Lennie

I think keeping the eggs in the fridge should be fine? I have never kept them in the freezer and I hatch bbs daily. I always keep them in the fridge. I have not seen a single fish that eats eggs until today. I use magnetic eggs and if I happen to miss any eggs, they keep floating in the tank until next water change. Maybe explain your hatching attempt in detail so we can make sure you are doing everything correctly just in case

I don't think honey gourami is aggressive at all. I have kept many gouramis and so many bettas, and my honey gourami is angelic. Can it be the golds you read about aggression? Because my golds, especially females, are quite aggressive. Ive kept my honey gourami with some other gourami species and bettas in different setups, and if one was aggressive in those tanks, it was never the honey gourami. I wouldn't really compare honey gouramis to bettas if you ask me in terms of temperament. In fact, none of my 11 bettas were similar with each other in terms of character. I know @Guppysnail has many males to a single female ratio as a result of buying a group of juveniles ( like 5m:1f if Im not mistaken), and she has no issues to my knowledge. But ofcourse, if one can choose genders, might be a better idea to go for more females than males. I understand your willingness to read and learn a lot. But I would highly encourage to read/listen the experiences of people you trust, read scientific papers, breeding reports, and learn mainly from these. We also have many friends in the forum that helps us based on their career, like Duck being a vet or Biotope biologist being biologist for example. Their perspective is also always valuable. Internet is great, but all I can say is, not all info one may obtain is good and true sadly. Or a lot of the times, these info lack experience to base it on. This way, these sort of info can be misleading. If I have never kept honey gourami in 4 different setups and not have friends that keep them in groups, I would hesitate to have them thinking the males are aggressive like bettas after reading this statement. I hope you can see my point there

Great pics bud. If you ask me besides more rounded body shape, I noticed a more pointy or wide head shape between different sexes but Idk which is which. the only exact way for me to say is, under right conditions, male grows those tiny spiky bristles around his nose like a beard while females only start to have a rounder belly carrying eggs Example of a male with bristles ( if that is what they are called, I am not sure) my females and males are all the same color. They look better red when they grow up tho. Also light plays a role I believe. juveniles they may look a bit patchy. Also another possibility is being hybrids if they are adult size Example of a female when I got a group of mine, one had issues growing for real. No deworming worked. It was skinny and very small while others were almost adult age. I had to feed my tank sera baktotabs which is an antibiotic food for other fish. After that, it recovered and increased in size and weight ending up being a healthy adult today like its siblings!

It's probably fine. But make sure your heater works properly and you set it up correctly if it needs to be set up. A bit lower than that can be nicer I believe. Also you mention 84 is the lowest you see. That can be a lil worrying. The ranges you mention are considerably low to too low for a betta @Kaiju Idk what sort of a research suggests 72F Please see this from an aquatic vet perspective

That pointy fin sadly dont work for all gouramis. Works for some like golds, pearls, dwarfs. But does not work for some others like honey gourami or sparkling. Rounded body/belly is very common for many female fish so that is still valid. If I am not mistaken the male picture you shared is the male of a wild type honey gourami. The ones you have in your picture are the "sunset" version. Sunset type Honey gourami m/f (f on left, m on right) m breeding dress: Wild type Honey gourami m/f

Hello, You can also check gold white cloud minnows. My friend @beastie has gorgeous ones. Sad thing is, I couldnt find any that look as good as hers. Everytime I find a good stock they always had black dots here and there and none were that clear gold. Check her journal! - Gold barbs are way too active and grow a bit big. If you are okay with barbs and their high activity level and size, you can also check rosy barbs. Males are orangey but females remain in gold tones. All those orange pics you see online are the males. This also gives you two different colors in one school. Another option is gold laser cories if you don't exactly want mid column schoolers You can also check yellow mollies. They are the fish that shows the best yellow irl I have seen so far. Not exactly a "schooling" fish, but they like to be in groups anyway yknow.

