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I dont think any of us who have seen @Mmiller2001 has failed to be wowed by the look he achieves in his tanks. Mmiller2001 recently submitted an entry in the Aquatic Gardeners Association Dutch style competition and won second place in a field of 21 entries. https://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2023/index2.html clicking on each entry allows you to view larger photos, description of the tank and judges review of it. The competition was awfully good. I would be pleased to have my name next to most of them… I have found studying these tanks and reading the judges response quite educational and thought others might enjoy reading them to. There are also categories for garden style that might be more akin to how most of us style our tanks rather than following dutch style rules closely… Congratulation @Mmiller2001for your outstanding results. I know I am beholden to him for help he has given me to grow healthier plants and suppress Algae…

Thank you @Pepere, I really appreciate it. I also read all the judges comments for each tank I enjoy in every category. It's valuable information for sure. Here's another cool thing to look through even if Dutch isn't your thing. It has some water parameters listed and such. NBAT

They are quickly becoming some of my fav fish. Very active and love to eat lol.

@Katherine to quote one of my posts from earlier in this thread...

Flint is making my tank look good. He gets plenty of veggies and kelp/spirulina/BSFL foods but he has assumed the role of tidying up this piece of spiderwood. Flint’s section: Other section: See how his one fin doesn’t lay flat? I wonder if he has an old injury or something. It apparently doesn’t bother him though.

Hmm. Sort of like saying go carve a copy of Michelangelo's David by getting a big block of marble and remove everything that doesn’t look like David…

Yeah, that makes total sense. I only have 2 tanks so I won't be hatching large quantities, just small batches, part of which I'll feed live and then freeze the rest.

Man you guys always amaze me with these! And then i give it a try and it never goes well, but decent enough for me to be happy with! Truly a work of art!

I've got two of the Ziss hatchers, they're hanging on a piece of 1x10 that holds my electronics and whatnot for a water aging/heating setup. I just use rigid tube with a small piece of flexible airline to connect it to the lid. Even the rigid tube occasionally get some salt buildup, but I always rinse it off after a hatch so it's not too big of a deal. With the film (molts?) that coat the bottom towards the end of a hatch I would think the airstone would get yucky. At least the way I hatch.

One rule I have learned on my Aquarium hobby journey is that if something in the tank is stressing ME, then remove it. If I have a plant that I can't keep alive? Remove it and try a different plant. If I have a fish that's eating my plants? Trade it in at the LFS or give it to a friend. In your case, I would take the Gourami and trade it in. Pearl Gouramis are very docile so if you want a gourami, I'd go that route but honestly any gourami and Betta has the potential for issues.

First, Congrats to @Mmiller2001. Those judges can be brutal and helpful at the same time.

Bolivian ram fry are now free swimming. Took a video instead of taking photos. I fed them sera o nip tabs that stick to the aquarium glass so we can see most of the fish. They will be transferred to the 60 breeder once my stand is complete. The big ram I got from @SugarBassJoe finally decided to come out and I think he paired up with the same female he came with. I’m glad they remembered each other 😂

Something like this…

First batch of fry moved to an upgrade last night. Feeding this morning:

@Mmiller2001 wow that’s a gorgeous scape. Congrats ! I could stare at it all day.

@Mmiller2001 your scape looks fantastic. A well deserved second place finish. Congratulations. I’ve always loved the Dutch style and the focus on the lush plant growth, but I also just love hardscape too much to exclude it! Maybe I’ll try my hand at it someday and resist the urge to throw a huge piece of driftwood in.

My female Swordtails keep getting huge… but no fry show up. So, I am trying an old play from Master Dean’s book… Dropped fry can swim out through the holes, and survive in the tank.

Of course…. 50% off on tanks right now…. I remember the first time I heard of people having more than 1 tank…. Blew my mind. I had never thought of that…

What filter do you have?

