Lennie

I'm not sure about that one. In my experience, shrimp builds trust that cannot be broken. Mine don't have any survival instincts at this point istg. I can literally touch them, they don't get scared or act jumpy, but they are pretty healthy 😄 This building trust may take a long time tho. I think if they know nobody is hurting them in that tank for a while, they are never scared of anything. Also there are videos online about assasins predating on cherries. They are opportunistic carnivores. Maybe it is a last sort of option, but they clearly eat them if given a chance. But, assasins take meals and go for a nap for a while, So I feel like even if it goes to that route and eats a shrimp, probably the number would be super hard to notice. I would worry about getting a female stored sperm in a store and letting her plant her bombs in the substrate and replacing your "pest snail" colony with assasin snail colony tbh. People generally forget how fast assasins reproduce too. And while "pest snails" are a part of a clean up crew, Assasin snails are just carnivore pets you gotta feed If you are not rehoming

When I was setting my first planted tank, I didn't know I had to soak my big piece of driftwood even after I've boiled it. So I placed everything in the tank, tied mosses, planted all root plants and so on. Placed the rhizome plants (hehe, noobs. @JettsPapa, @jwcarlson) in the corners of the wood. It was a densely planted for a good start. Looking perfect! Until... I started filling the tank with water. EVERYTHING SUDDENLY TURNED INTO A VEGGIE SOUP. Driftwoods floating on the top. Plants are everywhere thanks to driftwood pushing them all around. That was very disappointing... I ended up covering random places with the rocks to make sure driftwood sits in. All my scape and work turned out to be a driftwoods covered by rocks everywhere. I had a rock on my face whenever I looked at the tank for months. That driftwood was never willing to soak. I'm mad again,,,, at a driftwood.👺

Well, ideally, VERY BIG. Goldfish get huge, and they are super duper dirty. Bare minimum, 30g/per goldfish in my opinion. So 270g/1000Liters bare minimum aproximately for 9. Still sounds small when I think twice. I wanna say up to 2k Liters after Seeing Cory's 800g lol. I believe that in normal fish tanks overstocking a lil bit is okay, but not with goldfish, no. Check the background aquarium size in this video. That tank is 800g if I'm not wrong, so 3000Liters, and see how many gf there are. People usually keep them without substrate because first, they poop a lot and it is easier to clean bare bottom mostly, Second, they have super poor genetics unless you get one with a body shape that is similar to their ancestors, they usually have swimming problems and stuff like swim bladder, so they potentially end up not being able to swim and sit on the bottom and substrate cause even worse damage on the bottom of the fish. They tend to eat everything that fits in their mouth, so you really gotta be careful with substrate so they don't end up choking. Also no decorations in the tank. Any decoration or rock means potential injury. Anybody can disagree with me, but this is my opinion Please make a research before deciding on fancy goldfish, and try to get the ones that has similar body shape to their ancestors if you still decide to keep some. Goldfish are hard to keep because they are so prone to get injured and diseases due to inbreeding, body defects, and poor genetics.

I would highly recommend blanched veggies and snellos. You can find so many snello recipes in Lav's yt channel again, just as I shared above! Watching the following videos might help as well. Pleco wafers and normal fish food may be fed from time to time, but not exactly the main part of their diet. Besides ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, GH, PH and KH and calcium in water column as well as in their diet plays a big role on snail health and shell erosions.Please see the videos below. They will help you to understand them better, and potentially may make you aware of what's wrong: Basic snello recipe to give an idea: If you need help, please let me know. I can share my own recipe that I use for my rabbit and mystery snails. Here is another recipe, but with Agar agar instead of gelatin: https://floridamysterysnails.com/2018/05/30/how-to-make-snello-snail-jello/ Agar agar and gelatin becomes active in different way, so make sure to follow the video for gelatin activation, and this recipe for agar agar activation as a binder.

