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Until recently I rented out the basement as storage space. Our house was larger than Hubby and I needed. Storage tenant is leaving.They stopped paying rent so space available now. So I decided my fishroom-s needed to go downstairs to make it easier on me. Currently they are two converted spare bedrooms. One room still partly what used to be my dressing room. It’s now dual dressing room that is not working well as a dressing room and a squished in fishroom. When I put out my tote for water changes and bucket I siphon out used water there is no room to walk. It’s a step careful and try not to trip situation. I get water by running a hose through the house from the kitchen and used water goes out the window or to the bathroom down the hall. I store my buckets in my bathtub because I’m out of room. Very inconvenient and requires moving them every day to shower. Working in my rooms means everything I’m currently using for whatever fry hatch setup sits on the floor in front of tanks. I bought rolling shelves but they don’t roll over the throw rugs I use in front of each tank to protect the carpet. The house is split level so rooms are above the garage on the second floor. The basement is actually the first floor. This is the basement. 13’ x 26’ plenty of room. 😃 My Hubby ❤️ and friends from Smallworld Aquatics are helping me. One is a contractor. The challenges The room hits 44 in the winter. The HVAC was not installed correctly by the houses first owners. It was an attempt at finishing the unfinished basement. The foundation stone stick uncovered 3 inches into the room and works like ice packs. The garage is not insulated and drafty. We run a heater in the garage over winter to keep the pipes from freezing (they froze and burst one year) The only plumbing down there is hooked to the washer. No faucet available. No drain other than closed sewer line the washer is hooked into. 3 plugs wired to a circuit containing mainly outlets outside, in the garage. And my laundry room. Not usable in capacity for 20 plus tanks. I bought the electrical supplies to run more sockets my breaker box has room for more breakers. I bought the flex duct but they were out of boots the size I needed. Gup is learning to HVAC 😲 Hubby bought the paint and flooring. He also helped me get the first coat on. The insulation board will be delivered Saturday to cover the exposed foundation concrete This party has officially started 🥳 Flooring, utility sink and beautiful island Hubby surprised me with ❤️

I have babies!

Your first shrimplets are super fun! Wait until you see one that’s as big as an eyelash. Super fun! Congrats!

High levels of nitrate can weaken the immune system leading to secondary infection I would do extra water changes and add a double dose of prime to help detoxify any nitrate till it constantly stays under 40ppm

chili rasboras Endler's guppies/livebearers

👏👏👏👏 I would definitely recommend some kind of cover for them. The little plants in the front are great, but they’re not doing much to make the fish feel safe. Taller plants, taller pieces of wood, tall pieces of rock, floating plants, etc will all provide cover and make them feel more secure. Would also recommend getting more as they feel safer in numbers.

Could be caused by an injury I would add a small amount of aquarium salt 1 table spoon for 6 gallons at that level most plants are fine and add some Indian almond leaves as they have antibacterial and antifungal properties you might have to add one leaf per gallon to get a beneficial effect if you notice the eye start to swell or any Reddening then I would do a course of maracyn @Mattlikesfish36

I would wait and watch unless it starts looking red, the eye gets cloudy, eye gets bulgy, unusual behavior, it gets fuzzy, changes colors ect. Any other symptoms I would start treating, but it is stressful and expensive to start treating your tank/fish and chasing your tail for something that isn't hurting anything. Name him Quasimodo. Oh, also keep a close eye on other fish. If any of them start getting something similar than you have issues.

Hello everyone !!! New member to the forum but have been growing fish since I was like 6 years old. Currently have a 125 gallon with Discus, Rainbowfish, Von Rio tetras, Silver Halfbeaks and Cory cats, 37 gallon with 19 Blue Diamond discus fry at about 3 month old, 20 gallon with the breeding pair of Blue diamonds, 7 gallons with Scarlet Badis and a 3 gallon with a Betta albomarginata and Pygmy Cory cats. I’d like to set up a few more tanks in the near future.

I'm not denying that it's easy to make but OP did say that budget is an issue that's why I referred marketplace instead of buying from Lowes. If OP can find a glass lid for free or extremely cheap (I've seen lids for a 40B being sold for $5 in the marketplace) then that's 100% better than buying polycarbonate. OP also is looking for a new light which can add to the cost and he's specified plenty of times that budget is an issue. A regular 10g tank is 20" long and the cheapest option I see at lowes for polycarbonate is $6.98 for a 10"x8" sheet. OP would have to buy two sheets to cover his tank or get the bigger sizes which cost more and probably not in the budget.

ill be the devils advocate here. pretty much every living things needs a small amount of salt in its system to function. now i dont advocate going crazy, but a half to full tablespoon of salt for 20/30 gallons or more is not a bad thing (now to really fire people up, yes thats way more than any water softener will ever induce). a tiny bit is good for things imo, and when dosed in higher quantities, its still a good medication.😈

Browsing through Pet Bazaar. Mom & pop shop. Many snakes! And amphibians. Snowball pleco Tigerhead pleco Peppermint? Camo Pacman Frog

The blue light is very good for growing algae.