Common pleco:

Yeah. I agree. I just am not sure how I will pull it off…. I probably will be removing some Anubias in the process and likely at least 1 rock. The biggest downside of a 29 gallon is the lack of sufficient front to rear depth.. It reminds me of when I built boats. I was talking to the designer of the boat asking him if it was really necessary to through bolt a particular fitting as access was difficult to get a washer and nut in back. I wanted to drill and tap and bed with polyurethane sealant. He said it might be fine but it would never be as good as through bolting with a washer and a nylock. He then told me to always though bolt and back with a washer and a nylock when it is easy to do it. And when it is tough to do it, find a way to get it done…. Make a tool to extend your reach etc…

That boy be ugly, but he does have shiney eyes 😄 Sorry here about your fish. 😒

I'm excited. They might take a it to color up and I'll have to remember what it's like to keep mid-level swimming fish again! I planted in some anacharis today, pearlweed, and some rotala (rotundifolia) red in the tank. It looks a bit beat up from the RR treatments and de-duckweeding, but I am hopeful they grow really well. Pearlweed is tough to plant with big chunky pinsettes!

Ok so we will be here waiting patiently for photos. 🙂 Oh, I thought you meant you were the shipper (of neos)

I would use the last of your maracyn if your still seeing no improvement You would want to get holed of another broad spectrum antibiotic treatment with a different active ingredient such as minocycline doxcycline or kanamycin sulfate

Well I finally got water in it and I set it up the way I want it I got some Cardinal in there some buce some anubias Nana I'll be using Pearl weed as my carpet I know I have to trim it often and I'm still on the search for some more plants

Re-newbie here after 27 year hiatus. My ocd doesn't allow me back into the hobby after 26 years until I have a quarantine tank.i was going to pull the trigger on a 10 gal "kit" But is a 5 gal sufficient for now for fish up to 3"? Also. Should live plants be avoided in a qt to make sanitation easier? Should there be a separate qt tank just for live plants? Also Is 4-6 weeks qt legit or just social media noise?

This new substrate looks good! Are you getting this substrate?

He looks like a common pleco (Hypostomus Plecostomus) to me. I like adding canned french cut green beans or sliced organic zucchini, rubber band to a rock, for my plecos once a week just to give them a change from algae wafers. It might surprise you how many of your other fish enjoy the veggies as well.

Also, I ran into bad hatches when I wasn't scrubbing the hatcher out after each hatch. I was rinsing it really well, but wasn't using the brush. With small hatches the build up on the bottom isn't really visible, but now that I've built up to more eggs, it's really obvious that I wasn't getting it clean enough.

Some of the symptoms you described such as sunken belly and spitting food out is a sign of wasting disease you would want to treat with esha ndx active ingredient is levamisole once a week for 4 weeks @ToothlessTheGuppy

What does this mean? I understand the concept, but how quickly did it work, and did it work well in your opinion? Did you keep some? 🙂 Yay! And the barbs were from the other post, right? The hobbyist that had to move or something and is giving away their setups?

I blacked out my tank once for two weeks for velvet, and the lily grew 3 new pads. There is probably some unknowable qualitt to you water, like to much boron or something weird. I see it all the time where people cant grow one plant for some reason. Someone asked me the secret to growing dwarf sag, since it grows ceazy in my tanks , when i. Reality its one of like 5 plants i can grow consistently. Maybe you've been unlucky and have gottem bad bulbs, or maybe theyve been outcompeted by other plants(although this doesnt really make much sense). There are a couple trickly lick flipping it over or removing it and leaving it moist, out of water foe a month that may be worth trying out.

Love these fish @TeeJay

The other thing I'd say is that they seem to be heavy root feeders, so if you don't have aquasoil, you'll want to spoil them with root tabs. If you never got past the bulb-with-no-roots-or-leaves stage, you may have just had the bulb upside-down.

