Leaderboard

I just wanted to share how much my betta has changed from when it was in a cup to now in a 6 gallon planted tank with shrimp that he doesn’t eat or bother! I got him in early January this year and I'm amazed on how much blue he has now!

Wow, Cory's have quite the fan base!

If you want to have a betta tank with shrimp it needs to be heavily planted and they might eat and nag at shrimp or some might not or some like mine bothered the shrimp and after a week he noticed that he couldn’t eat them and completely ignores them now. I was trying out shrimp and someone local sold me these 12 shrimp for $0.25 cents each so I wouldn’t be bummed if any died. Luckily none did and I have a shrimp carrying eggs! Now the question is if they will survive.

I've had some pretty remarkable come backs! I feel as long as there is green somewhere in there, I'll remove any obvious dead material and let it be for a while. I've had Crypts take several months to start new growth. I'd say, just be patient, you never know. Good luck!

Oh and found one of my bolivian ram

Ooh I have some, not so great quality though Oddballs: epiplatys annulatus garra flavatra and white cloud mountain minnow, mix of colors sewellia lineolata otocinclus indostomus paradoxus Blackwing hatchetfish or Carnegiella marthae neolamprologus multifasciatus snails: brotia pagodula rabbit snails

Also forgot to mention. I breed Pygmy and CPD in the same tank. I use this setup. Deli container with child’s jewelry beads so the CPD eggs fall through. The Pygmy pollute the moss with eggs. I never had luck with them using a mop. Both species prefer moss over a mop. I dump the CPD eggs in a breeder. I dump the entire container mulm and all I don’t bother to separate. I leave the catch cup in for 4 days. Then dump it to a breeding net and throw the moss with Pygmy eggs in another breeding net. This go I got over 100 CPD and 40 Pygmy. Pygmy and Habrosus are both beginners level easy to breed. Pick which you like best. Pygmy swim more mid level than Habrosus. Both fun fish.

Day 7: I have finished my investigation of my prison: the invisible barriers holding me captive are impermeable and beyond reproach. I am exhausted, and can only hope the feeder will return soon with something better than these stale, oily flakes. They are palatable and afford me some constitution, but only just so. I must retire to the wooden branch, which I have claimed as my own, and recoup my strength. I still do not understand why I am being held captive! Day 8: Those damned puffers are at it again. This is my branch, and I will have none of their impudent abuses. We are all prisoners here, to what end should we visit grief upon one another? I do not feel they comprehend such necessary civilities in the slightest, unfortunately. Day 9: The feeder has returned! And the water abounds with wriggling red worms, the likes of which I have never known! Oh such splendid pleasure, to think I would find such a heavenly grace in this damned place.. Perhaps I have been too condescending in regards to my new fate...

I would go for middle sized cories. I had problems matching smallest cories like pygmys with bettas before. I also had issues with bigger sized cories like sterbais or gold lasers in smaller sized tanks like my 96 liter tank before when they were fully grown. So middle sized cories are the best imo. My pandas do great in my shallow nano tank with the dimensions of 50x40cm Kuhlis hide a lot.

I’m team Cory too! Depending on your pleco variety, they may either get huge or you’ll pretty much never see them😂 And Kuhli loaches are awesome little noodles but they also can be very shy. Corys are always out and about in the town and I think they just add a lot of activity to the bottom of the tank! I vote Pandas or Julliis but it really comes down to personal preference.

Big day in the fry tank today. Graduated the Pao fangi fry to compost worms. 4 of the 15 are seen here cooperatively feeding. They rotate through based of their standing in the colony

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 ❤️

When I was setting up my 40g breeder, I had a 20g long that I was using to expedite tank cycling and to use a quarantine tank. Since I have fully populated my 40g and also picked up a 10g (for quarantine etc.), I'm looking to set up the 20g. I have two operating tanks - my feature 40g (Bolivian Rams, Tetras and Cories) and a 29g Native tank (Central Mudminnows). My past experience is predominantly with other South American (Tetras, Cichlids, Cories) as well as some live bearers, asian species (barbs, rasboras) and some other Ohio natives. My plan is not to create a fish room so I'm hoping this tank completes my expansion. Was thinking about Shell dwellers, but interested in others thoughts. Not a big fan of Bettas, Plecos, severely mutated species, or fish that constantly have huge turd streamers. Interested in hearing others thoughts.

