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Hello! Recently as a birthday present from my family I have been able to start setting up my first planted freshwater tank. I have used this forum to do quite a bit of research and it has been endlessly helpful, so I thought I’d join to help gain further insight and interact with its lovely community. I’ve always loved animals from a young age, (Little 7 year old me cried at the horrid conditions of fish being kept at Walmart) and have always tried to do my best research on how to care for them whenever a new one caught my eye, regardless of whether or not my parents would allow me to get it lol. Now that I have that opportunity, I’m excited to interact with people who have the same adoration for fish (and living things in general) as I do ❤️

I would skip the Pleco. My male is one of the biggest fish I have. I personally believe a 20 is too small for them. They also rasped my gigantic Amazon Sword to death when I first got them. I would personally do the Cory’s. Pick your flavor. I’d do 8-10 of them.

Wait.. the slime comes back? 🙃

Your AOB is alive and well (keep feeding it or it will eventually die back if ammonia is all gone for too long), your NOB is still getting established just takes some time. Remember that once you are "cycled", it's only enough bacteria for the current waste levels, so add new fish slowly at first and wait for things to clear before adding more. Also, prepare yourself for the coming algae wars. Your pirate shipwreck is going to look fabulous, covered in slime. 😅

I have ended up with a single female Krib in tank on its own, she will harass and kill anything. So feel free to try but be ready with a back up plan. Oh and I think male Kribs are little more chill than the females if kept alone but that is just anecdotal and I was comparing them to a psycho fish.

So often we hear/read what didn't work, or what crashed or died after a power failure. I'm here to tell you that investing in some gear up front, and choosing air-driven filtration like sponge filters, can/will yield success and peace of mind down the road. I run around 15 tanks in my basement. I used to have an upstairs display tank, but when it sprung a leak I shut it down, and I'm happier with everything in 1 room. With everything in 1 place, central air is the obvious choice, and I have it. Most tanks have air-powered sponge filters, a couple have power-head driven sponges, and 1 has a pair of HOBs (but also a sponge). I have what I like to call my 2-stage power outage backup plan. Stage 1 is simply a 12v LiFeP04 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery. These go from 100% to 0% without loss of capacity or performance, for thousands of cycles. This single battery, run through a small inverter, will power my 54W air pump at least overnight, and probably for most of a day if needed. Last night we had an outage from 3pm-10pm. Air pump was switched over to battery within 30 mins, Since we're in a heat wave, but the basement stays cooler, heating and cooling were non-issues -- the only difference between power on and power out (for the fish) was the fish room being dark. Sponges were bubbling, every tank had some filtration and circulation. No extra cords, no muss, no fuss. For the 3 tanks that primarily rely on electric filtration (the power head sponges and hobs), I dropped an airstone into each, with air volume set to deliver a decent bubble column. What's stage 2 of my plan? When power goes out, you never really know when it will come back. Will it be a few mins? Hour? A few hours? Most of a day? Multiple days? If you still have cellular data, you can check with your utility and see what's projected, but we all know that a) that isn't reliable, and b) it can change frequently and drastically. I ended up not needing to switch to my stage 2 plan. But knowing it's there if I had needed it (if the battery runs out) took a lot of pressure off. Stage 2 is a 3500W inverter generator. Nothing fancy, my main goal when shopping for it was a) quiet, and b) to be able to run blower for gas furnace, freezer and fridge, and a few extras like lights, modem, etc. And the fish room (mainly just the air, since the generator would heat the house, so temp won't drop too low, eg if it's a winter failure). And recharge the battery. It's not wired into the house, so setting it up does require quite a few cords. Future me has a plan for that. That's all, just sharing my success. 🙂

The Wet Spot, Aqua Huna, Aquatic Arts, and Dan's Fish are some of the better online places to buy fish, imo. Orange Laser Corys would be a great bottom feeding crew, imo. I'll let others chime in on other fish to add.

