Lennie

If you get guppies imported or raised in very sterile or brackish conditions, they are not used to (freshwater) pathogens so they do very bad. In this case it is usually about getting fry and raising them on your own tank. You likely lose majority of the adults if not all of them. 7 guppy tanks here, same issue with all imported parents. Fry are super healthy👍🏻 Being line bred genetically makes them weak in general, but the problem I usually faced was not exactly caused by genetics issue if they are the imported ones, more likely them not being able to handle the pathogens and end up dying due to being used to very sterile or different environment I would advice, if you want guppies, source them from a good hobbyist or place that breeds their own, preferably within your country or for better, around your near location

A fish looking pretty is not enough for me to enjoy keeping it personally. Clown killis were tiny fish that existed in a nano tank for me. Nothing more. I haven't observed anything interesting between the males like sparkling gouramis or pseudomugils have or any interesting courting behavior. They scatter eggs do no parenting or worth seeing mating part either. Again, that's my opinion. I love fish when they are like puppies. Puffers and goldfish can be an example. They get excited to see you, follow you around and stuff. The next type I like is, when they are interesting to watch and observe. Like the rituals of pairing up, laying, guarding, courting, raising the fry, the relationship between the fish and the sign language they use, the changes in their colorations based on the occasion, etc. Also fish's behavior like sparkling gouramis or pesudomugils behavior or between the males sparring and stuff... Exciting. The sparring at the beginning: So yea, it is totally a personal thing. I am more interested in the behavior and character and experiencing natural world of the species rather than a clown killi looking good and doing nothing to interest "me". BOO! 😆🤗

I would highly recommend searching for what you like based on the recommendations you get. I personally found clown killis absolutely boring to keep even though they look cool in online videos/pictures. Also they are crazy jumpers, I found some in my HOB even when I had a lid. Be careful. Fishbase mentions the temperature between 23-25C. I personally check fishbase and sometimes seriouslyfish for the fish info

I have never seen them available in my country. I dont think beastie also has access to them. I bet they are just common in the US? I dont know anyone who keeps them around here

Btw. I think that tank looks great for pea puffers too. They are very interesting fish to keep. I have mine tankbred, so if you think you can find a group of healthy tankbred ones, and you can keep cultures like grindal worm, white worms, pest snail, daphnia and hatch artemia, or keep frozen foods around if they show interest like bloodworms etc., then you can consider them too. But consider if you can keep cultures and buy frozen food around to feed them. Also, they are usually not known to welcome tankmates. But mine live together with shrimp and 2 juveniles bristlenoses and one random guppy baby that transferred with floating plants. It was a newborn and grew up there. I saw some people trying other tankmates or so but its pure chance based I guess and involves second plans. Snails are a big no tho

Plecos commonly like higher temps. You will be very unlikely to see a clown pleco in a tank and it will have a considerably big bioload, I would skip personally. It will take place of a fish, or better to say many fish, you can easily and commonly see all the time in terms of maintenance and bioload. Borneo suckers or hillstream loaches can be fun oddballs in these temps. As well as panda garras. You can also try one bristlenose pleco, I find them very tolerant of low 20Cs and water parameters. Furcatus also like higher temps of 24-26C. I currently have my luminatus and gertrudaes at room temp of 20-22C, and they don't look happy and as active as they were in higher temps during warmer months. As long as the fish aren't wildcaught/very sensitive or has very specific conditions like super soft 4.0ph water, and if I don't aim to breed, I don't check ph, gh and kh a lot unless it is on the very extreme sides. I would rather focus on the tank setup, is it planted, a rocky biome, what kind of substrate, do these fish share similar flow and temperature liking, etc. One downside that comes to my mind is, in a colder tank, it is hard to find a common centerpiece fish. @beastie exactly has a tank with white clouds, panda garras, and hillstreams. But we cannot easily find her tank a centerpiece fish. Paradise gourami had to be rehomed as it is not very peaceful. and very common gouramis, dwarf cichlids, bettas, etc. that are kept as centerpiece in these tanksizes are tropical fish that require higher temps usually. If you are not planning such centerpiece than it should be okay. But I thought it is worth mentioning that majority of centerpiece options will be eliminated if you focus on lower temp tank for a 29g. If I were you, I would instead go for fish that likes mid 20Cs. Which would give you more options. And many people want that one centerpiece fish that is characteristic and has a name in general. I would do the following: - a school of 10 mid size (like cardinal tetra or rummynose) OR 15-20 small size schooling fish(like ember tetras or similar size)- mid column. - 20 pygmy/hastatus/habrosus cories; OR, 10 panda cories - centerpiece fish. I think one male apisto, OR one bolivian ram, OR either one m or 1m:2f honey gouramis - 3 hillsteam loaches OR 4-5 borneo loaches, AND/OR 4 panda garras, AND 2 nerites (all after the tank matures a bit to sustain grazing surfaces) - one mystery snail of the color you like - neocaridinas of the color you like

3 options. Mating, picking on the shell for calicum and stuff, or grazing growth on it. Very likely it is just snex tho.

