Lennie

Never seen them in my lfs before 😞 They have pgymys, orange venezuelas, albinos, bronze, paleatus, juliis, napoensis and pandas from corys. Other than corys: ottos, kuhlis, snails, SAE, garras, borneos, banjo catfish, clown pleco and bristlenose!😄 If I don't go for angels, which I probably won't, I may put my pygmys to new tank and increase their school size maybe! Planning to try some new fish, like garras or clown pleco maybe. In addition to neocaridinas and snails! Maybe one borneo again as an addition

I have a 45L tub set up cycled, sitting in my room corner with lots of salvinia and elodea in it. But I would love to have like only 1-2 to join my school, I don't know what I would do with the rest. I will just let them be in the community I guess. Any potential surviving ones will be welcomed! As much as I love my sterbai corys, I don't think I can introduce them to my new tank, as they get big and chunky, and would mess the aquasoil all around, pretty sure. If it was the pygmys, then I could easily home many of them I need some gentler clean up crew for my new tank. Sterbais ain't it. 😄

I def agree. Having hands on established media is a great tool It is just, for example, when I decided to return the hobby last year after a long break, I did not have any chance to have some sort of established media on my hands. Literally could not get anything anywhere, and nobody around me is interested in the hobby. The source should be one that I really trust to anyway. So after all the searching time, I couldn't find any media. All I had was bottled bacteria option, because I dip my plants for hours before using them, I'm not sure beneficial bacterias on them survive the dips. (not rly for the snails, but all other potential harmful planaria, hydra, parasites etc.) I normally got myself an extra medium size sponge filter to run it in my established tank for a month, and then I was planning to either move it to my new tank, or move the HOB I had there after the sponge is seeded enough. But that tank has numerous MTS. You should see the sponges of both HOB prefilter and sponge filter itself. I've seen some even climbed inside the HOB from outside, as there is a sponge on intake tube. I don't wanna introduce MTS to my new tank for now, so even that plan kinda failed. The best could be using ome established media from my old HOB, and washing it good making sure no snails tranfers, and also they don't directly go in to HOB and potentially kill themselves and break stuff. It is really really hard to get them out with %100 success. Not the mention the potential transfer of duckweed I have 😄 When I squeezed the filter last time, it helped with cycle a lot, but I gradually found 4 really tiny mts babies in the 2nd tank. I'm not sure to risk it on my 3rd. Would love to hear if you wanna give some suggestions. My plan is just transferring media when introducing the fish on the same date, and trying to get some bb living there and lots of plant growth until I get to that point. I don't understand how bb ends up in our tank on its own without introducing it by any means, like no plants, not dirt, not established media whatsoever. so I really don't know much about it to comment really.

Many!🦐 Also three types of different snails. MTS/Nerite/Rabbits. Rabbits never really climb around tho. They just stole plecos home, they just go around, eat on the ground and sleep. Either shrimps, tetras, or MTS then. I saw MTS moving around it before. Also lots of people mentioned about snails and egg eating behavior before in another topic

Paradise fish? 👀

I think they played it safe there rather than giving an exact answer, but let's be fair, it is really impossible to tell how everyones tank gonna cycle. It depends on lots of stuff going on. Also seems like the understanding of "cycle" is very different. Coz when @Irene tested the Dr. Tims "cycle" instructions, her 1 year old sponge filter could not meet the requirements of Dr.Tim's ammonia cycle kit. These type of clean instructions are always open for discussion especially for stuff than varies subjectly for everyone and their tank! I've cycled with stability before in different scenarios: 1- From zero. Just fish food and stability. Lots of plant since start. In my experience, it never took even 4 weeks from 0 just with stability and fish food. But I can't remember exactly how long it took. But I'm also not sure if I would ever cycle with a fish food. It does release ammonia when it break down, but also fouls the water, may result in other undesired stuff as well. Including potential algae break. Because breaking down pinch of food does not help putting in something in balance. There is a stuff going on, but nothing stable. 2- I used some established media from an old tank HOB running for a year, added some seachem matrix media and filter wool around the new sponge. And poured the filted gunk water to the sponge filter area. With dosing stability, it took me 1.5 week to cycle. Lots of stuff combined, can't tell what helped the most. 3- In my new tank. I've planted it densely on day1. Just doing water changes in every 2-3 days due to aquasoil. It is heavily planted, some are melting and some are changing forms between emerged-submerged, so there are leaves decaying. Dropped a catappa leaf to decay as well to make sure there is a food will be ready for algae eaters in the future introduce. I don't take the decaying matter out. It has been sitting like that for almost 2 weeks. Started dosing stability yesterday. I feel like decaying plant matter+driftwood, a bit of ammonia from the aquasoil with stability is a good start. I only got the 50ml bottle tho, so I will be underdosing a lot. I have a good plant growth going on. The HOB is running, and once I move in some stocking, I'm planning to add media from my established HOB to this one. Do I need stability? Questionable, probably not :D. It just clears my mind about introducing all type of bacterias to the system. here is the video!