Purely Aesthetic for me, and I currently have only a 29g, 50cm cube, and a 10g tub. I like building some sort of natural lid over time with floating plants. Also I don't wanna clean the lid and any sort of stuff grows on them over time, and my water has high kh and I dose equilibrium, so the water leaves so much white residue on glasses that are so hard to get rid of. Water splash on lid would be really annoying. Rachel O'leary also keeps most of her tanks without a lid and her fish looks great. I usually do weekly water changes anyway, and other than that, all I have to do is toping up the water once in the middle of the week by just putting some prime and that's just it. It is easy, unless your tanks are really big tbh. I personally haven't noticed anything building up really, as I also have densely planted tanks, they use stuff nonstop for growth anyway. But for bigger tanks or if you keep a lot of tanks, it might turn into a chore yea. The only side effect I face is, potential dust going in. But keep my all tanks in my bedroom, and I always keep it dark and the door closed as I don't spend much time there anyway, so it is mostly not active there during day time. So no really a lot of dust ending up in the tanks. But this would be a different scenario if I kept it in living room without a lid for example.

As far as I know, mysterys really don't like being on their sides. If he stays like that and don't move, there might be something wrong. First thing comes to my mind, those fish potentially bullied him and made him scared to open up. Can you give more info about their diet and water parameters? There shell seems damaged. They also might be just aged, as their average lifespand is around 1 years sadly. There is no medicine you can use on mysteries really, but the most affective way to help them is giving them a "Air Bath" Please see the detailed video below. hope it helps!

If I had issues about high nitrate, I wouldn't add all in one fertilizers that has nitrate, but I would add the ones with potassium and trace elements, as long as you feed fish with fish food. Nitrates are only one of the things that fertilizers include, besides many other elements. If you have a high nitrate, sure, skip the ones have nitrate. But support others. Plants do well when they have everything compared. Think of this picture something as a general idea:

If you worry about whether they are dead, dead snails do start smelling quite fast. You can smell test it, if it smells bad in a level it makes you gag, it is dead. I had a chance to keep 6 nerites until today,3 zebras and 3 horned ones. I have never seen mine taking a nap in their shell. I usually find them remaining on glass or plants but never fully into their shells, they just like to keep themselves on glass but a lil bit burried into subsrate part or between driftwood pieces in my experience. You never know if your water has calcium unless u specifically test for it or you dose/add something that has calcium intentionally. I use equilibrium and my snails all do fine! The best way to understand is observing day1 shell and current situation of the shell if it is getting enough minerals, if you have no time to kit for it. Your hardness might be coming from all different elements and maybe 0 calcium. You never know. Also can you see their antennas? Some fish tend to see these as worms and may pick on them. Loss of antennas can make snails depressed in a level they don't move and die gradually. Also if they fall behind, they may get picked on as they don't have a trapdoor, and it can again get them depressed and killed. This is beyond if they can correct themselves tbh. More like, do fish let them to correct themself meanwhile. Also, another thing that comes to my mind is, nerites don't eat every type of algae and only loves to graze biofilm and some type of algaes in my experience. Consider them like ottos or hillstream loaches. If your tank is new, or there is so many grazers on limited amount of food, they will starve to death. I've never seen them eating blanched veggies, snellos, wafers or fish food of any type. Make sure they don't starve. These are my experiences

They really look super active and fun! My lfs recently started to carry them and even watching them was so much fun in the store I personally dont like their colors, even tho I normally love yellow-orange tones, but I loved their behavior.

Welcome to the forum! Hope you like it here. My suggestion would also be: Don't mess with your water parameters. I agree with @jwcarlson and @Mynameisnobody. Try keeping locally tank bred fish and you are less likely to face any problems. The point here is, the fish raised in your parameter knows your parameter its whole life. A wild caught fish/any fish with different parameters lives in that other environment parameters in its whole life and thats what it knows and is used to. They simply do better whatever they are used to live in. And they do better if things are being kept stable. That's really important. However, "being used to parameters" does not work exactly with every shrimp and most snails tho. Please keep that in mind. Because shell erosion and molting problems have nothing do to with being used to a parameters really, but may happen in case if you lack calcium content or acidic ph in snails scenario for example. I personally believe quality of life situation is really easy to observe on fish or inverts. Colors, prone to diseases, breeding action, eating, being active, succesfull molting, etc. My sterbais are breeding once every two weeks in 8.2 ph, this is above their "normal" range but this is what they have been raised into since fry-hood. It would become problematic if I suddenly put them to 6.0 ph. If you get your fish from somewhere far away, trying to match the parameters there is just a chore to me, meanwhile getting fish locally does the same job and lets you keep everything stable. My only advice would be, If you happen to keep snails and some shrimps(based on which species!!), they would like calcium content and higher gh, so you may consider dosing something like equilibrium or adding a calcium source&increase gh. Thats what I do and I just dose the needed amount with every water change, to make sure my plants and snails get enough minerals, as my water is also lower than 3mgL currently. Believe me, it is by no means a chore. Scoop some and ta daa. It directly tells you how much to dose so you don't even need to worry how much to add every single time. If you don't want snails or shrimp with such requirements, It should be okay I guess, unless your fish to be known liking really high mineral content.

