Ninjoma

I would say angelfish and german blue rams are the prettiest.

My golfish will eat literally any food I put in the tank. They are by far the least picky eaters I've kept. If I wanted to be positive the goldfish didn't eat the snail food, I would put their food in something the goldfish couldn't fit in like an apisto cave or shrimp cave. I keep mystery snails with my goldfish, and haven't needed to do anything like that though. They seem to get by fine on leftovers, algae and occasionally getting some fish food before the goldfish do.

I have this strange looking catfish I think is pretty cute. For a more serious answer, these are my cutest fish IMO

Thanks for the suggestion. I did consider making this post, but I'm currently satisfied with my own analysis. I may ask for help, if I continue to have issues.

I had a bit of a tragic day today. I woke up to most of my shrimp dead in my 10g. My parameters looked normal and there was no copper in the water either, so my best guess is there was something toxic to shrimp on one of the plants or driftwood I added to the tank yesterday. I was able to get a new colony of cherry shrimp at my LFS and the silver lining is I get the chance to do a better job culling this time around. For good news, I'm really liking how my 29g is looking after I did some trimming today. I recently swapped out the scarlet temple for rotala, and I think it's my new favorite red plant.

I keep 4 in a 75g and they do seem to pick on eachother a decent bit. I probably wouldn't do 8-10 in 40 breeder personally. One to two pairs would be my choice. Embers might be slightly too small to live with bolivian rams, but just about any other tetra would probably work.

I wasn't liking how my 10g was looking so I completely rescaped it today. Still not 100% happy with it, but I think It's moving in a direction I enjoy more. I'm happy to hear any suggestions. Before: After:

In most of my tanks I feed shrimp/ snail focused food (mini algae wafers, crab cuisine, shrimp cuisine, xtreme shrimpee pelets) in the morning and feed a more generic bottom feeder food (hikari bottom feeder/carnivore wafers, bug bites) in the evening. Currently in my shrimp tank I'm having a bladder snail outbreak, so I've cut back shrimp food to twice per week, and let them eat leftover fish food (hikari micro pellets, aco fry food, xtreme nano pelets) the other days.

It could be too much light. I've heard that they grow smaller under high light. https://aquariumbreeder.com/pygmy-chain-sword-care-guide-planting-growing-and-propagation/ I would also increase your pink light and decrease your blue light. Blue light encourages more compact growth and red light encourages more robust growth. I would do a shorter night period (I like 30 minutes) with 1% blue instead of 7% https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/green_light_is_it_important_for_plant_growth I might also shoot for higher nitrates. I personally aim for 50ppm. I would dose easy green one to twice per day until I hit 50ppm, then go back to your regular dosing schedule. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/faqs/why-is-easy-green-raising-my-nitrate-level The last thing I would do, is add some additional algae eaters to help keep the leaves clean. I use ottos and nerite snails. Mystery snails are also very good IMO. I had been struggling with my chain swords also. Here is how they looked in early January. I didn't like how they looked so I decided to do a massive trimming of all the poor looking growth. Here they are on January 8th. Now here is how they look today, less than a month later! I also dose Easy Green twice per week (4 squirts). And root tabs once per month. I also dose easy iron once per month for my red plants (not sure if this helps the chain swords or not). Depending on what crypts you have (like wendtii red), you could potentially add iron and it might help your chain swords. Here are the light setting I use. This is a 29g tall tank (18 inches high) so you may want slightly more light since your tank is slightly taller.

That might just be brown diatom algae. It's very normal for new tanks, because it likes to eat the silicates that come with new substrates. Eventually it will clear on its own. You could also try lowering the light duration, or just the night period.

1. What was the first fish you ever kept in some sort of an aquarium? My partner bought a few fancy goldfish, most of which died. Eventually I did some "research" and took over care of the last remaining one which is the first fish I've kept. She gets sick quite often, but always recovers with medication and seems to be doing well otherwise. 2. What tank are you most proud of and why? My 75g tank. It's my most ambitious undertaking so far and I think it will look the best when it's fully developed. 3. How did you get here, specifically to these forums? ACO was a source of information that came up fairly often in my searches. I like that the information is evidence based and/or based on first hand experience. I can't remember how I found the forum specifically, probably from a Google search or mentioned in an ACO video. 4. What is something you think you do to make the hobby easier for yourself that others can use? For me, having interesting things to listen to while I work on tanks makes it more enjoyable. So finding podcasts, audio books and new music to listen to is something I do and others could too. 5. What is something you specifically wish for guidance with in the hobby? Having a better idea of how to scale Fertilizer usage based on the number of plants/ how large my plants have grown. 6. What fish do you miss most? Probably my first ever pond snail, Gary, that came with some plants I bought. Everytime I upgraded my tank size, I moved him along to the new tank. He also didn't reproduce in any of the tanks I kept him in. Eventually he passed away in my 40 breeder. 7. How often do you change water? Is this the same for all of your tanks? I change water once per week in all of my tanks. 8. What is better, one big tank or a rack of 20Gs, why? One big tank. Having large, diverse communities of fish interests me. There are also certain species that require larger tanks, that you couldn't keep no matter how many 20Gs you have. I also enjoy having more room to aquascape and keep large plants like tiger lotuses. 9. When was the last time you spent 30 minutes staring at a tank? Probably last week when my starlight pleco was out. He is so pretty, but I don't get to see him too often. 10. What is your favorite food to feed your tanks? Probably xtreme community crave. I like that large flakes float, crushed bits sink and it has both protein based and algae based flakes so fish can choose which to eat. If I could only feed one food, it would be this.