I say small School of Chili Rasboras… with Anubias Petite Nana and Dwarf Sag… a mini scape!!!

Missed the kulhi loaches trying to get video of them just snaking around the foreground

Hi @svachon9, The ACO is very similar in design to the Fluval Fresh & Plant 3.0, the ACO light if 50 watts and the Fluval is 46 watts. I too have a 24" deep tank and with the light sitting on the frame of the tank at full output through clean glass tops at the substrate level light intensity is PAR@105 - high light. Do I run my tank at that brightness? No because I don't want an algae farm and even with CO2 in my tanks the amount of algae significantly increases if I am dosing fertilizer into the water column. I typically run my tanks at a PAR level at the substrate between 50 -70 depending on the plants I have in the tank and if I am growing. Hope this helps! -Roy 45 gallon tall (24" tall); PAR@70

Looking a little more like eagles.

That is awesome!

What you want to do is set some water from the tap out overnight and test that. This will get you a better idea what you have for pH from the tap. Then you can figure out what you need to buffer with. I believe most buffer with crushed coral 🪸

could also be a flow issue. Pearl Gouramis don't love a ton of flow so if the water is whipping around in the tank, she may be chilling in the lowest flow spot.

I don’t think there is a good reason to use salt unless you are treating something, especially because treating new fish could stress them out further.

A group of male endlers Sparkling gourami Maybe licorice gourami or a wild betta

That is exactly what the angel fish looked like. I have used the fizz tabs, kanaplex, general cure, tetra life guard, paraguard, maracyn. Not all at once of course but if things don't start to look better soon, I will give your method a try. I keep the water quality top tier. I just realized that I may have introduced infection through plants which would explain why my mollie tank has not gotten sick because they didn't get new plants. Thank goodness I was part enough to quarantine the Otocinclus (and every new fish) after the angel fish situation. Thank you for the second opinion on my slides. I am going to give it a week and see what happens before medicating any of my other fishy's. Thank you 🙂

I would also use aquarium salt alongside the funox

The easiest thing to feed them is active dry yeast. It is very cheap to.

Normally, gouramis are middle-to-upper layers fish that swim in the open. However, they may hide if they’re scared or sick. Looks like you have some other fish that are doing well (dithering), but your pearl might still be scared. Hard to tell from the photo, but do you have plenty of shelter in the form of plants (real or fake)? If not, that might make him shy. Also, having other pearl gouramis to hang out with might make him more confident.

Have you notice any rapid breathing hanging out near the surface lethargy flashing spitting food out sunken belly white stringy poop red worms protruding from anus like in these pictures loss of appetite and is this only affecting your archer fish @Gannon

Dont get the hid and nut number. But as for now the fish shop are close its like 9 at my place will using some of the water outside help relieve the stress on my guppies.

Thanks so much guys! So to keep it simple i can try hardening my water by adding some crushed coral first to raise ph and KH so they wont die right.

I find the same thing with the ACO test strips. I basically never get a nitrate reading on those, but the API test always registers nitrates. Anywhere between 10 and 80 based on the tank. Based on the fact that my tanks are well seasoned (been running for 4 years), I KNOW I have nitrates, I have tons of plants in my tanks, AND I dose fertilizer I personally trust the API test when it comes to nitrates.

My Cory’s grab the snail. Then after a while, they spit the shells out and Im left to clean up the snail shells.

Careful when you say big pleco; some get over 2 feet long.... now that's a nice size pleco....

But have hesitated due to the price… I just bought a Sportsman inverter based generator perfectly sized for up to several fish tanks, keeping fridge cold, recharging electronics etc… It is only 800 watts running load and 1,000 watts start up load, so it isn’t going to run your whole house.. but it weighs around 30 pounds, is much quieter than non inverter based units and is on sale now from a reputable big box store for shipping for $169.99. Normally $299.00. It was enough for me to pull the trigger to add another generator for my business

If they’ve been doing this, and you haven’t seen anything bad happen, I would assume it’s not an issue

A medium sized ACO pre filter works great on mine. I have a ton of shrimp in my tank with my 107

I think the 407 is "rated for" something like a 90gallon aquarium and there's no way I would use it for anything larger than a 3 foot tank. In the 55/75g it struggles to move water that distance. It just is specific to setup sometimes. There's also preference too. I tend to run a particular setup and higher flow demanding fish, but that comment and recommendation is something that was posted elsewhere and made a lot of sense to me after trying to understand the filter I have and some of the quirks on that filter. I wish the spraybar just came in the box!!!