I think you should start by cleaning up. Take out all dead and dying plant material. Scrape the glass and siphon the debris out as best you can. Next, treat the cyanobacteria with Fritz Maracyn. Just follow the label instructions on the box. It will kill off all that green slimy stuff. After it's cleaned up well go back to the basics of good light, clean water, good fertilizer. I think you started good, but after the plants started to grow you didn't increase the ferts. After the plants started to struggle from lack of ferts the algae took over. With too much dead organics in the water the cyanobacteria took hold. I would try medium (not low) light for 8 hours a day along with enough EasyGreen to keep the nitrates around 25 to 40. Also, make sure to replace all the dead plants you had to remove. The more plants the merrier. Also, you might consider adding ramshorn snails and Amano shrimp to help keep it clean.

I discovered several Microdevario Kubotai, Green neon rasbora fry in my 10g quarantine tank yesterday by accident while looking at some newly hatched RCS shimplets with a magnifying glass. I bought a group of 8 which have since been moved to the main tank. They spawned while in quarantine. I have been feeding them powdered flake food and Daphnia. Nothing else in the tank except Java moss, Java Fern and algae and things growing on spider wood. If I stay the course, what are the survival chances if I do regular water changes? Can't get good images, they are microscopic at this point. Some clinging to the glass eating algae or biofilm I suppose.

Fingers crossed, I can’t imagine any parasitic or bacterial infections would still be the cause after the amount of time/ exposure to the meds unless they are resistant. I would assume it’s organ failure at this point. Obviously not a professional opinion but with that being said, I may just water change out her tank so it’s clean and hope. Perhaps her immune system will respond to the change.

This particular tank of mine is fairly densely planted, and pretty significantly stocked, and has injected co2. I do not run an airpump, airstone on this tank and have not seen any indication of livestock stress. I do have a canister filter discharging through a spray bar that disturbs the surface and the pickup is through a glass pipe with a surface skimmer.

It difficult one with swim bladder issues usually if they don't improve within 10 days the prognosis isn't good I have seen fish recover after a prolonged period of buoyancy issues

My gut feeling is that based on current stocking the surface agitation from a hob would be plenty. on the other hand I cant see where the airstone would be bothersome for a gourami. The only benefit I would perceive from not having an airstone is less mineral deposits from not having the air bubbles popping…

Finished the black background for the tank and planted two anubias congensis! The tank is almost done cycling aswell. Here are some pictures. The anubia's plants are on the right and on the left just behind the drift wood.

You’re probably going to get a ton of answers to all your questions. My input is that a 20 long is a low tank, while Val grows very, very long. I’d stick with the dwarf sag and remove the Val so it doesn’t eat up excess nutrients. Just for example, I attached a photo of my 180 gallon with Val, it’s somewhere around 8’-10’. Edit: Of course, it won’t let me post a photo.

If you want tight schooling get rummynose (which you can't really put in a 10 gallon). In my experience cardinals and neons are almost not schooling fish at all.

Lets go! Baby Endler's! I noticed a few minutes ago that the biggest female Endler (Mama Endler) was acting strange, and she's been pretty pregnant for a while, so i moved her into the 5 gallon tank and sure enough she has started giving birth. I've been loving the Endler's in the big tank just because they add a ton of activity, and I can't wait to have a bunch more.

Your "whispy cloudy forms", algae and snails are caused by too much of something. Without a microscope, there is no sure way to know what you are seeing. Researching a similar topic yesterday, I found several articles on something I had never thought of: water molds. The descriptions run the gamut: streamers, cloudy, whispy, foggy, etc. Formerly know as fungus, most water mold is said to be harmless, and some fish and shrimp will eat it. It will also go away when it exhausts its food source. I agree with @daggaz. If there is enough to see, I would try to remove it. It's better to be safe than sorry.

I had two male honey gouramis and a M:F pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides (among other fishes) in a 55 gallon. The only time they even paid each other any attention was when the female was guarding fry, but the gouramis weren't brave enough/dumb enough to try her, anyway. Granted, the success was probably attributable to having four feet of swimming space, but still...