I wouldn’t put Panda Cory’s in anything under a 20 unfortunately. If you want Cory’s, you could definitely do a little school of Pygmy Corydoras! They do tend to school midwater so just keep that in mind. As for schooling fish, I think you could easily fit a little school of small fish in there. Anything that tops out around an inch would be ideal. Ember Tetras, Chili Rasboras, CPD’s, Clown Killifish (which stay up top), and Green Neon Tetras are all great options. And I do agree your Gourami is definitely a thick lipped, not a Honey. 🙂

Massive glow-up, @Matthew does stuff! Nicely done! Sadly, what @Lennie mentioned is true that the koi (and Nemo) coloration is more prone to tumors / cancer than those that don’t gradually shift colors. It appears to be related to the gradual spread of pigment producing cells or pigment production getting turned on in cells that didn’t produce those pigments previously. I haven’t heard of anybody doing any kind of studies, it’s just something that’s been noticed over the years by breeders. It’s not something I discovered, I’ve only applied an educated guess on the cause.

That looks like a type of hair algae to me, its similar to blanket weed if im reading you correctly. For me cutting down on nitrates/phosphates helped reduce the issue. Also, running polyfill to polish my water helped immensely.

Finished planting the plants I bought for this tank! I planted 4 cardinal plants and one anubias nana petite. I also added a black lava rock (front right corner of tank infront of one of the cardinal plants). I added it because I though it added some nice texture variety in the substrate.

It worked! Looks like rot to me. And might be dying. I have seen severe die offs, but this looks like it is dead. And if the fish are feasting on it, I’d take it out, it doesn’t look great sadly @Lonkley. IMO. Let’s see what everyone else thinks.

Hey everyone! Back from vacation and I just want to say that these pictures are incredible! Keep up the good work, and I will try my best to organize this project!

An amazing fish, my personal fav is the panda.

That’s some great care yoyr giving. He is stunning.

Basically HOB filters create water agitation, water agitation creates more surface area on the surface of the water. which means the water evaporates more as it has more spots to evaporate from.

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. 🙂

shell dwellers would be fun. either red fin caudalpunks or multis would be cool

Ooh, 20g is a good dimension to play with. You wont regret a colony of neolamprologus multifasciatus, they are a fun fun fun fish, but you should have some people that will take your juveniles 🙂 Everyone who has pseudomugil, is having much fun with them, they dont like flow, like shallow, lots of plants, LID, and they have fun and you will have fun watching them court each other and even have some babies As guppysnail would tell you, african dwarf frogs are also a hoot and this dimension could work for them

I also have absolutely lovely pseudomugil luminatus, but they are impossible to photograph, they wont stand still and the colors on the picture dont do them justice

I used to when my tank was newly set up but now conditions are stable enough that I'd essentially be writing the same thing over and over.

All of these pictures were taken by me: Honey Gourami Beckford’s Pencilfish Guppies Apistogramma Panduro Guppies Apistogramma Panduro Copella sp. Splash Tetra Blue emperor tetra Red thicklip gourami I have lots of pictures but most of them are whole tank shots or include multiple species. Right now my tank have tons of tannins making it hard to take pictures but after a big water change this weekend I’ll try to take more.

It will come back. I had a wood piece in a drawer dry for 6-8 months. Apparently there were left over moss spores. I put the wood in a tank and from nothing it grew This is that wood and moss 2 years later

I fed my bamboo plant 💚

Like I said I actively breed all these fish. I recommend start stocking with the ones you want the most. Add 1 soecies at a time. For breeding this is to many fish in 1 tank that small. After you are set up if you want any tips to breed let me know. I currently have roughly 100 CPD babies, 40 Pygmy cory babies. 100-200 bristlenose babies at any given time. I sold my scarlet badis group a few years back. look into grindle worms for a better and varied food source mine didn’t touch snail babies. Ramshorn snails are considered pests because they overpopulate VERY quickly. Your 10 will be over 100 in just a few months time. The bristlenose are inappropriate for that small of a tank. Cut out 2 4 inch rectangles and place them in front of the tank. You will see your tank is to small. The waste they produce is immense. Did you see the warnings aqadvisor provides concerning appropriateness and huge twice weekly water change schedule? I typed in your stock.

I don't know about that app. I downloaded it, then I put my phone into my tank to measure my parameters, and now my phone won't even turn on.

