Lennie

Any updates on the archer? got any better?

@nabokovfan87 hey! give us your answers, no cheating 😄!

I'm not sure how well small corys would take colder temps. They usually prefer 23C or more. Some bigger ones would take a bit lower temps but they are too big for 15g imo. I keep my pygmy cories in 24C. Meanwhile I think gold white clouds look great. @beastie has them, and I fell in love when she shared some pics. Definitely on my list for some day.

@TheSwissAquarist Green neons like lower ph just like normal neons it seems. Rachel O'Leary says max 7. Mine is 8.0-8.2 :') Meanwhile I keep my rummy noses with this ph and they are very healthy. Are neons more sensitive than rummy noses? All those years in the hobby, and I haven't kept any type of neons before 😄 Edit: they seem to be very fragile when I searched in some Turkish forums, even more than otos. They are commonly wild caught I guess? If so, That is a pass for me

Many thanks @Guppysnail Noted for CPDs! they were in the same tank with dwarf rasboras and I've seen something that looked like ich symptom only on two fish, so I couldn't be sure about them as I was confused about getting them already. It really is a struggle to find fish medicine here except seachem series and aquarium salt. So I wanted to play safer there. I will keep searching for more, but comments on CPDs were confusing me a lot. So thanks again for sharing your experience. Definitely planning to let shrimp establish a colony this time. I understand where people come from about introducing them later in a seasoned tank after fish for sure, but I personally don't think it was really successful in my 29g rn even tho noone bothers any adults whatsoever. The shrimps got are not in a size Pygmys can eat right now I bet, they are small juviniles. Let's see how it will roll. Sure thingy, I'd love to hear more. I keep catappa leaf & sometimes aldercones in the tank. My plan was to wait more, but there is lots of biofilm and stuff growing on rocks, catappa leaf and woods and the breeder guy had only last colony on stock, as he mainly breeds expensive caradinas. So yea, got them earlier and out of the plan. They seem to be grazing nonstop tho, both on biofilm and food I drop. In addition to leaf and a.cones, I have Hikari crab cuisine and a herb/protein mixture professional shrimp food from the breeder. And any fish leftovers/wafers drop to bottom ofcourse.

@SandBkeeper Looks beautiful!! They have a character but they are very tiny!! 😄. Do you feed them crushed flakes/ frozen bbs too? Or what do you feed? If I didn't get shrimps before, I would end up getting fire red apistos. The 1m:2f were looking amazing today at lfs😄

Great info! Thank you very much. That responds the question marks on my head regarding rasboras. Yea. I definitely agree. Main goal is not breeding only shrimp tbf, just making sure they breed over time, preferably much more than my sakuras in 29g. Because pretty sure at this point, how much moss, hiding spot and plants you have, they find a chance to eat most babies in a community tank if you have bigger sized tetras/fish. That's why I wanted to keep this one with considerably very small fish but with bigger school size and kinda understocked, cause I got a shrimp from a reputable breeder this time. I've added 10 pygmy cories today, planning to increase it to 16 by transferring the 6 from my 29g to this one maybe next week or so based on parameter readings. Even 16 will be really understock in this tank tho, they look so small there. I will see how it goes! Yeah I've heard BN and clown plecos being shrimp safe, but thought it was only adult shrimp again. My L199 never touches adult shrimp too. Thanks for letting me know Remi!🙂

1. This is gonna be a weird one but it was our huge piranha tank. Idk what my parents were thinking, I was a kid lol. They had to rehome them because I was keeping my hand in the tank they say. It became illegal to keep them after a couple years we have rehomed them, which makes sense. 2. My newest 50cm cube, because I have been trying my firsts combined. First aquascape attempt, first time new substrate, new rocks, all new plants, new driftwood and everything. Filling it with nothing I've given a chance before. 3. I've been watching coop yt channel for ages, but I was not expecting it to be this friendly here ngl. People often times try to lecture and try to give "I'm better than you"vibe. People are really friendly and welcoming here. 4. Plants and stocking very slowly. I've kept everything, cichlid tanks, guppies, parrot tank, goldfish tank, planted community tank, etc. And to me, planted community tanks are the easiest, considering you can easily find a part of ecosystem and have it in your tank. And it offers a lot of options it it is a peaceful one. 5. this: 6. Pygmy cories, all the time when I am not watching them. They are all *thankfully* still alive lol. 7.Once a week, with gravel vac, around %20. 8. I've kept from big to small as 29g. I would say 55 or 75s instead of very big or small ones. Gives a lot of opportunity to keep fish, except montsters ofc. 9. Yesterday evening, fell asleep on my bed watching them :') 10. Probably Sera O'nip tabs. Everyone, literally everyone goes nuts. Feeding frenzy is fun to watch. But it is a rare treat to feed, maybe once a week max for me.

