Lennie

you should show me how sometime :') Im scared to damage it while cleaning

that happens to one of my 50s too. And recently started happening of 70 as well but I have never cleaned the motor/impeller part of my hobs so maybe thats why. When you slightly touch it, itstarts working. As it said, it is probably magnetic and it may get stuck. But in my experience this usually happens when I do a water change so the basket gets empty

Yes. All 4 of my Aquaclears (1x30, 2x50s, 1x70) self prime as long as the water level is high enough in the tank and the basket does not empty itself during a power out or such. However, if the water level goes below the motor basket level during a water change, it empties. Then ofcourse it cant prime in such scenario. I like my AC70, I use it as only filter in my 100x40x40cm/160 liter tank. The only problem I have ever had with ACs to this day is, sometimes their impeller dont function directly when you plug it in back, I believe its magnetic and may get stuck?

Ammonia to nitrite takes pretty fast tho. Nitrite to nitrate takes much longer. So this would lead an overdose of nitrite, especially considering ammonia ends up reading more nitrite and nitrite reading more nitrate on test results when converted to the next one. Idk if it is true, but sth like this: 1 ppm ammonia --> 2.7 ppm nitrite --> 3.6 ppm nitrate. If you dose 2ppm ammonia and also nitrite, and while nitrite is processing for much longer time but ammonia constantly increasing the nitrite, you will then either depend on nonstop testing and constant water changes or waiting forever for nitrite to process and completely eliminate. I dont have access to this product in my country. But when I started researching for saltwater tanks, I saw MANY people cycling with this. Again, I have no first hand experience, and salt water is not the same as freshwater, but it is way more common beyond saltwater people using these instead of some other ammonia releasing starting technique like dropping in fish food. Or old school shrimp method

Hello My friend @beastie kept one. She may help

I lost two of my discus to a gill disease. Assumed to be gill rot. Nothing ever I tried worked for 8 months of treatment Discus rarely do good in such type fully substrate community tank environment sadly. They are mostly used to and require pristine conditions with perfect water quality. I will tag our friends here @Odd Duck @Colu @jwcarlson but I would highly recommend going to simplydiscus forum and also ask there ASAP Also you should share your water parameters, temp, tank size, stocking, how you acclimated, etc to find a better answer

Guppies are horribly mean towards snails in my experience. I did try several species with rabbit snails, vivparus and mystery snails. They do bother them A LOT. As a person with experience with maaany snails and 7 guppy species only tanks, I would say snails working successfully with guppies are less likely than it fails. Once I moved a snail of mine, Morty, to my panda guppy tank and he suddenly was inactive all the time. I saw him moving around one day. Oh boy, even the tiniest baby guppies were biting his flesh when he was out. So yea, guppies are pretty bad snail tank mates in my experience. All my snails were scared to death to come out in any guppy tank during the day just because almost all species I tried them with bullied them whenever.

Ramshorns eat maaaaany things that nerites don't even touch in the tank environment. I am not sure if this has anything to do with directly adding nerites. IF it does, then nerites should die even faster if it is about running out of food sources. As nerites basically eat diatoms and some flat surface algaes, while ramshorns eat basically everything decaying, commercial food, algae, biofilm, etc. Algae except hairy types basically. 100g tank would offer lots of natural growth for ramshorns to starve to death if you ask me

It will effect if your ph is low. Shells would dissolve, and increase kh and gh as they are basically rich in calcium carbonate. If your ph is high enough, you will barely notice any effect really. Some shells may have very sharp edges or tips. Be careful of them potentially hurting fish and try to not include anything feels sharp if you wanna use them.

I dont think 29g is suitable for any of those fish you mentioned really. If you google enough, you can find so many people keeping even goldfish in a 1 liter bowl online. You will always find numbers or care guides being recommended everywhere. Many people that love to comment on or write about stuff don't even have first hand experience with such fish. I did keep blood parrots in the past (my biggest regret along with discus sadly in this hobby) and I have goldfish. I don't have fh but I do know 3 people who has/had it. I don't think anything below 40g is suitable for a fancy goldfish that doesnt grow crazy big, but long body ones basically needs a very big tank or a pond. Ideally, I think even my 160 liter tank started feeling optimal in less than a year and I dont know what to do with mine in the future and they are indeed fancy goldfish. The reason why maybe it is adviced to keep goldfish at 29g because many goldfish today barely can even swim properly due to being bred to look "cute" with horrible effects on the fish's health overall, and even on the most basic aspects of its life like swimming or seeing. But for more normally shaped bodied healthier goldfish, bigger tanks or even ponds are awesome based on where you live ofc. Flowerhorns are basically kept at just barebottom no decoration tanks. Because their human made hybrid nature, their huge heads are fragile. I believe that's being the main reason why, not many people are willing to keep a single fish in a just zero decoration fish only tank even barebottom and spare a big tank at home just for that. Most people don't have many tanks like so many of us do here, so they want to utilise their space at home and the species they keep based on the conditions. FHs are fairly active swimmers, unlike many fancy goldfish. I know some might not agree with me, but hybrid fish commonly tend to be already problematic as they are already. Even going further and having a "short body" would make it even worse. The look comes with MANY problems as it is basically just the look to the eye, but overall completely more health issues to the fish itself. I would sincerely encourage to focus on optimal conditions and best care rather than focusing on the minimums. Meeting bare minimums is not the same with providing an ideal environment if you ask me. I could sustain my life based on living on meeting my own minimum requirements, but I wouldn't want that my whole life by any means. Especially considering we choose to keep fish, regardless of their will to be kept as is, at least we should try to provide our best, and minimum requirements are not meeting the best standards by any means. Personally, if I am only able to meet the minimums for a fish with such size and activity level, I would rather pass and try to set up a tank with smaller species that would find it heavenly

Hey Rube, No, I have no experience on that one. I have only kept a single honey gourami as a centerpiece unlike all other gouramis I had. @Guppysnail had 4m:1f from what I remember (she got them as unsexed juveniles at the beginning) , but she also had no issues if I am not mistaken. I bet it is the breeding aggression tho

In my experience, the colony does not survive in the long term in expected rates as long as there is enough hunters no matter how many hiding points provided. Baby shrimp basically roam around carelessly.

I wouldnt do 3 amanos myself. To be fair, when I tried an amano in a shallow 50 liter tank of mine, it seemed unhappy. Personally, I think amanos like bigger tanks. I have two in 125 liters and I personally wouldnt keep amanos anything below 100 liters myself. Those guys are fairly big. Probably many will disagree tho To me, the rest is fine. But yes, just as mentioned above, mixing different colors of neocaridinas will eventually go back to wild colors. If it is not something you want, then it is a better idea to keep only one color. Also I would keep at least 10 pygmy cories. These are all such tiny fish so bioload will be fairly low and easily maintained especially if the tank has fast growing plants

I have only two. 1m and 1f. And it was problematic due to him chasing the female a lot If you get very small ones, it will be likely hard to sex them. I am not very experienced on goldfish, as I have been keeping only two, excluding the childhood experience which I don't count. But I would try to keep at least 2 females per male. @mynameisnobody has more experience on goldfish if I remember correctly. Nice choice on keeping goldfish btw. I think they are such great fish with high personality. My another recommendation is just to avoid fully egg shaped bodies, absurd eyes, or anything that looks abnormal. You will likely deal with nonstop issues and health problems rather than enjoying fishkeeping with such fish. I got me low grade orandas for quite cheap. I have not seen a single swim bladder or wen issue yet. Not even once. They dont have that nonstop growing wens covering the eyes or big egg shaped bellies that cause problems like pricey ones do. Telescopes or celestial eyes, etc. all have eye issues as you may guess. Many have swimbladder issues, swimming issues, and so on. Closer to their natural carp body and look, usually the healthier it is. Like ranchus look very cute but that spine is very bad. Imagine human bred with such absurd spines and deal with it whole their life to look cute.,Many looks are commonly problematic for the goldfish so choose your fish friends friends wisely. Personal opinion

