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There coming in fast now whooo! Up next is the 10 gallon guppy tank. As you guessed it this is the home to my blue galaxy guppys. I think I'm down to just males now. I have rehomed all of the females I have for sure now. I have a couple of fry that I have to wait another week or two before I know for sure what they are. This will eventually be a new adventure tank. Along with there friends the piano snails. Filter is an aquatop Forza along with a double stacked coop nano sponge filters. Noticing a trend yet? All my tanks I run dual filtration on. Mainly for power outages when they happen. All tanks run on battery backup air pumps. So at least I know I will always have surface agitation and air if I do loose power. Plants are anubias, java fern along with guppy grass and hornwort. Enjoy!

Are you ready for that second cup yet..Up next is a 10 gallon setup for the dwarf emerald danios and the pygmy corys. There friends in this tank are a crew of piano snails and mixed neo shrimp. I will have at least 3 of the pygmys out of the original six for sure. But I haven't found any body's so I'm optimistic that I still have 5. Equipment in this tank is a tidal 55. Yes I said 55 lol. It has a custom baffel to make a gentle flow. Along with a small coop sponge filter. Plants include anubias crypts a ton of java moss and floating guppy grass and hornwort. Heater is a titanium hygger with a controller.

Ok for the morning edition of coffee with TeeJay is the 20 long tank. This is the home to my colony of 11 cpds and 7 aspidos spilliotis aka wiggle butts. As well as the home to the wizard small family and the blue jelly neo shrimp. Rounding out this tank is moonbeam one of the plecos from lemony and lunas first fry and mochi the hillstream loach. Equipment on this tank is a fluval 207 with spraybar, med coop sponge filter and a coop heater. Mopani wood slate rock caves for hardscape and midnight pearl gravel for substrate. Plants include crypts anubias java moss and floating guppy grass and hornwort.

Well it's water change day. I think today I'll try and get a new pic of each tank and give a list of all different fish and friends in each tank. We shall see how it goes 😆

Hooray! Someone brought in peppermint mocha creamer to share. I added just a hint of it to my coffee [with TeeJay]. Mmm!

Long time customer of Coop and others. First time Posting. Been in the hobby 10+ Years. Thanks

Hi, I just love aquarium co-op, Cory is a guru to me. My problem is that I don't live in the US, I live in Sweden (Nobel prize?). Sweden is a desert when it comes to fish keeping. Sure, there is a society for cichlid enthusiasts but that's about it. I used to keep cichlids but now I'm into puffers and that's almost unheard of. Pea puffers, yes, but the rest (as schoutedeni in my case) is a big "Que?!" I live in a small town, one hour from the capital, and I can't even find live food - not to mention snails. I've had to import the fish (from Germany). It took me a while to find them at all, the same for snails and live food like blood worms. Frozen, they rather starve. They're captive bred so one would think that they'd been used to frozen food, but nope. I'd like to have a thread for us non US citizens. Where to get yadayada. I live in the EU, and we have totally different brands. Sure, there is Germany, but the problem with Germans is that they speak German. I can cope, my German is okay, but I prefer to use English. Us Europeans, let's help each other!

What up what up? Did maintenance to every single tank today. Most just water changes, but also topped off my girlfriends shrimp tank, and I still continue to get the Pea Puffer tank cleaned up. Trimmed off some algae covered leaves that were too far gone, mixed up some new c02, replaced some c02 tubing, and we just continue to work on it to try to get it looking its best. One day my friends, one day. Boiled 7 or 8 Indian Almond Leaves but didn’t save any of the tea. However, I did add some of the saved tea to the 29 gallon and put all the leaves in there. I just wanted the leaves to sink quickly so I decided to boil them instead of just chucking them in there and waiting for them to become water logged. Slowly but surely that tank is darkening up. I love the look of all the leaves piled on this side. Makes the green from the plants really pop. The Cory’s don’t mind and the shrimp love it. Snapped a pretty rad pic of a few of the Chili’s. Such a good looking fish. Took the meds out of the Axelrodi Rasbora tank with a 50% water change and quarantine continues. They’re looking and acting great. Gonna leave them in QT until I either need to move the baby Panda Angels to their next tank or the Black Neons come in. Should both of those happen, I’ll have to move the Bristlenose to the 55 gallon tank. I really should just donate those guys to the LFS. I have no clue what I would do otherwise and selling them one at a time for a couple bucks each on Craigslist just sounds like a hassle. I’ll trim the cube before putting the Axelrodi in there, and once they’re in that should be some motivation to not let it get to insane jungle status as we move forward. Also stoked for the Black Neons when they come in. It has been a hot minute since I’ve had some new fish so I’m pumped. Enjoy your tanks, my friends.

https://youtu.be/MeOoWj71ir8

Im not sure what growth you are referring to. These plants have been floating for weeks due to me procrastinating.... planting is probably my most hated aspect of the hobby. Todays group photo.