I always use stability, I've never seen it cycling in one week even with established filter media addition and "seeding" with an old filter gunk. It just helps to introduce bacteria spores to the tank. And those need ammonia source in the tank to start feeding on and starting the cycle. I'm sharing the following from seachem's official site: "I have finished the suggested 7-day dosing, however, my tank is still not fully cycled. Why? A: Since every tank will cycle differently, it is difficult for us to give an exact time frame as to when your tank will be fully cycled. However, generally most tanks are cycled within 4-6 weeks." "If I plan to do a fishless cycle and use Stability™, do I need to add an ammonia source to kick-start the nitrogen cycle? A: Yes, for expedited cycling times, you will want to add a pinch of food daily until you have an ammonia reading. At that point, you can stop adding the food and let the bacteria run its course." here is the link: https://www.seachem.com/stability.php

It sure is, but I've always been doing cooler water changes for the last 6 months or so. I think them reaching maturity takes a bit of time! Btw, I sadly haven't seen the eggs on the glass again in the morning. My only hope seems to be the well hidden ones in the mosses. I'm not sure if my borneo sucker ate them from the glass. She is my number one suspect. 😒

I would def get bigger sized tank as much as possible. or maybe two 55s instead of a 100, if you dont want really big fish. 55 can home a lot of fish as well, and you can build beautiful 2 communitys there. Just like tiger barbs and Angels I've always wanted :' ) Or maybe a good group of pearl gouramis! But 10g has really limited stocking options generally as others mentioned. To me; 2x 55g> 75g+20Long > 100g> any other options If you like really big fishies, then 100g> 75g+20L for a good betta community, > 2x55g> any other options. Also, If you ever wanna keep an extra small tank, you can always find an excuse, convince yourself it is a good idea, and easily find place for a small 5-10g tank somewhere for shrimp or bettas I believe :D! We are good at making excuses when it comes to setting up a new tank. Trick yourself😈 I love ponds. If I ever had one, I would def go for kois in a big one. Kois are just adorable to me. It is just sometimes it reaches around 50Cs during summer in where I live. I even struggle to keep my tanks cool inside and full dark, and they sit around 32C s even inside the house! So I will probably never have one outside ever :'). Especially not kois.

Not the barbs again. You are making me miss the barbs I've never owned. Can someone stop cutting the onion. Thanks

I assume you are using an active substrate then? They are usually better for caridinas rather than neocaridinas if I'm not wrong. If it makes that much difference, I guess your kh is on a low end aswell? Or maybe ends up that way due to the substrate you are using I guess. Because I haven't seen any drops on ph in my new tank where I have lots of driftwood and tropica aquasoil. But again, I have a high kh. Kh helps to keep ph stable a lot. And mine is in a level more than anyone ever needs, and considerably even too much tbf. The key is keeping water parameters stable for shrimp. They usually don't take water parameter changes that well, even tho neocaridinas are generally hardier than most other shrimps in the hobby. I would try to keep it stable, fluctuations likely will harm them, especially adults. I would probably keep the water changes minimal and do it on different days in smaller size instead of one big water change, as it will be likely to fluctuate a lot with every water change due to the difference you have between the parameters. Over the course, your active substrate and driftwood will start causing a less and less decrease I believe. You can slowly adapt your tank to tap water in a very long period but with small baby steps. Keep parameters in check just in case! 5 shrimp bioload is very very small anyway. So you won't need to do lots of big water changes unless anything goes wrong anyway. I would def not take the risk of ammonia spike of uneaten food in this scenario. So keeping an eye on uneaten food became even more important here to me. Because uneaten food => potential ammonia spike => big water changes causing very different parameters to shrimp and causing shock effect

I assume it may help for you to have some calcium in the water column if your water is on the acidic side and if they start to dissolve, but I'm not sure to what extend. And if your water has high ph/kh, just like mine, I still have bladder snail shells sitting on my substrate 0 dissolving from a year ago. You don't want acidic water with cherry shrimp from the start anyway Also they ideally should have calcium in water column and calcium in their diet. Those two kinda needs to be combined. Snail shells, probably be providing calcium to water column, if they ever dissolve by any means. I don't think they will be able to graze on them, however We dont have that brand in where I live so I have no experience. But water parameters tend to go off much easier in a small size tank, especially when it is set for 5 shrimp bioload imo. So I would probably get a shrimp feeding dish and remove uneaten food after an hour or so.

