Lennie

Planetcatfish, for these guys, also does not say carnivores tho. To quote "All Panaque appear to feed on wood, so wood should be present in the tank. They also take prepared algae wafers and fresh vegetables (zucchini, cucumber, peas, green beans) and tubers (potato, yams and similar). " https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=642 Scientific papers. There is a long video she made on it showing some studies, but it is even longer. Just in case Im sharing it here maybe you or anyone else would be interested

They are not carnivores at all. Please see the video I mentioned above, particularly starting from min 12. Rebecca studies the evolution of loricariidae as her phd and is a biologist. Her channel is all about plecos if it interests you, highly recommended! Sadly there is a common misconception in general for many plecos like hypancistrus being carnivores too, even on planetcatfish it is stated so. I was feeding my hypancistrus this way. I learnt the actual diet a bit late too. They do eat meaty food if fed so, but that does not mean they are carnivores or natural to feed this way to them to my understanding. very pretty. I want these one day too but they get very big. I cant say exactly what royal that is. I "think" it is a broken line L191. But I'm not sure. Planetcatfish says almost 20 inch for it. So 30g also wouldn't do it in the future unless you wanna keep growing the size and use tanks as grow out.

It can be challenging to picture a pleco, but if you can have some clear detailed pics , maybe it may help to have opinions on what it is

Weird. Panaques are not one of those snail eaters normally. But, plecos can unintentionally bother snails no matter what. I can confirm that them grazing around/on the snail shells and being active at eating food may be challenging and scaring for snails. I have had issues keeping snails in bristlenose breeding tank too. as asked above, do you target feed it daily? As a side note, royal plecos get big. They reach the size of 17”/43 cm. You may want to have plans regarding this soon as it will outgrow a 10g very quickly I would also advice to see this video about panaques and their diet

Thank you very much for your detailed answer Duck🤍

I agree with @nabokovfan87 that sand does not mean it will be dirty. My overstocked S.American tank in the bedroom is majorly sand but I cant recall seeing it dirty really. The circulation there keeps it pretty clean. I have never siphoned it ever. And the color is beige, not even dark Meanwhile, with the sand + sponge filter combination in my fishroom, sand gets yucky. Sponge filter is very bad at mechanical filtration in my opinion. But even then debris/mulm sits only the top, so all I gotta do is sucking the debris on top gently and thats it. I never siphon my fine sand. I think that would do more harm than good by disturbing the layer and mixing poop in between. Im talking about 0.1-0.5mm sand here tho. And 1-2mm in some tanks

Males are are much more flashy and have longer fins when they are ready to breed just like in the video compared to others swimming around in the back but you can also check for ovaries. it is just hard to see irl imo I lost my other male due to a disease. I have not heard a single croak since then

I had them croak daily. Usually with the first lights hitting the room while Im sleeping but tank lights off. There have been times I woke up this, Im not kidding. I got me a group of three but it was very hard to sex so I ended up having 2 males and one f. The males fighting for domination was when they were croaking almost all the time If you have only one, or a group of female, or maybe even just one male and females, Im not sure if they will croak Males spar each other, do circles around and move their bodys and shake. Now that Im thinking, very similar to what I see on pesudomugils You can see the females around looking at them like ”boys will be boys” 🙄🤣🤣🤣

Thank you for sharing the info I agree that they are beautiful. I really wonder what their genetic background is too. Like if they are actual albino altums (or leucistic?), a mixture of altums and p.scalare, or directly p. Scalare. Since they are both from the genus Pterophyllum, would this allow altums and scalares cross breed and have an albino line like it is claimed to be by some people? I dont usually understand how far the potential crossbreeding go in these terms. Group, lineage, genus, family… confusing

I didnt say inject co2 tho. I have never did it in my life. Floating plants like frogbits salvinia water lettuce etc has direct access to co2. Thats what I meant. They suck the from the water and grow very fast. Same applies to pothos

Try floating plants and stuff like pothos roots in the water. Fast growing plants and direct access to light and co2 helps a lot My tap reads 40 ppm nitrate. This is my way to cope

