Lennie

Thanks dude. In the second website you shared, as you mentioned for blue color, it states; “It also appears to be somewhat deleterious, causing lower fertility, weaker, smaller fry and more deformities to occur in many spawns. Our opinion of this gene is somewhat tainted“ The guy said they are quite prolific and lay eggs around once every 10 days or so if the eggs are removed from the tank. He said he had nice batches from them before many times. So no issues with lower fertility for these two it seems. However, right now I texted him and asked if he ever faced any issues about fry deaths or rising them healthy/in appropriate sizes. Or any other issues actually. He mentioned several times that the fish are very healthy and said if you don’t like them by any means, I can take them back whenever you want pay back. I don’t understand much from genetics, but as it seems to have marble genes obviously, can marble genes might be making these stronger than regular blues potentially?

Hey Ben, that’s a pretty tank. Your fishy friends would love to to be in bigger groups and your tank can easily support bigger groups. They enjoy their own kind a lot and the more the merrier! Also barbs usually are more peaceful in higher numbers as it helps to establish a pecking order, and one potential dominant fish cant be potentially aggressive or nippy. It is also good to consider male to female ratio. People tend to buy only males for example due to their better color display but for every male I would advice at least 2-3 females. Something nice to keep in mind! Or else males may show less color without a female around, and too low number of females may cause males to bully females and chase around nonstop. I have never mixed two barbs together. @nabokovfan87 may help on mixing barbs maybe Btw, something to keep about barbs is, they are considered to be nippy. So your tank size allows some big size fish options too. Barbs will be kinda limiting for any fish you wanna add in the future as they enjoy cooler waters high flow, crazy active and potentially nippy. Same kinda goes for danios. So you will need to avoid any long fin fish, or fish that prefer gentle flows or are slow eaters for example. that is something to consider for future Ben’s decisions 🙂 Btw, what plant is that on right front? If it is some sort of anubias species, make sure its rhizome is not buried into the shbstrate or else it will die. You can attach it to rocks or between your driftwood gaps easily. Gradually they grow their roots and hold well! Cherry barbs are usually on the peaceful side of barbs but gold barbs at my lfs were nippy to each other. In my observations rosy barbs and cherry barbs were the most peaceful ones at my lfs. I only kept rosy barbs myself and I like them. Sadly I had a really bad batch of them but within the first week, they gave me 3 surprise fry 🙂

While scrolling down some fish content on ig, I saw this cute angel. Does anyone know what these are called? Or is it even a strain? Also, I saw someone selling his angel pair: they are named “blue marble angels”. I have never seen them irl before and the video quality looks a bit poor. Do you guys think they look as they should be? Could be a nice breeding project? please share your opinion. I will ask for more clear pics and gonna update the topic in the future. Here are the pictures of the fish. Hoping to edit with high quality pictures if the owner shares some with me. Dim lighting is also no help combined with poor quality video screenhots :,) @Fish Folk He sent me a video and I took more screenshots from it: Male: female:

Cj you make me laugh with these duckweed battles 🤣 you will win it… one day.. 🤪 😄 Btw Ive noticed duckweed LOVES light. When I took my 29g down which had tons of duckweed, and put plants on a tub that gets daylight a bit, Duckweed almost never grows there. And without appropriate light where other plants survive or even perform an okay growth, my duckweed die and never multiply interestingly

you can glue the roots but never glue the rhizomes, otherwise it will die. usually whatever you do, try to leave the rhizome part alone. That being said, I find sticking the roots between driftwood pieces and rocks work the best for myself. I never use any glue or lines to attach them myself. They hold insane after some time anyway

Decaying food is messy. Yes it releases ammonia but also gets moldy and leeches other stuff to the water column. If you already cycled with ammonia, I would not ghostfeed in the tank myself. When I ghost feed with bottled bacteria and/or filter gunk, I cycle filters in a seperate barebottom tub so the messy food particles don't end up being everywhere in the tank. I just squeeze the cycled sponges and put them into their new tanks, so the decayed food dont end up being in the tank stuck between everywhere.