Assumed pandas would be better as they are more on the endler size than normal guppys 😞 sad. but I agree that guppies are meanies. Maybe Pygmy cory breeding project!! 😄 At what tank size do you keep your rasboras at? I felt like they would be super lost in my 33g. I barely noticed them they are in the nano fish section at the store in a small tank. They were literally 1/3 of the juvinile CPDs!!! 😸 Also what do you feed them? Would love to hear! I asked my lfs and they said they are feeding micro food. They were out of frozen baby brine too sadly.

Update: Just came from my LFS From the possible smallest fish options, they had: CPD Pygmy cories lamp eye killis dwarf rasboras green neons. CPD were in the same tank with cherrys and I have seen one of them poking adult/juviniles only once in the tank. Probably would eat babies or small juviniles tho. I ended up getting 10 pygmy cories, planning to move other 6 from my 29g to increase the school size to 16 in the following weeks. The more the merrier. They are my fav, so I thought why not give them a bigger school! I’m not sure I liked dwarf rasboras in person. They look cool, but i feel like they would display better in a big group in smaller tanks. They are really really tiny, which is what you expect for shrimp safe ofc but they are very skinny aswell. At least pygmy cories get chubby a lil. Maybe I’m biased. A school of 10 was barely visible in a small 5g tank in the store. Lamp eyes and green neons were looking really good and healthy. I guess lamp eyes may jump aswell? They were on a no lid tank in the lfs, which they normally always cover killifish tanks, but killifish at the end of the day. Do green neons can be tankbred? Also I loved the look of panda guppy. I’ve never seen them before. But they were only being sold as a couple. Considering a couple maybe? Who knows

Okay. I personally keep my orange sakuras in 29g community tank, and there are def babies surviving, but definitely not majority of them. When I check shrimp safe fish online, I mostly see adult shrimp safe ones, as most of the fish will gladly eat the babies whenever they get an opportunity. Also, the shrimp safe topic seems to have very conflicting opinions between people. Some say their CPD is shrimp safe, another comments theirs tear them apart, keeps attacking until they die, even bigger sized ones. Some say their endlers are fine in a planted tank, others say their females just eat them. Setting densely planted tank setup aside, any fish that can be considered baby/juvinile shrimp safe? Maybe not %100 safe, but most likely to be safe? What about pgymy cories, dwarf/chili rasboras, or any other that comes to your mind? My worry is feeding small rasboras. They are cute but only mid column eaters and eat either frozen/live food or crushed flakes from what Cory says. How hard is it to feed them? The smallest fish I've kept is pygmy cories and allI have to do is dropping a wafer. Really no experience on keeping small mouth fishes. Everything I keep attacks the food lol. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/cherry-shrimp-tankmates I've read this one as well, but this is more toward the adult ones as well from what I understand. Would love to hear some experiences. Maybe something like 10 pygmy cories + 10 dwarf/chili rasboras with shrimp in a 33g? way too understocked, but maybe I can gradually increase it. Cute shrimp pic from online:

Okay that changes the things a lil bit. It makes 60cm x 30cm x 60cm if I'm not wrong. If it is 60 cm tall, then I would try to have some sort of activity on every level of the tank. In this case, I would consider forktail blue eyes for some top level action. I would do 2M:4F. On middle column, black neons sounds good to me still. Whatever you like the look of. In order to use the depth of the tank, I would probably either not get honeys, or get only one and make sure it gets food during meal times. It can be a lil tricky, I keep mine with rummy noses and he is a slow eater, but he is a constant poop machine and has a good weight so I know he is getting food. If you want a honey gourami, I would go for one, and make sure he is getting food. And again, I would go for a bottom dweller like a panda corys. I wouldn't say kuhli loaches, as you can keep a limited amount in that tank size and they will be skittish during dsy time especially in small groups and naturally nocturnal anyway. So unlikely to have some bottom action with kuhlis. A small group of panda corys sound like a good idea for some bottom action. I still advice to search more about borneos and panda garras too. The problematic side of those two is making sure of natural food constantly available for them to graze on, and high groups can run out of algae/biofilm to graze on easily. Panda garras like rocks, just to keep in mind! Whicever you like the character and look of. P.s: I highly recommend floating plants like water lettuce, salvinia, frogbit or redrooters. Whatever you like. They really help with keeping a tank on the overstocked side in my experience.