Yes, exactly, with other causes more likely than flukes. Gram negatives far more likely in our fishy friends and their aquatic environment. There are so very many Gram negative bacteria that are opportunistic pathogens and water is their normal environment.

Just now catching up with the tank, right in time for the tear down… It looked great! I have a 50g lowboy/frag tank I found shallow depth easier to get good circulation and surface agitation. Hope you attempt it again I definitely agree smaller tanks for river style are much easier to maintain. I also use emergent plants to keep water quality up.

Well I figured the man 3 @Guppysnail @nabokovfan87 and @Chick-In-Of-TheSea have a good idea but everyone else probably has no clue as to what has been going on lol. Now don't expect another update like that until after Christmas 🤗

Yes, I know this to be true (my job has me privy to some of this information), people in urban areas are seeing wildlife they never knew has ALWAYS been there. A mountain lion (fairly rare but possible) or coyote (totally common) walking down their street and they freak. They pose no real danger to humans unless during mating season or rabies exposure- honestly they pose more a danger to our pets than anything. Hundreds of microchips are found in the systems of many a deceased predator every year. Anyway, I KNOW I pass them and they pass me, but honestly I'd really rather see them for curiosities sake than anything. I'd be more scared of what you mentioned: a pheasant blowing up in my face in the middle of the night. That's the stuff of nightmares!

I Just figured I should give a little update this build I did end up having to brake down the tank for a few reasons. Reason number one is I did a water change on the tank and ended up having a crash killing about 90% of the live stock due to what I believe was a unusual amount of chlorine in the water and me not having enough non expired prime on hand. And reason number two is one of the seams was leaking and had progressively gotten worse over time to a point where I had a clamp holding the tank together towards the end. a few things for anyone interested in a similar project for themselves. 1 I think a 125 is probably a more realistic size for the top end of this build. 2 I would have also limited the number of species I was going for the darters really only ever ate live food which was challenging. The gobies did fight with each other for space and the many types of schooling fish made it hard to get them food to the bottom as well.I probably would have kept with the hill stream loaches and one or two large schools as well as one species of goby or kuli loach but not both. 3 I enjoyed the flow but honestly more was needed as well as a proper clean out for it and the pumps I found the muck would clog up everything on that left side of the tank with the pumps. also the topper was awesome but after a while the plants needed so much trimming so light would get to the water and one of the lights died from the humidity in the topper if I was to try to build a new one again I would consider going with a 33long or two modified by conjoining the short end to make one 8 by 1 by 1 foot tank.as for flow a few fx6 or large canisters would be much simpler to get a similar effect. As for stocking I would pick one of each species and focus on their individual needs properly sticking to CPDs with hillstream and kuli loaches if anyone has questions feel free to ask I’ll be happy to answer anything I can

@Guppysnail can we move this to the disease section and help get eyes on it in case anything comes up! Many thanks.

So when i had some counter tops put in i had left over slabs and i got the slab store to cut me some long pieces - 130 inch long and 18 inch wide so i could make ad-hoc aquarium stands for 20 long/29/30 long and similar: We got the first one setup today and tomorrow i'll move the 29 on-to it so i can move the 120 to where the 29 is in the room then i'll setup the 2nd one. This is what the stone look like - sorry about the glare it looks nicer in person Here is a close up but for some reason the phone seem to be unable to capture the contrast of the original stone (this is a natural granite stone with lots of quartz elements - it is called titan if you want to look up a nicer picture). The deposits have lots of red and gold flecks and other goodies in it but the base portion is blackish. You'd have to see it in person to capture the full scope of the rock. Pity i don't have an aquarium large enough to hold it. --- update: Did a google search and found this image: https://titangranitestl.com/gallery/kitchens/titanium-granite-kitchen/ -- Just be aware that as a natural stone each slab can look radically different. This particular slab had a lot of red/gold specs mixed in but others were mostly just white and black. Everyone should visit their slab store now and then and look at the natural stones - some are really quite lovely. The other piece i have is volga blue. One of my favorite used for the fish room counter is Jadore.

