NOLANANO

Anubias Nana or Gold coin are smallish slow growers that are somewhat bush like that do not spread. Anubias Nana Petite is even smaller.

In my experience keeping water parameters stable and keeping nitrates as close to zero as possible is the most important aspect to keeping rams.

I do as well. I think the employee was correct to warn you that 12 might overload your system in her opinion but should have sold you what you wanted. Its one thing for her to say I won't sell you an Oscar for your 10 gallon but saying she won't sell pygmy cories is a bit ridiculous imo. Silver lining here is that you know that employee cares about the fish more than the sale. Even though she was maybe a bit rude, I'd feel comfortable buying her fish because they will probably be healthy.

The one I pictured above does have a "Pulse" setting where it turns on and off every so often. It claims the battery can last 25 hours on pulse mode.

I am thinking about doing a small filterless bookshelf aquarium and I was wondering if anyone has done one or has any opinions. I have a smallish bookshelf in my office at work that would be perfect, the only issue is that it is no where near any electrical outlets. My solution is to do a filterless shrimp tank. My thoughts so far is to get the 3 gallon tank below: And also het these 2 rechargable lights: And lastly get 2 of these rechargable air pumps: Then have a sand bottom with some river rocks, a few small pieces of wood, some easy plants like anubias and maybe Bacopa. Maybe Dwarf Sag. Possibly Crypt Wenditii Red. All of these plants I can source out of my main tank. I could have one set of air pump and light charging while the other is active and switch them out daily. The only issues would be weekends when I wouldn't be able to turn the lights on or switch the air pump. I'd start with just plants to see how it goes I think and once I get the plants going I'd add the shrimp. Does this seem like a doable idea or am I asking for a disaster?

I second this. I have 8 Pandas and they are hardy and active. They don't hide nearly as much as other species I have had before.

@TealStarlight the only other advice I’d give about the sun sun is open the lid as seldom as possible. The reviews on it say that it is prone to leak but I have had mine for over 2 years without any issues and I think it’s because I have only opened the lid like 3-4 times to do maintenance. Otherwise the lid stays shut.

Sometimes. other times they get themselves stuck. They usually get stuck when they are spooked. Apistos are cave dwellers so I'd be shocked if he got himself in a spot he cant get out of unless he was spooked.

I have a sun sun and its pretty straight forward. I agree that Youtube would be your best friend in this situation. To answer a couple of you questions: 1) I would not keep the bio ring in the bag. I don't think the tray would sit right if they aren't spread out in a single layer. 2)As for the sponges, if you are using only what they gave you (thats fine if you are), I would put the blue sponge at the bottom and the filter floss above it. Its up to you if you want multple layers of filter floss in a single tray or if you want to line each tray with a filter floss pad. As for how I have my filter trays set up, I purchased the sponges in the below link and I put the coarsest sponges (3 of them) at the bottom, and then the second coarsest (3 of them) in the second trey, and then the finest (1 of them) in the 3rd tray with bio balls on top, and then a filter pad (1 of them) in the top tray with the bio rings on top. This way the larger particles can be caught by the coarser pads and the filter floss can just get the finer particles. this helps avoid clogging. Amazon.com : AQUANEAT 9 pcs Replacement Aquarium Canister Filter Pads Compatible with SUNSUN HW-304B/404B/704B/3000 CF500 Filter Pads Bio Sponges : Pet Supplies

Google says they can live 2-3 years. Maybe he was old? If your mystery snails also go missing, you probably have an assassin snail in the tank. They are kind of hard to spot because they burry themselves in the substrate and only come out at night,

Yeah I agree. Sounds like your snail is in snail heaven. This happened to me once and about 2 weeks later I found an assassin snail in my tank. It must have hitched a ride on some plants or something. Thats hard to say. I am by no means a snail expert but I don't believe there a snail actually called a pest snail. It was most likely either a rams horn or nerite or some other form of common snail that just hitched a ride on some plants. But in general, I think snails live about a year.

Random Check In: Wanted to add this tidbit before I forgot. The puffers eat Hikari Cichlid Gold sinking pellets. They pick that them along with my other fish. The pellets are pretty hard at first and the fish (including the puffers) have to work at them to break off bits. I think this will be helpful for keeping teeth in check. I am shocked that they are accepting this type of food. Definitely not as picky as I feared.

I find that all my fish like Blood Worms but they go absolutely NUTS over Beef Heart.

Yeah I am going to have to agree with @jwcarlson on this one. Based on your forum activity I'd highly suggest putting this fish store idea on hold while you learn more as a hobbyist. Especially if you are taking someone else's money to do it. Not saying the idea isn't eventually feasible but it seems like a huge leap to make for you right now. Maybe go get a part time job at a LFS to see how a store is run and see if you even enjoy it as a profession. This way you can see what works and maybe even see things you can do better than the LFS. Jumping head first into a business backed by someone else without prior experience is asking for trouble. There is just so much that can go wrong and you most likely don't have the capital to make up for any mistakes caused by the learning curve.

