Lennie

You should target feed them with blanched veggies and snellos and algaewafers etc. They are bad at finding food. Dont consider them like mystery snails which can legit smell the food from miles away and go there very fast. Rabbits are easily outcompeted by any other fish/snails in the tank. Usually they are wildcaught and might not be great at accepting normal fish food/wafers. My tip for snails in general is, try blanched veggies at first and once you have a chance to observe what they like eating after many tries of different stuff, start making snellos with those by adding calcium/protein to it so you can easily cover their nutritional needs and no need to deal with blanching veggies everytime. they also love leaf litter. Would be great if you can put lots of leaf litter for them to snack on. Mines fav are banana and catappas.

That's a great friend there 🥰 Make sure she keeps it wet and does not put it in the filter/tank without dechlorinating

Too many videos and info can be overwhelming for most people. I would avoid info dump and listing too many videos to watch or too many writings to read. If she is willing to read and learn, that is like already steps ahead compared to many others. Most people don't really wanna dive the fish world in detail, but may prefer just a good looking live decor in their homes and keep it healthy. Majority of us here are a bit nerds about the fish and stuff, so this is an important factor not to forget I think. I think this video is great and summarizes many stuff well. Especially considering it is also a mom-kid fish tank project, she may relate it more. Other than this, you may help her to understand the cycling concept, but if you are sure you have disease free tank, I think your help would be the best bet here. Besides sharing some good info and experience, you may give a handful of established media or run the filter she buys in your tank for some time while they do the researching, decorating and shopping. This way, she would still experience testing and slowly stocking, but with a lesser risk of running into ammonia/nitrite spikes and worrying about controlling them constantly, or starting from zero by introducing an ammonia source and constantly reading test results over and over again. Not to mention starting from zero takes much more time and the kid might be hyped about the tank already. It would be a quite delayed gift to have a Christmas gift setup and running for around 4-6 weeks from zero to establish a cycle. The gift would lose its meaning a lil :')

German blue rams are great but they require high temperatures. I keep mine at 28/29C. Therefore, the temperature issue is limiting for the species you wanna add in general. 28C is way too hot for panda cories. Maybe you can go for something around 27.5 and try sterbais? I keep sterbais with discus and I used to keep them with my GBR for some time in the past until they pair up. they seem to do okay for the past 2 years but it is not easy to comment on long term effect. I would do 8 sterbais and 12 blue emperor tetras. And leave some space for anything you might be interested in to add in the future.

I dont think the tank reflects nature but it is actually quite artificial. I think at best we take some good info and managable sides from nature but that's basically it. Water sitting in a glass tank, being fed, has technologically devoloped filters in, You mix sand, rocks, driftwood, plants, fish, snails, shrimp... from all around the world, usually reflecting a stable season forever unlike reflecting events like rainy seasons water rising and lowering, changing temperatures even during the day, changing diets based on the season, using artificial lights... So yea, to me, at best, we take some sides from nature and setup a nice planted tank at best and try to make our fish comfy. Therefore, I personally never completely understand the "natural tank" perspective. I said all of these to mention that, as long as there is a predator in your tank, AKA fish, I think having copepods, detrius worms, and such not harmful critters are good. I think you should not worry. To me, this is kinda interesting if you totally started from 0. 3 weeks seem a bit quick to me to cycle a tank actually. You basically introduced an ammonia source, and it turned to nitrite and then both cleared up and you only read nitrates? Because nitrates can be coming from fertilizer and plants might also consume ammonia if you happen to cycle the tank with tiny amount of ammonia.

