Lennie

That's adorable.

I personally believe besides all water parameters and stuff, substrate and light plays a non-negligible role. Not exactly a detrimental or crucial role, but they do make a difference and makes a lot of things easier from my experience. You can surely grow many plants on inert substrate and have a beautiful planted tank, but it is harder to balance everything from my experience. I grow my all plants at 8.0ph+ and kh20, so I don't think it has a huge effect either, for average plants. This may change for higher tech ones, but you would want co2 for them usually anyway. I never use co2, but my experience of using aquasoil+better lighting compared to dirted bottom inert substrate+roottabs and a decent lighting differs. You can see these videos just to get an opinion about an experience. I've personally experienced a similar result in my tanks.

!!! Someone else mentioning my precious pygmys? Heck yea. Pygmy corys indeed! 😄

Looking at the picture again, I can't see its barbels, maybe it is the angle. Does it have a sucker mouth? I am now suspecting it may be a chinese algae eater lol. A bit pale looking juvinile. But I guess not. The mouth structure would make it clear, but again, she will be giving it back anyway

Aspidoras also need a school, just like corys! So yea, It would be the best get another one for the cory school and turn aspidora back to its friends 🙂

Btw, Idk what "cory cat set" refers to, but all corydoras only school with on their own sub species. So your friend should get a group of min 6 of each corydora and not mix one or two from each. They don't school like that. Like you can't get one albino, 2 pandas, one sterbai, one bronze and call it a school. So just in case this is the issue, I would highly recommend them choosing the one they like and turning the other ones back and getting the same species instead.

Aspidoras spilotus? @Guppysnail

It would totally depend of your water parameters and what do you want them to do. Do you want them to dissolve and increase your kh and calcium content in the water, or just in case your snails wanna nib on them? I use powdered egg shells in my snello recipes, but If I added any to my tanks, they would probably not dissolve, as my ph is 8.0-8.2 and I already have a kh of 19-20. I don't know if snails will graze of them like cuttlebone or anything else, I've never used them directly like that personally. Tbh, I've never seen my snails nibbing on cuttlebones too, except MTS. And cuttlebones dont dissolve in my water too. But there are many people find success with some cuttlebone in their tanks. Just a warning, I've seen some videos online washing them with dishwasher soap and stuff to prepare the eggshells. Never ever do that :') Hope you didn't. You may just sprinkle some and maybe see how it goes by keeping the water parameters in check? I would keep it real small and observe closely in case in dissolves, and if it does, it may dissolve fast enough due to being powdery, so you would not want any spike in your water anyway.

Trying to find dying duckweed. Sounds like mission impossible😄

That's interesting. I wanted to make sure that it is okay when Prime Time Aquatics were mentioning bn as mystery snail tank mate but he said a bit extra caution especially if you wanna breed them. Thanks for sharing, I never knew that! I don't wanna jinx it, but over the many years of fishkeeping I've seen a fish jumping from my no lid tanks only once, and never seen a snail or shrimp escaping, thankfully. But obviously people experience them escaping. I usually stick to fish that are not known to prone to jumping like bettas, killis, hatchets etc., never fill the tank to the max, and try to grow floating plants on the surface as a natural lid. But I appreciate the warning. Hope I never ever face such occasion whatsoever. I've seen your shrimp before! 😄 what a mad lad. I haven't seen such a thing myself!

An update: The tank currently homes; 1 Zebra Nerite from my 29g 2 Mystery snails (1 blue [Rick] and 1 gold [Morty] 16 Pygmy Cories 11 Bloody Mary Shrimp I've found someone who keeps different bristlenose plecos at his home, So I am considering adding one to the tank as @Bev C recommended, because I really need someone cleaning the glass for me and currently it is not working with only 3 snails. I dont mind cleaning the poop, but I dont like cleaning the glass 😄 I feed veggies and stuff to my snails already anyway, so that's not a chore to me! I've never kept any bristlenoses before. I've watched many videos online already. The guy sent me the pics of his super reds he has been breeding, which I liked the look of most. Here are the pictures he sent me. I'm planning to get only one juvinile(he said he has his small ones around 7-8cms). I remember seeing bristlenose in your journal too! @Guppysnail How friendly would it be with mystery snails and any other tank mates? And here is Rick and Morty fighting over one piece of algae wafer when there is other two staying on the sand...

But aren't nerites herbivores and egg is animal protein?

you may check on this topic as I've written some stuff there before: If you still have questions please don't hesitate to ask In addition to all these, they are not being fed enough in stores generally. So When I got my mysterys, I instantly drop a piece of snello I made at home next to them and they directly go eat nonstop. Algae and fishfood alone are not enough for mystery snail diet. They need calcium and blanched veggies Also did you drip acclimate your snail? Sometimes I hear them taking much longer time if not drip acclimated. They can be just weak due to not having a proper diet. Or maybe potentially got bullied by tank mates so scared to open up.

