Lennie

To my knowledge, females still can lay eggs without males present. They are just infertile eggs. I have 11 adults but they have all been mixed with each other at some point so I don't even bother checking their gender as they potentially stored the sperm anyway 🤣 You can check it's gender actually

As Gup said, No, but males do mate with other males too. Even with other snails with similar size and they don’t care about the gender. Maybe that confused you

Both of those tank sizes are extremely small for a contant grazer that accepts no food. I don't think it would work in the long term, likely they will starve

I wanna say Just don’t. You have it for 8 months, u probably got him when it was around 2-3 months. So already pretty close to complete its lifespan sadly. Mysteries don’t live too long.1-1.5 year is usually the average. Let it live its old age peacefully and don’t risk applying or using anything on its shell

that is a mystery how! 🤣 She live feeds them with bbs, worms, etc but they are super clumsy. I know she puts so much effort to provide them a good care. However, like a bbs can swim in front of their mouth and they wouldn't bother making a move mostly 🤷🏼‍♂️ @beastie and I sometimes question how these do survive in the wild 😄

the thing is, males are the ones that are usually colorful. Females usually look paler in general. Like in the given examples below, where the female is wild colored or more yellowish toned(some call them "sunsets"), you can see how colorful the males are: F on left, m on right: again M:

I use GH+ and some mineral powder. But nothing to increase kh! I poured in some tap water with prime, let's see if adding kh will make any difference!

Thanks Duck, I hope it gets fixed soon! 🫠 I came across something like this online. Can it be my RO having no kh so the bacteria can't do its job? @Odd Duck @Biotope Biologist

I ve kept 5 males and 6 females so far. To be fair, I think females are wayyyy too underrated. Also usually, females tend to have much shorter fins even if they are halfmoons. So you can consider females in general I think without their fins. For males, plakats would be the healthiest. Try to avoid scaled ones, marbles and kois (as long as you dont source them from a breeder that breeds the ones that color up from the start mostly) in general. In my experience with males, my super yellow male is the healthiest so far. I would say my hmpk male is the second best. Silver copper halfmoon gets third spot, gold dragon male fourth, and big ear hm male is the last one. You can also check wild forms, however please source them from the breeders that actually breed them and not get wild collected ones. Because they are fairly new in the hobby, it is kinda a mystery if they are actually endangered due to being collected from the wild. I know there are people try to breed wild bettas to meet the demand.

what snails are we talking about here? do they have filter/oxygen source?

I agree that plakats have much better swimming skills, however we can't deny the problem comes with the color types and genetics too which are also valid for common plakats. Like aliens are also known to be problematic and they are human made hybrids. Kois that color up nonstop, scale bettas, marbles, dragonscales, are known to be prone to developing tumors, cancer, can go blind due to scale growth on their eye, and many other stuff. So "every bit of color" may actually mean tend to being prone to cancer/tumors too. Also at this point bettas are usually inbred a lot. But yes, I do think plakats would be the best bet in general at least if you avoid marbles, dragonscales, aliens, and kois. And ofcourse, big ears. Don't even need to mention that I believe. They have the worst quality of life in terms of swimming, imo.

Hey Matty, No plants where they come from except a few frogbit. No substrate in mystery snail tank, there is a fine sand on rabbit snail tank because they like to bury. about the sponges: the big sponge is; 14 cm high, 12cm dia. mid size one is 9cm high, 12cm dia.

yes I believe a plakat would do okay with that height and ph. At least 2 male and 4 female plakats of mine do Is your HOB working as a waterfall? That can be an issue pushing betta away as they like to feed on the surface and breathe there so they spend a good amount of time on the surface. If not, is there chance you can level up the HOB so it does not create a waterfall?

Try to plant heavier especially the background, let shrimp colony establish, and then add the betta. If you wanna keep the cycle up, then you can add snail(s) during this time until you add the fish, if your tank is cycled

Hey there, This tank size is okay for the betta. I wouldn't call it big or tiny. I am keeping my betta sorority in a 125Liters tank and I have kept a plakat betta in a 160 liter community tank before. All doing fine. Bettas usually like lenght and depth, but not height. Rather than the tank size, the height is the issue. Ive tried long fin bettas in 40 and 50 cm high tanks and nope, that's a pass. I had to remove them in a few minutes seeing them struggling for real. They do great in 25-30cm h tanks. Plakat bettas usually have the best quality of life overall when it comes to swimming. If I were you, I would def keep a plakat there considering the height. The best ph for bettas is the neutral, or a lil acidic than that. Some people can successfully keep them in lower end or higher end. I've tried everything between 6.5-8.0 and it worked for me. But ideally I would target neutral or slightly acidic ph, given most bettas are prone to fin related diseases. When it comes to shrimp, it depends on the betta. Two males of mine don't eat any. One would eat them all. I'm not sure if my 4th male goes for them, I haven't seen him on action. I never tried shrimp with my females, but Ive only had black roses and green jellies with my bettas, and they are not as colorful and attractive as cherries.

