Lennie

Hey Jennifer! MD says the roots, especially the roots of big root feeders find a way in. Tbf, I think the main reason why he does this is he takes down tanks and rescape them a lot, as it is the main focus of his channel 😄And lets be fair, seperating aquasoil from sand does not sound like a good or even possible idea 😄 He sometimes goes for a mixture of aquasoil/gravel/sand taken out from an old tank too. I would personally just go for dirt or aquasoil bottom and sand on top for a personal tank at home if I wanna keep species that enjoy sand, as sand blocks stuff very good. But I'm not a huge sand guy, I love to gravel vac every week and keep my tank on a lil bit overstocked and densely planted side. I'm okay with the maintenance! Just wanted to share this method as some cichlids tend to move sand around a lot, so maybe they can potentially reach the aquasoil level? :D. But again, species like shell dwellers are gonna uproot the plants nonstop anyway. This can be a bit depended of what sand-sifter are we talking about here I believe.

I personally boiled my pieces by turning over each side in case they were too big to fit it all at once. If still not an option; the belowmentioned video is what I think might help you. I came across the video while searching for different methods for my new tank. I ended up boiling again 😄 here is the video:

Seems like staghorn algae to me. But I cannot see clearly, might be a mistake. Can you google staghorn algae and compare it to yours in person? That might help!

I used to plant them, now I have been floating them for ages. Once they are floated, they randomly grow roots in some places, so I think you can plant those roots. My shrimp love the floating jungle they have created over time:) If you don't want to float for a while, or don't wanna use it as a floating plant, I think they will still do okay even if you just get the bottom leaves out and plant it like a random cutting. I saw them being sold at my lfs like cuttings like that. As far as I know, they feed from water column a lot no matter what, even if you plant them!

@Patrick_G thanks for letting me know. They sound like just the experiences I've read regarding them before! 😄

I love their look. But I've seen some confusing comments about them before. Some people claim that they are nippy. Do you have any experience of keeping them with long fin fish/ angels, etc? 🙂 would love to know!

Hey there, I'm sharing the below mentioned topic, you can see my detailed message regarding rabbits there. They look like some sort of rabbits/ tylomelania to me. I keep mine in a heavily planted tank, even with java fern. I personally have never seen them eating plants. They are mostly known to eat java ferns, and leave the rest alone. However, if you are not feeding them with blanched veggies and snello, then they might be going for plants to cover their veggie needs. They mostly give birth to one baby once a month. They have males and females, so probably you had luck with that one as there is no clear way to tell the gender! I've written some stuff in more detail here; If you have any more questions, I would like to help!

Love the socks! 😄

I think having a coarser/plant friendly substrate on bottom and sand on top sounds like a good idea if you wanna keep root feeder plants! MD Fish tank always keep his tanks that way as he likes the look of sand. He uses aquasoil on the bottom and top it with sand. He sometimes put those media in bags to make sure they dont mix with other layers. You may find an example in the video below. I tagged the related part for you :)! P.S: He usually does this but I've never tried the bags myself, I just wanted to share it to give you an idea! Here is the video:

Hey Annie! I'm sorry for your loss. I agree with @Expectorating_Aubergine. If it is a sand substrate without anything below it to help roots to grow healthy and good, then I would go for abovementioned plants as they should not be planted on the substrate. Subwassertang does better in water on colder side tho. Keep that on mind. If you have something below the sand layer, then I can recommend some root feeders too! There are also plants that can be both planted or kept as a floating plant like Hornwort or Elodea, which help with water quality a lot as they grow like a weed :). Also you can consider normal floating plants, they help with both water quality and to block some direct light for slow glowers like anubias as java fern, and helps blocking algae growth on them. You can't really go wrong with floating plants, except probably duckweed, unless you really want it. It is hard to get rid of later on. Amazon frogbit and salvinia are pretty hardy and easy to keep. You may start with those! Also don't forget that there is a difference between being alive and being healthy and having a good life. And better safe than sorry, always. There are people who keep a goldfish in bowl for so many years, alive. It does not make it a good way of keeping it tho. As long as you are super sure about something like your own well water and tested, I think It is always better to treat water with dechlorinators. What's your water parameters, the temp you keep your tank at and your tank size? Those would help a lot for some stocking recommendations! Also, moving the tank to a new home can be pain sometimes. If you are planning to move sometime soon, I would probably wait myself, as even cycling a tank takes around a month or so from zero. If your roomie has a good established filter, it may help to cycle faster. Tho if your water has chlorines or stuff, I'm not sure to what extend beneficial bacteria can establish in a tank without treated water, unless your water is free of those

Hey, Idk exactly what's going on but posting it under the Diseases section might help you to get an answer faster maybe.

