Lennie

Personal opinion, but I would keep the tank of a halfmoon betta simple. They are basically bad at swimming. Many of those plants will be obstacles to swim through all the time, and taking a lot of swimming space from a small tank like a 5g. I would still do a plantsd tank but with only a few plants and provide no place for it to force itself to swim through or will feel like obstacles or limiting the already limited swimming space

Oh, and double tails are more prone to swim bladder issues from what I know, but I have never kept one myself. Just wanted to add it to the list

I have witnessed guppies harming snails more than bettas do, with my experience with 7 guppy tanks and 11 bettas to this day. You are aware of the risk. Things may go wrong, but as long as you have a second plan, you can try under control and supervision. I would ask myself, what would I do if my new betta bullies my snail? If you have an answer, you can try.

I personally use beech, banana, catappa and oak tree leaves. I collect banana leaves from my own garden, used to buy catappa leaves and collect beech and oak tree leaves when I go hiking in the forest African dwarf frogs are not legally allowed to import in my country if Im not mistaken. We don't have them so I have no experience. @Guppysnail kept and bred them. But I dont know if she paired them with any snail, but I know she also doesn't have rabbit snails. Maybe she may share some opinion, but If I gotta be fair, rabbits are too slow and clumsy to compare with any other snail really

Hello Louise, I have so many of these guys, and so many different species of them! How? These guys tend to give birth under stress of transportation if Im not mistaken, and when they arrive to the LFS their tank had many tiny babies around. I asked my LFS to get all these babies, because who will actually take care of such slow growing snail at a store for so long. They were willing to give me, so I had a chance to observe many different colors of them., They want that hot temps. I find 26-28C is a sweet spot. Those ranges brought me the cute little babies. They are clumsy and not great to keep with most tank mates imo. They can get bullied easily and are super slow to outrun anything or any place they feel discomfort. They love fine sand and burying into it. But it is a good idea to provide them objects around to correct themself when needed, again, not the best movers. They climb to glasses and drop themself to the ground randomly. Like mystery snails parasnailing, these have heavy shells and cant parasnail but basically drop themself down. Any tough objects around may damage their shell when they do this. They need a similar diet with mystery snails but they are very slow eaters. They LOVE leaf litter, I always provide mine dry leaves. I would not advice that. I tried that before and it didn't work. Why? Different water temp likings, mystery snails are so fast at moving and eating so they outcompete rabbit snails very much, and male mystery snails want to snex with every big snail bothering rabbit snails like crazy. So I had to move my mystery snails to another tank. Rabbit snails are awesome, AWESOME, but they kinda need that species only tank or very very peaceful tank to live happily. And no, not even guppies were OK to keep them together with. I bet small cories, some shrimp (not a big population because shrimp also constantly pick around and bully &scare snails if they are high in population). Here are some pics from my tank:

I think you may try avoiding obviously problematic genes for better quality of life Like avoiding scaled bettas (samurais, dragons, etc for diamond eye aka blindness), constantly coloring up nemos and kois for their tendency of being cancer/developing tumors, long fins and dumbo ears for low quality of life in terms of poor swimming ability And maybe leaning towards wild options that are tankbred (directly wildcaught ones may be problematic for the environment and usually dont do very well all the shipping procedure and such in my observations) You can even lean towards some cool unusual options like antutas. Very nice fish overall

yw! If you have any questions about their care, I can try my best to help you. I love these guys, and still keeping some and also bred them in the past. Also whiptails are not very popular. It is refreshing to keep and witness their behavior and look in a tank environment compared to very classic other fish we used to see on a daily basis. If you want similar colors, then super red bristlenose would be your best bet, but again, your amazon swords would be likely gone in such scenario. There are more brownish looking ones. Make sure you are actually buying the red ones and not those brownish ones (which some people say hybrids and easier to breed)

Hello, The tank is pretty and two sponge filters would be good enough, but a pleco would feel so exposed in such setup due to not having much hiding spots and the amount of light everywhere gets in the tank. Also, although I love plecos, I have to say they are hard to see unlike ancistrus. They mostly just hide until it is pitch dark in the tank, and you cant see them anyway. My L199 doesn't use caves and only utilitise gaps created by the wood or work pieces as her home. Bristlenose plecos are mainly out and you can see them very commonly. But, I guess you have a.swords and some people report theirs destroy the amazon swords, so may not be the best choice. If I were you, I would keep red lizard whiptails. I love these guys. They would love those temp ranges and ph. A group of 4-5 sounds good in a 29g.