I consolidated all of my microflora buckets into a gigantic brandy glass. It's gotta be at least ten liters if not more. I've been using little five liter plastic buckets, and visiting various lakes, ponds, and ephemeral pools. I kept those standing on my balcony, and took out little starter cultures that I had in my windows in clear plastic food containers. I got a great big bucket for eventually doing a stabilized culture in (primarily daphnia) but I really wanted something to have in my living room that was more like an aquarium, where I could see all the little critters going about their daily lives. So last night I saw the huge brandy glass in the red-cross store, and I took a morning off from work and was at the door the minute they opened and bought it (what a steal, like 10 bucks) and put all my established cultures into it. So I've got scuds, seed shrimp, daphnia, microworms, some kind of tiny pond snails that don't seem to grow more than 0.5 cm which seems perfect, copepods, some really fast round things that are on the verge of being microscopic (like max 1mm) and which I need to identify still despite spending my entire childhood studying this stuff -no they are not paramecium, and just a plethora of other infusoria. Also have some different algaes and moss, hornworts, and some plant cuttings from my fish tank that I will get going in the cup, which I basically set up like a walstad. I'll put some pictures up once the water settles.

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.

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.

The rational for this is that plants consume oxygen during their dark cycle. your tank though is not particularly densely planted and also has low livestock stocking. Further both cories and Gourami are able to get oxygen from the surface if needed..,

You may want to rethink your stock and do a bit more research. I have bred all these fish with the exception I breed Pygmy and hastatus dwarf corydora. And lemon bristlenose pleco not gold nugget. (Very high bioload) Small tanks are hard to keep stable. Scarlet badis only eat live food plecos even one adult are much to large for a 6 gallon tank. CPD are crazy active and dont do great in small tanks. They will eat the Habrosus eggs and fry. Ramshorn snails eat eggs. For that size tank if you really want Habrosus or pygmaeus who are very active 6 Habrosus or pygmaeus and some cherry shrimp are the most I would put in that tank. Double check aqadvisor that you entered ADULT and not Juvenile size on the pleco. I’m not sure which you meant by golden pleco but these two can both be referenced as golden. Minimum tank sizes are shown in photos

There you go, that’s what Val will look like if it’s healthy. It will block the light to your whole setup once established.

I know Cory recommends its use. The reasons why I am not a fan follows. GH is comprised of calcium and magnesium. K.h is carbonates. Crushed coral adds calcium and carbonates as it dissolves and no magnesium. plants need both Calcium and Magnesium and do best with a specific ratio. I have very soft Tap water, 1 degree GH, 1 degree KH. By dosing both Calcium and Magnesium in known amounts I can optimize plant growth. as a general rule KH does not aid in plant growth but it can be important to some livestock. If I dose crushed Coral, I have no idea what the end stage of increase will be or how fast it occurs, and that dissolving will also slow with time as there gets progressively less crushed coral in the tank as it dissolves over time. plants continually work to reprogram to optimize themselves for the conditions they find themself in to make the best of things. You do a waterchange, and assuming you are using crushed coral because you have very soft water asI do and conduct a 50% waterchange and essentially gh and kh will roughly be half of what it was before the water change, and then it will start rising so your plants are continually trying to reprogram for changing conditions. Personally Iuse Equilibrium in my water change water that doses calcium, magnesium, iron and potassium. The new water going in will be roughly the same levels of these as what is coming out except for any depletion that occurred over the week, so stability and consistency in my opinion is enhanced. plants tend to do better with all parameters staying pretty much the same, CO2, temp, GH, KH, Nitrate, potassium, phosphorus, trace elements lighting, etc… @Mmiller2001 uses individual dosing of lab grade calcium and epsom salts for magnesium instead of Equilibrium and his planted tanks are both award winning and absolutely stunning. In no way would I argue that Equilibrium is superior to his method, and when my stock of Equilibrium starts to approach the end I intend to consider his method in more detail… I originally had crushed coral in my tank also based on @Cory recommendation and still have a bag of it. I pulled what I had in my tanks as I learned more about it not providing magnesium, and the water change issue. My plants are doing much better now than before, but I in no way attribute it all to removing crushed coral. I have changed a lot in my tanks both with water and light parameters and plant husbandry practices etc…. I do not however foresee using crushed coral again… One might set up a test tank and add crushed coral and graph GH, KH changes over time and what affect water changes has, but I cant see doing it myself. Honestly it is just way to easy to dose Equilibrium with a measuring spoon into replacement water…