Maybe @TheSwissAquarist might help regarding your questions since they are also from the Europe Other than that, yes, I understand what you mean. You go watch a video on how to treat ich, and then you dont have ich-x in your country. You watch how to treat X disease/parasite but you end up being very limited with options or cant find it at all. However, since I started checking the ingredients of a product, I noticed I can actually find some other brands’ products with very similar or same ingredients locally. So I would highly encourage to read ingredients overall. As dewormers like prazi and levamisole, I get mine from my vet. There is no storebought product available for me too. Maybe you can ask your vet if you can find any. But you will need to work to dose them correctly and safely. If you ask me, I am not surprised that they are on live food diet. In fact, most live food cultures are sustainable (so more economic than constantly buying frozen food. Why would you freeze yours if it isnt something that goes bad or loses nutrition right? ) and more interesting to fish, and great to raise fry and trigger fish to spawn. Especially for fish like murder beans, it is the main diet. If possible, having your own sterile food cultures could be a better idea, this way, you will be less concerned about finding food I believe. But can be a lil challenging to find cultures, and when you do, having a sterile one sometimes. @Colu is from the UK and he is quite good with the diseases and medicine. Always helpful and caring. Maybe you guys would have access to similar products

This is the size of a female sterbai compared to female rummynose bleheri from this morning. There is no male in the tank all females currently so the females were getting even thicker during breeding mode sometimes rummynose even standing closer to the glass Ladies from their old tank, about a year old or so

While mating, the male sits on right top of the shell. Tho I havent seen any of my mysteries mating when they are that small. Now it sounds a bit unlikely if she is that big, she mightve already mated at where she came from. They can store sperm for a while. Tho, males may attempt to have snex with other males, or even other big snails like trapdoors and rabbits. So until I see eggs or checking their organs, I wouldnt be sure about their gender Im glad to hear all are active and doing fine after the shipment

Male mystery snails live to have snex. Sounds like mating Make sure you have a tight fitting lid and lower the water level a bit

I added two bladder snails to the container today. Let's see how it will go Thanks everyone for sharing their experience

Thanks for sharing Rube. I watched this one and many others on yt actually. But as I mentioned I cannot let water flow in my container but manually do the water changes as I cant keep them in the parents tank. Because the parameters of the tank I keep them are set for the red lizard breeding and does not match the parameters they hatched in ( I hatched them in their parents tank and moved before they start to freeswim) Mine can..... I bought opaque ones this time on purpose but still failed to prevent this issue sadly. This is what I have, One small, one medium size and one big size. Maybe not opaque enough?

Whats the way you prefer to raise if the parents are not taking care of them? I tried keeping the previous batch in the tank they hatched in but ram fry seems quite lost without parents. They spread everywhere, either consitently go to light source or towards the flow. If parents are there, they keep them in check all the time. It was very hard to control in their main tank, but now it is a bit better. But yes, I have a couple losses each day. Would love to hear your method for those that are not under parental care My ram parents go crazy if I keep a container in their tank. Constantly trying to pick on it trying to get the babies, super stressed nonstop. So I water change by taking water from their tank, however keep the container in red lizard whiptail breeding tank as they also like the warm temps. No other tank I have goes that high. But the issue is, red lizard tank parameters are not the same with gbr one. I keep my tank parameters based on the species so I have to use a container without flow

That's great. Have you ever observed one being better than another to clean up? I basically have mts, bladder snail, mini ramshorn, ramshorn, mysteries ( including babies), rabbits, spixis and banded mystery snail (Vivaparus georgianus)

Hey guys, I wonder if anyone keeps any sort of cleanup crew like small pest snails in their breeder box/container for uneaten foods while raising fry? My ram fry are at bbs stage right now. My ph is 5.5 so its pretty low (which helps with potential ammonium instead of ammonia I believe) and I keep up with multiple water changes a day but no matter what there is always a bit of uneaten food left on the bottom. And of course, deaths happen. So maybe one or two pest snails would be nice to clean up all of these until I notice or better to say, assist me between water changes What do you think? It is way too easy to overfeed live bbs to such small fry. I considered shrimp but they might be a bit harsh on the fry as they are tiny and may kill them especially during night time. They love to get their hands on everything. Does it make any sense to use one or two pest snails in the container? What do you think? @Fish Folk @jwcarlson @tolstoy21 and anyone else who would like to share some experience

My bad. I missed the temperature point and only focused on the capability of keeping the tank between the aimed temps. Especially considering it is healing, to make sure the immunity system is not negatively affected, keeping the tank above those abovementioned temp would be a good idea I believe. I tag the related part from a video Ive watched before. I "think" 50w should be fine for a 5g tank as long as it works properly. My smallest tank is 50 liters and I usually use 50 or 75w heaters on these. I believe the issue would arise only if the heater breaks down but otherwise should be okay?

