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guppy's are like a box of chocolates, ya never quite know what youre going to get .

Appears to be a scud. Harmless scavenger and good fish food.

I'd be more concerned about why you think your fish "hate water changes".

Welcome aboard @iMax

Tried my hand at video https://youtu.be/V6q5lSjZDyY?si=EWk5XNdhUfdpHpWr

I sold $130+ of plants out of here today, I've been putting off trimming. Most of that was from selling significant amounts of buce and and half the bolbitis. I think I want the Limnophila sp. Wavy to come down between the buce and the crypt nurii, it currently is just not green enough in that area. Plus, too many of my groups are just "blobs", I want them to have defined shapes and directions. One of the more common things I get asked is how I keep my tiger lotus compact. Well this is after trimming it down pretty significantly since it was getting too tall: Unfortunately it was still too tall. You see how there is a big gap between the lowest leaves and the substrate? Well a lotus will always grow leaves higher than the highest existing leaf in my experience, they just keep growing upwards until they are no longer shaded out. So unfortunately I needed to cut it back even more. Yeah, it looks stupid now, but that's the price you pay for a compact lotus. Luckily I only have to trim it back this far every few months, then it's just a matter of trimming any particularly tall leaves.

A pair of aquascape scissors will set you back about $20 I like having them for trimming all my plants around the house. It stimulates growth by cutting leaves and limbs that aren’t pulling their weight, but I would say I like the jungle look!

Water Parameters Temp: 78 FH PH:8 Hardness:75 GH Alkalinity: 300 Nitrite: 0 Nitrate:10 Ammonia:0 This sounds like a weird question. I vacuum my gravel once a week and replace 15-20% of the water. Fish hate water changes. Heavily planted. Fish always hate water changes and there is no visible debris or smell. The water is crystal clear. Top layer of substrate is gravel and the bottom is pool sand. Nitrate levels of 10 are very safe. Is there any reason to clean it? I know there is always waste in the gravel that I can't see without stirring it up, but do I really need to clean it? Is 1 time a week unnecessary? Basically, I am currently trying to find an excuse to get out of my Sunday chore LOL.

All right, tank matainence day today, and I dipped the cholla log in a 5ml hydrogen peroxide/2 gallons water solution (rinsed before and after) and a lot of algae definitely came off....we'll see how that goes. Curiosity also got the better of me and, especially since Gale the snail was in the coconut hut and I was worried that maybe somehow my nitrogen cycle was just so efficient that the gudgeon was dead in there and the tank was just processing it without any ammonia or nitrate spikes, I lifted the hut a little today. He's definitely alive and really nicely colored up so, I put the hut back down on top of him. No sign of eggs or fry but it was dusty from the hut being moved + disturbing the sand...and I didn't look super closely before replacing it. So we'll see when he comes out again. I miss seeing his stupid chonky head, which maybe is another indication in favor of 'get more gudgeons'

Sounds good, be sure to have a ton of rock work from them to call home. If you more than a pair, I’d make very specific rock work territories. Super cool species and do your research because some stay smaller and are a bit calmer, while others are larger and can go looney.

Definitely don’t want that. I’m leaning more towards the Julidochromis. Went to my LFS today and one of the girls showed me her colony of Julidochromis that she’s got growing there. She said that she’s willing to sell me a few if I set up a tank for them so here I go.

What is the size of your tank, and what fish do you have in there?

Water changes are the most important thing you could do for your fish, but I have the same Q as @jwcarlson, I am concerned about that as well. What do you mean by “hate it”? Are they super stressed @NikkiRae?

Thank you all for the valuable suggestions. Given I had newly introduced the fish to the tank I did the following: - Reduce the air bubbles in the tank - Switched off light for around 3 days Looks like the fish was just getting used to the tank. He's pretty active now and surfs around the tank including the bottom from time to time.

Ok, thanks. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't bad.

I focus on consistency, and enjoy doing my water changes. It’s a few hours on my day off where I get to throw on headphones and take care of my tanks. Now, when life gets hectic, I’m on vacation, etc then I have no issues whatsoever skipping a week. I just don’t make it a trend. I also have very soft water, so my tanks can really use that water change to replenish the trace amount of minerals in my water. If your tank is heavily planted, you probably don’t need to gravel vac every week. You’re just taking out natural plant food and making things harder on yourself. Just take water out and back in and call it a day.

