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FrozenFins

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FrozenFins last won the day on February 25 2021

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  1. Hi @brayden malone, There is no set amount of fish you can have per gallon. Every aquarium is different and can handle various amounts of bio load. For the most part in an aquarium that size I would stick to one highlite fish (honey gourami, betta, couple balloon molly) and then a couple really small tetras. For example, in my 5 gallon I have one betta and 5 ember tetras. All seems to be working fine. It is moderatley planted. With more plants, I might feel comfortable adding a couple more tetras or maybe some shrimp. So here is my suggestion, start off small with your stocking. Maybe start off 3-4 balloon mollys. After a couple weeks, if water parameters are fine I would add some pygmy corydora. I would not add regular corydora, they need more space then a 6 gallon can offer. If after adding the pygmy corys all is still good I might add one more balloon molly or a nerite/ mystery snail. I would not add more after this. Neither would I do both mollys and honey gourami in a 6 gallon tank. Plants like frogbit, Hornwort, and other floating plants would be great for a tank like this. They grow fast, and rapidly absorb those nutrients. It would help tremoundously with keeping the nitrogen low. Remember, as your stocking this tank you want amonia and nitrites to be consisntley at 0. It would be great if you could get to the level where you only need to top off your tank from evaporation, and no waterchanges are needed because you have low nitrites and amonia. Nitrates you should try to keep lower than 20ppm, anything higher then 30 is a no go. With the stocking you want to do, a 10 gallon is defintley the better move.
  2. Hi, I love black sand too! I think it adds to the natural look of the aquarium as well as makes the plants POP. I've used various kinds of planted tank substrate. In particular I love most kinds of inert substrate. Inert substrate is better at holding the nutrients you need for plants in the substrate. I've used caribsea eco complete and have enjoyed it. Its not very dusty, and claims you dont even need to rinse it. I have had huge success with the seachem flourite substrate, however it is very dusty. Make sure you rinse it very well. Both substrates I would highly recommend.
  3. a good 25% waterchange should work to lower the nitrates. Dose some seachem prime if you have it too. It makes amonia nontoxic, adds an extra layer of slime coat, and helps with general fish stressness. Keep lights off for a couple days as well, high lighting can add to the stress levels of a fish. I forgot to ask... is the acara eating? Are the fins clamped? If he is eating and fins are normal thats a great sign, means hes not too stressed. Your tank inhabitants all seem quite docile... but have you seen any fish bully the acara? That can certainly add to stress levels. Also a bit of a side note... 80ppm nitrates is super high and is most likely the reason to your algae outbreak. Reduce your fertilizer dosing significantly. Nitrates should be 10-20ppm. Anything higher then 30 will probably cause a bit of algae.
  4. Agree with @Colu. Dont feed your betta till he looks back to shape. Overfeeding happeneds - not the end of the world. Bloodworms are not good to overfeed as they are hard for the fish to digest. Feeding just once a week on bloodworms is plenty. From now on, feed once a day with pellets/ flakes. Once a week use the brine shrimp/ blood worms.
  5. Sounds like a stressed fish. What are your water parameters? Amonia and Nitries in particular? Any new additions to this tank? New fish?
  6. Hi @HelplessNewbie Dying plants happeneds to every one, especially when your starting off with planted tanks. Java Fern, Dwarf Sag, Cryptacoryne, Swords, and Anubias are all great beginner plants. One thing to keep in mind is that almost all plants (especially cryptacorynes) are going to look like they are dying when you first get them. Its called plant melt. Plants will melt back when you first get them because when the plant farms grew them, the leaves are typically grown out of water. In this case the plant is esentially shedding its old leaves for fully aquatic leaves. Best you can do is cut back on the stems completley and continue to give them the adequate nutrients. Plants like anubias and java fern in my experiance dont tend to melt back for some reason. Whereas plants like cryptacorynes will always melt back. When you see a new plant starting to die - you can immeidtaley cut off its stem to speed up the melting process. It will grow back with even more lushes leaves. Another plant tip: Plants with rhizomes (anubias, java fern, bucephalandra) and other free floating plants, feed from the water column. These guys will benefit from the use of easy green (which you said you already use, so great!) Its important to know when planting plants with rhizomes not to burry the rhizome in the substrate. You can instead glue it to decor or just plant the roots. For plants like amazon swords, cryptacorynes, vallisneria, and dwarf sag they feed from their roots. They wont care for liquad firtilizer but instead enjoy root tabs, like easy root tabs from aquarium coop. (which you also use so great!) Sorry to hear about all those sick fish. Seems like a lot of illnesses in such a short period of time. Perhaps it could have been the source for these fish, maybe the store you buy from just dont supply healthy fish.