Anubias are generally easy and beautiful looking, I bet all are more or less beginner friendly, but plants are all hit or miss, even how easy those can be. So you will have to see how it is doing in your tank, but no co2, no big light requirements and being a rhizome plant makes the anubias really easy and hardy in general. Mine is literally under a dim light and it flowers and gives new leaves every month or so. What I would like to suggest is, you may wanna google the sizes of those anubias plants and plan what type of a scape and in which location you want to use them. Because some anubias can get big (like broad leaf), meanwhile another remains really small( like anubias nana). After that, go for whichever one you like the look of! They never sell them in pots in where I live and pretty sure they import them from Indonesia. I attach them to woods but they never like it in my water, meanwhile my much hardier to take care of plants do good in my tanks. Plants are really a hit or miss. If you wanna fill a bigger space, you may consider mother ones.

In addition to @beastie, I would suggest increasing the group size if you can provide them enough tank size, territory and biofilm. They seem to be better in groups of 3 or more. My borneo sucker seems to be perfectly fine alone, but I didn't know they need groups when I got them. If I got him today, I would get 3. Considering your have just got yours, give this one a tought!

I've personally had a chance to try HOB, internal, sump and sponge filters, and I personally like HOB the most especially considering I'm keeping small to medium size tanks now. I have prefilter sponges, I prefer finer one to a corsed one, which helps to block literally everything that goes to the tube. When I switched to a corsed one, I've started seeing some problems tbh. Cannot imagine one without a prefilter in general:D Yes it clogs much faster, especially if your tanks are overstocked, and it can be a hell to use if you have so many tanks, but I feel like coarse sponges on HOB intakes are not great if you have "pest snails", which I have. MTS babies can go through coarse prefilter sponge but not on finer ones from my experience. But at the same time, I've seen them finding a way to climb inside the HOB anyway too. Baby MTS are really really small and can find its way to the intake tube if the sponge is coarse. In my experience, sponge filters cause some fish and snails to be scared. I observed this being a less of a case if you have a black bacground in the tanks. I've tried every flow rate, and even between one air pump to another usb air pump. I know that would sound unexpected, but I've literally seen my fish being terrified because the way it constantly causing varying reflections in water column from LED lights, like really small lighting effects, if you have a thick layer of duckweed or floating plants like I do. Backgrounds to cut the effect a lot tho. Also I've observed is my rabbit snails being much more comfy and active whenever I turned off the sponge filter.

How dare you make the competition between neons and cardinals when the title is The great tetra debate!😢 If I had to choose a neon variety; +1 to this one. But I am personally not a fan of neon/cardinal tetra look in general I guess. I've never liked the mixture of blue,red and white. So I like the more green/blue vibe green neons give instead. I would prefer Kongo tetras over them all any day, if tank size ain't playing any role on the decision :').