As a last note: I would recommend to stock it slowly. My 29g has a similar stocking and I stocked it over the course of 8 months in total. Maybe I was a bit too extra. But patience is the key!

That sounds fun! I don't know your tank dimensions but I will write the following based on the assumption it is somehow similar to 20L/29g, .Hope any of these help: I would reconsider Jungle val. They tend to shoot lots of random roots, which may be a chore to keep the aquascape you u want to have, especially u wanna keep all plants together. I agree it looks pretty in the back tho. I would either do 1, or 1m:2f honey gouramis. Even though they stay on the peaceful side, I feel like the number two is generally always a good idea to avoid, unless it is a pair breeding project like angels for example. My gourami loves to sleep on top of my floating elodia sometimes during the night. So tall plants reaching the surface can be a nice thing to consider! Also to keep in mind, with this kind of scaping, you won't have much sight blocking for potential territorys. A good think to keep in mind for some fish needs. I would skip forktails. I wouldn't add more mid/top column fast eaters. Honey gouramis can be shy eaters and neons will already eat the food crazy fast. I would keep the panda school of at least 6 if you decide to go with that. Or maybe pygmy cories if you want something that will eat leftover food and give you some mid level swimming aswell. Just make sure you get tankbred ones. Stores may sell wild caught ones and you may end up with lots of deaths. You can find @Irene's video on this one. I will link the video at the bottom if you wanna check it!:) Other than cories, you may consider borneo sucker, I would say either 1 or 3. No twos. They would be better in 3+ if they can establish territories. Or, one panda garra maybe. Borneo suckers and panda garras are grazers mostly, even though they will probably go for fish food as well, they will want more algae and biofilm to graze on. I haven't kept panda garras yet, but my borneo sucker eats everything I drop to the tank, just like corys. I'm dropping my topic here as you may read some other peoples comment. I was looking for a cleanup crew aswell lately for my new tank. My specific condition is having no lid tho, so you have even more options. I thought I would go with sponge filter in my newest tank that I've been trying to aquascape too. But if you really care about the look, HOB and canisters seem to be the key. I couldn't find any place to fit my sponge filter after I scaped the tank. Ended up buying a new HOB. Probably gonna change its location after having plant growth on mine. I keep the sponge I got in my 29g as an extra just in case I need it some day. Lastly, maybe you'd like the look of aquasoil/sand seperation in my tank. I dont think you should cover aquasoil with sand really, unless you want it ofcourse. Here is the Irene's video. It might be your lfs carrying wild caught ones so that you have issues with corys.

meanie.

No. Leave the spidey alone. They are one of my fav animals!! P.S: this picture may trigger some people's arachnophobia. Just saying

I agree with @xXInkedPhoenixX. It is really rare to see people deciding on doing a further research and not end up buying the fish. What I don't understand is, where this some GBR isvery hard to keep is appearing online. I haven't kept them myself. So take it with a grain of salt. But the only "hard" part is meeting their water temperature/parameter needs and building a tank around imo, as most fish don't enjoy the temperatures they do. And maybe them being prone to tuberculosis. What makes them so hard? meanwhile Bolivian rams are easy, except the temperature part? Would love to hear some experiences from those who keep gbr/variations.

I have these everytime I start a new tank, and if there is a decaying matter and/ or ammonia in the tank. So I would def test for ammonia as @Tommy Vercetti recommended. other than that:

Agreed. I've been keeping olive horned nerites(combination of your two :D) and zebra nerites. Would never get zebras again. They are hardy and beautiful looking, but their females lay WAY MORE eggs than my horned ones did a whole year long in my experience. They even layed on big MTS- Like..... Have you ever noticed the amount of different egg laying between your olives and horned ones? Probably I will never keep nerites again anyway. Besides all wild caught perspective, the egg laying behavior really ruins the tank for me. I've seen nerite eggs laid on substrate particles. I don't wanna say anything more. They are repairing my rabbit snail's shell erosions succesfully. Medic snail reporting for duty🐌