A submersible pump is just a pump that pumps water and it can be under the water, I set the submersible pump into the tank then turn it on and it pump all the water out through a hose

Ya I filled it all the way up left it for a few days and I just syphoned out what would go and bucketed the rest

water changes are really needed based on water quality and fish health. IMO the once a week water change is usually much more than needed.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! @TJ _isme, thanks for your input on draining...that was the piece that wasn't intuitive to me, since you can't just turn a large tank over on its side and dump. I'm unsure what a submersible pump is, so I will have to look that up; all I have are the gravel vacs/water change hoses. @madmark285, from my untrained eye it doesn't look too sloppy, but not a bad idea to seal the bottom... @johnnyxxl, yes filling it up a few inches at a time and checking for obvious water beads seems like the way to go. I did see a Big Al's Pets video that said this. Did you fill your 110 all the way up, @face? How did you empty it, then?

That is a cool thing about the internet. I probably won't skip it. I just don't WANNNNA LOL.

Yes no food for the next 5 days then you can start to feed

They are aquatic. I have let them grow un-groomed for 6 months . I just started replanting my 15 gallon 3 weeks ago and put some of the same seeds in there on my drift wood. This is what they look like when you keep them groomed. I am going to go pick some up today and do some rearranging since it is tank cleaning day.

Hi all! I know it's been a month, and I just wanted to post an update in case anyone visits this thread. I have not lost a single danio, but it's certainly been a frustrating experience. After a full course of Maracyn 2, my danios in the hospital tank looked better but not completely healed, so after 2 large water changes I proceeded with a full course of Kanaplex/Jungle Fizz tabs, according to @Colu's instructions. The danios were still acting okay throughout all of this and eating okay, but I did noticed after the Kanaplex/Jungle tabs, their appetite greatly increased, which I took as a good sign. The bad news is that the meds caused a slight ammonia/nitrite bump. I was expecting it, and testing the water for it, but what I wasn't expecting was for a sponge filter completely clogged up with mold or fungus. There was visible mold (white and green spots) growing on the sides of the tank near the air stones, and the sponge filter was so clogged that when I removed it, it wouldn't release the water and weighed a ton! I also ended up with one danio that got a fungus infection (I'm assuming secondary to the columnaris). To say the least, this was a strange experience, and while I think the meds worked, I'm highly suspicious of those Jungle Fizz tabs. Date on the box was fine (2028). I've never seen mold growing on the aquarium glass, and certainly never had a sponge filter clogged with visible white fungus. My danios ended up flashing and beating themselves up quite a bit with the ammonia/nitrite bump, but after switching out for a HOB filter filled with cycled media, we now have that under control. I've had the danios in a Level 3 salt treatment for a few weeks, just to make sure the columnaris is gone and to help all the abrasions from them flashing to heal. They are looking a lot better now, although I still see a couple spots that are not quite fully healed. A couple of the males have actually decided to color up and I'm seeing some spawning activity, which I take as a sign they're feeling much better, even with all that salt. I plan to start taking it out through water changes in the next couple days, and hopefully, fingers crossed, the infection won't return! Side note - no one in the main display tank ever got this, thank goodness. A huge thank you to @Colu for taking the time to respond to my many questions!

A fluval C3 hob filter running at medium a 50 litres tank aprox 13 gallon tank. I have a anubias, java fern, ludwigia sp red but seems like suffering from root rot and two other plants that i dunno what it is. Will this stocking list work? (Ignore the guppy its dead and the replaced with different plant mention above but the driftwood and stones are the same) 9 green neon 4 kuhli loach 5 cherry shrimp

Kulhi loaches are hard to photograph still lol Kulhi loaches are hard to photograph still lol

Careful on using a razor on an acrylic bow front, they scratch very easy. Use a credit card which will bend to conform to the shape of the bow. Concentrate on scaping during both the down stroke and up stroke. I feel that the up stroke removes more algae. Again be extremely careful scrapping by the substrate. If by chance you do collect debris on the card it's highly likely you will scratch the tank! I do not suggest using mag floats on bowfronts. I got a good scratch on mine simply from using a non protected outside portion while hastily working on a project......

I leak tested my tank on my deck, I made sure that the area was smooth and flat first then I filled the tank with water 5 gallons at a time checking for obvious leaks then left full for a week checking for any slow leaks. Then well because my tank is obviously older when I placed it in it's final spot I checked for leaks again

Dosing does not need real exacting measures. Up to 5x can be used. I took that leeway and just ordered small pumps from Amazon rather than trying to find ones that were identical.

