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The lighter green, small crumpled leaf seems like new growth to me. Some of my anubias' shoot up new growth like this too.

I'd say 29, but If you decide to do a 20, because you're unsure about going bigger, I'd recommend a 20 long. It has the same footprint and uses the same lids as a 29, so it's an easier upgrade later on.

What kind of shrimp specifically? Neocaridina or Caridina? Minimally, I would temperature acclimate them. Some caridina species can be a bit intolerant of massive sudden swings in water parameters. Neocaridina are much more forgiving. I only plop and drop shrimp when I am moving them around my fishroom. But I have had most of my current lines for years so I'm very familiar with what they can tolerate.

To my eyes, that looks like a good, healthy anubias. The lighter, wavy leaf is the newest leaf, I'm guessing? Most of my anubiases (maybe all of them?) have lighter colored, differently shaped leaves at first, then as the leaf grows and ages, it darkens and changes shape to match the others. Is it new into that tank or has it been there a while? Anubias are pretty tough, just slow. If the leaves aren't covered in algae, and if the rhizome doesn't feel squishy (and is above the substrate), then I'd just wait it out a while, keeping an eye on the new growth. EDIT: I just snapped this photo of one of my anubias (Anubias nana, I think): (Please ignore all the little floating bits; this tank just got fed baby brine shrimp.) That curled, lighter leaf in the middle is the newest one, still growing. That's sort of what I mean. Incidentally, the one I'm worried about is the one to the right and behind of it, covered in hair and green spot algae, but I'm just doing manual removal for the time being.

not a good idea if you ask me. My LFS sells them in such tank size, and they are very active fish. I think they need a fairly big swimming space to satisfy their needs. They look pretty bad at that tank size at my LFS. If I were you I would consider tiny rasboras like chilis or a betta betta having a risk to pose dangr for shrimp ofcourse

I'm understanding this as 'good first time set ups' Either a 20g long, or a 40g breeder. Both are relatively small-ish...and provide good options for fish varieties and plenty of room to scape

If you already have tanks just put some cycled media in there and you're done. Why start from scratch

3 June 2024 (Day 28) 4 June 2024 (Day 29) 5 June 2024 (Day 30) I started to add whiteworms to the grindal and bbs feedings today. 15 pao turgidus doing well and so far fairly social.

The largest you can afford that you have room for.

I have just received a pair of Betta Mandor a rarer species of the betta family and in receiving them I have decided to create a journal where I can document everything I notice or experience in keeping them. This also stems from being unable to find much of anything in the way of personal experience bout caring for this beautiful fish in captivity. Hopefully this is helpful to anyone wanting to keep wild bettas or just wanting to know more about this species. Their current parameters are a ph of 6.5, 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrate, and 10 Nitrite, temp 85 F. After acclimating the pair both began exploring their new home with both sticking close to each other understandably. While exploring the tank both attempted to eat random things the male made several attempts to eat a snail and the female tried to eat a leaf of dwarf sag. I did a first feeding of frozen bloodworms by taking a single worm in a set of planting tweezers and wiggling it around in the water the fish then quickly came and after a first sample ate quite a few worms. For appearance both male and female after two hours of acclimating had a coloring of a very light milk chocolate no visible gold or red bars on their cheek area. The male does have a blue iridescence color on the edges of all his fins with both fish having a iridescent blue rim on their eyes. At two and half hours after acclimating faint gold bars have started to appear. Eight hours of acclimating the gold bars on both male and female cheeks has become pronounced with a faint black color appearing on the edges of the male's fins just under the blue band. Last thing for this post I have seen the bettas "yawn" opening their big mouths they look very cute when they do it. Will post an update soon with pics!

Welcome to the forum @redcherrychrimp2! Cool fish! Welcome! Yes they do!!!!

Ok. That's a relief. The invincible rotala died in here. Micro sword is struggling. So I went with the anubias. It's been a month

In a long tank it’s more doable than a standard 5 gallon. What are the dimensions?

Mrs. Goldfish's puffer tank uses an Aquatop Forza PFE1, and while I've been slowly turning against HOB filters generally, I do like this one. It's easy to clean and has adjustable flow, and, for its size, a reasonable media area if you want to customize. It even came with a prefilter sponge! It does not self-prime, though.

In my experience, a bigger tank is basically the same as a smaller tank when it comes to running them. Most of my tanks were barebones sponge filters and tiny internal filtration for many years. Only over the last year did I really start playing with canisters, bigger internal filters, more flow, etc. You can run tanks on sponge filters alone, if you want to. Things just get more expensive as you get bigger. The tank itself, more plants, more fish, more dechlorinator, more fertilizer, bigger filters, etc. but it can also be done barebones and your fish should thrive.

Sorry, what I meant to say is I would put the new filter that you got for your 20g and put it in your 10. Usually I do that well before I get the tank so it has time to seed up nicely. Then move that filter to the 20 so it has all the good BB in it. Definitely don’t take out the only cartridge you have for the 10g 🙂 It will just make things a lot easier!

