tank and I believe I caused a new cycle by heavily disturbing the substrate. The PH increasing feels significant to me but I don't know enough to be sure. I'm relatively new to the hobby (Started my tank in Feb this year).

Would you still recommend I dose the medication just to be safe?

Hey all, just a quick post about planaria… these cheap test tube looking traps seem to work really well, this is only after an hour or so… that’s all, 🙂

It is very unlikely that you have a high amount of copper. Fertilizers that provide micronutrients for plants have such a small amount of these metals that it would take quite a while for them to accumulate in the water, even without water changes. I advise you check the ingredients of your fertilizers however, micronutrients especially metals are wasted on your water if they are administered at any sort of frequency. Humans also need things like cobalt and manganese to survive, but in such small amounts that it is extremely rare to have deficiency in them. Copper is used as a transport ion in plant roots I believe, but it is not required in large amounts. I digress, there are many hobbyists who have been successful in maintaining a water change-less system for decades. It can be done as long as all waste is properly recycled. As for your stocking, I would go ahead and do water changes on a schedule. Despite being classified as beginner fish neons are sensitive to poor water quality and guppies can be finicky if the water becomes depleted in needed ions. Measured by your gh and kh.

They continued to get cloudy water and dead fish after water changes. It turns out they were thoroughly cleaning their biological media. We had a long talk about the nitrogen cycle, I helped them with various plants, and, because they have the same water source as me, walked them through exactly how I treat my water and do water changes. Hopefully, they will end up with a thriving tank. 🙂 Oh, and I showed them Cory's Python siphon trick... 🙂

Maybe a little flexible but probably not much. I got some shims from Home Depot this afternoon and put them under to where they just stopped and cut them off and put back under in 5 places. I think that will do the trick. I will just keep an eye on the level of the tank and stand. Here is another acrylic tank and stand that had an acrylic canopy I had this past summer. I decided I didn't like it after all and sold it. It just had two hollow columns of acrylic holding it up. It had an acrylic base and top that were clear. It is still going strong and I hear from the buyer all the time so I guess that is a good sign. Sometimes I am overly paranoid. I have a 40 and a custom 5 foot 75 gallon acrylic tanks, but I built stands for them. They would hold a car and have foam board on top to even them out. Again thanks to all. I think I will sleep better tonight....lol

It's an interesting question and ultimately there are varied mindsets on the topic. One of the big things to keep in mind is that things build up in the water over time. This could be things you cannot test for. It could be as minimal as something that causes algae or fish breeding, but it could also be more serious things that build up over time. This buildup is called Old Tank Syndrome. Because of things like that I would say that you can extend out the time between water changes, but doing them can be important in the long term health of the aquarium and it's inhabitants. Here is a very level headed discussion on the topic that may give you some perspective from one hobbyist. The main section of the conversation happens about halfway through, but it's all related to the topic.

if everything is good, you do not have to change water.

Glowlight pipsqueaks in the making:

It's totally normal, I talked to support and they said their's do it as well. I have it in my bedroom with little to zero background noise so I hear it really well. It makes a high-pitched sound when it's actively heating. I have a degree in electromechanical technology and when a lot of power is put across resistors, heating coils, or inductors it can make a high-pitched sound. Any of those three things that heating elements commonly use get an insane amount of power sent across them for what they actually are. For reference, the average LED bulb in your house nowadays uses around 5 watts and 20 of those bulbs worth of energy are put across a component that's smaller than your thumb. There are ways to negate the noise and I'm sure when further iterations of the aquarium co-op heater come out, it will get implemented as it gets better. I have noticed with time the sound has gotten noticeably much more quiet.

All of the fish in the tank should be happy to have a little bit more flow than the lowest setting. Just a note. One thing we often miss with heaters is that they need flow to dissipate heat and function properly. More circulation means that you have better performance and higher efficiency. Some heaters have a "low flow" warning and it's really useful for me to know when I have to clean out the heater guard or check on something. I would turn up the flow on the air pump to medium range at least and see if you notice any issues with the fish/shrimp and if the noise goes away. Keep us posted.