I think you’ve hit it dead on with Parotocinclus spilosoma. That looks exactly right. Cute little pleco that stays about 2” and I might have to find some of them for myself, now. 😆 I’m sure I can set up a group in a 10 G. Well, as soon as I clear out some guppies. 😂 🤣

If as you say this is a breeding project you're going to want to get those shrimp out of the tank from time to time to sell them or even just inventory them. It's nice when you can at least make your breeding tank look nice so in this case I would use things that are easily removed so you can net your bred animals. Personally I wouln't plant any plants- I would use rhizome only plants that you can glue to the rocks and move when needed. I love any type of Java Fern or Anubias that fits the tank you're using. This way the rocks and plants can be moved as needed with no need to uproot plants to find or catch stock.

If I had better skills at making short videos I totally would 😂

Flukes should have responded to the first treatments with PraziPro, so I don’t think flukes are the issue. Flukes should be visible on the fish’s skin if you can see close enough to notice these much, much smaller black dots. Flubendazole has some antimicrobial effect as well as the anti-parasitic function. It is even being studied for anti-cancer effects because of how it acts inside the cell. I would be far more inclined to think this might be a bacterial skin infection vs flukes, largely because I think you would have seen flukes since you’re looking so close. I think salt in the water would be a good thing, but I’d probably only do 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons to start, then over a couple days, potentially increase to 1 tablespoon per 3 gallons. That dose is likely to affect plants, so pull anything you want to save. Add at least one airstone and let the fish rest from the meds. They’re pretty safe but you don’t need to treat flukes that aren’t there.

Oh I don't know lol. I would still like some chili rasboras or maybe some small tetras or a group of phantom tetras. Maybe a 6 pack of cherry barbs.

Ok round 4 are you ready for this or what?! Next up is the 10 gallon shrimp sanctuary tank. Only thing in here is red cherry shrimp. Along with one ninja (assassin's) snail. Have never had a ramshorn issue in this tank like the rest. I forgot to mention there are also assassin's in all the other tanks so far. Just like the rest it has driftwood and dragonstone for all the books and crannies shrimp like to hang out in. Kind of hard to see the stone behind the gaggle of java moss hornwort and guppy grass. Filtration is another aquatop Forza filter with 3 coop nano sponge filters. 2 are double stacked. Gravel as substrate and shrimp domes. Java fern have taken over the middle wood of the tank not that you can see it.

The only disease I can think that cause black spots is black spot disease the recommended treatment is praziquantel active ingredient in prazipro it's rarely fatal usually self limiting and doesn't require treatment it's more commonly found in pound because it need birds as part of its life cycle am not convinced that's what it is what's your ammonia level @Jesse L

I have run into this. I even had them tell me they won’t ship live plants once. I have also found packages labeled live fish often get delay. More often than other packages. I now use perishable and fragile stickers and do not indicate live fish on the package

Unfortunately, it's normal for this to happen. I take mine to the UPS shipment warehouse because the local UPS store claims they "don't ship" them. Despite that they do. It's not worth the argument and I would recommend getting on the phone and speaking to the person at the sorting facility/shipment warehouse for UPS or the postmaster for USPS and verify that they will ship the package. Take the name down of said person for the sake of any issues. FedEx won't ship live animals anymore from my research.

🤩🤩🤩🥳 @Chick-In-Of-TheSea sent me an Aquashella T shirt. I love it 😻 Kats Aquatic sticker included. To match my Boo cat inspection.

You can borrow mine!

I wonder if the pumpkins on my porch are healthy for the squirrels eating them. And why the damn raccoons skip by the healthy and accessable pumpkins and go for the trash bins that they can’t get in to?

You kinda made me cry. So much crisis and tragedy surrounding me and in the world right now; my Betta is sick; my dog is only half groomed and we’re having professional pictures made tomorrow; sooo many errands and chores to get finished before the two holidays coming up; and I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed with the people and animals around me that I have to help. Then I read this. Something I wrote two weeks ago. You remembered me and felt drawn to say something. It’s an amazing feeling to be remembered. So thanks. Thank you. From my overwhelmed heart to yours - you just made my day!

