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This thing hung around barely alive for months and months…. Finally it is starting to thrive and have good coloration…

Many of us have gotten into keeping fish thanks to the breadth of Tropical species in the hobby. Over the last few years, I have found Temperate climate fish species most intriguing. These live in local waterways around the USA. These photos are from our tanks… Banded Darters (Etheostoma zonale) Behavior is similar to goby species. Appreciates green plants in the tank. Males vary their brilliant green color depending on the season. Orangethroat Darters (Etheostoma spectabile) Very friendly and non aggressive. Cold water is best. Cold, unheated basements are perfect. Eats frozen bloodworms. Rainbow Shiners (Notropis chrosomus) More beautiful than many tropical species once mature, these Georgia and Alabama natives are my favorite Temperate species to keep and breed. They eat flake food just fine. Mountain Redbelly Dace (Chrosomus oreas) These are very nice in native river-stream setups. I have been able to breed… around a thousand by now. Gulf Coast Pygmy Sunfish (Elassoma gilberti) Very shy, these guys need live foods to thrive. Their courting dance moves are spectacular! Oh my… there’s so, so many more

Woohoo 🎉 My German blue ram breeding article was published as a feature story in Tank Tales the ACLC Newsletter AND I made the cover with my photo submission 🎉 I cannot post the article though you must be a club member to get the newsletter 😞 Just wanted to share my excitement

As others have said, you can have a wide variety of fish with those parameters. I have quite a few in my tanks, and my water is harder than yours, with higher pH.

Pruinosus ‘powder orange’ although I get some ‘orange cream’ from time to time. The culture is still 1000+ strong. I should probably start selling and trading to get some more crosses 😅

Hello everyone! I wanted to start a little journal of my high-tech planted tank. (More like medium-tech; these are all mostly easy-to-grow plants) Plants are val, dwarf sag, dwarf hairgrass, various types of buce and crypts, java fern and finally amazon swords. I used some cheap Mexican beach stones available at home depot/lowes for the island in the center. The wood is called ghostwood, which I believe is just sandblasted manzanita. Substrate is UNS contrasoil capped with some coarse sand. My goal is to get the val to fill a lot of the back half of the tank and float over the surface. I know the swords might be too large for a 20 long, but i feel that with adequate pruning i can get them to remain bushy. once they grow in they will hopefully shade the buce and prevent any algae growth on their leaves. The Dward Sag has exploded. the dwarf haorgrass is the newest addition and am hoping to get a decent carpet going. I wouldn't mind a patchy look in the foreground. I'm dosing nilocg Thrive+ and am running 1.5 bps off a small paintball tank. Took a while to dial in the needle valve as the Aquatek regulator has really bad tolerance. The CO2 diffuser is placed right under the intake of the aquaclear 50. So far, the diffusion has been excellent and I haven't noticed any issues with the impeller. I also swapped an impeller from my AC30 into the 50 to get gentler flow which the rummynose tetras seem to prefer. Stocking is an apisto hongsloi, about 20 rummynose, and 9 corys. Nitrates are consistently below 30ppm so I feel i can fit in some more fish. I'd like some nano Amazonian top dwellers; Pleas make suggestions! I was thinking of either dwarf hatchetfish or pencil fish.

I didn’t know Amazon Swords flowered. I was away for almost two weeks and when I got home, I noticed stems growing from my anubias and sword. 10 days later, they look like this. The Pleco loves grazing on the flower.

Hello All, I just wanted to get some input on nutrient deficiency for my Amazon sword. This is a 20 gallon tank stocked with 5 glow fish tetra's, 4 hillstream loaches, amano shrimp and 3 pea puffers. Plants in addition to 2 amazon sword, 1 dwarf aquarium lily, java moss and Vallisneria. I was considering reducing my fertilization schedule due to staghorn algae but the Amazon sword plants seem deficient in something. The plant on the left is older, while most of the leaves are fine some have darker veins and a warp/twist to them. The plant on the right is newer the leaves are not as dark as the other plant and have dark veins, 1 leaf is kinda floppy. Fertilization schedule: Tuesday = 1 aquariumcoop root tab per amazon sword Thursday = 2 pumps easy green Saturday = 1 aquariumcoop root tab per amazon sword Thank you for your help.

Oh man, I really tried to catch it on camera, but I couldn’t. Snoopy was carrying around these square snail foods. It was very silly.

Did you do any medication as well? How have your levels been? Ok sweet! I'll give it a go and will reach out if any questions come to mind. Thank you! Ok sweet. That was the plan. Dose the meds and don't feed for at least 4-7 days. Then I'll do 50% changes each week to cycle out the meds and keep good levels. Thanks for helping with all of my questions @AllFishNoBrakes

I'm currently 2 weeks into 12 scissortails, 6 orange venezuelan cory's and a bristle nose in a 10gal. They were all young enough and small enough i figured the tank could handle it and everything has been fine, now i am changing water every other day but so far so good!

I would dose Easy Green to have total tank nitrates around 20-25 ppm. this will require much more dosing than the Easy Green label…. Each 1 ml pump of Easy Green raises Nitrate 3 ppm in a 10 gallon tank. WIting for better GH, KH test kit is reasonable enough. I think @Mmiller2001 recommendation to lower it is primarily to lower the ph which will allow better plant utilization of the Iron in Easy Green that gets bound up and inaccessible to plants in higher ph. Not only is it what “I would do” it is by and large what I actually do… And these are the results I get doing it. Now granted I also have CO2 running, but increasing your macro and micronutrients are likely to improve things substantially from where they are now.

If it was me, I wouldn’t hesitate to do that. Especially considering I don’t feed for the first 4 days of the trio, and then sparingly from there, ramping up over the weeks. Test often, but if you’re careful you should be fine.

The answer is: Maybe? This is the part where patience is key @Colten OSteen, it's only cycled when you only read Nitrate and not the other 2. There is not an exact time when this occurs as every tank is its own micro world. Nobody can say, "yes it happens on day 17". It's just something to keep an eye on until it does. I've seen people take only a few days to cycle (this is usually with some help from a running tank) or a few months! Most of us are in between. And new cycles sometimes have wobbles, especially if you try and stock it with too much too fast!

Let me call out @Guppysnail who once helped identify a bladder snails poop on this forum, and since I couldn't find similar threads anywhere on the internet, he's an expert in this niche for me 😅 sorry for disturbing 🙃

6.8 is getting towards softer water, which some fish don't like as well and some fish prefer more. It just deoends on the species. Like others have said, there are some hardier fish species that don't care that you could try. 6.8 itself isn't that bad, but I'd be a bit more conscientious of what fish I got as things like driftwood and lack of water changes could soften it further over time. Still, 6.8 isn't crazy outside the normal.

Looks like GSA, I’d raise PO4 a third more than what you were previously dosing. The internet likes to demonize PO4 for some reason. I keep my tank at 10ppm PO4. Having it this high has always stopped GSA.

I had to scrap it! I sold the zoomed terrarium and the tall terrarium wouldn’t hold water no matter how much silicone I used so it will now be a humidity box for my partner’s orchids I bought a 12g high aquatop tank and once the rest of the tropical plants show up I will make a post about it!

Point in fact: most aquarists will just tell you to “plop ‘n drop” new fish. This typically works fine. But sometimes die-off is correlated to sudden temperature shifts. My thoughts here are out of an over abundance of caution. Don’t think of this as a rule… unless you’re doing NANF, in which case it probably SHOULD BE a rule! If temperature differences between bag and tank are less than 5°-F, just float the bag for 20-30 mins before pouring bag over a net suspended in a pail, and adding fish. I prefer adding with tank lights off for comfort. If temperature differences between bag and aquarium exceed 5°-F, then add several gallons of fresh, clean tap water to a clean aquarium-use pail / bucket with some Prime (or preferred water conditioner). Try to get temperatures in the pail _very close_ to temps in the fish bag. I also add a lightly bubbling airstone. Provided temperature is close enough, move fish to this pail. Then, for 60-120 minutes, start adding tank water to the bucket slowly. Once temperature is very close, net them over. I mentioned NANF (North American Native Fish) above. They are my favorites. Nearly impossible to find at fish stores. Here’s a few species, most of which I keep. I get boxes of these fish with water temperatures at ca. 45°-F. Very cold!