Yes, it some cases. depends on the silica levels. Mine occasionally gets recharged. not horribly, just a bit

It will. for a couple weeks, then a month off while the slime dies. then it will again. although, I had a black sand, supposed to be premium quality, everything was covered in an inch of diatoms. I gave up on that tank for 6 months. moved the fish out. kept it running. It's fine now... 2 years later 🤣

lol. Yes, I added an airstone to my 10g, and in 1 week, the tubing was all green LOL. Plus algae is a good sign of an established tank actually. And that you have plants or high light 😅 Yes that is the cause of higher nitrites. Just patience than soon, FISH!!! Good luck!

I don't vacuum my sand substrate because the Cory cats keep it pretty stirred up alongside the kulhi loaches. I do small water changes from the lower level keeping the water to fairly clear other than the tannins which I want. My tank seems pretty good and stable which is what I aim for. I worked on the numbers aiming for stability and adjustment of fertilizer and lighting to obtain low algae levels. You have shrimp which graze on algae and biofilm. The clouds I would vacuum out before your fish gets sick. After you are sure that they are healthy and not getting sick I would focus on the method of maintenance you want to go. I am doing weekly water changes because I dose fertilizer. If I didn't I would just keep my weekly testing and change based on the results.

Having any bacteria in the water column, in large enough quantities to be visible, is not a good thing. "Good" bacteria, the ammonia and nitrite eating types, colonize surfaces. If they are up in the water column, they will be landing on your fish's skin and gills and your fish now has to pump out extra mucous and put its immune system on overdrive to keep healthy and clean. That stresses the fish. That's true for any bacteria, by the way. Getting those good bacteria in the water column is also not very likely, if you didnt just dump your filter bioload into the tank during a cleaning. Its far more likely to be other types that feed more directly on food waste. In this case, it indicates you need to cut down on the amount of nutrients (food, rotting plants, animal waste) in the water column, and/or you need to increase your filtration.

I trimmed/shaped my little boulevard Cypress. I have very little idea what I'm doing here, but attempting to make pompom trees. I will just keep trimming as they grow and hopefully they will look presentable in the future. I have two of these. They are next to my tub pond, out on a patio area I've been slowly working on since this was wild, undeveloped land when I moved in.

You will always get conflicting info. Always. What works for me may not work for you. What works for you may not work for me. Aquariums are part science, part personal experience, and part art. You’ll have to try some things and find out what works for you!

I’ve been thinking about putting a school of green neon tetras in a 10 gallon single species tank. I’d like to see a tight schooling behavior. In your experience, will they display that in there or will it be too small and they’ll feel safe spreading out? The alternative is green neons in a 20 gallon community and move CPDs that are currently in the 20 to 10 gallon

In the early days of the internet, Johnny, the webpages were all white text on black background (or like IBM blue) and you just scrolled down and down and down, there werent really much buttons or inner pages or tabs or whatnot. Also normal people with like 2% computer skills were making them, so they just included every cheesy 1992 computer graphic you could get, all 16 ugly cgi colors, flashing colors, hundreds of different fonts and font sizes, all on one page like Word just got real sick and horked all over the place. It was a dream come true. It was hell on earth for epileptics. It was internet, 1992.

Welcome to the forum! I will check those out. I don't expect test strips to be accurate, just close. I realize that the strips are only an indicator. I use them because testing and recording data on 4 aquariums can be done in under 10 minutes. The question arises from the KH and PH numbers. showing a much wider variation between the test strips and Liquid test. There has been some difference of opinion on this, but it is a different color, and my latest bottle of test strips now includes a >301 indicator. I had to laugh at that because >301 is how I've been recording my GH for over 3 years. No idea about the droplet test. For me at least, the droplet tests have their own inherent problems.