50 years ago last May, a nobody named Richard Branson took a chance on another nobody. Today, Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Virgin Galactic Space Tourism... owe in part, their existence to: The backstory is almost as good as the album:

I have several in my angelfish tank. I really don’t do anything special for them. Just like anubias, keep the bulb above the substrate and the roots will descend. When they start reaching for the surface, they can be trimmed back to a more compact shape. Trim each leaf shoot close to the bulb. Unless you want them to provide some top level cover. I have both types. I even have 1 bulb suspended in a bunch of dwarf sag. Those roots don’t even touch the substrate but the leaves grow all the way to the top. One of these days I’m going to coral it, trim it, and put it back on the bottom. Just watching it to see how it does.

^^continued^^ … sweet groove …

hey, I'm new and researched keeping duckweed from getting sucked into my filter. I can't seem to find the thread.....but did what was suggested and made a little "boom" out of irrigation tubing. The idea was great and it worked, but I still have so much current from the pour-over filter. My tank is small.......5 gal........is this the problem?? It's a classroom tank, I'm a teacher and really want to get some cool tanks going with plants.

This is my guess. Peroxide is damaging to plants. Reverse Respiration is much gentler on plants. Use a freshly opened bottle of seltzer and submerge your new plant for 5-9 hours. If you are trying to kill algae 9-12 hours.

Use freshly opened seltzer. Submerge your Java fern for 9-12 hours in the dark weighted down uncovered. Place fern back in the tank. The bba will turn bright red (dead) and eventually be eaten or disintegrate.

You can try Reverse respiration, if you’re willing to remove your Java fern from your tank. @Guppysnail

Ok my question has been answered. They are tiger barbs. Their markings are clearly visible. Thanks to everyone who had an input. Day 14

Let's start here.... ...and all I want to do is share the headline and just mention it if you've ever had a tank struggle like I have. *deep breath, exhale slow* I woke up this morning and it wasn't anything special that caught my eye. Those that know me know that I follow certain aquascaping channels and my goal is to get towards having a nice tank again. Seeing something like gjcarew's or Mmiller2001's or Seattle_Aquarist or the countless other amazing plant minds on the forums has been inspiring and it's been one of the motivations for me as I did enter back into the hobby, struggled, and wanted to really learn some things I didn't know or understand about my own failures. Without knowing it, this is one of the more profound and subtle notions and it was ringing clear because of the time and the place of everything around me in the moment. Imagine a world of chaos and outside of the walls you see volcano erupting or storms surrounding. You see the trees being tossed by the wind or the ocean waves crashing against the rocks and spraying high into the sky, but you're safe inside the walls and you are focused on this little pod of nature that you and entwined with. I can mention George Farmer and his meditative approach towards tank maintenance or I can mention this clip above and the subtle notion that.... "2023 was full of new and exciting adventures and as the challenges presented themselves, we faced them all together with a unique persistence of an aquascaper." [There is definitely more to the quote above and so I encourage everyone to watch at least the introduction on the Green Aqua video above.] It is one of those phrases that has a lot of gravity to it and it's something that you really don't understand unless you've truly experienced it. I think a lot of people have seen the movie Rudy and been inspired to persevere. Maybe you've seen Miracle and been inspired to face some overwhelming obstacles and scars from the past. There is a lot of ways that we can find energy, momentum, and inspiration in this world thanks to things like youtube videos, movies, forum posts, and conversations with friends. ....and with all that being said I wanted to share a bit about my own vulnerable persistence. I was watching an old video and then I looked up at the wall and I saw this extreme shift in my tank. It wasn't subtle, but it was a moment where I cherished everything that happened for me to get to the moment that I was in. It honestly started here, with this tank and the first time I've ever purchased a single piece of hardscape with the intent of aquascaping something. Even then, USPS lost the package of the piece of wood that I had hand selected. This piece was sent as a replacement and it didn't fit the tank I had. I had to cut the piece of wood and then I had to wait for the opportunity to really scape something with it. I had a piece of wood and I had some plants, but it wasn't an aquascape. It wasn't meant to be, but it was a holding place for a future self. This led me down this path, which was my first attempt at an aquascape. It was my first real attempt at a carpeting plant and my first real attempt at something using a "planted tank substrate" in lieu of sand. All it needed to do was to grow and to work. I failed with how I planted the plants. I failed in how I cared for the plants. I failed in my analysis of necessary water chemistry, lighting settings, and that substrate I used has turned out to be another failure point. That tank quickly regressed back towards chaos. I tried continuously to make things works by adding "more plants." Some things works and some things failed. It was not about giving up, but it was consistently a journey about learning why. Why something worked, why something failed. There is always things out of your control and there is always going to be something where you might just have to start over. Try again to create something beautiful. But again, chaos ensues at times... and all of your moss dies off. ....and sometimes you get a lifeboat from a friend (or two, or three). Brown tinge is from blackwater extract being added! Stepping out of your comfort zone can be enlightening and focusing on the things going wrong isn't as impactful as dwelling on the reasons why things went wrong. There is an eternal hope if you have the perspective and the patience for it... new things will happen and that changes the parameters of everything. The point is that every single tank can be a journey if you frame it as such. Enjoy the journey as much as the perspective that can give you. Sometimes you start in one place, find yourself in another, and just need to follow your feet towards the direction you wish to go. Starting point when the goal was to have a planted tank, discovering aquarium co-op and wanting to grow plants for the first time. This was my 55G and it was just planted with a second or third plant order. There were some failures and I changed to a 75G with an active substrate with a cap.... in a tank mostly filled with anubias. And this is where we are now. Time will tell how myself and the tank grows. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along this journey and know that there is sincere gratitude for your help along my own journey, big or small, it's all valuable for me and being put towards this goal I have for myself. I'd love to hear about your own tank journeys below.