Maybe, who knows! 😄

I wondered what they add to it that we don't use in homemade snellos but nerites went for this one. So from what I understand, this is the mixture of their three other products. So that's a bit interesting. I am not sure how I feel about ingredient lists for nerite snails, and they don't contain any type of algae powder or worthy greens, but garlic, wheat and whole egg/egg protein. Also why would they not go for homemade snello but for these? These snails....😄

Echinodorus Red Rubin maybe? Considering the new growth

I'm not sure to what extend it would make any difference if your ph is above high 7s! I've never seen mind dissolving. I guess they dissolve in acidic waters or low 7s maybe. They always sit like day 1 in my 8.0 ph water :') But just in case if they wanna nib, which I've never seen personally, sure! Ofcourse I can't know what they do when I'm not around, but the only snails I've seen to nib on cuttlebone is MTS, and rarely, even then. I bet they also do that for any algae growing on them just like any other surface tho

True, they can come with shell erosions pretty commonly! As long as you don't test for it, I think this is the best idea to keep an eye on their shell structure and new growth, if they look healthy and no further developments on the old erosions, I think what you have must be enough. If you add wonder shell, that must help I believe. I personally dose Equilibrium due to having my tap water being super soft, so it helps to both shrimps and snails besides plants, and I have never observed any erosions on any of my nerites, MTS, mysteries and rabbits. I also keep a small piece of cuttlebone, but it never dissolves due to my 8.0-8.2 ph and 20 kh. It stays there in case anyone wants to nib. We don't have wonder shells here so I haven't tried them before! But it must be helpful to maintain hardness and mineral/calcium levels for snails from what it seems. I personally would not worry much in your case. I pointed it out just in case the top one caused any damage! Mine also go on top of each other from time to time but I also don't see any erosions so I don't worry. But I've even seen zebras leaving eggs on horned ones lol.

Besides snex, it may also indicate either cleaning each others shells, which snails usually do, or they may also nib each others shells for calcium. Can you see how the one on top has a perfect shell while the bottom one has erosion marks? The top one might be nibbing on the shell of the bottom one for calcium. You may want to ensure you provide enough calcium for them!

Hey guys, I just wanted to create this topic to hear about experiences regarding Nerite Snails. I have been keeping 3 zebra nerites and 3 olive horned ones, and to me, their behavior changes actually! I could not come across anything like this topic online. So I wanted to hear from you all here 🙂 My experiences regarding both are as follows: Both are great at eating algae, as expected. Zebras lay WAY MORE eggs compared to olive horned ones. Interesting enough, my zebras loves spending more time on woods and rocks, meanwhile horned ones enjoy being on glass and big leaf plants like anubias more. None of them ever touched any snellos, wafers, blanched veggies, cuttlebone or fishfood from my experience. Only one zebra tried to "escape" but all he did was climbing the inside the HOB. So not really sure to what extend it can be called an escape. Otherwise, I've never experienced them attempting to escape, considering I never use lid. Would love to hear about which ones you have experience with and whether you have observed any difference! If you have any other snails, can you compare their algae eating capability with mysteries, ramshorns or any others based on your experience? People seem to have varying opinions on this one, while most people say nerite are better, Prime Time Aquatics actually uses mysteries in their tanks for algae clean up crew it seems. Meanwhile, MD, seems to go for ramshorns most of the times. Would love to hear from you all! A pic from internet:

My LFS has more females than males. 😄 Seems to be a pretty rare occasion. Your fish look beautiful!

I would personally only advice to increase the school size of rasboras as two is not really ideal for a schooling fish but 5g is small. Pygmy corys are really active, kuhli loaches want lots of hiding locations and good amount of bottom area to sift around especially during night time and embers get thick, and these all enjoy really big groups. I keep my 16 pygmy corys in 33g tank and you should see how active they are and how much they enjoy being a big group. Imo, 5g is too small for any schooling fish and it is only okay for shrimp. Maybe for a single betta, if there was no shrimp and other fish. As otherwise they end their life in a cup of water sadly. Anyway, if you really wanna add something there, make ur rasboras happy and increase their school size to min 6. But please be noted that, considering the amount of gap on top and decorations, filter, substrate, etc. the tank has much lower amount of water than 20L. So frankly I would just keep either 3 endlers or move endlers to a new tank and increase the schooling size of rasboras, or just make it shrimp tank only. And I def would not add any new species. You probably have endlers rasboras shrimp and snail in probably around 15L water or so already.

this topic might help:

I personally don't think even adult cherry shrimp would be safe with three spot gouramis. They are known to be agressive and grow up to 15 cms. If a shrimp fits in fish's mouth, it will be eaten. If a species is agressive, they will try a way to eat it even if it does not fit in their mouth directly. I would not advice keeping cherry shrimp with any gourami other than honey gourami, and even in that scenario, you should observe its behavior closely.

Lucky you got this video today ;D