Even if their bioload as a pair is higher then all those snail/guppy tanks in combination, wouldn’t it catch up with it at this point after 2 weeks? Also why am I reading lower ammonia gradually after I stopped feeding, but no nitrite or nitrate in a barebottom no plant tank Isnt it interesting

I’ve just noticed that I forgot to add, I cleaned the sponges in tank water before introducing them to the discus tank. So they are not dirty or full of detrius.

Okay. I have never experienced such thing in my 15 years of fishkeeping. So I need some suggestions. Has been a couple of weeks since I have the discus breeding tank going on. But there is an issue that never stops. READING THE AMMONIA/AMMONIUM 😒 About the tank and equipment: the tank is 180 liters, 60cmx60cmx50cmh. Has two cycled sponges and one airstone running. one sponge came from the tank with 5 adult mystery snails. other sponge came from a tank with 16 rabbit snails, some guppy fry and shrimp. So as you can guess, both sponges are already dealing with lots of bioload as it is. Literally poop machine tanks. The sponges were kept in tanks with 10gh, 20kh, 8.0 ph with no ammonia or nitrite, only nitrate readings for months. I know they are cycled %100. The discus tank is around 6.0 ph, sometimes a lil lower, sometimes a lil higher. No kh and low gh. However, the thing is, it reads ammonia and Idk why. I tested the Ro just in case to check if there is ammonia, 0. All clear 👍🏼 I tested the RO, again just in case, after using prime to see if chlorine cause me to read ammonia. Nope, again, still 0 ammonia.👍🏼 I opened a new package of Sera's liquid test kit and tested again. So I know the test kit is not the issue here.🤷🏼‍♂️ -> I stopped feeding them for 4 days and used some stability. Ammonia( or Ammonium with this ph I guess?) started to lower but never read zero still. The thing is, there is no nitrite or nitrate readings even when the ammonia lowers down. Weird. I fed them for the first time yesterday again, boom, 1ppm ammonia( or probably ammonia again) today. I don't overfeed or anything. There were no uneaten food particles on the bottom. The tank is bare bottom. -> I siphon the tank after feeding time everyday. So food never sits on the bottom of the tank. -> the tank looks milky sometimes. That was my sign to test the water at the first place. The test kit reads ammonia/ammonium. But fish never really act weird or show the signs of ammonia poisoning. P.S: I always use prime during water changes even when I use RO, and I double dose to be on the safe side. I am a better safe than sorry type of guy. I am feeling lost about whats going on. All other tanks I have are fine as they are, including the ones I use RO and tap, the ones are overstocked or being fed 2-3 times a day. What's up with this one? Any ideas? Does the cycle crash for some reason? I don't think 6 ph is that low to affect the cycle.

I would personally keep an extra cycled filter on hand, let the new water sit in the bucket for some good time until all ammonia and nitrite clears up and water change after it has no ammonia/nitrite reading.

If he ( or she? also looks like she too) is actually armageddon, the it is supposed to look like this I guess instead of normal light colored ones considering its body color. Tho I am not sure if it is an offspring of same tail/fin structure with actual armageddon parents. They don't exactly look like anything that directly fits under a label to me. If you liked it, go for it. You can provide them a good home and witness its change. But it wouldn't be a good breeding project member if you want offring to sell for good money cause they don't seem to carry actual fin structure requirements if I am not mistaken. Is its price on the lower end?

the bottom fin gives that dark armageddon vibe yes. But its tail structure does not exactly belong to a line if I'm not wrong. Maybe it is an offspring of parents with different tail structure. Also he looks very pale and sad. I can't imagine what he would end up looking like in a happy cozy home. Planning to get him?

I personally disagree with this one based on my experience Otos eat a very limited type of algae. Only some flat surface algae and that's it. They are usually done cleaning diatoms in 1-2 days and basically done. Also they are majorly wildcaught, subject to very questionable collection procedures from the wild, and goes through way too bad stuff just to eat diatom and some flat algae in our tanks. It is very hard to make them accept commercial food in general, has to be quarantined as they are wildcaught but they are mostly always starved and a fresh new qt tank will offer no food to these guys. The only way I can recommend them is getting tank-bred ones that are known to accept commercial food and veggies. I have 3 SAEs(which I again recommend tankbred ones) and they only chase each other from time to time. Well, it was more common when they were small, but at this point they quit that behavior almost(which is to be said the opposite online and it conflicts with my experience so far, it is mentioned that they school as juveniles and get territorial as adults). I have never seen mine chasing any other tank member personally. I have lost a bit of track regarding this topic, so Idk if it is mentioned, but don't forget that you will need a cycled sponge for a quarantine tank too. You can also consider whiptails. Some tend to be on the herbivore heavy diet side. You can check royal farlowella whiptails. Whiptails are amazing creatures. I only have red lizard whiptails but they are on the carnivore side mostly and not really algae eaters. Meanwhile royal farlowellas may assist you through it as they need majorly a herbivore diet. They would love your tank I believe.

Great post CJ, thanks for sharing it with us all🥰

They are adorable😍😍 And I loved the grey one the most. What a beauty! This is very true. Keeping chickens played a huge role for me to go vegan 9 yrs ago. They are super caring and smart. Full of emotions. They literally talk to us just like a cat or dog talks back. 🤍

My turn!