If the room is not too cold I think it should be fine. At the end of the day these 25W heaters are supposed to be used in some tanks and 5g are one of the smallest options if not the smallest Keep the temp in check to see if it can keep it between the numbers you desire to see hope your lil friend gets better soon

You can feed both oto and pygmys after the lights are off. I would suggest feeding them on somewhere you can see the leftovers. So you can see if they eat during nighttime and if you overfeed or not. My pygmys and otos are quite active at night.

Hello Shadow, Im not that experienced with angels, but I think you may be right. I think angels are social enough. I started with very small 5 platinums but 4 didnt make the QT. When I visited LFS, I also saw they had deaths in the platinum angel tank later on. So I think it was the batch. bcoz other 6 angelfish tank were perfectly fine. Then, I got a friend to it, a blackveil. They were constantly schooling as juveniles before I sadly lost the other platinum juveniles. But I think the remaining one and his friend, Wednesday the blackveil, enjoys each others friendship from time to time. I personally wouldn't keep an angelfish alone. If you have a chance, and potential backup plan if it fails (which I know you do as you have many big tanks), I would get him a friend!

I will list a few but not in a way they are meant to be all kept together. Just to recommend so maybe you like any of them and build a tank around. 1) Hillstream Loach/Borneo sucker 2) Threadfin rainbowfish 3) Asian Stone Catfish 4) Pea Puffer 5) Neon Loach 6) Indostomus crocodilus/paradoxus 7) Glass catfish 😎And last......... Whiptails!

I agree! But their aggressive behavior was unexpected to me. I am considering to add a pair of cichlids, likely kribs but I cant decide if I should. What were you keeping yours with? In a community tank or as dither?

Hello everyone!🙃 So, around 2 weeks ago, I stopped by an LFS that I barely go since I was not a fan of the way fish tank looked before. I gave it a shot again and it was well worth it. They hired a new person and they seemed to work on tanks very well, fish looked much better in general. And.. Guess what! I found n. beckfordiis. 🥳 I got 4m:7f for my shallow long tank. They are very rare here. This is the tank they are in, it is a 110x40x25cmh. At the LFS, the males had breeding dress but overall they looked peaceful. However, when I put them in my tank, males all claimed a corner in the tank, and then, started attempting to breed with any female that enters their territory. Males sometimes shake their bodies and move around in circles for domination. Males usually not schooling with females and only females school with each other. Instead they just protect their own territory and wait for females to make a move. I know the reputation of reds and purples being a bit aggressive. But to be fair, my males are also considerably aggressive as well. Soooo... - What's your pencilfish experience like in general? - If you bred any, wanna share any tips/personal experience? Or about anything in general! - I know they are well known dithers for apistos as they are "top dwellers". well, Mine only eat from the surface sometimes, but usually are in the mid/bottom side of the tank, barely going top. - Would keeping a pair of Kribensis Moliwe be safe here with 11 pencilfish? ( @anewbie what do you think?) My friend just imported 5m:5f and Im interested in obtaining a pair from him. They look beautiful

@Odd Duck may help I believe Princess Peach is adorable for sure!

For me, it was the pygmy cories. I had 16 pygmys and 5 otos and otos started to school with them. Following everything they do. Swimming as a school from one place to another. Taking an air gulp from the surface. And also, eating whatever they eat. That being said, since pygmys also consume animal protein rich foods as well, It was not super ideal and I had a bloating issue on one oto after a couple months and I think maybe it was due to such diet of eating with pygmys.