Cory

There is one important detail to grow crypts...... Add water.

If you want to make your own. I'd recommend making african cichlid salt. You can find the process online, where you take a 5 gallon bucket and find the right amount of baking soda and other minerals like epsom salt to put in, usually a little bit of marine salt as well for trace minerals. Then you can extrapolate that out for how much water you change, if you changed 20 gallons at a water change you'd do 4x of what you were able to get right in the bucket. It could take you an hour or so remaking the 5 gallon bucket to find what the right ratios will be for your water after r/o and what type of fish you're wanting to keep.

It's hard to say, if the plants are really thriving, usually they handle a week no problem.

Water changes are unlikely to get you through this. I would use either a uV sterilizer or black out the aquarium for a week. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-algae

I'm not sure I've seen that calculation. It does everything in my fish room plus the depth of the 800 gallon which is 40 inches deep. Most people don't have aquariums deeper than 24 inches.

I'd say there is always a risk. These must be pretty small clown loaches. Clowns are known to love wedging themselves into tight spaces. If concerned, use another heater for a month, until they grow? There is really no way to make a heater guard that would cover every circumstance. If you didn't have a heater guard, a larger clown loach could burn itself. If you make the holes even smaller, then it could trap fry, shrimp, snails etc. I think this is a case of a perfect storm between the right size inquisitive loach and the heater guard.

Great story, thanks for sharing. It's funny how small of a world it can become. Now when you watch the peru videos you can see Michael in the background 😛

I'll inquire with our manufacturer.

Ultimately you'd have like 1 male, 5 female of each type. But making sure it doesn't become more males than females, and keeping an eye on the "tank bosses"

It'll usually work in my experience. How successful it'll be comes down to male/female ratios, and maintenance.

Did you put root tabs under them? The amazon sword is converting to submerged grown leaves. It's consuming the nitrogen in the leaves as you can see them turning clear. If you haven't already I'd add 3-4 root tabs under it. The same might be going on with the triparta as well. A new tank, the substrate won't have much int he way of nutrients and needs to be amended with root tabs usually.

I think whats missing from the post is when you started the prazi, but prazi + salt is fine in my experience. You'd want carbon out for the prazi as well.

Top level view: You get a import license to bring stuff into the country. Then you pay and schedule someone to inspect the shipment on arrival. This can be very expensive if it lands outside of normal business hours which is fairly common, or let the fish sit till the next day. From there, you need to know what is legal to import. You'd need to know that you can only import from the countries you applied for. Koi and Goldfish need health certificates to come into the country. Aka more fees. Importing fish probably starts at $750 for 1 box of fish between the fees, flight cost, inspection etc. Where it makes sense is when you add more boxes. 2 boxes might only be $1000, and 3 boxes is 1200, etc. This doesn't include the cost of the fish. So it's one of those things that is doable, a license is like $100 a year to maintain. But the cost/hassle shouldn't be overlooked. When you are trying to schedule someone to look at the import, flight gets delayed, or rebooked etc. It's a stressful time each time we do it.

I worry that the brine shrimp, may have been nutrient deficient. Lots of times they aren't fed at stores and might be food but low in quality at that point. For now, I think all you can do is keep lots of baby snails available and look at water parameters, temps etc, to see if there is something that is off.

How long have you been feeding him the live brine shrimp? What was he eating before that?

How skinny was he when you got him and how long have you had him? When they get this skinny, usually you can't turn it around. Need to get em eating regularly before they hit this stage 😞

Do you have a picture of him and his tank? Have you tried something like frozen blood worms?

We are aware of this. It's one of those things that'll be a nice to have, when we can accommodate it. We haven't found the right way to get the best of both worlds yet.

It could be mold. That was a hurdle I had to overcome while making easy green. having a mold inhibitor in it.

Are there fish in the tank? Do you have a picture to give us more context?

Do you have a nemo fish?

Some basics would be, did you clean the glass before attaching it? Any algae or scuzz on the glass will compromise the stick. Maybe wipe off the suction cuts with your fingers and scrape the glass where you are gonna stick it?

We will be at Vivarium both days.

Melafix is the equivalent of putting aloe vera on a burn. Other meds are what a vet/doctor etc would prescribe. If it's a light sunburn, sure it might work, any actual damage you need medicine.

The problem is pool filter sand varies by a lot. There could easily be 50 different sands being used. One time I bought one that had ground up plastic in it as well. Not a big fan of finer sands, but coarser sands are nice.