Ofcourse! Aiming to provide them the best life as much as possible seems to be the best way no matter what, especially at this point. Our friends here can help with that I believe, as I left goldfish keeping about 15yrs ago. I just wanted to share the video so that you should not blame yourself on that one in case you come across swim bladder issues and many others with goldfish. It is likely that you are doing well, but it is the poor condition of breeding and genetics sadly. Also I just want to raise some awareness whenever there is a chance. Because somehow, she is normally one of the most well know gold fish youtubers, and probably her most informing video has really low rate of views. I just believe it should reach more people, whether here or somewhere else. Hope your babies have a great life ahead and don't face any issues whatsoever! peace,

As far as I know, you may try your best, but they are just genetically in a very bad condition right now that anything you will do will just make the conditions slightly better. You really can't fix it. Sadly it is the case especially for breeds that has been kept inbreeding and resulted in lots of body deformities and are genetically just bad at this point. I would highly recommend watching this video, but especially starting from the part I tagged for you. You will get your answers for your swim bladder issues and why this is not an ending battle. It is usually much much less of a case if the fish is less subejct to inbreeding and develop poor genetics and body deformities over time. Goldfish is mostly not it Please don't take this as something negative response to your question. I just think it will help you understand stuff very well. I've kept goldfish in the past and I bet most fishkeepers did. It is just good to understand what is going on with them at least, imo.

I agree with @nabokovfan87 as always. They are grazers, so It would kinda worry me if your tank is recently setup. If your tank naturally had time to build up biofilm and algea it should be fine. My borneo sucker has never went for fish food until he really really became confident in the main tank, now he jumps to food faster than everyone. But before then, he was only grazing on biofilm and nothing more for weeks, maybe months. It may take time for them to explore fish food in my experience. I personally think nerites and hillstreams/borneos/ottos are not any different than shrimp, or in my opinion and experience, even more sensitive than shrimp when it comes to natural growth of biofilm and algae for months

Im safe too, I’m on the west coast of the country. But some of my friends have their families living there, and they say it was a really bad one. More than 1.7k buildings have turned into a wreckage due to earthquake with people inside them and it is snowing out there. And it keeps being followed by small earthquakes so people try to find a place to stay outside just in case in this cold. I hope the best for them and I feel really sad. Thank you for asking us btw. Really appreciated

That's really interesting! Cause in my tank, they outcompeted bladders and I believe caused all bladder population to die. I found bladders more delicate and MTS super hardy. I feel like MTS can outcompete all other "pest snails". I'm surprised to see your experience

Love this! Why am I exploring this too late. Your lil buddies are all looking adorable

In addition to all the the comments and recommendations above, I would give different plants a chance. We all have different water parameters and tank conditions, and tons of stuff we don't even test the water for, and from my own experience, a plant may grow great on your tank and may barely live in mine. People say java fern and amazon sword are easy. I successfully killed java fern and my amazon sword looks like dwarf sagittaria whatever I try to. Soil bottom, root tabs, water column fertilizers, plant light. I've tried everything. Meanwhile, my Echinodorus Leopard has an amazing growth. Like ??????😐 I remember hearing something like "for every plant that looks great in your tank, you will have 3 dead ones." It feels so true. Plants being labelled as easy ones are definitely hardier and have a better chance of doing better in low tech setups compared to something requires a high tech setup. But it is always a hit or miss for you own specific tank and the only way to know is trying. Also, I know it can be economically challenging. But I feel like densely planting results in a better result, especially when you include fast growers to the mix . Fast growers help to fight algae build up meanwhile your other plants are melting and adapting. If I were you, I would try to plant with a combination of fast growers, maybe floating plants for example to block some light for slow growers, and plants you wanna try. Most of the fast growing plants are really easy to multiply, so you can reach a dense look by taking cuttings gradually over time, after the plants settle for a while. Personally I always start with 6 hour light when I have new plants, and increase it very slowly gradually. and I never go beyond 8 hour lighting, even for higher setups. Try and find what works for you, which will take some time to observe. Btw, if I were you, I would not dose recommended amount of fertilizer directly in the current situation of the tank. Your tank is not really planted that much, so lots of fertilizer would benefit to algae as long as your plants cannot effectively use it. Lower the dose and observe if they show any sign of lacking nutritients. It is quicker to observe in fast growers, but it may take weeks for slow growers. Even duckweed can't make it in some tanks. Don't be disencouraged and try different stuff imo