Like I said, if you want them all dead, buy some NO-Planaria and medicate your tank. It will kill every snail in the tank. Wait two weeks, then do it again. (To make sure you get them as snail eggs will hatch and a new colony will appear). Myself, I just accept the snails. I did put a few Assassin Snails in the tank to keep the snail population under control (I have a sand substrate so the Assassin snails bury themselves during the day and come out at night).

been a minute but here are some updates: - I've got a filamentous algae breakout up by the cholla wood at the top of the tank that I'm having trouble clearing out....not sure if it's that I increased fertilizers a bit over a month ago or if it's that the cholla wood is maybe breaking down too quickly. Planning to do some research on how long cholla usually lasts in tanks; I've seen it at fish and aquascape places of course but that's no guarantee it's actually a good call lol. I did notice (pretty quickly after adding it tbh) that it's a lot softer and spongier than before I added to the tank, and there's some greenish algae deep in the wood that doesn't bother me so much because, unlike the filamentous crap, it isn't spreading in to the roots of my floaters. I've been thinning out the floaters a bit more the last week or two, mainly to pull out heavily algae'd roots, which in turn is increasing light in the rest of the tank so, hard to tell if that's helping anybody or not. The cholla wood is easily removable (see re: break down, the glue points to my spider wood did not last very long) so I might take it out and dip it in a hydrogen peroxide solution this weekend. It has some bucephalandria well-rooted in to the top that's actually growing mostly out of the water since the cholla sits so high in the tank....I like it a lot, and I like seeing the contrast between the fully submerged vs emergent growth. Might replace with a different piece of cholla or with a ceramic pleco cave it it turns out that all cholla degrades so fast. Anyone else had issues with cholla wood? - last Sunday 4/14 the male went in to the cave -- the actual coconut hut this time. For the first couple days I did see him come out at feeding time and quickly go back in, but I haven't seen him since. It sounds like peacock gudgeons usually take about 5 days to hatch so I'm getting a little nervous. I don't want to disturb him but also like, I do kind of want to make sure he's alive? Water parameters remain good and everyone else in the tank is acting normal so, I'll give him until the middle of next week if I can restrain my curiosity, just to make sure the longer end of 'about 5-7 days' is well past before I go poking my nose in his business. Maybe the first couple days he was still in the 'enticing the female' stage and she hadn't laid yet, and that's why he was willing to come out? - I'm debating my stocking plan again. I was thinking 'upper water schooling fish so there's activity in all levels of the tank and I get to see a variety of behaviors' but a) the floaters are so thick -- would they have sufficient access to the water surface? would they be visible given the floater roots and the fluval's waterline dots or not so much? and b) the female gudgeon at least does come up to the water surface; maybe I should just get more gudgeons instead? Originally I thought, 'only 1 pair of gudgeons because I only want to put in one cave' but it's now coming to my attention that, even though I didn't build in other intentional caves, these guys are not that picky. At first I heard some advice that was like, 'include one more cave than you do male gudgeons' and I thought 'well that's a no then' but now I'm wondering if that advice wasn't geared toward optimizing breeding instead of general peaceability in the tank, because I've also seen a lot of stuff that's like 'they're not aggressive with each other or other fish and are a great fish for aquascapes'. Certainly mine are not aggressive with Gale or the otos at all. And 'great for aquascapes' implies to me that maybe the cave requirement isn't as strong a necessity? Also I'm kind of worried that if they are somehow successful in hatching fry and any survive to adulthood, we'll have inbreeding issues since it's a pair and not a colony. Obvs one way to avoid this is to net them out and sell them. But on the other hand, maybe I'd like to maintain a colony instead? The most likely outcome is that they will eat the fry. But as the plants increase (fingers crossed), I know sometimes without netting out to a separate tank folks are successful in a small amount of fry making it adulthood. As always any input is strongly welcomed, especially on the stocking front 🙂

Eheim 2217

You could still make it look more natural without it looking messy. I’d move those plants in the front towards the back since they’re growing taller then add some anubias, buce and maybe dwarf sag in the front. You could also get other stem plants to give the tank some variety and different textures so it doesn’t look flat. You can use echinodrus bleheri (amazon sword) or red tiger lotus for the corner if you want some shade for your gourami.

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.

Pearl gourami are very shy. It could be getting used to the new tank.

Its more than likely stressed if your lights are to bright do you have plenty of plant cover if you don't have floating plants I would add some that will make it feel more comfortable when I kept a pair of pearl gourami's years ago they were very out going I had lots of cover for them and they even spawned a couple of times

They need to swallow a goldfish ASAP or risk having their entire urinary tract full of duckweed.

Try not to be jealous of my photoshop skillz

Courtesy of reddit

Got my dirt substrate in. Ready for plants.

Why is it whenever I take a photo, there's always an aquarium co-op product there to ruin it?

When Its Been Months After Buying Kuhli loaches, and you finally see them for the first time:

When you know that your family is sick of your hobby: