Lennie

Interesting story. Thanks for sharing and for your help, as always 🤗 I found the ram image online, but mine look very similar if not the same. When I got them from my LFS they didnt look anything like that, they were just dark colored. The thing is, for me, even adults reaching their full size and full coloration took a while for the blacks even tho when they started breeding earlier than reaching the full size. Did you rehome the one in the video or saved it to yourself? Maybe some colors need much longer time than normals or more stable lines do The problem is when we get some fish, we dont even know at what generation they are.. And it is likely we purchase siblings already, am I right?

With an exception of floating plants like duckweed and frogbit (especially roots). Wanted to mention it just in case. However, as they can only climb from the side glasses, if you float them in the middle of the tank with tubes or so, it may help

I keep mine on the floor in the fishroom the top is open like a mini pond, I have floating plants there and a tiny yucky sponge filter on a very low setting, I feed a mixture of activated yeast and spirulina. If you have green water people use that too. I didnt have a chance to try sunlight yet but although it may help for algae, I would worry that the water would get too hot by the sunlight for their liking I got both daphnia and white worms from other hobbyists to start my culture at home so yes you are gonna have to find one. I find it too risky to collect anything from a lake or so. And daphnia eggs didnt work for me sadly @Guppysnail has worm cultures if you are interested in. Maybe dm her to ask if you are from the US White worms basically want cooler temps, and you keep them in soil. You feed them bread, yogurt and nutritional yeast. Some people may prefer different feeding methods but so far this works great for me. All you gotta do is renewing the bread when it starts molding

Daphnia second White worms third. all easy, does not need too much attention and most importantly, don't smell.

Actually on planetcatfish and some other sites Hypancistrus are mentioned as carnivores but my biologist friend who studies loricariidae evolution as her PhD said scientific literature has never suggested them being carnivores, and she said these fishes will go for meaty foods doesn't mean it's what they are adapted for in the wild. I used to feed mine heavily on a carnivore diet due to my similar researches but not anymore. I tagged the related part of Rebecca's video, hope it's helpful!

So, I have been breeding my black rams for some time and I had a chance to make some observations Both parents are black, just like the pic given below. So far all babies are either blacks or golds, golds have a higher percentage. Golds tend to be hardier, and generally grows faster, have better survival rate. ------------------ I would like to continue breeding my own line in the future from my good looking healthy offsprings. However, I would like to focus on making the black babies stronger and equalise their growing to golds if possible. Also would appreciate having more and more black babies like their parents. So, my questions are; 🐟How does fish genetics work in this regard? Is selectively breeding the best looking healthy fish is the way to strengthen your future lines and having that color pop up more in the future? Like should I constantly raise and breed black babies from every future generation, like first F1, then F2, then F3...? How can one stabilise a color line better? 🦈At what point in breeding of same generation may constitute a problem? At what point adding a new blood is necessary, if it is? 🐡Like I can ask the same for my long fin super red bristlenoses. The babies are all red but around %65 longfin and %35 normal fin type. They don't seem to have issues of survival rate and growing in comparison of both fin types unlike rams' color in my experience. Also the fin quality differs between long fins too. How can one can make the offspring look ideally what they want, and least in a much higher ratio, without any potential harm to quality of life like extreme inbreeding and stuff?

I dont have a flying fox, But I have 3 SAEs. I do hear some similar stuff for SAEs too but as they are commonly sold under wrong names, maybe that is where those comments come from. My SAEs love to chase! But only each other. They eat and graze around, and suddenly one decides to chase another. Then, they stop and this chasing behavior switch to other two. They are like kids playing tag. I would never keep two in a tank as it may end up turning into a constant chase between the same fish. I think they need distraction with a minimum of three. Just thinking, maybe your fish acts like that bcoz of lacking a friend around to potentially waste its energy and natural behavior, so it gets maybe aggressive/territorial due to this issue? Again, just thinking and not basing this on any fact as I dont have silver fox but SAE. Maybe adding friends with similar size might help if your tank can support it?