No updates. I have no other info about the product either. To be fair that was my main intention to create a topic here to see if anyone has any experience I took a pic of the box at my lfs tho. Maybe it helps to read the writings on it

Def not a pair of anything. Two days ago my friend gave me his panda cories because of problems he face keeping them with 1m:2f apistogramma cacatuoides in his tank with dimensions of 120x40cm. One of the panda cories lost his eye. He is okay right now but Iwould hate it if you face something similar so I wanted to share. You can keep one (and in under different conditions, even breed ) apistogramma cacatuoides, trifasciata, hongsloi, inka, agassizii or panduro in a normal tap water. Not my words, I know an apisto only breeder who does this as a full time job and has SO MANY apistogrammas, and very rare ones included. I know noone as experienced as he is when it comes to apistos. I bet, wild form cacatuoides would be the calm option but not sure. I think one bolivian ram also should be fine. @Chick-In-Of-TheSea may help further. @beastie also keeps them in a group, but I believe they don't really need one. German blue rams like it way too hot for some other fish you keep so I wouldnt keep them. Kribs also have rarer species that, I think, look prettier. My fav are Pelvicachromis taeniatus, but they have different look based on where they live. I got me Moliwe pair, but lost the female couple weeks ago sadly. Females look amazing imo, males still looking very cool. You can find another that looks cool to you but idk if they need another gender to show off their colors.

Yea my puffer also had ich but since it was a brackish type, with gradually increased salinity, the ich was gone. We don’t have ich-x in my country but we have a local product that has the same ingredients of formaldehyde and malachite green. Sera costapur F seems to have similar ingredients too, malachite green oxalate and formaldehyde. I have also never used paraguard before. But to my understanding it has malachite green, but not formalin/formaldehyde which is also effective against parasites. I am not sure if the replacement of this ingredient works as good as formalin/formaldehyde to treat the problem. @Colu may know if it is okay to mix two and continue treating that way

No the cycle is there. I moved their sponge to this tank from another, which was already cycled and running in another tank for a long time. My test kit, Sera's ammonia/ammonium test kit, tests for both ammonia and ammonium as the name says it. I mentioned no ammonia/ammonia as a sign that the cycle has never crashed in this tank. Not to mention I moved the sponge here from a high gh ph kh tank. Also ammonium may be preferable in comparison to ammonia, but that does not make it harmless and it is not non-toxic. It is just less harmful, but still harmful. You still need to have a cycle going on.

I hear about this, but not sure how this works tho. I keep some of my GBR at 5.0-5.5 ph, basically no kh and 0-1 GH and never had issues with the cycle or ammonia reading or cycle crash ever.

I will never understand why someone would do a fish in cycle when it is obvious that it hurts the fish unless it is a must for emergency, or makes no sense to cycle if you will dump in so many medicine that will kill the cycle mostly anyway in a quarantine tank. So as a general term, fishless cycle for me. In fact, if you wanna have more than one tank, you can easily keep an extra filter around running for a while in one of those tanksand start a new tank in one day directly. The patience required for cycling is usually valid for the first tank you are setting up, unless there is a specific situation that wouldn't help it. Like if you have a 5g and wanna start a 75g this may not work, or if you need a tank where maturing up matters in the new tank, like a reef tank or tank that will home grazers like otos, nerites, borneo loaches/hillstreams, etc. If I had access to Dr Tims bottled ammonia, I would surely use it but I don't. If I use aquasoil, I install the filter directly in the tank and add handful established media and cycle it inside the tank. Otherwise, if I dont use any aquasoil that would leach ammonia constantly I would just pass an extra filter that has been running in a different tank, or cycle the new filters in a seperate container dosing fish food, bottled bacteria and yucky sponge squeezing. Recently I started cycling a reef tank and I have not included live rocks and have no access to Dr Tim's ammonia. I dont like the idea of using fish food directly inside the tank, so I instead used raw shrimp I got from a super market and put it inside a purigen bag. Oh, it is smelly. But released 1ish mg/L ammonia in 2 days. It is a waiting game again. But a good one. I have TONS of stuff to learn meanwhile about saltwater and reef tanks. A great period to not rush anything and make indepth research while the tank is cycling and maturing. ------------------------------------------- I personally think it is everybody's own due dilligence to search and learn how to take care of an animal. I learnt how to keep all my fish myself. This was also valid for all the tortoises, cats, dogs and hamster I adopted. I also taught myself how to take care of my pony and guinea pigs. I am not better than anyone else reading this. Internet makes it easy, and we just need to learn how to reach good info and eliminate others. Don't expect anyone to teach you how to take care of a live creature. Do your research and take your time. It took me 4 months to decide if I want to start a saltwater tank, and I have been in the freshwater side of the hobby for a very long time. I see people entering the store, asking the store guy if this this and this fish can live together, but all all together and add them into a fresh new tank. HORRIBLE. Even so many hobbyists here cannot agree on one basic issue. How come we can expect one person working at the store to be an answer to all our questions. I believe expecting some help regarding technical assistance and information or hearing from an experienced person working there nonstop with the fish might be useful. Useful to obtain another information. But not with the animals. You are dedicating to spend X years of your life with an animal and deciding to take care of it at its best. You should do your best to learn how.