I see The last time the water guy was over, he tested and my RO tds test read 24. So whatever that 24 is coming from, it may be affecting the ph you say? I have both water softener in the whole house + RO water. If it still reads this way, is it possible to read the perfect 7 with 0 tds? Seems kinda hard. My tap with water softener already reads 0 gh, however has a tds of 370. So RO system cuts that part from 370 to 24. But gh reads 0 both ways

I had very bad luck with salvinia shipment so I feel you. However, my frogbits and water lettuce arrived in much better condition. Maybe you can give them a try when you settle everything down. For RR, you can use this to get rid off from your current algae problem as well as to dip your new upcoming plants! Here is the detailed topic: Here is the website: https://reverserespiration.com/

Ah, my bad. Ive just woken up from a nap and checked so many topics to help on bed. I probably got confused with someone else having betta as their stock with a different question. Sleepy lennie brain 🙂 Sorry. Now I gotta go find where I read that 🤣 Contrasoil is usually known to leech for a shorter period and lower amounts from a few people I've heard of. Especially compared to ones like ADA or Tropica. While waiting for plants, I would try to get rid of that algae problem. Have you tried RR on them? Also their rhizomes are not in the substrate right? I would also take your decoration and rock out and clean it from algae rn before setting up everything with the new plants. Are you sure those floating plants are alive? Decaying plant matter also contributes to the ammonia. If they are dead, I would throw them away. I once had a salvinia order which almost all died except two tiny pieces. Those lil two tiny green pieces ended up recovering and growing. When I wanted to reach to my bettas desired 7 range ph, I was adding small bottle of dechlorinated tap water with water changes and it didn't take much for me to reach the desired ph, as my tap is 8.0 ph and 20 kh. What's your tap water parameters are like? You said soft water so low gh, but what about kh and ph?

she's in a bigger tank now. Swims even more, and healthier I would say. Also I separated the tanks with my L199. and MTS. So I had to feed my pleco during daytime because otherwise, MTS mpopulation were rising crazy high if I feed her at night, due to plecos being messy eaters. Floating food pieces everywhere= yummy snail food everywhere. And she was getting lots of snacks during daytime pleco feeding. ah. So stuff are more balanced now. She can be a crazy eater, but my SAEs are faster and crazier than her, so she can't overeat anymore 😄

False. My Ro water has exactly 6.0 ph. it depends on your system I guess. It is usually between 5 to 7 based on what you have I believe. Ideally, you should take some water in a cup, aerate it with an airstone, and after some good amount of time, test the water again to see what you actually get as ph from your RO once it is aerated in the tank I personally dont find adding aquasoil later on a good idea. Instead I use it from the start, and expect it to complete its high leechjng period and after parameters are stable and the tank is cycled m, then I add the fish. So your soil is probably leeching ammonia rn. The smallest tank size ive used aquasoil was 50 liters and with an established filter and lots of water changes, it took a while to clear all ammonia out with tropical aquasoil. Your probably leech less in general but might be the reason why you are reading ammonia(or ammonium). btw normal substrate+ 1 inch extra aquasoil would n top, equipments, plants and all, you cut a lot from a 5g tank water size. 5g is already pretty small. i would try to find some way to fix this problem. Even my 50 Liter betta tank feels small with a very thin layer of substrate and a few baby endlers. So yours is smaller than the half size of my betta tank without such thick substrate already. Please dont get it wrong. I just keep lots of bettas and they love swimming and 10g is bare minimum in my opinion. So feel like we need to increase the potential swimming space on what you have on your hand to make your betta feel comfier. I kept this guy in 42g too and he was crazy happy Btw, Ive just remembered. You are gonna need a water around 7 ph for healthy bettas. Ph both on higher or lower end won't be good. The middle is always better because bettas tend to have health issues pretty easily from what I see online. Thankfully I haven't faced any on 8 ( 3m, 5f) I have, except one female in the picture being a lil eggbound.