Pretty sure that’s a silver rasbora (Rasbora argyrotaenia). They have a habit of just showing up in random fish orders.

Some of my plants aren't doing as well as I think they could and I'm starting to get algae growing on some leaves. I'm thinking I should come up with a more refined fertilization schedule but I have no idea where to start. The plants that aren't doing that well are my S. repens and helanthium quadricostatus. All of my other plants I'm quite happy with except for some algae on the leaves. My tank is 10 gallons and I'm running two Nicrew Aqualux at 40% power each. I'm estimating my tank actually has about 8 gallons of water in it. For fertilizers I use EG, flourish iron, flourish phosphorous, flourish comprehensive, magnesium sulfate, and aquavitro mineralize. I do have root tabs but I'm trying not to use them because I've heard you don't need root tabs if you have good fertilization in the water column and I'd prefer to eliminate variables. I dose all my ferts once a week after water changes. I do 3 gallon water changes with 50/50 tap and distilled. My tank GH is around 80ppm and KH is around 40ppm. Temp is 78-79. I was unable to find information about calcium or magnesium in my tap water so I'm not sure about cal:mag ratio. I dose EG 30 drops per week. My nitrates usually test around 20-30ppm. I dose .8ml of iron, 1ml of phosphorous, .75ml of comprehensive, .125ml mineralize, and a little under 1/8tsp magnesium. Again that's once a week after water changes. Because I've started getting algae growing on my leaves last week I decided not to use any phosphorous or comprehensive but that is just me taking a shot in the dark. I haven't started learning about types of algae and their causes. The plants I have are: narrow leaf java fern, anubias nana, anubias petite, limnophila sessiliflora, helanthium quadricostatus, S. repens, and I recently added a few stems of Hygrophila rosanervig.

I'm starting to suspect that I don't have enough phosphates in my tank. My dosing routine has been so-so for quite some time. I haven't been dosing super consistently and in general I've been underdosing. A month or two ago I checked my nitrates and they were at like 80+ ppm. I was a bit surprised since I do have a decent amount of plants. My first thought was that probably some other nutrient than nitrate was the limiting factor. So I ramped up my dosing schedule. So for the last two months or so I've been dosing regularly and a bit on the heavy side. The liquid fertilizer I use consists of micros and potassium. That should take care of it I thought, since phosphates and nitrates probably are abundant just from feeding. And the plants did perk up. New shoots and buds all around... but then nothing. It's like they want to and they push but they don't really take of. And when they do push out new shoots I see the older leaves kinda decay. So even though I've been dosing micros + potassium the plants don't take off and the nitrates stayed high. In my mind that leaves phosphate as the likely limiting factor. I cut down on feeding and increased water changes and now I'm at about 30 ppm nitrates. Then the other day I stumbled over this article by Tetra. Especially this paragraph: "In lakes and rivers the enrichment of the water with nutrients is termed ‘eutrophication’ and this can lead to heavy growth of algae or aquatic plants. These nutrients are mainly nitrate and phosphate, with phosphate being the limiting factor in freshwater environments. In other words it is the presence of phosphate that triggers the plant growth, and it is phosphate that most commonly runs out first." So I'm thinking that I may run low on phosphates. I don't have a test for phosphates and I'm not sure I can be bothered to get one but I have a phosphate fertilizer in the mail. Once I start dosing phosphate in addition to my micros + potassium, I expect the plants to take off and the nitrates to start dropping. I'm really curious to see if that will happen.

I want to setup a 29G community tank with cherry shrimp. My tap water GH is 100-120ppm and KH is around 70-80ppm. TDS meter says 180ppm. Ph usually settles at 7.6-7.8. What fishes would that be ideal for? I'm thinking any of the livebearers would do well but I'm not sure if they actually need harder water than that or what my other options could be.

Do they need hard or soft? First time getting these boys and I’m going to get 6.