An update: Visited my lfs again as I had something to do outside nearby. I've been thinking of the blue mystery I've seen couple days ago, and wanted to check if they got anything new. Besides all the fish I've mentioned before, they got Ember teras and Red Neon Blue Eyes @nabokovfan87 just like you've mentioned. They were looking very nice!! But somehow were kinda nippy with each other and versus other fish? Is this something normal or was it a stress effect or something? I'm not sure. Anyhow, I made a mistake, and got me the blue mystery snail I fell in love with couple days ago. When I went to the tank at the store, (s)he greeted me. I had no choice left but to give him a chance. I will closely observe its behavior and move it to my 29g and find a lid if I see any weird behaviors. Left some space on top around 1.5 inches for the siphon breathing and curiosity. If he lets me see inside his shell, I will name him for a certain. For now, he is called Rick, from Rick&Morty. Spiky blue shell reminds me of Rick's hair :D! I wanna get a gold one and call that one Morty. Best friends:D Here he is probably eating his first snello ever. He seem to be hungry

Tbh, I always make around %20 water change with like max 15C tap water or probably even colder in a tank where I keep at 25C normally. I keep shrimp, lots of tropical fish and snails. But what I do is, I introduce the water to the tank very slowly. Might not be ideal, but it is followed by breeding actions, and I can’t see them being unhappy and breeding. I’ve never faced any issues myself in this way. But also I’ve never noticed the reactions you mentioned as well. Potentially water parameters being changed instantly or introducing colder water fast might be the issue? Is this the ratio you always make ur water changes? I’m thinking of different water parameters thanks to RO instead of temperature change, or temperature changing instantly

I like the idea of this topic. I would like to share some opinion in this regard, but these are just my ideas so no facts whatsoever. I had a chance to keep soo many different animals until today. Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, chickens, pigeons, dogs, cats, fishes, parrot, horses, turtles, tortoises etc. The first thing I'd like to mention is, from what I have been observing, we are not like most animals when it comes to our diet. When you give a fry bbs, it will eat it directly. When you give a lion baby a dead animal flesh, it devours it. When you give a human baby a baby rabbit, you cannot see it instinctively killing it and eating it. So I feel like animals killing instict comes from nature if they are naturally hunters, no matter if they grow up with shrimp or not in that case. Meanwhile we kinda get this habit during what we learn rather than instincts playing a role, imo. People reporting lots of rams or angels eating small fish or shrimps when they grow up in a community tank. So I again think it is their instinct and growing up in a community tank does not play a role, but a potential ticking bomb. They hunt in nature, and nature is the biggest "community tank" ever. From shy perspective, I wanna give an example of my guineapigs. I had two bois, one adopted as an adult, the other one was a baby grew in my hands. Adult one I got was the friendliest thing ever, meanwhile the one grew up in my hands kept being super shy and distanced all the time no matter what. In nature, they are preyed on, so this has an effect on them no matter what I believe. But meanwhile, whenever my dad grows an abandoned pigeon by its parents, that pigeon ends up super friendly and builds really close connections with him. Feeds on his hand, sits on his shoulder etc. Also our chicken are really friendly too, especially when we grow them from their babyhood. They sometimes come to our lap and want cuddles lol. So maybe this changes based on the animals own character rather than what animal it is? Idk I feel like fish are less shy based on how much they are related to natural environment. If you keep 50 kuhlis instead of 5, they will be less shy. I personally observed my pygmy cories being less shy in a community tank as a group of 6, but more shy in a group of 16 when kept as species only. But I believe their natural behavior will play a role no matter what in any case. Meanwhile, in contrary to all of these, nature always surprises us with unexpected occasions. Like a lion adopting and protecting an antelope as its baby. But these scenarios are really rare. I personally believe the way we raise our animals have an impact on the behavior of them, but it is well related to their nature. If it is a more domestic one, like dogs, than the scenario will be more likely to shape according to the owner. If you treat your dog nice and great, it will be a nice doggo, even it has a bad reputation like pitbull. There are pitbulls letting chicks play on them. If you treat them sh*t and turn them into a monster, they will end up in a bad condition. However, fish are not really a domestic animal that we can affect their behavior a lot, imo, compared to our long time friends like dogs.

Hey, I've been representing that one in the forum for a while now! 😄