Personally, I've only seen my nerites grazing algae and biofilm and ignoring any type of food put in the tank, any fish food, wafers, blanched veggies, and snellos. So I personally wait for some time before introducing them into a new tank. I make sure there is natural food growing in the tank. generally people recommend one for every 5g or so, but to my experience, it is too much. They constantly graze, think like shrimps as a snail. I would personally go for 5-6 or so. They really are hard working, I don't think you would face any issues, if you do, you can increase their number anytime. For MTS, think twice. I have them, they are great at turning substrate especially in a planted tank, but they can be annoying as well. I personally don't think limiting food is enough for MTS population, even if you keep up with weekly water changes and gravel vac. It worked for bladder snails for example, but It never does with MTS in my experience.They breed like crazy, and anything, decaying plant matter, fish food, algae, biofilm, etc can be counted as a food source for them. Also to my experience, adults are pretty nocturnal but babies are not nocturnal at all.

@Pepere thanks for your opinion! I make around %20 water changes in my tanks at least once a week even tho nitrate does not build up due to densely planting. and I dose some equilibrium every time, mainly for plants, shrimp and snails. But surely will be closely checking on parameters since it is a new tank, and my no experience with aquasoil!

Is there lots of decaying plant matter? They wouldn't increase it a lot but would create a bit of reading I guess. It is common for plants to melt when they change forms or water.

Update: I've added established media yesterday morning and made a water change with Equilibrium today. Test for ammonia/ammonium was gold yellow this time. So established media clearly cleaned any hint of green from yesterday. So there was indeed some ammonia on the abovementioned readings because the color yellow was very obvious this time. Gh is 9 after dosing Equilibrium with water changes. It probably supports that, the aquasoil gradually sucks it up or somehow neutralize it after some time. I will test again in a few days to see if it drops. Ph was 8.0 as expected, which is my normal ph number. The color scheme changes pretty quickly while trying match them in the app, especially if you cut strips in two just like me! 😄

It is always a good idea to stock as slow as possible imo. I personally start with 10 juvinile/baby shrimps, as they are much better at adapting new parameters. That also increases the chance of having males and females in my case. So the colony goes on. meanwhile, plants turn into a jungle. What I would do personally, and I am currently doing actually, after the tank cycles and biofilm grows in the tank, introduce maybe 10 shrimp(or less if you will know the gender by getting bigger ones) and let them settle for a while. Letting shrimp to start some sort of colony and letting plants and mosses turn into a jungle means higher level of shrimplet survivals. Then, after some time, you may introduce fish slowly, maybe 1m:2f? You should also be ready to rehome some anytime I assume. Cause both endlers and shrimps will be having lots of babies! Probably endlers mostly in this scenario, as they will likely to hunt on baby shrimps. If you don't wanna deal with lots of babies, then maybe you can consider some others, considerably harder to breed ones, for your tank size. Small rasboras like chilis, ruby tetras, sound like a good idea to me. Baby shrimps will have more chance to survive in such tank too. I would decide which one do you want to have babies. Endler+shrimp combo sounds like female endlers may hunt on baby shrimps due to bigger size, while in chili rasbora+shrimp scenario sounds like shrimps will be breeding much more, meanwhile rasboras harder to breed compared to endlers, so they will probably keep their school and provide a good color to the tank. If you go with "baby shrimp safe" fish which means very small in size and small mouth mostly, I guess a heavily planted +cycled tank can deal with the chili rasbora school besides shrimp colony too, as their bioload is small. Probably I would not wait that much between the two in order to introduce them to the tank. But if it will be soemthing potentionally gonna hunt on baby shrimp and can reproduce a lot, like endlers, I would wait and let the colony go and plants to grow a lot.

Hey @Gannon! I can’t clearly understand from the picture but I once had my honey gourami and months later pygmy cory have a red dot appeared on their bodies. They were both healed in 2-3days. I remember reading it was about water quality somewhere. I did a water change even though my parameters were fine, but honey gourami healed after 2-3 days without anything. In pygmy cory scenario, I already had catappa leaf in the tank and dosed stress guard to help just in case. Maybe yours is similar, I’m sharing the pic of mine below. I think, and some of our friends here also confirmed that, it was probably an injury in my case. Fish can be clumsy, all I have that can be considered “sharp” is also driftwood! I wouldn’t like to give a bad advice especially when u have a chance to treat it if that is a disease. Just a thought! does this look similar in person? Beautiful fish btw! Hope they get better as fast as possible