Meanwhile the big advantage is the majority of tanks will trend towards acidity due to the typical chemical reactions that are occuring in them as food and waste are broken down.. having a bunch of crushed coral or similar substrate means your buffer levels are automatically replenished, more so the lower your tank dips, and dipping is simply made harder because of the buffer in the first place. So in a tank where you dont do a lot of water changes, or where any replacement water is carefully pre-conditioned, its generally going to be a good thing to have in there. (I used seashells and some chalk-bearing flint hardscape collected from the local seacliffs, as well as lime buried in the substrate). You just can't use it like a crutch, giving no thought into what is changing in your tank. That said, my tank is maybe a little wee bit too high in pH and I wonder how it would look if I could nudge it down just a smidge.

The main thing wrong with crushed coral is that it's slow to respond to large water changes. It takes time to dissolve. meanwhile your gh and kh are suddenly lower. sometimes drastically. doing water changes with equilibrium means you can adjust and keep more stable water. it all depends on how often you're going to do a change keeping in mind that you'd also need to adjust your kh as well.

There are also lots of DIY overflow systems you can build that don't require drilling a tank. Google "DIY aquarium overflow" and you'll find lots of information and pros and cons.

@daggaz I think the OP was asking if an additional non-natural filter (HOB) was needed on top of going full sponge filter in the tank, due to having said plants. Plants are filters, but can only do so much. @TomO me personally, I would run two sponges in a 55g, since that's what you want to go to. But, I would get the second sponge seasoned (wait a couple of months with the new additional sponge), before removing the HOB.

I thought about the AOBs going hungry a few days ago and started adding small amounts of the ammonia daily. That probably accounts for the continued increase in nitrites now that I think of it. Ammonia is staying down so the AOBs are alive and kicking! Yep, I do plan a slow process of stocking so I don't crash the system after all this. Yep, that ship will look great covered in slime! Took hubs to the Ft Fisher Aquarium for his birthday. One tank had an artificial shipwreck "reef" which hubs thought was cool. Ours won't be a reef...more Amazon river bottom...but well... 😂

There's a reason forums are making a huge comeback. Web 2.0 is dying. 3.0 was DOA and some rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born as this ai garbage fills up every inch of storage with nonsense

Curious why you include "all the plants" in that.. Plants are a filter, both in removing nitrates and trace minerals from the water column, but also as a huge surface for bacteria to colonize. Having more plants means you could get away with having less filtration, at least to a point.

You could try. Not everything is set in stone. Just have a backup plan. It depends on the personality of the animals. I have a honey gourami with a betta. And pandas. An oto. And the last neon. Shouldn’t work. But the betta and honey ignore each other. Completely against the rules. But I had/have alternatives if/when it doesn’t work.

Run both. That way, when you want to start another tank or need a quarantine tank, your sponge is ready to go 😁

Heterandria Formosa. Super active in all layers and small enough you could easily house 3-4 per gallon.

I would say a 2.5 gallon aquarium with a mexican dwarf crayfish could be cool. For a 5 gallon you could go with cherry shrimp, ammono shrimp, or ghost shrimp. Also sparkling gouramis could be fun.

Good news, everybody! I've invented a new device that can measure feelings!

I don't want to say that fish can't feel pain or they have no emotions at all, but the brain of a fish, especially a small fish, just doesn't have the higher structures to create these sorts of complex emotions or introspection required to be actual grief as we humans understand it. There's honestly not a lot going on upstairs in many species. That said they are amazingly instinctual creatures who are acutely attuned to their environment with powerful senses like their lateral line and sense of smell underwater that are far beyond our terrestrial understanding. Many fish can recognize different people and remember long past stimuli so they're not completely stupid either. I suspect there was a disruption in the pecking order that is now resolved as well as the possible fear of a predator once the smell of dead fish entered the tank.

I went and got 4 more Glo Light Tetras and Cardinal Tetras today. They are doing very nicely and everyone seems to be coming out a little bit more now. Thank you!