I'm a total newb so take everything I say as extremely relative, I have a full aquarium of thriving plants though and learned something which is: Too much light at the beginning of a setup might lead to algae taking over while your plants are getting comfortable, my plants partially acclimated after 2 weeks, but the real growth started after 3 months, I'd consider shortening the photoperiod to 4 hours and adding 1 hour each 1/2 weeks depending on results until reaching 8 hours and lowering the intensity. You have mostly epiphytes which grow very slowly and don't pull many nutrients from the water column, you also have (like me) a lot of aquasoil, I'd lower the light intensity to 30/40% for a couple of weeks (8 hours photoperiod) and then ramp it up slowly to the point you see plants are doing well and algae are not taking over. Some plants just die, in my setup I had a lot of plants deemed "difficult" or "slow growing" which just took off and never looked back and plants which were labeled as "easy", "hardy" and "fast growing" which just died off and needed manual removal by my side, each tank is different and sometimes some plants don't work. What I did with my tank when I had issues was basically manually remove all the leaves which were beyond salvation, sometimes even removing everything but the roots altogether, lower the light intensity (I can't so I just reduced the time the lights were on), reduce fertilization (aquasoil still leeches nutrients in the water column) and do small frequent (10% every other day for a week) water changes (I just put 1/3rd of the reccomended fertilizer dose in the water I changed each time). Also some waters (like mine) are very rich in silicates by my online researches those can feed algae a lot, I switched to RO/DI but maybe you can find a solution to just remove the silicates. Also if I have to be completely honest, I'm pretty sure the key to the success of my plants is the fact that I have an enormous Limnophila Sessiliflora (I believe Ambulia nana is the name which is more common in the USA) sucking up a lot of nutrients from the water column, I sincerely recommend it, but if I were to re-scape from scratch I'd put it in a ceramic vase, burrow it halfway in the substrate and cover it with some rocks because that plant grows so fast and so much it's a pain to keep in check. If that's difficult to find or you don't like it floating plants like Water Lettuce, Frogbit or Red Root Floaters are excellent at removing nutrients from the water and your Betta would love them (all the info I have on floating plants is from research, I don't currently own any). Hope I've been at least a bit useful, don't get discouraged you'll be amazed at how good plants are at coming back from apparent death, good luck with your tank!

If you have a Kasa timer, you can plug your air pump in with your light and have them both turn on and off together.

I dont see a negative to shutting it off. @Lennie feels a gourami would benefit from it being off. I am not sure that I see it, but, it is nothing I would be doctrinaire on and he may well be right… you could certainly shut it off and observe if you see any changes.. I cant see a negative to removing the airstone as your tank is lightly stocked.

Especially during night time gouramis love to sleep near the surface in my experience. On one side HOB pushing it away and having airstone creating big and constantly bubbles and creating a pushing effect on the other side would leave no space for gourami to safely rest and sleep in my opinion

As is often the case, "it depends" is the best answer. Sponge filters are great biological filters, not as great as particulate filters. If you want sparkling clear water, an extra filter is handy. Your fish stocking plans are fairly modest, so a single sponge filter combined with the plants is likely all you'll need in terms of biofiltration. Your fish don't need a lot of current or water flow. Sponge filters can lose more CO2 (if you're using CO2) than you'd lose with a canister filter with the outlet below the waterline. If you're not using CO2 then a sponge filter can add some CO2 to the water column since the air you're using for the sponge filter typically has a higher CO2 content than the aquarium water. Since you've already got the filter, I'd just add it to the sponge filter. It won't hurt anything having the extra filtration and you've already got it, so might as well use it.

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

I'd personally run both or get a second sponge filter.

I have a fishless tank with a small snail population and a few plants. No fish means no fish food. An over abundance of snails caused by overfeeding is probably the most consistent advice you will ever get. Overfeeding snails includes decaying plant matter and other detritus as well as fish food. Unless there is a chemical explanation, the "whispy cloud forms" are likely a bacterial formation.

Based on your first post, it sounds like you mostly fixed your problems already. It's kinda hard to tell what you mean by "whispy cloudy forms". I'm assuming the tank has at least some water circulation from the filter. A 7 gallon tank is pretty tiny volume-wise. If it was just a shrimp tank, I'd say leave it. But with the fish in there too, I'd say do a small water change and see if that helps.

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.

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!