This has been the best tool so far in my battle with duck weed. Fingers crossed I got it all and will be rid of it in this tank. It's call the Floater pick, has anyone else tried it?

Sorry to revive a dead post but this popped up when I was trying to see pothos vs potato information and I figured I should update this. the monstera definitely won, by a mile, the pothos is growing very strong and is as thick in the stem as my finger, but the monstera is fruiting, has 32 inch leaves (no sunlight) and has roots that span 6 feet by 3 feet, definitely the winner for large tanks but I would not recommend it for anything shy of 200+ gallons just because the roots will take over you tank, I can add way more photos if there is interest, there is very heavy plant load in this tank with the monstera but even when jam packed with goldfish the plants keep nitrates to basically 0, it got so strong I had to add close to 30 pounds of crushed coral just to keep the KH from crashing and it’s really done amazing keeping the water “clean”.

Good luck! If I had to bet though, I'd put money on Duckweed in the long haul. It just takes one... 🤣 🌱

(1) Before leaving home, feed live foods heavily. Lots of Daphnia, Baby Brine Shrimp, whatever you have on hand. (2) Adjust conditions to promote spawning behavior: especially for NANF, leave certain tank lights on (i.e. turn _off_ the timer), add a stone tray for riverine egg scatterers, open a vent to a basement fishroom to allow temperatures from central air to lift from mid 60s past the golden threshold of 70-F... (3) After everything has settled down, kids are tucked in bed . . . post a thread about how neat it will be when you return home in a few days to find your fish have been spawning while you were away at your in-laws 😎

As I was feeding the cpds and wiggle butts I noticed a couple of juvenile blue jelly shrimps. So I think we are on our way to getting the colony established. As well I noticed a couple of the female cpds are getting nice full bellies. So I hope to start seeing some eggs in the near future. Mochi is doing well and has grown a little since bringing her home a couple of months ago. She still is really small but I know she won't get huge either. Oh and a new 4th bright pink leave is starting to open up in the flamingo plant!.