Ultimately, even tho its nothing like I imagined, I love how the tank ended up visually. It is divided (hard to see in this picture compared to real life) into a light and a dark empty space (left and right sides), where the right hand side of the tank is heavily shaded by the lily, the algae that I let grow thickly on the otherwise sunlit tank side, and the floaters that get pushed into that corner by the powerhead. My catfish LOVE this area and patrol it regularly, hiding in the midplants when necessary. The left hand side is kept clear by the powerhead and so has full lighting, and is dominated by the school of CPD's, who do not hide at all. The two amano shrimp just cruise all over the place, as do the siamese algae eaters. We love our tank, and television is a rare thing on worknights. Just relax, cuddle, and talk while looking at fish.

I first realised they do when Lily (my f discus) lost her partner Marshall (my m discus) She was legit trying to wake him up and return him back to life. She was acting so sad. Poking his body to make him swim again helplessly. Trying to get her partner back to life. It was not like a fish picking on dead fish or something. It made me tear up witnessing that scene. That was the day my feelings towards fish being emotional has become stronger.

One day, the aquariumist was tending to his tanks when a fish jumped out and started flopping around on the floor, begging for help. The guy quickly scooped up the fish and exclaimed, "Oh poor fish! What is wrong in there, that you jumped out, how can I help you?" To which the fish answered: What's wrong? Where do I begin, man? You know... I wake up everyday and swim to the factory to work for Gregory Illinovich... I work all day for the man, and he doesn't even know my name. He doesn't even know what I do for him. I don't even know what I am doing anymore all day. But he knows I work for him, and that's all that matters, that kind of power over me seems to give him happiness. There is no happiness in my life. My life is a blur... I toss and turn all night, and sometimes I wake up and look at my wife as she sleeps, and I don't even recognize her anymore, I can't even remember the last day I loved her. She's just some old lady I used to know, I don't know where to turn anymore... "Ok," said the man, very concerned... Yeah, and it gets worse. One of my daughters, Anastasia.. she fell last winter, and the cold took her. And my wife's eyes are as dead as I am inside after it. And my son, Nikolai.... I look at him, and I do not love him anymore. I look at him, and I see myself in his worn eyes, and it is repulsive. I see the same tired fish, like looking in a mirror, so helpless and pathetic and weak that I cannot even reach under my rock at night and put my fin on that revolver that is lying there just waiting for me, and just end it all, once and for all. But I can't, because I am so weak.. "Jeeez," said the man. "You poor fish, man you have got problems, fish! You have some serious problems! But why the hell did you jump out to tell me, you need to see a psychiatrist, I am just an aquariumist! All I can do is change your water!" "Yeah," said the fish, "but the lid was off."

My experience of caring for the pipefish comes from keeping seahorses many years ago. The key to keeping pipefish isn't that hard for the experienced fishkeeping hobbyist imo. The most important thing is providing a daily supply of live food. I rotate 2 hobby brine shrimp hatcheries daily for 2 small species of pipefish is more than enough. I feed them at 7 am and after 10 am. that's enough for them the rest of the day. Timing for light is 7am to 3 pm. Also keeping parameters in order is also important. During water changes I actually use a floating thermometer to make sure the temperature almost match the aquarium water. Before I got the pipefish the 40 breeder had been up and running for around 8 years. The aquarium had a couple of plants at that time been adding more anubias and Java fern. I recently added cherry shrimp so far so good. @Lennie

The names for your hillstream loaches are absolutely genius! Dyson kills me😂😂

This is a topic that’s touchy. What works for me might not work for you. But I can say from my experience. I’ve never cleaned any of my tanks. The most I do is top up water due to evaporation. And I also welcome all the pest snails. To be honest I ran my 20 gallon and never cleaned a thing. I didn’t even change the filter in the HOB filter. But it’s like I said. What works for me might not work for you. I run all my tanks the same way. Once your plants are established with plenty of plants from what I can see they kind of take care of there self’s.

Avoiding extremes is always the best idea. An absolutely clean, sterile tank is bad, as is a tank that more closely resembles a backed-up septic system. Anything in the middle between those two extremes is typically the best option.