I love plecos and catfish. To me, one of the best resources when it comes to catfish keeping is planetcatfish. Here you go: https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=103 https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=857 I assume the one above is dwarf one?

I was gonna advice it as well but if they already struggle with accepting dry food, I thought maybe feeding live/frozen bbs can make them accept dry food even harder? I couldn't be sure. Never had to deal with such situation myself

From my personal experience, 8.2 ph alone shouldn't cause that much of a problem. Most plants do better in lower ph than 8.2 for sure, but you seem to be keeping low tech ones, so I would not worry much. I keep my tank at 8.2 too. If your fish are local tank bred and your parameters are similar to parameters they have been raised, then I would not worry much. It becomes more problematic if the fish are wild caught, which is kinda common for ottos. Generally, playing with water parmeters, especially in smaller tanks can go out of balance real quick. Outside the question, neons, embers, ottos and a centerpiece betta seems a bit too much for a 10g imo. Especially considering all should be kept in schools except betta. You may want to look on this one 🙂 I feel like otto is likely to have the most potential struggle if it is wildcaught. As wildcaught fish do better in their natural parameters, and ottos aren't likely to be living with 8.2. If you don't hate the tannin look, you may drop a small piece of Indian almond leaf. Your betta, neons and shrimps will enjoy it. Especially baby shrimps 🙂 It may decrease the ph a lil, based on how hard your water is.

Lucky! I tried keeping them before but somehow my rummy noses love their roots :') I thought maybe they want more veggie based diet, but I just believe it is all about them enjoying to eat them 😄 They have been eating them in a level they can't develop any roots and die at some point. AlsoI believe they got competed by salvinia and duckweed too. Planning to keep some on my new tank. gimme >:D!

If they show interest in food by attempting to eat it, but spit it out afters, it is mostly a sign that the food is too big for their mouth. Generally what I do is, crushing the bigger sized pellet food right before feeding it in a level my tetras and pygmy cories can eat it. I do this a lot with NLS there a+, as medium fish size version is the only one I can find in my lfs. It turns some parts of it a bit powdered side while crashing, which probably is not the ideal for water quality, but I have a hard working clean up crew 😄 Maybe try feeding by crushing the food even a smaller size and to see how they react. Or maybe flake food, easier to crush with hand. I feed mine Omega1 Freshwater flakes like once a week, they like it. They also seem to have easier time eating "Tropical Nanovit". Mine like both granulat and tablet versions. also you may ask your lfs to learn what they have been feeding them at the store! Everyone in my tank always go for the wafers I drop to the tank for my bottom dwellers. As they consist of small particles, they can easily eat it. I believe. you may find nano tank sized wafers or cut the bigger ones half or so. Btw, try to feed smaller portions and observe their reaction closely. We are all tend to overfeed sadly, and uneaten food will affect the water quality a lot. Hope they start accepting food once crushed!

Ahh I see. Then whatever floats your boat! 😄 I would get fire red, or probably gold ram as second option. I thought of getting them for myself too before deciding on honey gourami. Generally I like visiting my lfs, keep checking the breeds I am interested in and watch them in their tank for ages. Then there is usually "I want this one!" type of bonding appears. This helps a lot to have an idea regarding the character of the cichlid you want in person 😄 their behavior can show difference from one another I think. Observing it's attitude towards others in the tank etc. might be a good idea. As long as you have a general idea what fits well in your tank as a centerpiece fish, I think observing them irl will help you to make your decision. And ofc knowing what they end up looking like once they are happy in your tank. My honey was literally showing no colors and was pure white and stressed when I got him. Witnessing the change was so nice. I think look for what you feel more bonded rather than the best, but ofc keep an eye on it's health and movement, or if it is eating if possible. They will look great in your tank under good conditions gradually anyway 🙂 This was the day I got my honey gourami: This is him now: Loving them and providing a good care turns as the change you look for! 🙂

Couple days ago I visited my lfs to get some driftwood and rocks. Thought of this topic to check cpd prices. It was $2.60 each. But they were pretty expensive once converted to my currency, especially for a schooling nano fish and you have to get around 10 or so.