Well, certainly not my experience flow wise. With a spraybar and inline diffuser I am keeping all the bubbles nicely dispersed and in suspension. You can see the bubbles rising to the top and taken by the flow to the front of the glass and down and looking through the side of the tank you can see a circular gyre of bubbles…. And all the foliage in the tank is gently swaying… That is with a 207 on a 29 gallon tank and a 107 on a 20 high. I dont perceive any need for greater flow… i dont use the included pick up though. I use a glass lily pipe pickup with a surface skimmer instead. And yes, I doit with fluval ribbed hoses…

Guppies and live bearers in general like hard water - your water may be a bit soft with the low PH. I already have hard water so I cannot suggest a product I've used.

While I have never witnessed corydoras eating an entire snail including the shell, I commonly crush snails on the aquarium glass and my breeding groups of corydoras rush to them and eat them. I wouldn't imagine it being a problem for them consuming the shell as well.

I did a large waterchange & off i went to get some fish. My kids have waited long enough. I have neon tetras, corys and rose tetras. Thanks everyone ☺️

A canister filter with inline heating and CO2 would really clean up the look of that tank. I'm not saying that it doesn't look good now (it does). However, I'm imagining it without the heater or CO2 diffuser. :)

I own a Tidal 75. The basic problem with these filter is water bypass. As the sponge filter collects crap, the less porous it becomes. On the Tidal, the water will bypass the filter and go around the basket. I think this is a common problem with all HOB filter, some filter are better dealing with this. I even had this problem with a sump filters. Simple put, water will take the path of least resistance. Canisters filters use pressure to force the water thru the media. In a well designed canister, there is no possible bypass for the water. One issue I see for canister, people tend to clean them once a month or longer. This means organic material is broken down inside the filter and ends up as nitrates. With my sump filter, I have to replace the filter socks every week or two as the water will start to overflow. I am removing organic material before it is breaks down. But nitrates is not a big deal, just do water changes. I bought the Tidal 75 in an emergency, my 75 gallon tank had a slow leak and I needed another filter. My original plan was to use the Tidal on a 40 gallon tank but instead, I built a sump filter for it. I ended up connect to the Tidal 75 to an undergravel filter on a 29 gallon tank, I love it so far. The Tidal is mounted on the side. For 7€, I would get the 207.

I have a 107 on my 29 gallon tank and I like it! Can’t really add much to what @Pepere has already said other than I enjoy the filter and it’s great for my needs on that tank.

I need to get pictures off my quite old camera (phone pics aren’t that exciting). Will post up once done if they’re any good. It’s not a fancy camera so don’t expect too much! It was very different at totality than even seconds before or seconds after. There was barely any difference than what would happen with light cloud cover immediately before and after. I did have intermittent light to moderate cloud cover throughout partial and some light but very transient cover during totality. Here’s my best shots of totality along with a shot with a crescent shaped sun dog during partial. My phone couldn’t even show a partial since it was so bright it overwhelmed the light sensor and camera. My only good partials with the camera were with light cloud cover to help the camera light sensor to cope.

I don’t typically like to use multi-drug meds because any bacteria that survive it are going to be resistant to multiple meds and much harder to kill or control. I lean much more towards using individual, more targeted meds. The antibiotics in Polyguard are not necessarily considered very strong or broad spectrum (which is why there are so many in there). I would much rather use Kanamycin (Kanaplex) for external or superficial infections or one of the Maracyns for internal infections. Levamisole (Expel-P) works better against the more common internal parasites but praziquantal (PraziPro and Paracleanse - which also has Metronidazole) has its uses, too, and hits a different class of parasite. There may come a day when I would use or recommend Polyguard but it hasn’t happened so far because it has more potential to cause big problems with resistant bacteria.

Appreciate all your help. I'm so happy to see blue (nitrite) today. Am i cycled now? If i am, my plan is to dose to 2 ppm ammonia & fingers crossed in 24 hrs , i'll have zero ammonia & nitrite. Do a 80% water change?

Did you rinse off the sponge filter before you put it in the tank?

Not putting ammonia in for a few days won’t really do anything bad to your cycle it takes a long time to kill bacteria like that as for if you want to do fish in do a 100% water change and treat it like any normal fish in cycle keeping ammonia and nitrites low maybe add some salt to help with the nitrite but it’s basically the same nothing changes

The bacteria that metabolize ammonia to nitrite establishes itself quicker in my experience. The nitrite to nitrate bacteria seemed to take a whole lot longer. patience works… I would just be waiting right now…

assuming your tank is somewhat established, it can probably handle all of them. always best to add a few at a time if you can, that allows the bacteria colony to adapt as the waste increases.