Hi, here's a series of images of relative cellular damage to the plants with various cleaning methods. Reverse Respiration was by far the least caustic and was the only one that enjoyed 100% pest elimination and 98% algae kill-off. In fact, only RR killed Malaysian Trumpets due to the pressure penetrating their protective operculum. RR also is the only method that poses no toxic residue risk. There's an instructional video here: www.reverserespiration.com

@Kristina, might I suggest reverse respiration instead of an alum dip? https://reverserespiration.com/ Not that those other systems won't work (they will!) and not that you necessarily need to quarantine plants, but if you want to, you should look into reverse respiration. Among the other benefits, the only by-product is water, so you don't have to worry about adequately rinsing the treated plants.

I wouldn’t overthink it! Bettas are so easygoing, they pretty much tolerate all the water parameters under the sun. Increasing your alkalinity isn’t necessarily going to help him - in fact bettas like low alkalinity and soft water anyways. And Easy Green should do the trick for all your plants. I add Seachem Equilibrium to my tanks but that’s only because I have soft water and snails. Not sure if it really does much to help my plants - probably, but not that huge of a difference! I would stick with what you have, keep dosing your Easy Green and don’t keep worrying about everything on the periodic table lolz😂

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1utKM5j3fgXQIwGXwARqHy-CnApq6yYsz/view?usp=sharing If you have any questions or comments, let me know here or on the Doc.

It looks good! I am assuming that we will be replacing most of the pictures, guppies are great and all, but I think we need more variety 😄. The pictures are very good though. Did you take them? I am working on a section template right now, and I should have it done by this evening. Thanks for your help, @Guupy42!

Well, it would appear at the moment, that out the 12 Congo Tetra I have, only 3 are Male… that give me 9 females. Not particularly thrilled about that, but, what can ya do? Hoping maybe o e or two are just really late bloomers 😂

And don't fret too much about some plants dying or underperforming. Geroge Farmer is a world-renowned aquascaper who recently oversaw the planting and preparation of multiple tanks for Europe's Interzoo 2024. With the best possible plants, the best possible lighting and care, and the most knowledgeable aquascaper around, multiple plants failed and needed replacement. You can do everything right and a plant will just say, "Nope! Not for me." Plants that thrive in one tank in your water may struggle or die in a neighboring tank with the same water, soil, and everything. Aquatic plants are just as quirky as can be. Find out what grows for you and stick to those plants. I had a tank (a thirty-tall) filled with Jungle Val. It was absolutely thriving. A local pet store got a beautiful Madagascar Lace Plant that I added, and the Val all melted. Within a week it was all gone. There are plants I can't get to grow no matter what and others that some people have a hard time with that grow like weeds for me. I've had plants thrive in one tank and die in the adjacent tank. When it comes to aquarium plants, just hope for the best and grow what grows for you. And understand that no matter what, some plants just won't like something you're doing. Until the plants develop language skills, it's anyone's guess as to what went wrong.

If it were NTD you would have got snout chondroma body lesion some spinal deformities these are commonly encountered when your fish have NTD

I believe the last two in the tank were dead today. Regarding stable water, I age and preheat all my water. Water temp is 75-76. Water changes of about 90% twice a week. pH settles around 8.2 or 8.3 after aging. Bare bottom tank with sponge filtration. Lots of hornwort. I didn't think about NTD, that's an interesting angle and would make a good amount of sense. I slowly lost cardinal tetras over a number of years to what I believed to be NTD. They occasionally had little patches of odd stuff that these CPDs had. The cardinals took FORVER to die from it and it never affected anything but the cardinals. I appreciate the input from you two, @Colu and @nabokovfan87! I'm going to do another big water change tonight and see what shakes out with the remaining fish... get the meds cleared out. There's no symptoms in anything else, I've got kanamycin and the fizz tabs if needed.

You could still do a fishless cycle with a little help from your other tank. Simply squeeze the sponges or swish the media from the HOB into the new tank, add ammonia, and then watch it cycle from there. If you wanna do it from scratch, I totally get it. My first couple of tanks I did it from scratch as I liked it and thought it was fun. From there, I had so much established media that I would do what I described above, just to make sure it was safe for the new fish.

Obviously you need room in the house and room in the budget, but after that, I'll always be biased toward lower, longer tanks, all else being equal. Partly because more footprint gives more space for fish and territories and more swim space in the water column (since most fish do a lot more lateral swimming than vertical swimming), partly because more footprint gives more room for planting, but also because water depth dramatically reduces PAR, so getting adequate light to plants in tall tanks is a lot harder than in shorter tanks.

Just one word….Patience!🤣🤣. It’ll clear no problem at all. Go ahead and start your fishless cycle.

clear at first, probably not the substrate imo, but more likely a bacteria. it wont last long, no worries.

Probably substrate though I don't see why it was clear than cloudy. Bacteria could of come on the driftwood. Personally, with no fish I would do a water change. If it's sediment may as well get it out. You could also get a really cheap hob,add polyfill or polishing sponge and let it filter for a day. If you want it really clear, use accu-clear. It would be nice to have a hob around to do chemical and mechanical filtration when needed. Nothing fancy. Could use the cheapest one there is since it's not to keep them alive.