I would not like to misinform, but I currently do have shrimp in both red lizard and twig catfish tanks. I'm pretty new to twigs and if I am not mistaken farlowellas are more about algae grazing and snacking on algae tabs and sometimes veggies offered. My red lizards don't really eat shrimp I think, I keep them together with shrimp for a quite long time by now. They are more like cories I suppose. If the baby shrimp end up in their mouth, they may eat it buy they wouldn't go hunt any specifically. With only a few days of experience with twigs, the addition of shrimp to their tank made them feel comfier. Shrimp sometimes mistake them as branches going on top of them lol

A group of Whiptails based on your choice! Oddball and interesting to have. I have both red lizards and twigs (got them recently) . Royals next I hope🤗 Red lizard whiptails (L010a) Twig Catfish Royal Farlowella

Mystery snail population control is extremely easy. They just lay the eggs out of water and all you gotta do is remove the clutch and freeze it before any baby develops and destroy it afterwards, or feed it to other snails for calcium by crushing it under water again before any baby develops. I know we may have to travel and such sometimes, but other than these specific scenarios, it is really hard to be overrun by baby mystery snails unless you ignore the egg clutches out of the water. I see no point in successfully hatching clutches and making another snail to eat them. You can grow them a decent size and sell/put for adoption please see the video for the future clutches you dont want to hatch

Please note that it is not snail safe.

That is not a "trick", but as a person with tanks full of snails, I no longer feed my snails everyday. I am considering everyday feeding a bit more unnatural. You drop in a big food piece full of veggies, calcium, protein and all they do is eating and motionlessly pooping/taking a nap whole day long. That started to seem weird to me. Now what I do is; As always, I make nutritionally rich snellos. I add lots of veggies, calcium source like powdered egg shells or crab cuisine, add powedered spirulina and algae wafers to the mix, and keep them as cubes in my freezer. I drop one cube once every two days. This way, during the day in which they are not fed directly, they graze around, eat decaying leaves, snack on leaf litter I add, etc. I decided that I hate to see my snails(but mostly mystery snails do that) eat heavily and do nothing other than sleeping and pooping. I like my new style of feeding better. Just offer them some food around, like dont take decaying plant leaves, add leaf litter, maybe let them find one small piece of extra uneaten food from other fish, etc to award their exploration and effort! 🤗 P.S: baby snails would be an exception here. I am talking for adults here.

Wow. Many thanks to everyone. Such great info to learn from! 😍🤗 @dasaltemelosguy I'm happy to hear they ended up healing. Your severums look great

Hello everyone! There is a common topic that is named as "bacteria conflict" in my country which is believed to be more common beyond guppies, discus and angelfish. They suggest not to mix these fish from different sources and lean towards locally bred species. Some claim their "bacteria" conflicts with each other resulting in deaths. Some think this is a misconception of discus plague. I think this is all about immunity. ------------------------- So, whenever we get a new fish, we *ideally* quarantine them, acclimate them to their new environment, check for their care guides, learn from experiences, prepare a tank to meet their needs... and so on But one thing I think we don't pay enough attention to is their immunity, pathogens and how they will handle going into a community tank after completing all the quarantine and stuff successfully. How does fish immunity work actually? For instance, when we get a wild-caught fish or fish from farms (which mightve raised their fish in brackish conditions, thus their immunity might not be used to even common stuff to handle, or is already used to water and conditions of a faraway land), how can we make these fish get used to their new environment actually? Besides a good diet, environment, low stress, and keeping the tank between ideal temperatures, can we do anything else do build some immunity? Like adding some floating plants or adding some water from the main tank to the quarantine tank slowly like once a week to build up resistance by going slow? What would be the safest way to build up the immunity system before completing a quarantine and directly being added to a new tank? (I know these fish go through stressful times - at least transportation all alone- and likely end up in many different tanks before ending up in our tanks, but I would love to learn more about immunity and what we can do to build up some resistance. Like if I wanna keep my wc fish in a community setup, what should I do? Tagging the three 😝🥰 @Odd Duck @Colu @Biotope Biologist

Thanks 🤗 I'm considering to keep them as only fish in their tank, at least until they safely complete 1month. With one baby mystery snail (to clean up uneaten food, share similar diet, and free infusoria for them to snack on thanks to their poop?) and a few neocaridinas. Lots of leaf litter, sand bottom, planted with branches. Luckily my friend said this batch is eating spirulina tabs, hope they continue to do so at my place. I setup the tank today but added a very established filter. I also added shrimp powder for biofilm. One of the things that confuse me is the flow. I know they like high oxygen content, but do they like flow? I see conflicting info on this. Some say they like flow. Some say they like stagnant and calm water. Is branches/plants/leaf litter enough to have? They don't seem to use tubes or caves like plecos/red lizards, am I right? They even lay on the glass from what I've seen.