Mine lived on 3-4mm river sand and now a mixture of tropical aquasoil and very fine sand so far for a year. I havent had any problems yet. They do take the small rock pieces and sand to their mouth and they spit it back. Mainly doing this during feeding time I think it should be okay. From what I understand, these guys live in similar substrate in nature anyway? I want to add a note here. They do disturb the bottom of the tank a lot, so the water gets dirty with fine particles. Make sure to have a good filter and add good mechanical filtration. Sponge filter was able to keep up with the biological filtration, but the particles in the water column was so bad no matter how big or often I water change. Big HOB with prefilter sponge, coarse sponge and filter wool helped me a lot Another note, if you will get a couple ( i would do 3 in your tank size), try to get 1m:2f. males do chase females from time to time much worse than livebearers do. Spreading the males chasing behavior is needed. I have 1m:1f and community tank stopped this behavior to a high degree, but species only tank=male focuses on the female a lot

I use fine sand in bn breeding tank with no issue other than how fast it gets dirty but Discus tank and using substrate is a questionable topic in general. I would suggest searching deep on that topic on simplydiscus forum and asking for opinions there. Personally, discus keeping prevented me to enjoy hobby when I gave them a try. They are needy and fragile. Think 10x before obtaining discus. I saw the examples of a few people finding success with discus just like any other fish in a community tank with no special care needed. That's very rare, and it was nothing like my personal experience.

I had a similar topic back in the days that you may like reading

You use aquasoil? If so, at least personally I havent seen anyone vacuuming aquasoil like a normal substrate at best prople usually try to keep the top surface cleaner and thats it. I have never vacuumed aquasoil myself. It naturally can get dustu and mushy anyway

You shouldnt face ammonia after 4 months anyway under normal conditions. there must be something causing it. Maybe something you use leeches to the water column? Once I moved 3 cycled sponges to my new discus tank and the cycle always crashed. I thought it was the breeding cone I added. I took the whole tank down, washed it with hydrogen peroxide and white vinegar. Threw everything yo trash previously in it. No matter what I do, cycle was never there. I set it up from zero. Moved in only a single established filter this time. Never had issues ever again. If I were you I would set up the tank from zero and dont use anything in it. No way this is normal. This sort of cloudiness should go away in couple days. 4 months is huge Did you by any chance use cleaning products of any kind at any point?

I personally think fine sponge are much better. As long as you are okay with doing maintenance more often ( and it is just basically washing the sponge so that's like 2 mins a week) fine sponge is better. I have coarsed sponge in one of my tanks too and I also have issues with it. I dont like it

not a good idea if you ask me. My LFS sells them in such tank size, and they are very active fish. I think they need a fairly big swimming space to satisfy their needs. They look pretty bad at that tank size at my LFS. If I were you I would consider tiny rasboras like chilis or a betta betta having a risk to pose dangr for shrimp ofcourse

Dwarf gouramis are truly problematic. Well known iridovirus is a common problem other than that, there is a study done on those gouramis to check common diseases/problems, and oh boy, it is bad https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289663392_Survey_on_frequent_diseases_in_imported_dwarf_gourami_Colisa_lalia “The authors examined the carcasses of 110 (41 males and 69 females) dwarf gourami (Colisa lalia). During the study 22 males and 39 females of theexamined dwarf gouramis showed lesions on the surface of their body and on the fins. In the gouramis with superficial wound more severe lesions developed such as ulcerative dermatitis in 38 cases and septicaemia in 8 cases. Culture from the basis of the ulcers revealed the presence of Aeromonas hydrophila besides ubiquiter bacterial flora. In case of 6 dwarf gouramis Tetrahymena piriformis infection was observed, while in 11 other cases white-spot disease caused by Ichthyophthirius multifiliis was diagnosed during the supplementary examinations. Pathological simple fatty infiltration was seenin the liver of 14 dissected gouramis, in additional 4 Capillaria species were also detected from the gastro-intestinal tract. The survey concluded insixgouramis with the result of tuberculosis in fish. Nine female gouramishad mature, but partially degenerated eggs in their body cavities.”

Drip acclimating shrimp shouldnt be your problem. That is the safest way for inverts. I believe there is another issue that causes the loss in your scenario

Mine are very peaceful. With a group dynamic of 3m:8f. I think if your stock is just like mine you can keep them there. I have 11 in a shallow 15g but I know people having issues with keeping them together. So I cant tell you exactly you can keep them there. But in my experience, mine are peaceful

Try white worms too. They love it I dont have grindal worms but I bet they would also love grindal worms