If you no longer see Amonia or Nitrite in your water and do see Nitrates, it sounds like you do have some nitrifying bacteria in your tank that is keeping up with your current bioload (the Fish food you added). There's no guarantee that you'll have enough bacteria to keep up with the shrimp and shrimp food you plan to add though, so just make sure to keep testing your water everyday once you add the shrimp until you are sure things are stabilized.

I like my Tetra Whisper AP150. It's pretty quiet for how powerful it is. They also sell an even larger one the AP300 which might interest you.

My fancy goldfish seem to get sick more than any other fish (finrot), so I would recommend having medications on hand. Other than that, no real tips. They are chill, cute fish and least picky eaters I've kept. They will eat anything I put in the tank, even if it doesn't fit in their mouths.

Yes, I did.

I used one in my 29g tank for a while. I think I did somewhere between 1-3 bubbles per second. I would personally set it to at least .5 bubbles per second. Then, wait a day and see if you are getting a c02 reading on your drop checker at the end of the day before your lights turn off. If it is still too low, then the next day do a higher dose, etc. Ultimately I ended up setting up a higher end system, because in order to get sufficient co2 with the fluval kit I had to replace the canisters a lot which was expensive.

Personally, I leave the blue plastic biological filtration in. I shove a piece of coarse sponge in place of the aqueon cartridge, then place a rectangular piece at the outlet. I fill the left chamber with crushed coral. Also I use a medium pre filter sponge. This seems to work quite well. If you want to use purigen, I would shove it in the left chamber. You may need to remove the LED sensor to make more room. I sawed mine off.

I have a very similar setup. 75g, HOB on the left, sponge filter on the right, but with a powerhead on the sponge filter pointing towards the center of the tank. I noticed a deadspot in the front right corner of the tank, so I added a 2nd powerhead above the sponge filter pointing towards the right side of the tank at an angle. Now I think I have pretty good flow.

Beautiful! I love the rasboras and the plant choices.

Bummer! I'm not familiar with that plant, but from the photos I've seen, it's not my favorite for that spot. I would personally go with a plant with smaller leaves and less space between the leaves. However, this is your tank, if you like it and it's available you should go for it!

I haven't panted in waters that alkaline before, so you may want to check compatibility, but here are some plants that might look good: If yellow arrow is behind the wood: -Nymphoides hydrophylla 'Taiwan' -Crinum Calamistratum (curved over the top of the wood) Here's a stock photo for what I am imagining. Blue oval: -African water fern -Ludwigia super red -Red melon Sword (I bet Flame Sword would look good too, but I haven't grown it before) Red square: -Anubias nana "petite" -Bucephalandra Kedagang -I like your idea of Alternanthera reineckii mini too Pink circle: I like your idea of a lily. Another plant with a long stalks could also look good, like Anubias hasifolia.

I took this photo of my crayfish "pearling."

Hmm, that doesn't sound right to me. When I plugged in those numbers I got 0.0039. 0.25ppm Amonia shouldn't be very toxic. Anyways, best of luck with your tank!

I honestly don't think I got any advice as a beginner. One of the biggest missteps I had was not realizing that the 6 in 1 test strips don't test for ammonia and that is one of the main things you need to test for in a new tank. So my advice is, make sure to buy an ammonia test kit. Also, don't buy goldfish unless you have a massive tank. There are many other easy to keep, colorful fish, that don't produce as much waste and don't grow as large.

My understanding is that this depends on your temperature and PH, but 0.25ppm probably isn't harmful using most parameters. Basically the API test kit is telling you the total amount of Amonia, NH3 (toxic) + NH4 (non-toxic), so you would have to use other parameters to determine what percentage of your Amonia is NH3 to know for sure. If you use this calculator https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/FreeAmmonia.php and your NH3 concentration is below 0.05ppm, then it should not be harmful. This is the video I learned this from, for context. If you are worried about your current Amonia level, you can use seachem prime or fritz complete to "detoxify" the Amonia for 24ish hours at a time. It will still show up on the test, but it can't harm your fish. About 1 dose worth detoxifies about 1ppm Amonia. If you really want to try to lower your Amonia to 0, an Amonia absorbing pad, purigen, feeding less and gravel vaccing more might help.