I have 4 HOBs in my bedroom, 3 of them are Aquaclears (30,50 and 70). Pretty quiet in general, only AC70 has a tiny bit of rattling sound but it is almost impossible to hear if you arent very close to it. If you can level the water equal to the outflow part of the HOB, then they are extremely quiet in general. If not, then waterfall sound can be as annoying as sponge filter/airstone bubbles and spraybar. However, please note that if you betta is a long fin one, basically very low flow is your best bet. And in the past, I found my plakat male jumped into the HOB 3 times before so if you willl use a HOB with water line levelled up, then you may want to consider something to block the potential jumping.

Hello, I also have no idea about this product and whether it is suitable for the tank use/fish health. Do your puffers accept repashy/commercial foods? Or will it be your first try? I tried feeding a piece of raw prawn and pest snails. A piece of raw prawn worked for the first time but he lost the interest in the second feeding. If he has a chance, he just didnt bother destroying the shell but sucking the food from the opened ends. He has always been crazy for pest snails and they were the only ones my puffer was interested in chewing the shell of to reach the food. I also got frozen littleneck clams. Thawed and opened them in half, but he was not really interested, I had to take the uneaten food after some time. My LFS fed them mealworms but I dont think think they are good in terms of nutrition based on my little research and if they are even good for them in general. Other than these, different earthworms and whiteworms were happily accepted. I had a couple neocaridinas in the tank but I have seen him trying to make a move only once, and he failed. Shrimp just got away easily. I have not seen him eating any neocaridinas in the 3 week period but long time might changed things. At least I had an opportunity to have neocaridinas as a cleanup crew because puffers are messy eaters! And lastly, he accepted frozen spirulina brine shrimp cube happily. The guy I shared above sadly failed the observational quarantine period and I lost him 😭. So I didnt have a chance to try more food. I have no idea why, but yea, the batch at the lfs also looked horrible when I visited while mine remain okay during that time. It was only a one day thing. Hope yours do much better I got my lesson and these sort of fish that require constant live or frozen food are not really my thingy with this size. Some people like this “hunting the prey” action but it made me feel bad. So I am not planning to go back to puffers other than keeping my peas My captive bred pea puffers have been doing great and happy at least but their food range is usually much different due to the size and teeth growth not being a big factor. So yea, I had nothing really worked other than pest snails in terms of teeth control sort of food.

I know right. Exactly my experience. In a level couple days ago I noticed I dont even feed the cubes and basically it has been sitting in the fridge for months unfed because it is annoying. I will give it a try and update if it worked for me too. I didnt have a chance to try it yet, I learnt about it today. In the video, the first attempt to release the air bubbles does not work, but the following attempts were successful. He mentions it in Turkish, so I would like to clarify what sucessfull and unsuccessful attempts look like. You can see the air bubbles removed from the cube👍🏻