Has anyone had this happen before? I was trying to ship two separate boxes of fish, some G. metallicus and platies. The postal worker didn't want to take the box. I showed him on the USPS website that they do indeed allow shipment of live, harmless fish (this page: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm). He ended up sending me to a different counter for that employee to deal with me. By this time I was really late to work so I'm ashamed to say it but I lied to the second guy and said there was nothing perishable in the box. Now I feel guilty but also confused and irritated bc why wouldn't they just take the fish?? Any tips or feedback?

I've had a 32.5 G Fluval MegaFlex for almost 3 years now but I just have never really been happy with the aquascaping in it and have had poor results with live plants, bearded algae growth, and being able to keep some fish long term. - Currently have 7 panda corydoras (they bred a few months ago apparently and went from 5 to 7) - Two (now pretty large) yo-yo loaches. - One bristle nose catfish All of these fish have really been in the tank since the start.. Over the past 3 years I have tried: school of tiber barbs (they did well for 1.5 years... and then one got sick... and then within 2 weeks all of them had died). pearl gourami - only lasted a few months and never seemed happy. Blue Ram Cichlids - have tried twice..... only lasted a few months Ruby Clown Cichlid / Bolivian Cichlid - only lasted a few months. The biggest challenge seems to be my water.... we are on a spring/well/mountain runoff system and the pH of the water seems high. 7.8-8.2. I knew this going in and added a lot of driftwood, but it didn't seem to make much difference. I also added CO2 for a while and it didn't lower the pH much, helped the plants a little bit, but seemed to help the algae more than anything. The last time I tried the Ruby Clown Cichlids I tried very hard to buffer the water with Seachem's Neutral Regulator.... initially it seemed promising, but when the Ruby Clown Cichlids died I abandoned that and let it return to its natural pH which has not seemed to be a negative for the corydoras, bristle nose place, and yo yo loaches. A few weeks ago I had a really bad outbreak of bearded algae (not the first time), but I've cleaned the tank more frequently, and moved the tank location out of afternoon sunlight and it's getting better. Questions: I have medium size round gravel and black sand in it. Should I add some type of substrate for the live plants? 2. What changes could make the aquascape look better? Should I add CO2 again for live plants? 3. What fish would you recommend adding given the above? I'd like to add some much more lively and fun fish to make the tank a bit more interesting. I'm currently torn between just going for a basic community tank with a bunch of tetras and smaller community fish, or trying to see if African Cichlids could work given the pH, or maybe even trying a Convict cichlid with some barbs. I really wish I could get either the Blue RAM or Ruby Clown cichlids to thrive in the tank as I really like them and they are readily available here, but I feel bad at this point after multiple failures.

Hi! Saw nobody had answered you yet so I have a few insights. Welcome to the forum! I would ask you personally first- ask yourself- do you get bored easily with your tank? I know a lot of hobbyists that just like changing it up constantly. If that is you, this might just be your pattern in the hobby, maybe changing things up keep you interested. However, if it is just overall dissatisfaction with what you have had so far I would consider these points. You do have high pH so if you don't want to be become a water chemist and mess with that constantly and put your fish in a wobbly environment occassionally (which causes stress and illness) then stick with fish that are high pH tolerant. I think you have good options there. IMO the largest of the Flexes isn't the best tank for most cichlid types because generally you get fewer fish and less action. You did express some interest in having a more "exciting" tank. I think a community tank is the way to go. Personally I think a combination of Molly, Swordtails, Platies and Guppies make for an exciting tank. If you don't want reproduction you can go with small combinations of males that are generally pretty and never ending movement. I think you can also consider one of a few of our favorites here that might be able to tolerate your parameters: Bolivian Ram. They are a lot less picky about pH than their Blue Ram brothers and while not as pretty according to some (I disagree) they are FULL of lovely personality, are a great centerpiece and would occupy the bottom half of the tank. I would check your area for Bolivians kept in similar parameters. As far as plants, yes, get yourself some actual plant substrate this will definitely help you- even if it's just gravel. Plants that need their roots covered will not benefit by being in sand as it doesn't allow nutrients to the plant- then they suffer. OR, switch it up to rhizome plants only (Anubias, Java Fern) which don't require planting.