Rummy noses are very active and curious fish, from my experience. I keep 10 in my 29g with Honey gourami centerpiece. If you have never thought of Honey Gouramis, they are just adorable. Cute feelers, super bright yellow/orangey color, super duper peaceful bheavior. Suggesting this as I see you already mentioned fire red and golden rams, so you probably like the yellow/orange tone already, which I love! My rummy noses were a bit curious about honey's feelers at first, but they stopped the behavior very soon, thankfully. No damage whatsoever. If you don't like the look of honey gourami, I would probably get gold ram or fire red. I like their look the most out of the list. But it is pure personal choice :D. And probably I would skip bettas, rummynoses' activity level may bother the betta I feel

Okay, so there is stuff that are going wrong for a rabbit for sure. First things first, fish food is not enough for snails like rabbits or mysteries, more than that, not even a main source of food. Your lfs guy was wrong, sadly. You can provide some algae wafers from time to time. But you need to offer lots of blanched high calcium veggies to them. You can give them green beans, peas, broccoli, spinach(sometimes), collard greens, pumpkin, zucchini, carrots, sweet potato, etc. If it is something that can be peeled, play safe and peel the veggies. Make sure stuff you get are organic and does not contain any pesticides, salts or additive. Clean them good, put them in a boiling water for a min or so, mybe a bit longer for harder stuff like carrot or pumpkin, it helps them to sink. You can also prepare some "snello" at home and offer it to your snail. You can easily find snello recipes on youtube. You can also check this recipe; https://floridamysterysnails.com/2018/05/30/how-to-make-snello-snail-jello/ This is gonna be a great option for a healthy diet. It is generally a mixture of calcium content(I use powdered egg shells), fish food (I mix omega1 freshwater flakes, hikari crab cuisine, and NLS Algaemax), veggie mixture from the abovementioned ones, and a binder (some use unflavored gelatin, I use agar agar as I'm vegan, your choice). Gelatin and agar-agar have different type of way to activate as a binding agent, and cannot be substituted with 1:1 ratio. So check the link above for agar-agar, and video below for gelatin use :). You can also get some hikari crab cuisine as it contains nice amount of protein and calcium. But again, not an everyday food. They need calcium both in their diet and in the water column. You can keep a piece of cuttlebone(bird section, no flavors or vitamins etc, just natural cuttlebone, no other ingredients). I clean the outer shell and boil it for it to sink and make sure it is not salty. Taste it on the tip😄You can also use eggshells, there are lots of videos about it too, but definitely no soap whatsoever. I've seen some people washing it with soap. Never do that please. You need to keep your snails in a cycled tank (ofcourse), with ph preferably minimum 7 and nothing below, and preferably in a hard water. In case your water is soft, or ph is lower than 7, their shell will start being erosed which can reach lethal level. Same goes for lack of minerals especially calcium. Also you need to keep them in warmer water, the minimum I've heard of them doing okay was 24 with my friend's experience. I keep them at 26-27. Nipping situation in every tank seems to be not ideal at all. You may want to either give him a new tank or consider rehoming. He might end up scaring to open and suddenly die. Also they like burying, and sifting through the sand/non-sharp sand-like substrate. Mine loved the clay based substrate (mine is JBL Manado). They won't do well on a bare bottom tank as they cant perform their most basic sifting and sleeping action by burying. They breed slowly in tanks, so yours can be a wild caught one. If is the matter of wild caught fish/snails w/e, they are mostly very restrictive with the natural and habitat conditions. Therefore you need to keep it within the desired conditions and water parameters for it to survive, not even to have an ideal life. So please make more research, search for snello recipes, get lots of veggies, and if you can't get test kits, considering the nipping action going on, I think rehoming might be a good idea. cheers, You can find lots of snello recipes on her channel as well. Sharing a video for an idea;

Looking great! Decided on what you will be adding next? 🙂 I will be stocking my 125L in a couple weeks too! I would love to hear about further plans 😄 Maybe I steal some ideas! On my last visit, I've seen some beautiful looking Kribs in my lfs. Reminded me of your tank. Even though they are easy to breed, I was not seeing them commonly before. Would love to hear more! cheers