  7. Welcome @IsisP!!! The hobby when you first start off is a confusing one. You've come to the right place, this community and forum is very helpful and will take you through every step to take to start a sucessful aquarium. You'll learn more every day that you explore this site. Follow what @AllFishNoBrakes says - all really great advice. I find when using additives such as API quick start, or the 'ghost feeding' method as mentioned above, you can cycle your tank within a week. Take a sample of your water into you local fish store for testing and they can help you determine if its ready for fish. If theres no amonia or nitrites but a little bit of nitrates your good to go! I like to start off with a smaller amount of fish to begin with. I might start off with only getting 2 platys. After a week of getting the platys, if everything seems fine then you can finalize your stocking with your guppy and other platy! I would like to warn you of getting three platys however. Platys are considered livebearers, meaning they give birth to small live fish instead of laying eggs. With this being said, if you end up with a female and male they will most defintley breed. This may sound fun to some, and to others not so much. Only problem I would have with this is that the potential babies may overstock the aquarium, but adding plants will certainly help with that. When stocking platys I reccomend this stocking ratio: 1 Male : 2 Female 3 Males I wouldnt do any other option. With more males then females, the female will be constantly picked on because the male would like to reproduce. If you have more females then males, the aggression gets spread out. There is a good chance that any females you buy will be pregenant already. Which is why I suggested 3 males. However 3 females would work too, just be prepared for a whole lot of small babies. The platys will eat their babies. So if you dont want the babies, let them eat them. If you do want the babies, provide lots of dense hiding spots for the babies. You can get your fish store employee to sex them out before bagging them up. They are quite easy to determine sex wise. Good luck!
  8. The problem is most websites have very different information. Which is why I thought I would turn to aquarists who had experiance with these guys, because usually they have more knowledge then some of the websites... like wikihow. haha. Thanks for all the information! Higher Ph is good to know... will fix that probably with crushed coral. 🙂
  9. Hey everyone! I am currently working full time at my local fish store. We have a huge freshwater shipment coming on Tuesday. Included in this shipment are some Cardinal Shrimp. Heres the main problem, the fish store is a predominantly saltwater based shop. They ordered some Neocardina shrimp and added cardinal shrimp because they looked pretty, not knowing how much different their care is compared to other caridina shrimp let alone neocaridina shrimp. They will be put in the same aquarium as the neos, simply because when placing the order they thought care was the same. And now there isnt enough space for an extra one. Because cherry shrimp and neos can take a wide range of parameters and are a hardy inverts.. short term i think this will be fine?? So anyone have experiance with cardinals? I know @Cory does, I've watched all the co-op videos about the cardinals. Any general information we should know? The Ph the tank is sitting at is at 6.8 - ive read mixed opinions online. Some say soft accidic water is best, others say harder water is best. Which is best in your experiance? Ive also read about the importance of keeping parameters stable with these guys. Only waterchanging when necessary. I've also read that Nitrates should be kept below 20, would you guys agree with this? Thanks!
  10. The raggedy fins seems like finrot to me. Finrot is a bacterial infection thats quite common to bettas. Id suggest an antibiotic such as API Melafix to fight that. Follow the dosing instructions on the back of the bottle. Its worked wonders for me. Could you send us a picture of your betta? Here is a picture of one of my past bettas named Hugo. He dealt with finrot for the majority of his life. I fought the first infection with Melafix, but the infection came back a year later and nothing seemed to work... he eventually died because of finrot. The picture shows finrot in its late stages. This was what very beginning stages looked like: You can see the small tears and nothces in the beginnings of his long flowy fins.
  11. Hello everyone! While working at my lfs we found this bug in one of our saltwater reef tank filters. For the sake of just wanting to know what it is, I was wondering if someone could help me identify this. A slug? What kind? Ideas?
  12. Heres my experiance with angelfish, Angelfish are lovely fish... seriously one of my favorites. They have amazing personalities and I often find they do a little "wiggle" or "dance" before you feed them. HUGE GLUTONS. Angelfish in a 20 gallon long would be a no go for me. If you had a regular 20 gallon I would attempt it, but really try for a 30 gallon. You could start the angelfish as a baby and then grow him out and eventually upgrade him in a couple months... but make sure you have that bigger tank ready. in a 20 long it really just comes down to how tall these fish get. I've had one that got up to 6" from top to bottom.
  13. Wonderful! Platys are very cute and produce wildly! Have fun, post some updates!!!!
  14. For length you will often find lights that will fit say, 48"-55" tanks. As long as your aquarium is within that range, your good. I beleive a 75 Gallon aquarium is usually 48 inches, in which case a light within that range is perfect! The width doesn't matter, whatever you perfer. If you have a rimless aquarium you could do lights that clamp onto the side of the aquarium. Whatever you perfer. I am not to in touch with spectrum/ voltage. I wil say that Hygger aquarium lights I've had the most sucess with. Lights like the fluval 3.0, or the co-ops light I've heard good things about. If you aren't trying to grow plants, the brightness of the light doesn't matter too much. This was the exact Hygger light I was talking about: https://www.amazon.ca/Aquarium-Programmable-Spectrum-Extendable-Waterproof/dp/B086SVC2FH/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=OvglX&content-id=amzn1.sym.fd852109-df41-4ce9-b0ef-f5d8fc4554a2&pf_rd_p=fd852109-df41-4ce9-b0ef-f5d8fc4554a2&pf_rd_r=M33EKYKT003GXQ2W1YJ5&pd_rd_wg=IK6DQ&pd_rd_r=1a956913-90f6-4198-b57e-fd6c1d195cbb&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mr_hp_atf_m
  15. I certainly did have better flow with both sponge filters. But with just the one sponge filter had adequate flow too. The only reason I had two was so I would have a cycled fitler on the go for emergenices if needed.
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