tolstoy21

Water conditioner typically does not affect the hardness and/or Ph of the water. With a Kh as high as yours, I doubt there is any reasonable amount of drift wood or leaves you could use to significantly drop those numbers. Hard to say if tetras will do well in your water because I can't tell what your Ph/KH reading are other than they hit the maximum that the test strip can read. Neon's should be fine up to a Ph or 8. Higher than that, maybe? Honestly, I think all of us just starting this hobby tend to stress over water params only to find that, over time, many typical, pet store fish will acclimate to a wider range of parameters than the internet would have us believe. In my experience, trying to change your water's makeup can be a frustrating and usually unsuccessful effort. There are products you can use to lower the Ph/Kh of your aquarium, but these tend to make your parameters bounce. It's best to just stay the course with what you have. What fish appreciate the most is stable parameters over perfect parameters. Good luck and stay with the hobby even if you don't succeed with your first tank. (Alas, many of us don't. I know I didn't). And ask any question you want. Many knowledgable people here to help you on the journey.

Make sure the bottom pane is not tempered before drilling or else it will shatter into a million bits. This is easy to check with a pair of polarized sun glasses. Many tutorials online show how to do this.

I use a dollar-a-gallon 29g. This was a bunch of years back, but I don't remember the 2 glass dividers being super expensive. But, yeah use anything that will hold water, is easy to work with and inexpensive.

Agree 100% on the filter socks. I wished I had planned them into my sump design.

I followed the below video for as a simple design. Plumbing the sump and adjusting flow rates is a different topic not covered here and will depend on how you plan to feed water to and from the sump. You will need a install a PVC gate valve to tweak the flow rate for the return line to the sump. Additionally there are a number of options on for how you can configure the overflow/return -- https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/content/post/md-2017-08-durso-herbie-bean-animal-overflow#:~:text=Durso%2C Herbie%2C and BeanAnimal refer,see used on an aquarium.

If this fish s truly constipated, epsom salt and a little bit if smushed peas can help relieve it. https://be.chewy.com/aquarium-fish-constipation/ Epsom salt can also be attempted as a possible cure for dropsy --

Ah, Ok I see what you're up against now. Just drill the clear parts. 😛 😉🤪🤣

Keeping the fry in the tank runs the risk of 2 things: 1) The mother killing other fish in your aquarium while protecting the fry 2) The fry being eaten by other fish I use a turkey baster on fry all the time. If you're gentle with the fry, they'll be fine.

Feed them! Find foods small enough for them to eat. Frozen baby brine shrimp are easy to find in many pet stores. I would move the mother back to the tank. She'll be unhappy in the breeder box and won't really be able to care for the fry in a meaningful way in the box. I wouldn't put the fry back into the community tank if you want them all to survive. The magic of nature! Sometimes fish will just do their thing without you knowing or doing anything. Other times, you really have to usher along the process. The conditions were just right. But the size of 'just right' is not a tiny, hard-to-hit bullseye. A lot of times its a more forgiving range or parameters. My guess is they will breed again. Hard to say. In regards to LFSs, I've gotten everything from 'Go Away!', to 'well take em off your hands for free', to store credit or $10 a piece. In terms of cash or trade-in value, it would be roughly 1/4 what the store would sell them for. For apistos, typically you sell them in male/female pairs. Good luck raising them and have fun!

It feels like just yesterday that they were in diapers and eating paramecium.

Not in my experience. I haven't seen that in any of my fish. I guess it could be normal, just haven't seen it myself. Attaching pics of my male and female.

I'd put them in like every 3 months. if it's a new plant, just bury three or four tabs in the substrate underneath it. As swords grow, they can create quite extensive root systems so you'll want to increase the number of tabs at that point, and position them all around the plant, not directly under it.

And they will work fine without the hassle of harvesting from nature.

Agreed. Make sure you have bits rated for steel, otherwise they will either burn out or break before you get through the stand. It also helps to have a drill with decent RPMs.

Try conditioning them without live foods and see if that works. Mine spawn a few times a week just eating things like Hikari Vibra Bites, black worm pellets, freeze dried tubifex worms, Northfin Bug Pro, etc. I make a mix in out of this and feed it 2x a day. I think the key is quality foods, not necessarily live. But yeah, you can't go wring with live foods. I feed the fry BBS and, as they get a little bigger, grindal worms, eventually switching them to flake. So, no real recommendations on what is good that can be harvested from nature. But a good, quality flake food, crushed up, will work as well.