Guppies are really bad at handling the pathogens when mixed in my opinion. You can quarantine the new ones to deworm and such if you worry, but they will be subject to the pathogens that already exist in your tank and their immunity may not take it well and you may still face problems and deaths that you dont see right now. The ones that will come to your house are likely to be familiar with each other and build resistance towards the pathogens in their home but your new tank and new fish is always a question mark that quarantine wont exactly help

It may look nice/cute but it is not good sadly Animal protein rich foods are not a part of their diet. It is like feeding a cow meat or feeding a carnivore pufferfish algae tabs. Wrong diet has impacts When I kept my otos with pygmy cories, they were schooling time to time. My otos learnt eating commercial food by imitating pygmys, in a level they were even scting like taking a gulp of air from the surface when pygmys do, but gradually it became problematic and I had to remove them to another tank because I lost one to a bloat due to consuming foods that they shouldnt. Cories do enjoy animal protein rich food but otos are aufwuch grazers and such animal protein rich food has no place in their diet. %46 protein vibra bites says and it has fish meal, krill meal, cuttlefish meal and silkworm pupae. I know it is hard to control these stuff in a community tank but I just wanted to share my experience.

Ive kept 11 bettas to this day. You are right, they dont live too long sadly. Genetics are totally messed up. We also buy many fish at juvenile size in stores, but it is hard to know the age of a betta you buy until you have a clear info on that If you want hardier bettas you can lean towards wild species that are tankbred

You should start the cycle by having an ammonia source in there at the first place, otherwise it will just read 0 unless you have a tap with ammonia or just very low numbers due to decaying organics You should add ammonia source like ghostfeeding or dr tims product, read 1.5-2mgL ammonia and start cycle this way. Once both ammonia and nitrites drop to zero and you read only nitrates, you are ok. It wont just sit all alone and cycle really, and dosing beneficial bacteria wont do much as there is no food (ammonia) available at the first place for them to start going on If you didnt dose

I use tropica aquasoil and for me it takes around 3ish weeks with a handful of established media added to the new HOB and water changes done pretty often, about once every two days You can also use aquasoil on bottom and cover it up with fine sand to block it reaching to water column ( or even put it in filter bags and cover them) This way plants utilize it by reaching it with their roots and you can use the top layer the way you want it to look. Cleaning the aquasoil is painful but this way you wont need to. I tried covering aquasoil in one of my recent setups and pretty happy about it. Using filterbags would be a better idea tho, my aquasoil was used and a bit mushy so I couldn’t

I havent used salty shrimp but I use shrimp gh+ product and mont clay powder of another local brand and used to use equilibrium in the past. usually these sort of gh+ and gh-kh+ shrimp products come with extra minerals and different ratios from what I understand. Im not exactly sure if the following info is true, I saw this chart on reddit; Bee Shrimp Mineral GH + Soft Water Mineral GH + 17.88% Calcium 6.76% Magnesium 2, 11% Potassium 0.69% Hydrogen Carbonate 41.50% Chloride 16.91% Sulfate 0.35492% Trace Elements and this is the equilibrium chart on Seachem’s official site ; Guaranteed Analysis Amounts per 1 g Soluble Potash (K2O) 23.0% Calcium (Ca) 8.06% Magnesium (Mg) 2.41% Iron (Fe) 0.11% Manganese (Mn) 0.06% Equilibrium has way more K. And different ingredients. The main thing that increases gh reading is calcium and magnesium from what I know. So it is also a question of what else the products you use have while you are reaching those wanted numbers. I personally didnt want to increase gh but also dose so much K at the same time, it felt harder to balance a tank in terms of nutrition for me. Someone also shared their experience like this: “I did a crude experiment on a gallon of RO, targeting 10gH on each gallon using saltyshrimp, GLA GH booster, and seachem equilibirum. The saltyshrimp ended up being 244ppm TDS and 11GH. The GH booster was 386ppm/12GH. The equilibirum was 426ppm/12GH.” Another point is gh is usually affected heavily by calcium and magnesium but TDS is affected by many things added. Neocaridinas are hardy. They are tolerant to many tank conditions. If you can support trace minerals in the water I think you can use equilibrium. If you are keeping sensitive shrimp species, or already struggling with controlling nutrition in the water column, using a shrimp specific product might be a better idea if you ask me. Overall, using a well known shrimp product for a shrimp tank makes more sense for sure. Maybe equilibrium+ Montmorillonite clay for trace elements and molting? I use it and very happy about it, solved my molting issues I have a tap with 18 dkh so I have never used kh products, I cant comment on that one. I used equilibrium with my orange neocaridinas in the past and I still had some molting issues going on now and then until I used mont. clay powder. (I have a wTer softener tho). Switching gh+ product was not all alone enough to stop molting issues totally but I didnt use salty shrimp and it probably have different ingredients than mine.