I’ve never tried this before, but the AC nano filter looks pretty good! It has very good reviews! Also says it’s great for bettas @Tropicalfishkeeping201. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/filtration/products/nano-tank-hang-on-back-filter-1

Drip acclimating shrimp shouldnt be your problem. That is the safest way for inverts. I believe there is another issue that causes the loss in your scenario

Are you sure it’s broken? Sometimes when I unplug my HOBs during maintenance the impeller just doesn’t wanna kick on. I stick my planting tweezers down in there, and the impeller kicks right back on. I should probably just clean the housing and impeller and everything, but why do that when you can just jump start the impeller? lol.

Ok i understand now. Usually high general hardness means you got plenty of carbonate too. I wouldn't over think the plant micronutrients and all the fertilizer products either. Just get some easy green and give it a squirt once a week. That's usually more than enough for a low tech tank with moderate lighting and no co2

UPDATE: You can now leave edits on the document. If you have a section you'd like to write, you can send me a Google Document here: nickbrahan@gmail.com, or by sending me a personal message containing the text. Once I get multiple portions of a section, I will compile them as a Doc and post the link here!

By all means! I think that we should start with the Livebearers, then move to the Cyprinideformes and the Characins, then to Cichlids, Catfish, Anabantids, and then to Miscellaneous.

Instead of view mode, you could do anyone can comment, that way people can put their ideas on your Google Doc, too. By the way, I have an aquarium book, and it ordered the fish types in a more broad way, maybe you could try doing these groups, because then you would have a wider variety of fishes. Not saying that you should copy exactly, but an idea of a way you could do it. Cichlids Catfishes Cypriniformes (Barbs, Goldfish, Loaches, Minnows) Cyprinidonts (Live Bearing Toothed Carps) Characins (Tetras, Pencilfish) Anabantids (Bettas and Gouramis) Miscellaneous Freshwater Brackish Water Marine

No one agrees on anything. Fishkeeping is 1 part science, 2 part mysticism

Here's what I'm planning to put in my long 6-gallon aquarium : For reference, my aquarium is 23.62 inches long and 7.87 wide and tall 2 Anubis Nana Petit 1 Anubias Barteri 1 Java Fern 2 Mini Coin Buce 1 Broad Leaf Buce Plant 2 Java moss balls Red Root Floaters Jungle Val 2 Java Fern Trident Mostly plants that grow attached to driftwood. I got a piece of Forest Driftwood as long as my tank, and I have a vision for placement. Any tips on making these plants the healthiest they could be would be much appreciated!

I've had my pea puffers for a little while now. They were small when I got them and I fed them baby brine shrimp and snails (that they would hunt). They seems to be slow eaters and I removed any other fish. I was doubtful that they would eat frozen blood worms, as they rejected frozen brine. However, wow, I've never seen them so aggressive. They love it! 🙂

I have been trying to breed wild-caught red cherry tetras (Hyphessobrycon sp. MZUEL 17771) for a over a half year now. I don't really know how to sex these, nor do I know anything about their preferred breeding environment, etc. The only detailed video I could find about how to breed them was in German and You Tube is a poor translator, so I got half an idea (a half baked one) about maybe how to approach the subject. I paid a pretty penny for these fish, so after four failed attempts, I felt kind of discouraged. Then something happened -- PFM, as we say in the IT industry when something fixes itself and no one knows how (PFM stands for Pure F*in Magic). And this was a true PFM moment . . . I went to check on my blue dream shrimp (got these recently) and guess who is in there? Yeah, cherry tetra fry! No idea what they hitched a ride in on -- java moss, java fern, alder cone, worm hole, teleportation or something else to do with advanced particle physics -- but there they are, enjoying tasty blue shrimplets! So, at least I know now that I can raise the fry in my tap water. But the linger questions remains -- how the heck do I intentionally breed them?

Plop and drop.

Man, I was just looking at Ken's Fish food. His bulk prices are decent. I'm going to have to give some a try. Thanks for mentioning him!

Moved the ricefish fry into the 10 gallon with their parents. Cherry shrimp went into what was the ricefish fry tank.

I think it might be like snails. They can sleep for a long time. Do a sniff test.

Use water, enough to keep the fish fully submerged Don't eat your fish unless civilization has come to an end and you don't possess a proper can opener Watch them daily and enjoy them as much as you can Other than that, the rules vary from person-to-person.

Try white worms too. They love it I dont have grindal worms but I bet they would also love grindal worms

Vinegar will dissolve the calcium Could also use unscented magic eraser

I’d leave the sponge in. Not for any filtration. Leaving it in and going keeps it full of beneficial bacteria. Then if needed you could use it for a quarantine tank. Or even starting a new tank. Just lots of ways to use a seeded sponge I currently have 2 spares. Had 3, but instantly cycled a new guppy tank with one.