Don’t underestimate how many live bbs you can get by using only a few eggs. I use like 3/5 of a teaspoon and feed 13 tanks with it easily.

What do you mean by that?

I would do nothing and add fish when it arrives. And monitor the water parameters after it being added. If you tried your cycle many times to see if it works, and you are reading 0 ammonia and nitrite, and your tank is growing plants. I don’t think you need anything else

I think they would feel comfier in a much bigger group. 20L can home way more than 11. If you are willing to spend some more on the size of the group, I would personally make it 20-25.

That looks like a white cloud to me. Your light might be showing off the stripe color much brighter. Usually lighting changes the look of the fish a lot. Especially when the fish is very close to light source, just like the picture where it is swimming on the top bottom half is not red, so it does not look like a neon tetra. Neither does its body shape tbf.

Moonlight Gouramis ( Trichopodus microlepis ) maybe? beautiful iridescent silver color!

I would use stuff like Tropica Premium nutrition which has no Nitrogen and Phosphorus, only Potassium and trace elements

For nitrates, they can get elodea or hornwort + floating plants your friend like. Amazing combo to fight nitrates. even in my overstocked tanks, I usually ended up reading 10 nitrates max on weekly water change days. And my tap has 20 nitrates:) I basically add nitrates to an overstocked tank with water changes and end up reading lower than what I start with! Def give these fast growing water column feeders a try. P.S: I always alum dip my plants and from my experience it really harms elodea and hornwort, basically kills them most of the time. Again h202, death. If I had access to seltzer water I would def try RR. If you decide to get any of them, please avoid harsh dipping methods, they cause serious harms in my experience to these plants. I barely see such effects on my other plants once dipped

I don’t have wild types but I have 8 fancies. Wild types usually require an extra responsibility imo because they are fairly new to the hobby and they are endangered in the wild due to being collected nonstop as far as I know. I personally wouldn’t get a wild type if I wont be breeding. Aliens are not wild. For a fish to be wild, they should be existing in the wild I believe. So aliens just hybrids, hybrids that look amazing. However please know that they come with some health issues. Same goes for dragon bettas with those scales. I have gold dragon bettas and my male and female are totally healthy. I avoided any blindness problem by getting fish that dont have those white scales reaching to their eyes. Some get completely blind due to these scales growing over their eyes. Idk if health issues are avoidable on aliens. I had my plakat betta live peacefully with my angels, honey gourami and black rams. It usually always depend on the specific behavior of the betta AND other fish. Sometimes a betta can be gentle but other fish can be bullies too. here is a pic from my 42g tank.

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Dojo loaches? yay, right? @dasaltemelosguy Beautiful fish btw, love to see them always, minus the parrot. I can understand why ur wife named them that way. Poor guys tho

😮 Sparklings are also nice. I have 3 in my female betta sorority tank (it is a community with 5 ladies) ,they are cute and peaceful, just like honeys. I really like the look of gold gouramis but yes, their potential aggression scares me! What were the ones you had problem with?

I have been searching about axolotls lately and I like this guy's channel. https://www.youtube.com/@FrankiesAquatics He has tons of videos about axolotls and he breeds his own. But I guess he is in the UK. Even then, you can enjoy his care videos!

Sera Micron nature usually works great for me for my guppy and endler dry. For more carnivore fish, based on the size: live bbs, and now recently cultured microworms and vinegar eels. I think frozen would work good as long as the fry are good size to eat them, and they are not seeking for live food action like baby bettas. I personally struggle feeding freeze dried food even to my adult fish. Sera Micron nature has %51 spirulina and %18 krill and some brine shrimp. I like it. @nabokovfan87 has been researching about ricefish lately. Maybe he has come by any fry care articles.