Hey Guys, Today, we were chatting with two fishkeeper friends and one asked a question about FD tubifex. I asked them what technique do they use to feed it, because it is painful to make them sink for me, and my fish is not interested to eat from the glass in general. They showed me the video of how they do it, and let me tell you, I am impressed. Because even my previous attempts of presoaking it was a failure. Basically, you take out the plunger and put a cube of FD tubifex inside the barrel. Then, draw some tank water in, not too much, just enough to keep the cube covered. Then, cover the plain tip of the syringe with your finger to block air to enter, and for couple times make the movement like you are trying to draw some liquid. This action causes the air trapped inside the FD Tubifex cube come out, yo ucan literally see them as bubbles. You let the trapped air release and repeat it a couple times. Afterwards, when you are done with getting rid of the trapped air inside, you just remove the plunger and drop the cube in. I wanted to share this technique and hope it helps some people. The video is in Turkish but I am sharing it below to help visualising it. Hello @Cory, I believe you may find this topic useful as ACoop sells FD Tubifex. I remember a video where you were explaining Dean's method and your stick to the glass method back then. This might be a good alternative I think

If you remove tannins, you are basically wasting catappa leaves because their main purpose is having those beneficial tannins in the water column. And maybe having a more realistic tank, providing comfortable and natural tank for some fish in terms of environment. It is very veeery unlikely for decaying leaves releasing 2mg/L ammonia btw, surely not in 4 hours. Let me tell you, I am cycling my new tank with a raw big size prawn, and it took 2 days to see 1mg/L ammonia. I bet there is something else going on in that tank, or there is a confusion caused by tannin coloration If you have extra cycled media or have a chance to add some cycled media to this tank, it can be nice. Otherwise keep up with water changes and add bottled bacteria I guess

Yea I hear the same. That being said I have 7 species only guppy tanks in the fishroom, and I havent observed any problems on them being kept at 20-21C at this time of year. Temperature usually affects the immunity system and metabolism if I am not mistaken, but guppies seem to be more tolerant overall in comparison to many other tropical fish in my experience But again, if one wants to breed prolifically, that might pose a problem

White clouds are also colder water fish like zebra danios. Lower than 23C would be even more desired for these guys. Fishbase says 18-22C. Guppies are usually mentioned as at least 22C in the long term. I keep mine around 20-21C during winter time as I heat the fishroom, not the tanks as long as the tanks need high numbers like german blue rams. And they are all good, but they don't breed prolifically, which is also good -for me-. If I were you I would set up the tank at 21 or 22C myself @beastie around what temp do you keep your white clouds?

Hell no! That is a CAPTCHA fish and you should write the code on it to see what it is. 4YROYGS 😝🤣

Ah I see! Same warning can be valid for male guppies, be careful. Especially it is a long tail one. Small and better swimming species like panda guppies would be okay I believe but long fin guppies can be easily overcompeted, stressed about the activity and may be nipped. Zebra danios are extremely active as I mentioned, so minimum of 90x30cm tank footprint is suggested from what I see in seriouslyfish. Bigger swimming space and bigger group the tank support is better. If you ask me, 9gallon is tiny and cannot meet these guys’ activity levels. I mentioned the temp range based on the fisbase stats. Seriouslyfish also says 25C max. Is there any reason why you wanna keep it at 78F? Guppies and white clouds can also go lower than that. Im not sure if it is still the case as I have been seeing zebra danios in a bad shape a lot recently, but zebra danios used to be known as very hardy fish. So they can tolerate a temp above their desired rsnge probably, but it would at least shorten the life span I guess https://www.fishbase.se/summary/4653

Check for snello recipes on Lav’s snails channel on youtube! Once you get the idea, you can play around the recipes based on what ingredients you have

The new growth tends to come a darker color and may lighten up later on when it keeps growing. The lines between the growths usually reflects to the growth in different water parameters. So in case you switch tanks or play around your parameters, you may happen to see it. That's why, for perfect shells, stability is important. But it is more about the aesthetic look If you have any concerns, ofcourse you can share a pic. OTherwise, it does not sound like something negative. Now that I think, they might be searching for food too. Make sure you feed mystery snails often enough. They eat A LOT! And fish leftovers with a few blanched veggies may lead to underfed snails. People commonly underfeed their snails

To increase the chance of keeping a betta in a community tank, add the betta last to the tank. Otherwise they set their tank as a terrotority and will not welcome any future additions. If your divider allows water to go through, like basically the betta in quarantine are now exposed to new pathogens and so potential diseases due to addition of new fish nextdoor, I would say that basically restarts the quarantine process for the betta(s) there. If you are planning to keep zebra danios with any of the bettas, I gotta say that is not an ideal combination. Zebra danios are crazy active and energetic, known as potential fin nippers, can easily compete a betta for food and stress bettas with their very high activity level. Also zebra danios require a big space and group to meet their energy levels and considerably cooler temps of 18 to 24C meanwhile bettas need around 26C at least for their immune system and metabolism to work properly. I would suggest lower activity level fish that are not known as finnippers and that might enjoy sharing similar tank conditions, especially temperature