Thank you! And yes that was one of the few things I managed to find as well. I know someone who keeps a group of 15 IRL but they are still growing. The “color change” confused me in that article. I asked the friend and he said he has not observed anything like that in his batch at least to this day. He is one of the most experienced if not the most experienced person I know IRL. How can an albino fish develop a color later on suddenly? We are both kinda surprised to see “albino fish” developing colors and going dark. I have not heard anything like that myself before. How is that even possible? they explain it in the abovementioned albino dantum article as: “I then started to think that something in the environment I provided had caused the melanin production to continue as in normal angelfish. After a little online research I discovered that in albino animals, if a trigger caused the enzyme tyrosinase to be turned on, then this fish with two albino genes would have those genes not activated. So, there are environmental triggers that prevent the expression of albino, or if you want to look at it a different way, that allow the production of melanin even in the presence of homozygous albino.” Is this true or even possible?@Biotope Biologist @Odd Duckwhat do you guys think? If so, in nature albino creatures have such disadvantage. Why wouldn’t they use such biological capability to their advantage then? Agreed. Im trying to convince myself not to spend to get me a group of 5-6 and expect pairing in the future 🙂

Hello there. Hope you are doing well. Is there anyone who keeps Albino Dantums? Some say they are P. scalare. Some say they are a mixture of both altums and p.scalare. Idk if it is possible all. Their background does not seem to be known well. I find them pretty and I wonder if anyone keeps or at least has info on them. My friend just got a group of juveniles imported and I wanna learn more about them, but I haven't come across much online. Like do they form pairs and breed well normally or do they have issues due to potentially being a mixture? Is there anything wrong with the genetic line? Is there any specific requirements other than dim lights due to being albinos? If I keep them with my platinum and black lace angel, would they potentially pair up (I guess they would, but still)

Why is it too low you think? I'm confused. I have cycled tanks as low as 5.0 ph. No ammonia/ammonium and nitrite readings ever. No kh and almost no gh. Very low tds. Still cycled

First thing is genetics I believe. As a person who has been keeping and having many batches of babies until today, I can easily say that I have seen many lighter colored fish than mine in comparison online. As these fish are selectively bred for their coloration and look, you gotta make sure the genetics are the way you want as a starting point. As an example, we may consider it like german blue rams I think as they are commonly selectively bred for the coloration. I have never seen any normal colored gbr that is as colorful as @Guppysnail’s pair. If I go to a local store and get me a random pair, I would very likely not end up with what she has when they breed in terms of the look/coloration. Good food is also important. In my country we feed them blanched cappia pepper to boost red coloring too from time to time. Their main diet is about algae and grazing aufwuchs in general anyway. They are majorly on the herbivore side so Im not sure if feeding a krill diet would be any good. Especially young ones are even more prone to issues if fed animal protein. I dont think it would be ideal to feed something out of their ideal diet range just to potentially color them up. I guess red/orange is more about carotine and axanthines. My fish dont show interest to carrots much so I mix it to a snello to feed it. I would say lots of high quality algae based foods and cappia pepper and maybe carrots if they like it. Ideal environment and genetics that are similar to what you desire them to look like at the first place. And yes, they are deep orange color at best, at least mine are even tho I got my pair as their main super red pair as a gift from a very well know breeder here. I have never seen any actual “reds” to be honest. These are what my babies look like and at best they are still orange not red.

I got me a pair but sadly lost my male due to a disease which no treatment method Ive tried worked against. So I have my female in a S.American community tank and she is the only discus there To be honest, if I knew I could find her a great home I would probably rehome her. I don’t think these guys are meant to be kept alone. She was also not happy being with her partner in a tank as a pair all alone without any fish around too in 180 liters. I am not experienced enough to say much, but I think these guys want a community tank, ideally a big one, and a couple discus buddies around. @Fish Folk has a discus tank and that’s a 55g if Im not mistaken. Well ofcourse bigger is better. But if you really want discus you can keep a small group at least rather than a single fish imo. but what cories do you have rn? Also when I got mine they were kept in 28C. I don’t think need to go 30C exactly. That makes it very hard to find tankmates for in those temps and many people I come across keep them at a temp lower than 30C in my researches. But yea long story short, I wouldn’t suggest keeping one alone as a person who is kinda obliged to keep one in a community tank right now

I am dropping this topic here as an update for anyone who may read this. Things sadly went pretty negative gradually. I had to experience why they are called aggressive. You may find what my experience turned into gradually. I see your point there. Right now the all other options in the tank are betta, two angels, one discus and one m apistogramma cacautoides. And yes bully female cant do anything to any cichlid because they are, well, cichlids. At least until today. They dont care each other with the betta too still