My prediction came to fruition. The 2 larger males battled for the preferred cave last night. I guess they both recovered from their travel to the trade show and then to my house and felt comfortable that there weren't any predators to worry about in the tank. I watched them circle and flash and occasionally get physical for about 45 minutes before going to bed. It didn't appear that either was getting injured or backing down. I am curious to see if either was able to evict the other when I get home from work. One funny thing is that my smallest male tried to get in on the battle but was completely ignored by the larger males. He fairly quickly left the cave and hung out with the females waiting for a winner lol.

Thank you for the detailed response. I will order that fertilizer asap.

I have had Bacopa in my tank for the last 3 years and prior to the last couple of months I would have labeled this plant as indestructible. What happened (I believe) is that I had the floating plant salvinia get over grown and essentially suck all the nutrients out of my water. I think this is what happened because it happened once before and when I removed the salvinia the stems started growing again. The first time it happened, I had some more sensitive stems that started to die prior to the Bacopa which tipped me off. While the Bacopa did stop growing the first time as well, they never turned brownish and lost leaves. I have since removed the salvinia in its entirety but its been several weeks and the Bacopa has not recovers. The rest of my plants (various anubias, a couple of Crypts, Val, and Dwarf Sag) have all began to grow again but the Bacopa is being stubborn. The lower portions of the stems have lost their leaves, the middle portions have leaves with holes in them, and the upper portion of the stems have full leaves but they are smaller than normal. My tap water in New Orleans usually has enough nutrients in it to support easier plants and I use the occasional root tabs (although I usually concentrate then beneath the crypts and Grass plants). I have also started to use easy green once or twice a week. My next idea is to cut the Bacopa stems down to where the leaves are whole and let them grow from there. Before I do that though, does that seem like a good idea or will I just have short stunted plants? For a visual example, I went from the top picture of bacopa looking amazing in the middle to the bottom picture of Bacopa not looking great on the left.

Yes, I was very happy with the find. There were a couple of other impulse buys that I held back on because I wasn't as familiar with the fish but since I had previously done teh research on these and knew that the Borellii temperament is fairly mild for a cichlid, I felt safe buying these. Plus I have a few caves that were only being utilized by my cories so having these guys really utilize that space has been great. I have never had more than a pair of Apistos so I am kind of surprised at how tolerant the males are of one another. I think I have found the females to be more aggressive toward one another than the males. Maybe the males will get more territorial once they get comfortable but right now the 2 largest males occupy the same space while the smaller one mostly hangs out on the opposite side. But even when they cross paths, there isn't much, if any, aggression between the males. I also find them to be fairly polite to the females. Its like they flash and say "Can I take you on a date?" and the females say "No." and the males say "Ok, Sorry for bothering you." and move on. When I had a trifasciata, he was relentless toward the females. He would definitely been reported to HR lol.

Went to an aquarium trade show in Slidell Louisiana called Aqua-Fest yesterday. I didn’t think I was going to buy anything but then I saw a group of 6 Apisto Borelli (3M, 3F) and I couldn’t pass it up. my LFS get apistos maybe once a year and when the do, they usually only get a pair. I honestly have never seen 3 pairs ever. I’ve had a single Borelli before but he didn’t last long as he was a juvenile and got bullied by my rams. Not having any rams currently, and wanting to give the borelli a proper chance, I pulled the trigger. I also got them for a fraction of the price that I would have if I ordered online or if my LFS got them in. I’m ecstatic about them.

I'm not saying you are definitely wrong but have you ever kept a CPO? I have had 3 over the years and they are really small and pretty weak. I only had one actually try to hunt fish and the one time he "got a hold" of a panda cory, it just swam out of his grasp with extreme ease. Unless I am way off base, Darters are bigger than panda cories so I would be shocked if the CPO could do much with the Darter. Now after it already died or while it was super weak in the process of dying, I guarantee the CPO took out the eye. I have a video of my fish literally stealing algae wafers from my CPO with zero fear of it but I'd have to upload it to youtube to share it so I probably won't ever get around to it lol.

Smart to go slow. Plants get expensive. Unless you plan to get really into the nitty gritty (lighting, fertilizing, etc) I would stick with easier plant. I tried a few "harder" plants with no luck because I didn't put in the work to make them thrive. I came to the realization that the vast majority (99.9%) of people that look at my tank don't know an anubias from a pink flamingo (one of the plants I tried and killed) anyway so who was I really trying to impress? Now if you do want to get into plants there check out this guy's journal: Miller's Journal - Photos, Videos & Journals - C.A.R.E. (aquariumcoop.com)

I am by no means an expert but looks like hair algae. If it is, Its not harmful, just a nuisance. If it get really out of hand it could kill the plant but you don't look anywhere near that. You can spot treat with either Easy Carbon, Excel, or Hydrogen Peroxide. Spot treating means putting some of the aforementioned in a syringe or pipet and spraying it directly onto the algae. The algae will turn reddish brown and then die. It won't solve the root cause that is creating the algae but it will kill off what's there.

If you plan pea puffer(s) then you won't have snails for very long.

In my experience CPOs are much more likely to eat the fish once its already dead. I have seen them try to catch a panda cory before but the cory was to strong for them to hold and wiggled away quite easily. I did see one catch a sick SAE before and be able to hold on but the SAE was barely alive at this point. Basically I think that its unlikely that the CPO killed the Darter and its more likely that the Darter died and then the CPO ate him.

I got a picture of a little fish so I did my part. Lol