@Colu @Odd Duck Thank you so much for your help again guys. Today the fish seems perfectly fine snacking on leaf litter. I haven't noticed any dots on any. 🥳🥳🥳🤗 Shrimp and the mystery snail still show no stress behavior whatsoever. I will just use the third dose of kanaplex tomorrow just in case but not planning to add more malachite green/formaldehyde medicine as it is mainly recommended for day 1 and 3 and day 5 and 7 if really needed. Then the next day I will do a water change and add a small HOB filled with activated carbon. I'm happy that everyone is great and doing well again🩵

Thank you!🩵

They look very nice and plump. But very tiny. They are actual babies! I meant to keep them in a quarantine, but it turned out to be a grow out tank at the same time. They eat live bbs now, I feed them twice a day. I gotta find grindals as they are nothing in the size of eating even adult daphnia yet. They are sooo small!! They ate baby daphnias. I have vinegar eels on hand from those youve listed. I have never seen scuds here to be fair, maybe it is me. Since they are very tiny, I added a couple mini ramshorns to their tank, but they dont seem to pay attention to them. I bet it will change once they grow. I also have many bladder snails and pond snails. Should I try? Majority of my pest snails are in the guppy tanks. Is there anything I can do to have a sterile culture of pest snails? Maybe like starting a new walstad tank with snails so they can reproduce there? How long would it take to have a new snail only tank to eventually go potential parasite/disease free if there is any?

Thanks Duck. I didn't raise the temperature. Its day 3 on the treatment. So far I used malachitegreen/formaldehyde medicine on Day1 and 3 as suggested. Same goes for Kanaplex. Day1 and 3, dosed in the water column. I blacked out the tank as I saw something like malachite green being sensetive to light. Idk if it is true but I wanted to play safe. Also since I thought it might be velvet and I saw velvet being photosynthetic I wanted to keep it dark too. I added the recommended amount of salt by Colu. Approximately how long does it take Epistylus to heal? I don't see any visual improvement or it getting worse. Looking stable. Malachite green/formaldehyde medicine says Use day 1 and 3. If needed, you can continue to apply on day 5 and 7. So far shrimp and snail shows no stress but extra day 5 and 7 applications may be concerning? Maybe I should do a water change, readd the removed salt ratio, and dose malachite green/formaldehyde medicine back on day 5 and 7?

I wonder if you keep a tank with no fish (but with snails or without snails), would keeping a tank fishless for a period break the cycle of parasites like flukes, ich, common worms etc? The question goes for other diseases too. If you keep a tank fishless but running for the required period of time, would potential bacterial/viral diseases disappear at some point or they are always there? Is there a general adviced period for this? OR restarting the tank is the only option?

The pic you share on social media😎: You in the pic your friend shared, just because they looked good in there🤪😝: When you look good in a pic but no longer talk to the people in there so they have to be removed:

I can't differentiate much 😭sorry. As these guys have a weird skin, it is hard to say if it is supposed to be flat on a normal fish or not. I tried to take better pics:

I have kanaplex. Should I dose it together with the malachite green/formaldehyde medicine I have or wait? I can dose the water column but I don't think these would eat any food I mix kanaplex in.

I no longer think it is sand. The thing is, it is still only on one fish. That being said, there were many dots today. Anyway, I added the recommended dose of the medicine and added the amount of salt you recommended. Put in an airstone for oxygen. Didn't increase the temperature, Idk if I should. So it is still 25C. I keep reading conflictive stuff about the temperature, some even claiming if you use formalin, then the high temperature might even make it toxic. Also it seems to effect fish gills, so higher temperature would lead to even lower oxygen content, so might have a negative impact in this regard too I suppose? As far as I know we use heat to fasten the cycle of ich right? Am I fine at 25C or boost it to something like 28C? Btw my friend said it looks more like Velvet than ich. What do you think? Malachite green and formaldehyde should work for both anyway right? In terms of behavior it looks fine BUT it does not want to stay still. Always moving. I assume it is being itchy and try to rub itself to glass and surfaces maybe.

My friend said they are tankbred. They look plumb and nice. He said you dont even need to deworm but I still might just in case

I have been considering pea puffers for ages but I always make myself not get them. My friend got a pretty good looking stock with nice bellies and all. I have two empty tanks for quarantine and one planted 125Liter tank for later on. So I may get a group of 10 or so. The question is about feeding. I saw many times live food being the only option here. I have daphnia, white worms and I hatch artemia daily. Would these three be enough? I also have mini ramshorns, bladder snails and pond snails in my guppy tanks. I can feed live bbs daily and support their dirt with extra food of other choices as second meal. I see grindal worms, white worms, bloodworms, blackworms, earthworms listed. Now the question is, what is the nutritional value difference between all of these? We may include tubifex too I guess? Like, as I have white worm cultures, is obtaining a grindal worm culture make any sense to add one extra food to their diet and spend money on? How different is white worms compared to grindal worms? @Guppysnail Also I am out of praziquantel. Would levamisole be good alone to deworm them potentially. They look pretty good but yknow, just in case? @Odd Duck @Colu I even want to breed them. I love the challenge