Maybe black fin cory (c. Leucomelas)?

How are they a problem? If it is not a shrimp and/or snail only tank, small fish would eat them. I have them in every tank of mine and I cant remember population being an issue even once Dont worry. they are good for your tanks. I would intentionally introduce them to any setup 🙂

Wait, So they can keep multiple potentially breeding shell dweller species or one species of shell dwellers in a community that includes them in a 29g tank or smaller mayhaps? Not many people are willing to spare huge tanks for such small sized fish usually. I see people commonly keep them between 10g to 29g tanks. @Tony s I have no first hand experience with these guys as it would be very problematic to rehome (nobody here really likes shell dwellers that much, they are very unpopular), but oh man breeding cichlids can be pain to keep in a community tank in general anyway. I would think a lot before really considering giving the tank you want a shot. There was a breeder hobbyist guy in my city I wanted to get gold ocellatus from, and he was even removing slightly bigger sized juveniles as one male one female all into new aquariums. Probably ocellatus are much more aggressive but yea If they are in demand and you can find homes easily like @mynameisnobody then I would still lean towards species only tank and observe their behavior better and play safer

I would lean towards which I like, and which is easier to rehome. Shell dwellers basically almost never sell good at my LFS. They are always there. Also they always need a species only tank set up for them, and quite agressive commonly. Rehoming might be problematic. So if any is in demand at your region, I would go for them, as shell dwellers are fairly easy to breed overall and you need future plans to what to do with the babies.

I had issues with two of my bristlenose plecos. So I setup a quarantine tank with antibiotics and a bit of salt. After qt ended, I moved my bristlenoses back, to their main tank. I turned the filter off there. Basically a barebottom tank with a couple piece of dried leaves ( for tannins and make bn feel slightly comfier while treating) I was super lazy to take the qt tank down, it was on floor level, so didnt bother lazy me for like two months. The tank was next to my planted isopod tank, so I kept giving them a daily LED light. I was like, Lennie, it is time to move and clean the tank. I saw two shrimps raised themself in that tank. No food ever added. No water change. Water evaporated heavily with salt and antibiotics concentrating. No filter. They were living there feeding on some diatom/algae growth due to light and probably got oxygen that way. Probably two super tiny shrimplettes jumped to the net when I moved my BN plecos to qt and lived there all the time. Suprising? Surely. Are neocaridinas hardy? Extremely. I don't say these as anything good or as a recommendation ofcourse. We should treat our animals very well, and this was an unknown scenario that is going on. But seriously, shrimp can survive conditions that are waaaaaaaay less than optimal. That's why, when I see people having issues with keeping neocaridinas, it always surprise me. Kuhli loaches are not that hardy by any means, in my experience tho.

He is a Turkish guy that is also from our local forum. He does some nice work. He was very kind towards everyone's and also my feedback and seemed like a nice person overall. Very accepting and caring of what others say. He is obviously talented, and being open to learning brings success for sure. He had plans moving elsewhere after 2 years back in the December. I wonder if he still plans so, too bad all the tank will be taken down if he does. Such nice work Hope his work and channel keeps growing and gets better. We have so many hobbyists in Türkiye but people barely record videos in English, so people around the world hardly notice any great works.

Make sure to check Lav’s snails yt channel sometime. She is a great snail mom

I would go for neocaridinas then, the color that your daughter likes. And only one color line. But they will need some culling at some point, you can easily move the unwanted colors in your line to other tanks of yours. They make great tank mates and lovely tiny cleanup crew as long as they are not a snack In my experience yellows are the most stable in terms of color and needs the least culling as neocaridina, but I did hear some people having issues with yellows in the past. I had no issues myself, and they breed nicely. Oranges being the best second. Blacks are the worst in my experience, very hard to keep the black color going. Blues shoot blues, rilis, blackish color and more, so hard to keep stable. Bloody marys are not easy to keep that precious looking going on. And my greens werenot high quality but I still liked them back then. Some yellows even have white sparkles like tiny stars on them, looks very cool IMO

Mine loves live bbs the most. White worms second. Small daphina was ok but they cant eat adults in my experience. I would advice checking those options. Mine refuse frozen food tho.

Your only option for a 10g is one amano shrimp for hairy type algae but mine dont really make any difference and eat any really. Nerites wont eat such algae, they eat diatoms/ flat surface algae My fav is SAE but they require at least 40g tank I would say preferably bigger. Mine are sooo active

I use white vinegar to clean but only an empty tank. I wouldn't use vinegar to clean a full fish tank myself.