[Help sexing Kribensis Pulcher]

Hello everyone,

I had a pair of kribs and unfortunately one of them passed away several months ago. I’ve just finally made some changes with my tanks and have a new tank set up for a pair of kribs. With that being said I keep going back and forth with the sexing of my remaining krib. 
 

initially I thought it was my female due to its size and it chasing the other around the tank but analyzing a lot of pictures of the two from when they were little and before the other died I am sort of confused. 
 

this krib can’t be longer than 3.5 inches max and I’m leaning on the smaller side but it’s tail fin looks characteristic of a male. I look online and see some people talking about M/F pairs being 4.7/3.2 inches max size respectively as well as other places stating 3.5/3.0 inches between the sexes.

additionally if anyone has advice about introducing the new krib to the existing one, i had planned on introducing the female to the male but I’ve never tried this before and don’t know if what I’ve read is correct. 

Any help would be greatly appreciate, thank you!!

[How to handle adding fish to new tank]

@Fish Folk @lefty o 

With that being said, it seems like I shouldn’t even gamble on tiger barbs. Assuming I can give my murderer to LFS, what do you believe the likelihood is of pulling another psychopath barb?
 

Also how should i go about asking the LFS to take the barb? Is it bad form to do so, and what should be disclosed to them ? The stocking of the tank / nature of the fish? 
 

Thank you for the responses! 

[How to handle adding fish to new tank]

I’m looking to set up a new 40g breeder that is going to have a kribensis pair and  anywhere from 15-20 tiger barbs. 
 

I have a single tiger barb that killed an entire group of 10 other barbs when I got them all at once, who is the reason for setting up this new tank. I can only get smaller sized tiger barbs from my LFS and the aggressive one is full grown.

With that being said would I need to grow out my smaller barbs and then add the mature barb or could I add them all together so they can set up a hierarchy together ? 
 

any help with the topic would be appreciated. 

[Female Pearl gourami w/ Cloudy eyes and red spot]

Hello everyone, 

I’ve had this pear gourami along with 3 others, 1 male, and 2 females for a little over a year now. I’ve posted about this particular female in the past as she’s had several bouts of cloudy eyes - she’s the only gourami to ever have any issues and based off of the tank dynamics she is clearly the bottom of the social hierarchy. The 3 females have relatively large abdomens but they’ve been like this for 9+ months, the group has spawned in the past, and I see them regularly poop so I would assume they’re not constipated?  

This time she has a red spot on her underside near the back of her body that is visible on both sides which leads me to believe there’s something internal that is appearing symmetrically on both sides of her. 

The tank is a top fin 40g tank that has a rainbow shark which never bothers any of the fish in the tank, 6 bronze corys, 4 otos, a BNP, the 4 Pearl gouramis, and one lone barb that terrorizes all of the female pearls pretty much equally. 

This barb has been in the tank the whole time and has killed all of the other 11 barbs that were with it before the gouramis and corydoras were added. 
 

I am in the process of setting up a 40L for the barb to move into as I know the stress is likely a casual issue for this pearls health issues but I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight as to what it is? Internal parasite? Abrasion from the barb? It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a spot like this on any of my fish in any of my tanks and am unsure about how to approach it.  
 

Any help would be much appreciated 

Water Parameters:

• pH - 6.4
• Nitrates - 0-20 depending on if I recently culled the floating plants from it that week
• Hardness - very hard 300+ 
• Nitrite - 0 every time
• Ammonia - 0 every time 
• KH/Buffer - low 0-40 on any given week (there is a bag of crushed coral in one HOB to supply some buffer)
• Water Temperature - pretty much always around 74-76 depending on the temperature of the house currently 

[Prefab Sump Kits (DIY)]

Excuse my noobiness but would it be possible to hook up multiple tanks to one of these sump systems ? 
 

if you can hook up multiple tanks for one sump system is there a rough estimate for a ratio between sump volume and fish tank volume ?

[Egg on top of salvinia?]

On 9/21/2022 at 1:27 PM, Robstar said:

Oh man! I got excited too. Oh well, it happens. Are you using xtreme krill flake? How do you like it?

Yes I am! I like it, it is palatable to all of the fish I feed it too so there’s really nothing to complain about. My CPDs will eat it off the substrate along with the Pygmy corys and they won’t do that to any other dry food. 

[Egg on top of salvinia?]

When I tried to remove it it instantly liquified, turns out it was a droplet of water with krill flake underneath it. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Egg on top of salvinia?]

I just went to feed my Apisto tank that also has Pygmy corys and CPDs. When I opened the Lid I saw this sitting on top of the salvinia and Im At a loss for what could have produced it and how it got there. Any help would be greatly appreciated! 

[Diagnosing Pearl Gourami / Tank]

On 8/24/2022 at 10:22 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

If this was me, I would treat for flukes and do a round of antibiotics. I would use API General Cure or Paracleanse and I would use Seachem Focus and Kanaplex mixed into food. I would use them simultaneously. There's no such thing as a pH crash. The pH of the tank is nothing more than a result of a tanks parameters and these are soft water fish who's natural habitats consist of low pH water.

I would make sure you are using enough dechlorinator before water changes just incase the tap water contains higher amounts of chlorine or chloramines. I would do a few extra low volume water changes to improve water quality as well.