That reminded me of the hedgehog I have! Some others: We have caretta carettas in Türkiye, they lay eggs here. I had a chance to see them alive My parents got these to me as a gift from their Thailand trip, assuming I would add them to my tanks. I indeed LOVED these shells but not a fan of adding such decor to my freshwater tanks so I keep them as decors in my bedroom.

Noted! Btw, I might be just making it up on my mind. The sand in very fine in this tank around 0.2-0.5mm and light colored. As farlowellas have a tough skin like plecos, I think it is possible that it is just very fine sand particles attached around on one while sifting around. I will observe more and see how it goes. I dont see many of those spots I saw this morning These 4 have been living together for a while before I get them and since I got them last tuesday. How likely one would start having ich anyway? I will apply medication if I am certain it is a start of ich but not sand. 🤷🏼‍♂️ Silly me. At least I did my daily sport by walking to my LFS to get the medicine *smiles in pain*

Thanks Colu. I see you suggesting adding salt too usually for electrolytes in other posts. Want me to add a lil salt too and increase the temp or skip it for farlowellas? The tank is set to 25C. The last time I had to deal wkth ich was 15 years ago. 😭

You mean fine for shrimp and snails too? it is not exactly a “quarantine”. It is just a species only tank that has shrimp one mystery snail(easy to catch) and farlowellas and they need to use woof and leaflitter to graze on and feel safe I can easily catch the mystery snail baby but shrimp is hard

Today I noticed one of the farlowellas in my quarantine tank showed synptoms of ich. We dont have ich X in my country but this is the closes thing I can find based on the ingredients. It says not safe for them but I see many people saying the ingredients were fine to use online. What do you think? I also have methylene blue and aquarium salt on hand as well as heater. @Colu @Odd Duck product info (hope it is readable) maybe u can see lil dots. There arent so many but def there

They are amazing. I love the golden ones even more( I haven't looked at their coloration souce in depth, so I hope it is natural and just selective breeding, idk?)! But I have to mention that they get quite big. My LFS has some in their display tank and they are both thick and big. Seriouslyfish says 9-11cm but there is no way my LFS ones are that small. They are almost the size of my hand. I think they need fairly big tank considering they also like a big school. My LFS ones look like the big ones in this video I would lean towards some bottom dwellers other than kuhlis or some other fish that would love to graze on that wood piece. Kuhlis are adorable but seeing them is very hard if the tank is properly set up because they will happily hide 😄 Corydoras, whiptails and bristlenoses(don't hide a lot like other plecos, especially females) would be a better choice to see them more. For schooling fish, I really want diamond tetras or congo tetras sometime. But I have no experience with them yet. They are not small so it is hard to find a good tank to fit a nice size group for me as my biggest tank is 180 liters but I have goldfish there I would add 3 SAEs. They are funny and helpful when it comes to algae eating. Make sure to find true SAE if you will get any.

They all look great. And them being gifts make them even better and more valuable. 🥰😍

Hello everyone Hope you are all doing well. Sometimes I come across hobby related objects that people has and they look amazing. It can be a painting of a friend, a goldfish ring, pleco plushie, toys, trinket, decors, and many more. I would love to see what kind of stuff everyone has that is related to the hobby at their home other than tanks and equipments. I wanted to create this topic as I think it would be fun to see what everyone has. To start the topic, here I am sharing what my sister knitted for me as a New Year gift. An Axolotl! Now it is your turn! Or you will face an axolotl attack 🤪😆 Oh please. Just kidding,

They are very pretty. I wanna keep them one day too but city is very hot especially during summer time. My bedroom tanks go above 30Cs easily but fish room stays cooler (as it is in the basement) but still way too hot for cool water species.