You may also consider buying a small shrimp feeding dish and remove uneaten food after some time. That may help a lot I believe and make it very easy to control everything. If I had a shrimp only tank, I would directly buy one myself! Calcium plays an important role in shrimps diet. So I would consider feeding something that has calcium in it and made for shrimp as well. It helps a lot with molting and such. Some brands have really small packages of shrimp food, so that would not cause a waste I bet. I use hikari crab cuisine mainly for my snails. Hikari also has shrimp cuisine. I would probably get that one if I were to feed it to my shrimps only. There are other good brands available in US but not in my country, so I have not tried them yet. You may like this post! https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/shrimp-food Have fun with your lil colony! 🙂

Can they efficiently meet their protein and calcium needs without feeding and only feeding on plant matter and biofilm? They usually scavange for everything in a community tank or in nature, which is much more than decaying plant debris and biofilm in the tank from what I observe. They might not starve without additional food maybe, but I'm not sure they can meet their calcium/protein needs with decaying plant matter/available biofilm. They need a variety in their diet just like fish, even in small groups, imo. I would provide shrimp pellets and algae wafers from time to time personally. Just feed lightly as 5 shrimp wont eat much in size ofc. And highly recommend the catappa leaf. It is likely to have babies after some time and that decaying catappa leaf may help a lot to babies to get fed especially.

I thought killis love to spend time on the upper side of the tank. They seem to be in mid/bottom in every picture. Learning something new everyday

How old is your tank? That would kinda help to understand how much biofilm available to them all the time. I personally would drop a piece of catappa leaf and make sure they won't be starving just in case. When it decays around 2 weeks, it provides lots of food source to them. I keep a piece in my tanks all the time. I'm more of a "better safe than sorry" guy. Make sure it does not impact your water parameters much tho, as 5 gallon is a small tank. I never feed shrimp directly but I keep mine in community tank, so they always scavenge something including leftover fish food all the time. They even go for snellos I make for my snails. But if it is a shrimp only tank, I would feed calcium rich shrimp foods like 2-3 times a week. Generally you can understand if shrimp is hungry or not. When u drop a food and they swarm around, that shows they are hungry. If they don't seem interested at all, they are either not hungry, or they just didn't like that food specifically.

Their unique color scheme is as beautiful as the male's one!

I have seen people naming snails. I have seen people naming centerpiece fishes. I have seen people naming their big puppys. What's that list, holy cow. You are trying to name a whole ocean. You sure will be stumped if you try to name livebearers or schooling fish- GL.😨 I vote for fish. all of them.

I think It should work. If this is the design you like, I would say go for it, and look whether you will see some dead spots after some time. If you see some sort of detrius accumulating at some locations, then probably those areas are dead spots, so you may try something different. If not, you are probably good to go. I would try what I like the look of first. You will be the person who is gonna spend time looking at the tank everyday, so finding it good looking to your eyes is important imo. It can be just the filter, but it does affect the way tank looks sometimes. If you see it not working as expected, then going for a change might be a good idea at that point. Enjoy your new tank!

Adolfois are really good looking!! They are a bit hard to find here. In my case, it took quite a while for them to start spawning! I got them on february last year as juviniles. So they are more than a year old! So they surely take the sweet time to reach that point 😄 Or they did, in my case. I would love to see your adolfois in the future!

It is actually really common to be confused about SAE, flying fox, CAE, and garra taeniata. Also they are commonly sold under wrong names in stores too. I just wanted to mention it to make sure you know what fish you have, as they may get territorial and sometimes problematic when grown to adults. I am sadly(or maybe thankfully) not enough experienced with potential fish diseases. So I cannot comment on that one. But if you think it is something disease related, maybe you may get a faster answer in disease section? I truly don't know. Hope it is not something serious and gets well soon!

corycats are the cutest!:D Especially pygmys. Holy cow, if my pygmys ever breed, I will lose my mind. They are my fav fish I've ever kept :D. Do you do anything special to feed babies, or let them be with leftovers? my 29g looks more like a jungle rn. I just let it be 😄 Visually it looks less pleasing, but shrimps and fish love it. I still have to figure out the MTS and hair algae situation I got when I left for military service tho. It does not seem to be getting any better even with limited feeding and scheduled maintenance for the last 4 months :') patience, I guess. Do you have some sort of journal? Would love to see your discus and tank. They are indeed one of my dream fish to keep one day!

Many thanks! I will keep an eye on them. Should I try to remove other ones by the time I notice they are empty? Would they foul other ones? I would love to see at least some to survive to increase my sterbai school :') cheers,

That's probably a chinese algae eater, not a SAE. They have different type of behavior especially when they reach adulthood, so I would advice searching for more regarding Chinese Algae eaters. Secondly, I found these for you. Maybe you can get some useful info:

Update: I was aboutta make the weekly maintenance. And look what I saw all over the tank! There were many around the mosses as well! How will I know if they are fertilized? Idk when they have been layed, but none were showing signs of fuzz look. P.s: this tank is so old, and I used to have an algae scraper and I did a great job scraping it with lots of sand. Yikes. Newbie times