[What fish are you eyeballing?]

I've been eyeballing Purple Moscow guppies on Aquabid. 😍 

 

[Accidentally Thawed Frozen Bloodworms]

I'd also toss them-- not worth risking hurting the fish. 

[Brine Shrimp]

I also freeze mine so I don't have to hatch daily. I freeze them with a silicone mold meant for gummies. 

[Best Heater... Does A Good One Exist?]

38 minutes ago, Cory said:

I'm testing another heater again... This is still a continually work in progress for me. This one appears promising from the beginning. Should be affordable, has digital temp display, you set the temp outside the tank. Lot of the little things I like, I'm waiting for my sensor to show up so I can track the temp on a graph for some more testing currently.

Wahoo! So happy to hear this!

[Best Heater... Does A Good One Exist?]

Ugh I was considering picking up a new strain of guppies but instead $$$ I just replace a heater I broke during an aggressive water change (whoops). I've tried what feels like every major brand of heater on the market running at 50w or less. The Eheim 50w is my favorite heater! It runs around $35 and IMO its well worth the money since it has outlasted and and is more accurate my other heaters. I don't like purchasing through Amazon so if it ever leaves Petsmart I'd look for something similar. 👀 

This heater was super duper accurate for almost three years running in a 10 even though its rated for a 16 in a room that runs cold at night and warm in the day. After this time the heater hit "max calibration" where the red ring would be pushed all the up "up" but heater would be heating my tank ~4F higher than it was "set at". I figure it may have since changed or warped from use over time in a room with temp swings. I've since moved this heater to my 20 gallon that doesn't experience heat swings and I found I was able to recalibrate it to just-below-center to reach 78F. So far so good but I'll be watching closely to make sure temperatures continue to behave as expected. (And will totally update here if the unit does indeed fail.)

 

[Favorite Plant]

Cryptocoryne Wendtii 

• grows in any light
• grows quickly; I get a new shoot every day
• super duper easy to split up plant
• enjoys fertilizer but doesn't need it
• wavy leaves with bronze undertones are gorgeous
• grows in gravel, stratum, course sand, fine sand
• can get it on the cheap

[New fish mom]

You're welcome! 💯 And yeah I'll see them knot up in response to stimuli like being nipped at.

P.S. I love your new community tank and they way you aquascaped it!

[New fish mom]

Welcome to the hobby!

If they're swimming like an 'S' and they're pretty thin then I think they're detritus worms. I found a discussion about them in this forum:

I'll occasionally see one here or there every few weeks in my well seasoned tanks being chased down by a guppy. From what I've read they're the result of excess poop and debris and they break that stuff down. If you see a swarm of them as Mark describes then it may be a sign of poor water conditions.

I'm a little more than two years into the hobby so I'd cross-check this online diagnosis with the characteristics seen in your worms.

[Hello from Michigan!]

Thanks @FranJ ! Yes I see several of them every day, and the more fish that are in the tank the more often the kuhlis come out--they're mostly active at night. I might see them poke their heads out of their little caves if I feed frozen brine or bloodworms during the day. They usually move from cover to cover so I make sure there is something along the bottom of the tank for them to move behind along the length of the tank. Oh and if you have heavy cover for them they'll lay on plant leaves! 

While they will search for food on the bottom of the tank they don't do it fervently like like a corydora, its a lot more laid back so I'll feed food direct to them near their rock caves. They're a lot of fun, almost like little eel-dogs! 🐶

[Hello from Michigan!]

3 minutes ago, LunarFlower29 said:

Oooh! Loving your tanks. Hopefully I'll be able to have more than 2 at some point. lol

Very nice!

Is your hospital tank a plastic bin?

Thanks! And yeah its a 7 gallon, plastic #5 storage bin.

[Bannana plant propgation?]

Totally, I am propagating another banana plant this way right now. The stub at the center is where I cut the stem from the main plant, it has grown two small leaves since then as well as its first root from this point. I add nutrients to the water and try to make sure the leaves get enough light. This is maybe a week and a half of growth or so.

[Hello from Michigan!]

Hello from Michigan! 👋 I'm about two years back into the hobby; I've kept fish off and on since I was a kid but I only caught multi-tank syndrome about two years ago 😉. I don't know many "fish people" IRL so I'm super grateful for the C.A.R.E. forum 🙌 and I'm excited to be a part of the community.  Thanks to everybody maintaining the forum and special thanks to Cory and Dean-- I'm a big fan of your YouTube videos and fish room walkthroughs!

Right now I keep Kuhli Loaches, Ember Tetras, and Fancy Guppies. In the past I've kept Bettas, Dwarf Frogs, Neon Tetras, Kubotai Rasbora, and Shrimps. I also love aquatic plants and have a bunch of different Crypts, Banana Plants floating and planted, Bacopa Monnieri, Dwarf Lily (new, still bulbs), Water Sprite, Dwarf Sagittaria, Sagittaria, Subwassertang, Java Moss, Christmas Moss, Java Windelov, Ludwigia Peruensis, and Hygrophilia Blue. I've also kept duck weed and dwarf hair grass-- ugh but hated the maintenance and got rid of them. When I was first getting started I kept Madagascar Lace, definitely the most beautiful plant I've ever kept, I miss that one!

Here's a photo of my tanks (I recently moved them to this starter rack so everything has been re-aquascaped in the last month or so.) The teal tank is the hospital tank. ✌️

@LunarFlower29 👋 here are my tanks! 

[Help on tank]

37 minutes ago, LunarFlower29 said:

The white flakes are your sand, right?

The sand is black and white (kind of difficult to tell) and the eco-complete is the larger black chunks. In the second photo you can kind of see a "layer" of eco-complete making its way up 😑 with a small layer already at the top and then a solid layer of eco-complete at the bottom. The mixing should't be too much of an issue if you don't have sensitive bottom dwellers-- I saw you wrote you have black sand visually it should be no big deal, especially if you have the eco-complete in its own corner as described.

38 minutes ago, LunarFlower29 said:

Thank you for sharing and good luck on your journey! I'd love to see the results so please tag me if you decide to share. 🙂 

No problem, I didn't expect the eco-complete to rise up either! Something to consider. The dwarf grass area is now just an open area, which the fish like okay, but I'm working on making it a shaded openish area using a dwarf lily plant. And thanks! 💯 If I post a picture of the tank I'll tag you. Good luck finding a carpeting plant you like, likewise I'd love to see an update on your tank. ✌️

[Help on tank]

So, yes, I've had success carpeting 1/2 of a 20L with dwarf hair grass with eco-complete bottom substrate and 1"+ sand top substrate. Note that over weeks, though, snails (and maybe the kuhli loaches?) turned the substrate enough to cause the sand to fall and the eco-complete to rise.

After about a year I removed the hair grass because I wasn't enjoying the aesthetic and stray trimmings. Since my kuhli loaches prefer sand, as the eco-complete rises to the top I scoop it out and sift the sand from the eco-complete using a repurposed kitchen utensil. Its a pain, really, and I would advise my friends against this substrate combo. 🙃 Next time I move the tank, I plan on separating the substrates out and using them in separate tanks so I'll never have to sift out substrate ever again.

Here are some photos of the substrate in action:

 

[Total Gallons/Average Gallons/# Of Tanks]

45 gallons / 11.25 gallon average / 4 tanks

1x 5, 2x 10, 1x 20L