Follow direction for both treatments and repeat the GC/Paracleanse treatment in 2 weeks.

@Mmiller2001 So I am just reading this now. The day I made this post I bought Melafix and Pimafix and began dosing both of them in my tank. Today the cloudiness in my pearls eyes have significantly decreased back to how they were a month ago. The white spot on her lip has also decreased considerably. 

This leads me to believe it is simply a bacterial / fungal thing ? 

I always make sure that I add the proper amount of water conditioner when doing changes, and recently found out that my  tap water comes out with relatively low levels of chlorine to begin with according to my test strips. 

I also bought crushed coral and added it to my tanks HOB, what you’re saying about pH crashes not being a thing is intriguing because I Read a handful of articles and watched a few ACO videos and they all seem to suggest that not having any buffer leads to pH swings?

Would you suggest that I remove the Crushed coral because it might raise my pH to much and actually cause an issue within my tank?

would you also suggest I still dose with an anti parasitic? I have paracleanse and it would make sense that a parasite would also be a stressor leading to an infection.  

[Diagnosing Pearl Gourami / Tank]

On 8/23/2022 at 12:45 PM, quikv6 said:

What is the PH and KH out of the tap? You have 0 KH, which can result in a PH crash, which may be why your PH is so low. A crash can cause fish stress and lead to issues.

Crushed coral may be your friend, and help increase the buffer (KH), preventing a PH crash.

@quikv6 All of my tanks tend to be low ~6.4 ph, high GH, and low K. The except being a beta tank I have with eco complete substrate which is usually 6.8 ph and medium KH range ~80-100.
 

This is my water straight out of the tap 

[Egg ID?]

On 8/23/2022 at 12:12 PM, Guppysnail said:

Their poo varies in size color and texture depending on what they have eaten. If it is a gurl it will vary depending on where they are in their egg cycle or if a male has recently mated with them (last applies to buys attempting mating with boys as well). 

Fascinating, I will have to keep that in mind. The poop I just watched was similar to BBS eggs in shape and size  where the photo they must have been .5-1mm in diameter and tan. 

[Egg ID?]

Okay I just watched my mystery snail poop directly in front of me while examining my tank and it seems clear that whatever I took a picture of for this post was not mystery snail poop 😶

[Diagnosing Pearl Gourami / Tank]

I have been monitoring this pearl gourami for the past month when I noticed she had a small amount of hazing on both of her eyes. She shows no signs of appetite loss, no visual impairment (she swims gracefully through aquarium plants sideways when darting around and has no difficult getting food). 

This female is picked on by the other 2 female gouramis along with the male who pretty much harasses all of them especially when they approach his bubble nest corner. 

Yesterday I noticed she had a white spot on her lip that appears as an infection from a wound perhaps? So I did a bunch of googling and figured I would wait a day or two to see if there is any other changes. Today her right eye is significantly cloudier than it was yesterday and her other eye is essentially the same. 

After seeing all of this I looked into the rest of the eyes of my fish to see if there’s any other signs of clouding and it turns out two of my green corys have small white spots on their eyes as well (it was hard for me to tell with them always moving around and how small their eyes are) but their appetite is massive and they’re extremely energetic. My rainbow shark flashed a few times yesterday but he does that every once in a while (I notice it maybe twice a month). 

This tank has been set up and running for about 5 months now with no issues. The only additions to it have been me gradually replacing fake plants with real plants in the tank. 

I guess my questions is if these things are related, if it’s either a bacterial issue, a fungal issue, or a parasitic issue, and what should my course of action be? I have a fair amount of meds on hand. 

These are my water parameters and some other pictures of my female gourami and one of the corys. 
 

[Egg ID?]

On 8/21/2022 at 7:52 PM, Cinnebuns said:

That's fair. I can't speak for these specific photos but in my experience they aren't large bits. Maybe @Lvkas can speak to the scale of the pics and the particles. 

The cluster was about 2 inches from the rim of my 40g tank.

The size of the entire cluster was about 5-10mm I’d say?

It’s gone after a water change I did yesterday so I can’t exactly measure it but the roots behind it in the last photo are from salvinia for an added reference point. 

[Egg ID?]

Oh geez I come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever watched the snail poop before! Thanks for the help @Cinnebuns

[Egg ID?]

Are these mystery snail eggs?  I’ve googled images of mystery snail eggs and these don’t seem to match up. 
 

The tank has pearl gouramis, emerald corydoras, otocinclus, a rainbow shark, and a bristlenose.

They’re also below the water line, I read that mystery snails lay their eggs above the waterline?

Ty for any possible help. 

[Fish ID question]

@Colu @Odd Duck Thank you for the replies! With it being a scarlet badis should I make the drive to bring it back? This tank has Pygmy Cory’s, CPDs, and a pair of apistogramma cacatuoides. 

[Fish ID question]

Alright I figured this would be a good first question for the forum. Yesterday I went to a new LFS 1 1/2 hours from my house for some CPDs. When I finally got back home I was looking in the bag while the fish was acclimating and noticed that one of the fish I had received was a random straggler from the sales tank at the store. Does anyone have an idea on what fish this is ? 

Thank you in advance for any potential help!

P.S. not only is this my first post but I’m doing it off my iPhone so if this is not properly formatted please let me know