I recommend white cloud minnows as they can live in a wide range of parameters. U can prob go with 10-15 of them for a 20+ gal.They do great with Cherry shrimp too Just make sure ph is between 7 and 8 I mean 6 and 8

Live bearers are pretty adaptable in my experience so they would work fine in your tank. My favorite type is the Endler Livebearer, they are wildly entertaining to watch. They have awesome colors, come in a wide variety and stay pretty small compared to their guppy "cousins". Due to their small size, they won't be able to eat many (if any) of your shrimpletts and you'd be able to stock a larger number than its larger livebearer counterparts. You could do all males which have all the colors and watch them "duel" which means they dance and strut in front of each other. Or you could do males and females and have both the shrimp and Endlers breeding.

None of those perimeters look too far on any end of the spectrum. They actually seem to be sitting pretty much in the middle, or the "ideal" for most fish. As long as you aren't intending to put fish that need crazy hard or very soft water (which would be noted on care guides when you do some research), you can probably do just about anything with water like that.

It might be overkill but if you are worried that the tank water is too hot when acclimating and it wil get hot (room temp) too quickly: - Drop temp by adding cold water, so bag and tank matches - Acclamatise like usual and add to the tank. - If you want the tank to go to room temp slower, warp some bubble packaging or foamboards around it, and put a lid on temperately if you don't have one.

I do not use fertilizer but when I tried using individual nutrients @Mmiller2001 had fantastic guidance for me.

What a lovely tank. Handsome Apisto!

Ignore the empty quote, I'm still getting used to the forum. Fish is still active but I've noticed that the infection seems to have slowed instead of stopping. I am going to do a 30% water change, replace the salt in the change. I have kanaplex arriving Tuesday but I'll see about getting my hands on erythromycin if possible. I am going to remove the sunken leaf to try to keep the decay in the tank down. Tank is sitting at 79 degrees. Would adding stress coat be a bad idea?

They are from softwater stream but the aquarium strain can handle a very wide range

Thanks for the detailed response! That seems roughly what the prices are here. Seriyu Stone is about $4 / lb which would be roughly €9 / kilo. That is super vague. Most platforms here don't allow you to sell live animals (maybe it's one of those things where the EU made a law and companies applied it to the whole platform). There are still people who try to be sneaky about it. A ban makes some sense though, there are a lot of people who try to sell things that are invasive/illegal. That seems to be a recurring theme. People just don't understand how to keep fish or just see them as decorations. This is one thing I'm jealous of. It seems like more varieties of killifish are available in the EU. At least on Aquabid there are a lot more European sellers

If the tank is empty (animal wise), add cold water to the tank before acclimating, maybe put some insulation around it so it very slowly goes back to room temperature

They can adapt to a fairly wide range of water parameters. Unless your water is extreme, the only thing you need to be careful with is temperature acclimation. If they come from 62°-F, but your tank us 74°-F, there is a danger to all fish when shifting water parameters too fast. If you test the temperature of the bag they’re in and find it is 5° or more different from the tank you’re moving them into, consider possible impacts to their health when suddenly shifting temperatures. Shifting up degrees very suddenly is particularly dangerous.

Yes! I did try that after one time and it worked!Thanks

I's a company I'm trying to start in my spare time. I have a test project a ran at a retirement home, I place, maintain, and do all work on a nice aquascaped aquarium. It stays my property bet startup is free this way. I gave them a 3 month free trail and after they signed for the next 4 years. Small monthly fee, zero work of maintenance for them, all troubles are mine to solve. Regarding difference from the US: Fish are cheap, all the rest is expensive. Some things are crazy expense, like neocaridina can be 5-10 euro a peace in a shop (average net wage here is 2.500). rocks are almost €10 a a kilo from a shop, wood €30-40 a kilo. so a 40G aquascape with lots of hardscape, external filter and CO2 is a full months wage. Fuel/gas/electricity is very expensive compared to US, houses are very well build and insulated so I focus on +-22° room temperature setups. Selling animals as a hobbyist is illegal on almost all online platforms, and those were it is legal you can't have a permanent offer for example 3 kinds of shrimp. Occasional and unforeseen sale online is allowed, when there is frequent or structural sale (very vague in the law) it's illegal and you need to have a company. wild caught is rare, most fish here are bred in eastern Europe where wages and power costs are low, so large breeders are rare in western Europe. Most shops only carry 20-40 spices, some hidden gems (many distributors for shops open for retail also) carry few hundred spices and almost all basic spices can be ordered vie local shops on a week notice. for example killifish, some shops have one species in stock, one distributor has like 5 species, but it's hard to get anything that is rare. The r/shittyaquariums here seem to be as frequent as in the US, awareness about fish care and planted tank is limited to hobbyists only but many households have there abusive fish tank.