I feel like rabbits are much more skittish and expects more care than any other snail I've kept so far. Can you please write the following in a bit more detail; what you feed him, what is the tank size, water parameters, how hard is your water, ph, temperature, what is your substrate, etc. Snails usually take some time to settle. When I changed their tanks after quarantine period, I have not observed any behavior change but my water parameters, substrate, etc were all matching the quarantine tank environment. When I got mine, they were not even eating a noticable amount for the first 2 weeks. @Guppysnail suggested me to let them settle for a while and that worked for me They eat okay rn. Btw, I saw one guy has his rabbit sleep for 1 week before and he was shocked that he was sleeping that long, so it is possible. I would smell test him, hold him gently and see if he performs any reaction when handled. If he smells bad, like in a level that makes you gag, that it sounds like the bad scenario. But mine love to sleep during the day and mostly be active during the night time. Also, believe it or not, I personally observed some of mine were scared of sponge filters. It may sound weird, but that was my experience. Whenever I turned the filter down, the skittish ones were starting to observe outside and move. I know fish are used to hearing sounds under the water so sponges in general are not really a problem, but maybe it is not the case for rabbits? who knows. The others loved to sleep under it, so I don't know really. Also rabbits can be a lil clumsy and sometimes may get stuck. Make sure he is not stuck :') It is hard to carry that shell around. And you may be right. Mollies can be bullies, and sometimes if rabbits get damaged once they were out, they can be super skittish in a level they never go out even to eat again. Sadly, one of my rabbits came with a damaged antenna, assuming it was a nip from a fish in lfs, they were shipped to me. It was so skittish and never went outside even in only snails tank. So I ended up losing him sadly

Love this! As long as some sort of empathy involved, everything else will be okay with enough researching. Because you will start caring about providing a good home and a good life to the fishy friend. Understanding that they feel, they have needs and that they also want to live a good life just like us is the best starting point imo.

He already has it stocked with danios, ottos, nerites, neons and endlers! 😄 So yea, bolivian ram may meet the others temperature need the best I believe. I'm not sure about this statement. Generally, as long as you aren't keeping really sensitive species, it is a good idea to record your nitrate build ups whenever you reach 40ppm or wherever you wanna keep it at. Once it settles in a schedule with your stocking/plant growth, thats your normal water change routine. Even it does not hit 40 by the end of the week, generally it is a good idea to make water changes at least once a week I believe. In nature, the water is almost always circulating and changing. Doing 3 small water changes/week instead of a big one once sounds good on paper, but also really hard to find time to do for most people. What are you school sizes btw? As long as you keep the water tested and keep up with the water changes, I see no harm adding a centerpiece fish. But lets be real, a bigger group of neons or danios could be better than keeping two small sized schools of them. I can't really see the schools in this pic, if they are there. Also your plants in general seem to be mostly root feeders. Plants are always great to have, They help with water quality a lot. If you like the look of floating plants, maybe you may consider adding some to your tank! A school of zebra danios, ottos, endlers, and neons with a ram might be a bit on the overstocked size based on the school sizes. I keep my overstocked 29 gallon with weekly water changes, and it only reaches 20 ppm nitrate at the end of the week. But I have lots of salvinia, duckweed and elodea as floating plants including heavy root feeders like yours! Also floating plants block direct light for slow growers too so they are less likely to get covered with algae over time! If you like the look of any, go for it. Probably not duckweed tho. So many people hate it and it is really hard to get rid of once introduced. Water changes are kind of a personal topic btw. Everyone can recommend something different based on their own experiences. This is mine 😄 and I guess plants are universal good 🐣

That's a pretty tank! 🙂 We kinda had a similar talk about Angelfish keeping couple days ago. I'm sharing the topic below if you missed it! I have 29g with similar design, lots of plants, some rocks and two driftwood. I searched a lot for keeping some angels there. I love their look!! Now looking at my 29g after a year, considering the thickness of the substrate and floating plants, they cut the height of the tank much more. Angelfish seem to enjoy tanks with height of 50cm or more even normally. 29g generally comes with 40cm height right? At least mine is. So, 40 cm height, with 5-7 cm substrate and some space left on top/floating plants, not an ideal height is left for an angelfish imo. You end up approximately 30ish cm height on your hands. Some angels can be 20ish cm tall once they are adults. Also as @Theplatymaster mentioned, angelfish are advised to be kept with bigger tetras, and neons and endlers are not a good tank mate in this regard. I've read once that someone's angel has eaten even his rummynose. People were discussing even the rummynose's size as a suitable tank mate. Neons and endlers much smaller than an average rummy nose. That would be very risky. I've never kept them personally but I read A LOOT of experiences about them last year. And I decided not going for them in my 29g after all things I've read. Now im considering to keep them in my 125L, but still so unsure.