Yea this morning, with the first lights in the tank I saw an extreme aggression from one female to another. She basically plays to kill. She does not even let the other one swim, move or even go to surface to breathe. If the other one attempts to go breathe from the surface or literally move, the bully literally attacks her so hard. I left the bully female in the main tank and removed the other one into a different tank. Otherwise by being exposed to constant stress and targeting, it would die too. weird enough, these two females were hating the male together this way. Now they turned to each other out of nowhere. I’m thinking if these guys need to have very crowded groups for a pecking order in a large tank, or should be kept alone. Please keep me updated based on your experience in the future when they grow up to their full size I hope for the best for you

I think it is not about being "fat". It is hard to say if it is some sort of organ failure/fluid build up or some sort of lesion/tumor or a similar growth. In accordance with this anatomy picture below, the location more or less matches to where the kidney/swim bladder is. And kidney failure is sadly of one the most common organ failures. Fluid build ups happen in such cases. That being said, I don't wanna worry you for nothing. I was just making some guesses. @Odd Duck may help better. I hope it is just nothing serious but sadly fancy bettas are commonly problematic and prone to diseases/issues.

Hello Sadly 30g is too small for gold gouramis. They are big and aggressive. So far the aggression I observed is limited to gouramis only, but mainly towards their own kind. Mine don't even care about the betta in their tank. I had a 1m:2f in a 100x40x40cm/160 liter/42ish gallon tank. I have more decorations and plants compared to your tank. The females were very aggressive towards the male when they started growing. I have never observed a slight aggression coming from the males side. My females were so full of eggs looking healthy. I was considering if I should try breeding but the aggression issue may make it hard to rehome the babies. Aaaaanyway, NExt morning feeding time, the male is nowhere. I checked everyone inside and outside the tank. I haven't even seen fishbones or anything. I am pretty sure the females killed him even in my tank size but I have no proof. Now only two females left. This time the dominant female started to bully the other female. These guys are weirdly aggressive. It works the same way. The dominating ones don't even allow the other one even swim properly and make it sit on the substrate. If moves, starts chasing again. I had no issues for a long time until they started to grow. So that's my warning. would love to share a positive experience but I wish you the best with a group of 4 in a 30g

I saw someone mentioning this product in our local forum. It claims to be shrimp and snail safe but I have never tried. Just dropping here, maybe it helps. It claims to kill both planaria and hydra

I hope I never need to try 😄

Depends. Some of my heaters are Tetra brand and they have a sign on them saying its the minimum water level. Ive used them by covering their minimum water level part but the top out ouf the water all the time with no issues. I also tried them fully submerged too but since their setting part is on the top, I find it easier to use the other way My other heaters are Aquael’s ones, both glass and ultra heater, and they want to be totally submerged if Im not mistaken. Reading the user guide is key here (maybe I should reread too🤣 I use them submerged tho since the first one I got so that must be it… I guess😄🤪)

Pair of pygmys would be a very bad choice if I gotta be honest. You can easily keep like 6-8 in there, but idk how badis go well with pygmys. I have a group of 20 or so (they have babies) in a 50x40x25cm tank, so it is a shallow 50 liter custom size. In the past I kept groups of 6, 10, and 16 in other tanks. Every single time the group got more crowded, the happier they seemed. @Guppysnail is experienced with badis species so she may help better. But for scarlet badis it seems very hard to find females from what I know and maybe 4 males can be problematic in that tank size?

Yes! Adding stocking slowly is the best bet. But I would highly recommend quarantining first. I'm not a quarantine directly with adding medicine type of guy, I instead do 30-day observational quarantine and even tho I have mostly completed these without any issues and medications, there have been a few occasions where I sadly witnessed diseases appearing in the QT. I think it is very important to not put your existing fish tank at risk. When you make a research, you will likely come across hypancistrus being carnivores or stuff like BN plecos eating wood. Rebecca, who studies Loricariidae evolution as her PhD, has a great channel on plecos overall. Highly recommended to check it out! I learnt a lot about the scientific stuff regarding plecos diet and needs. Some videos where she explains Hypancistrus and overall loricariidae diet, and the misinformation about "eating wood"