Yes, except you should see that a few days in a row to make sure everything is somewhat ready. Then slowly add fish. The idea is that the ammonia you are adding represents fish waste. Your beneficial bacteria colonies are like invisible pets you have to feed to make them grow.

Yes if you kill them off they won't return..unless you add new plants

That's corydoras gold right there.... Awesome!

Welcome to the forum! Don't worry, you'll get the hang of things. It can be a bit tricky doing quotes and stuff if you're on mobile. Something I've found is if you refresh and start with a comment there will be an option to clear your saved comment. Sometimes I have to do that to get rid of certain stuff like the quote boxes.

I used FritzZyme 7 and an ammonia source on a "sterile" tank and it took about 2 1/2 weeks. So, that seems to be in line with what everyone else is seeing (maybe could be 1/2 the time with a nitrite source to start with). I did exactly what you are proposing: I waited for the ammonia to hit 0 and then added more, allowing both ammonia and nitrite to hit 0. You are doing your future fish a big favor by doing this fishless cycle and you seem to be doing it successfully (so far)! 🙂

Love Fz7. usually use fritz fuel and sometimes turbostart. I think it speeds up by a several days, I believe. Waiting is just torture, in a good way. Now i have to figure out how to "not start" cycles 😉 . up to 12 tanks, 250 gallons scattered throughout my house.

It depends on which model you have. Some of them it's a good idea to submerge them and they have the min water line indicated on the heater itself for just about all of them. You want it to say fully submersible, which means that they've supported and sealed the wire assembly in the heater appropriately. You can see the squiggly "min water line" on the base of the heater where it attaches to the glass as well. Fully submerge = better heat distribution and you can do water changes without triggering hot/cold spots on the heater. The actual, proper directions for the heater are.... 1. turn off the heater and let it cool for 30 minutes. 2. do your water change 3. let the heater equalize in temp for about 30 minutes. 4. then you can safely turn it back on. Many a heater has exploded from being exposed to air or exposed to extreme water shifts. Also...

The first molt I found, I thought it was a dead shrimp, too. Just plumb freaky to see the antenna still attached. I mean, the antenna is so thin. Thank you, Mother Nature, for figuring these things out.

Hello all! I’m excited to be here and to learn from everyone! Very much a beginner here. I did keep three goldfish over 25 years ago as a teen, and managed to keep them alive for five years before I had to give them away. Definitely didn’t know anything about cycling/having a seasoned tank back then! 😅 Anyway, getting back into it again. I’ve been going down a YouTube rabbit hole for the last 2 months and after hours upon hours of watching videos and reading articles/forums, I set up a 10-gallon planted tank (amazon sword, windelov java fern, anubias, with amazon frogbit arriving in a couple days) a couple weeks ago and am waiting for the water parameters to stabilize before I add fish. I’ve decided on either a female betta or a short-finned male betta, a mystery snail, and a nerite snail. Hope the betta doesn’t end up bugging them too much. Anyway, wish me luck! Here’s a pic of my planted, fishless tank.

Such an underrated fish. I’ve got some that are pushing 5 years old now and they’ve basically been fed some combination of whatever flake I have and frozen brine shrimp every now and again. I’ve done white clouds in an outdoor stock tank before too and given enough cover for the fry, you’ll get quite a bit of breeding with almost no intervention. They are about as hardy as they come.

I think a 10g is too small for these fish - I have 9 in a 100g, they really need swimming space - very active fish, and they will also grow to about an inch and a half.

Okay thank you. I put some crushed coral as recommended and managed to get a hold of some almond leaves and added another table spoon of salt. I will have the maracyn on stand by.

Welcome @Manringjk (Julia)! Glad you are here! Andy