After keeping red lizard whiptails, I started to like whiptails even more. I find their look and character very interesting. So I want to try new species from the whiptails. Watched care and breeding guides. Also talked to a friend who keeps and bred them. I would like to learn more. My friend bred them in tap water and said hers aren't picky when it comes to food and water parameters, even for breeding. I wonder what's everyones experience is like Please share any experience and any tips you have🤗 P.S: I remember you mentioning your farlowellas back in the days so wanted to tag you! @Biotope Biologist

Nerites and usually rabbit snails are wild caught, as nerites are hard to breed as they require brackish conditions and rabbit snails don't breed prolifically, just one baby once a month if you are lucky to have a female that breeds. They grow slow and take considerably long time to reach maturity too, and their lifespan isn't so long. Rabbit snails need a bit warm water. What's your temp is like considering u r keeping danios? When I got my first batch of rabbit snails, I lost all 4. I think shipment during winter time did no good for them even tho there was a heat pack added. I would personally never order rabbit snails if the weather is not warm enough. They refused eating any food or veggie I tried. They were even scared of the bubble sounds sponge filter makes. A possible issue that comes to my mind is, your fish might be nippy to the antennas. Rabbits are even more scared than mysteries are if they are bothered. Being scared and not opening up mightve lead them to starve to die. Also they are bad at finding food and they are not like mysteries. I personally target feed mine. Also rabbits are not ideal tankmates for mysteries for three main reasons. Mystery snail males may bother rabbits by trying to mate with them, may result in injuries and bothersome for both sides. Secondly, rabbit snails like their tank a bit warm, warmer than the mystery snails ideally want. Third, mystery snails are pretty fast at moving, finding food and eating. They can easily outcompete rabbits if they are kept together. The time difference of eating snellos between rabbit snail tank and mystery snail tank is huge in my experience. As nerites are wildcaught, it is not easy to know about their age once collected. So old age is always a potential factor. I would also consider the chances of starving here if the tank does not offer enough algae and biofilm to graze on since you mentioned there are also many more nerites grazing around. Sometimes people add too many in a level a tank can't support their diet enough, or a tank that is not mature enough. Just thinking,, why is kh 0?

I have black railroad board on this tank. Maybe it may work for you too, even though your tank is bigger?

Lovely tank. Penny is my fav! I think you should consider having a black background tho. Imo, It would make the tank look much better creating a complete look with the black frames and hiding sponge filter and cables Curling leaves might indicate a deficiency maybe?

There is a test of checking different methods post shipping for some snails. You may check it out

It is usually the same with most fish. Shrimp are food to most. Although big fish or predators, or let's say fish with big mouth overall tend to go for (and hunt) shrimp more. Majority of peaceful community nano tank fish leave juvenile and adult shrimp alone in my experience. They are more likely to show interest to tiny babies and snack on those but leave the big juveniles and adults alone. Having a lot of plants, hiding places etc would increase the survival rate of babies and let adults to have safe time when they are fragile like molting time. I dont think these two would specifically do more harm to shrimps than if you actually got honeys. They just look the same size on sale as juveniles. It is always good to observe their behavior and see if they show any interest to harm shrimp, just in case. @Cinnebuns has both honey gouramis and thicklipped ones so maybe she can help better for their shrimp topic. I only have honey, sparkling and gold gouramis, so I dont have experience with thicklipped ones myself.

Im not sure if this is a valid way of shipping all snails as not all of them can breathe air directly. If I am not mistaken, spixis can't breathe air like mysteries. I have at least never seen mine going to surface for this purpose unlike mysteries.

6.6 ph looks normal. Im confused why you focus on ph here. Seriouslyfish says 5.0-7.0 for embers, 6.6 is even on the up limit side.

Those are domestic red form of thick-lipped gouramis

Man, these clown loaches. I hope I have a big enough tank for these guys one day. I spesifically like the one on the left very much