Maybe he was lonely and very happy to see another of his kind? That’s great they all seem to be in good shape! 😃

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea yeah, checked ammonia too and it’s at 0ppm

By using a sponge filter from an established tank, the tank most likely cycled very quickly, or there wasn't even one. I keep extra sponge filters in several tanks so that I can quickly set up a tank for quarantine, or some other reason, and never have had problems with losing fish due to ammonia or nitrite.

Black discoloration on fish could be ammonia burn. Ammonia can occur when medicating, as some medications disrupt the nitrogen cycle. Do you regularly test for ammonia? Of the “big 3” (ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate) ammonia is the most toxic. If you test with strips, the ammonia test would be on its own separate strip; it is not part of the multi-test strips.

You might try gently raising the temp to 78 in addition to other things mentioned above. I had my ram freeze on me and I just overly am concerned with that now. Mine was at 73-74 and I didn't realize until way after what I did wrong. Temperature being slightly off leads to stress, leads to issues like diseases and parasites showing up, so it's just something I want to mention. It's a bit interesting that the PH is this high. It makes me wonder about aeration, but that aside I don't think anything is of concern here. I would keep an eye on PH and make sure it doesn't go any higher. If possible, verify KH via a liquid test kit.

The ingredients on my bottle of EasyGreen list "EDTA Diammonium Copper".

@nabokovfan87 ph 7.6-8 kh 80ppm gh is pretty high 300ppm Nitrite 0 nitrate 0 temp 76 tanks been running for about a year

@nabokovfan87 thanks for replying! I first suspected flukes because some of my corys started flashing then some of my tetras started doing it so that’s when I noticed it was spreading and started meditating. I started with para cleanse, following dosing instructions two treatments one week apart. I didn’t see much improvement and followed with 3 rounds of prazi pro back to back. It seemed to help a little but fish were still flashing. I then let them rest for a month and was still seeing flashing so I tried a one week soak of ich x with little improvement. Finally used fukasol and have seen a dramatic improvement. All the fish in the tank seem fine and eating well but I did noticed those spots on the ram that I had never seen.

The purple one is the one I'd guess is a male, the big one. I've had it since it was the size of a pea. He moved on to the extra snail they sent me. The first one seems fine anyway, lol. But it isn't on the shell but like, face to face.

The new ram has been named. He is Spike! In the cartoon, Spike is one (of 3) brothers of Snoopy’s. Andy, Spike, and Olaf Here’s a little clip from I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown. Spike brings his BFF to visit Snoopy. More than one person suggested Woodstock, but we already have a Woodstock! Here is Snoopy and Woodstock: Also, here’s a favorite clip of a sound effects artist, kickin it old school. ☺️ https://youtube.com/shorts/-UJQXqlVvrA?si=0x7hcZ7_hTLpXQdb

In czech republic all but one courier has it explicitly forbidden to ship live animal (including shrimp and snail ) and it happened gradually, one by one shipper and now there is only one, fairly expensive. Noone wants to be responsible for the loses

Thank you. This is my step by step guide and shopping list when I’m finally ready to commit. 🤗

I ended up setting up an aqua clear HOB filter, and I ordered a baffle that should fit perfectly when it arrives. Thanks again!

So I have a new larger caves coming today for lemony and luna. They should have plenty of room to spawn in for the next time around. I thought he might have already had eggs in the cave a couple of days ago but he has left the cave alone for a day now. Maybe he did have eggs but they were not fertile. As well I caught a great deal on Amazon this morning and picked up another penguin pro 125 for the 29 as well. It already has one on it with an original penguin 150. I just hate this design. So I will be happy to run dual pro 125s on it as well as keeping the 2 med coop sponge filters as well. It will be here tomorrow so it will be a fun day off adding the new filter and changing out to the new larger cave.

Snapshots from the boxing up process… Catch large school with large net… Move to large specimen container, remove duckweed, cover, and examine… Prepare precise water volume for shipping and treat with Amquel… Count out precise numbers of fish, move to shipping bag, add O2… Close up box with Acclimation Guide and Shipping Notice, label filled out and covered with tape to protect from rain… Now to the P.O…

Yea. I cut it periodically and it just keeps growing feet after feet until it is more than 8 feet long. I'd rip the stuff out but my fishes like it too much. There are days i wish cutting it would stunt the growth for a few years but it just keeps on giving.

Thanks, I was always concerned using it because how tall it got. I like the look of Val, but i dont like when I see it hanging over on top of the water. I didnt think you could trim it down without killing the plant itself.