Lennie

Some fish can tolerate bad conditions better than others. Like a zebra danio being much hardier than a discus for example. So tetras doing okay might not be a good sign of well being. How are the adults doing? How long has your tank been running/was it cycled? Have you introduced too many babies at once so your cycle could not handle it maybe?

Sorry to hear that your are having losses. That kinda sounds like ammonia poisoning to me. You should get yourself a test kit, otherwise people can't really help you. Pure breed guppies are indeed getting genetically weak, but losing every fish in one day does not sound related to genetics really. I would do a big water change right now and get a test kit asap

If you want something low maintenance, understocking is the key to be honest. My water parameters are the same but I dose gh with equilibrium. Generally fish and inverts that like higher ph, want higher gh too. That's the part that is a lil bit problematic. Dosing equilibrium is just super duper easy tho. Highly recommended

She is the cutest🧡

I don't understand how a 2yo soil would be leeching ammonia, especially fluval one. Fluval one is not even known to be leeching much when it’s new! there must be something else other than the soil I believe. If I were you, I would leave the soil, remove gravel, enrich soil with roottabs, and top iy with ecocomplete.

Would enriching soil with tabs and topping it with eco complete would be an option instead of removing it all? What do you think?

Thank you for sharing all these with us. I have a question in my mind. Y'know, while seachem says prime just converts ammonia and nitrite into a nontoxic version, it remains available for the use of beneficial bacteria. There are even some people that do fish-in cycle by dosing prime. So if the test reads no ammonia, does it mean is it actually removed, so beneficial bacteria can't utilise it? Or they potentially made the claim as it takes hours to read 0 even in 10x dose which is twice the amount of safe emergency dose? Or is it just in a form that is not being read as ammonia with but bioavailable to the beneficial bacteria still? I just got confused a lil as you said it is removed. You mean no longer exist in a harmful way for tank inhabitants? @Ninjoma We think the same lol! I've just read ur msg

Corydoras gossei maybe? Idk

I had the same issue before. And my pleco is a carnivore. So I don't think it is pleco eating it in this scenario. The leaves feel like a crisp when u take it out, right? My amazon sword went through this for ages as well, and suddenly started growing nice green leaves. But this time, it looks like a dwarf sag. 😄 Maybe it just does not like your water. Who knows. Pretty sure mine does not like my water. Because I was also supplementing it enough. Plants are weird no matter how hardy they are mentioned as. Meanwhile, my echinodorus leopard grows insane under the exact same conditions. You never know!

they are adorable. I'm almost certain the front one is a female. But not sure about the others. @nabokovfan87 any ideas?

He was mainly mentioning caridinas, but also said yellow neocaridinas may have problems as well. He also mentioned that they almost never shoot different colors other than yellows as well. Do yours shoot yellows only? Very cute btw!

Be careful with yellows. Couple days ago, I was talking to a breeder guy and he said generally yellow lines have problems. Even if everything goes good, he said they may have group of deaths out of nowhere. @JettsPapa also keeps a yellow line if I'm not wrong. Maybe they may share their experience on yellows compared to others.

I would put it in on left side of the tank and airstone next to the outflow of the hob. This is what works the best for me in general. I get better turnover and flow, airstone bubbles pop in the surface and helps to get rid off from biofilm on the surface, and hob circulates oxygen around the tank well. airstone alone barely causes any circulation really

And I thought I am weird because I like spiders 🤣 teeth on fish looks very creepy to me. Except puffers, they look silly. I can’t google lamprey again. I assume those are teeth. I’m aboutta go to bed. Blaming you if I have a nightmare!

Me while reading your lines and you suddenly say fun stuff: CREEPY STUFF AAAAAA 🏃🏼‍♂️🏃🏼‍♂️🏃🏼‍♂️🏃🏼‍♂️

I like his videos already. Def gonna check more in detail 🙂

I really dunno how you can get rid of leeches, or how to identify what type they are. Maybe @Biotope Biologist might help Also I remember @Guppysnail mentioning she has harmless leeches too

Yea. Learning experiences is always good, ss long as you accept the fact that experiences are far from stating facts. They help to foresee some potential situations tho and help to widen your perspective. Fishkeeping feels so grey in general and far from being a black and white. Some people talk their opinion as a fact but it really is not. It is usually just one way of doing something. + 1 to this one exactly.

the problem besides some wildcaughts like nerites, is hitchikers or snails with pet value like tankbred rabbits or mysteries spending time at stores with fish or being in contact with some others that might be already subject to parasites or diseases. It seems hard to know and hard to avoid in general as a guarantee. But I understand you. Even personally I believe in observation quarantine for fish rather than medicating directly. So for someone that likes snails, it is doable as well in my opinion

I hate leeches. Besides catching shrimp perspective, I hope you can find a way that actually works on leeches 😭 After watching Lav's video, I was so sad. also seems like no method worked for her other than taking the tank down. Sharing the video so maybe it helps. Idk if you have same sort of leeches or if all leeches should be treated the same way:

They can host many stuff that don't directly affect themselves but the fish we keep, and we cannot really medicate snails. That's why I believe. So in nature, I guess they all find a way to balance itself. However, in the most basic format, we don't want parasites or diseases in our fishtank and snails can easily host some or help their life cycle. Also some wild caught snails can come with some leeches as well. So only option may be is to quarantine them for long period of time until we are sure it breaks for potential hosting going on I guess? I really don't know. I am just medicating my tanks lately as I fully stocked them and I made a 10g snail quarantine tank and planning to keep the snails in qt tank for 2 months or so hoping potential parasite cycles break. He was a friend of my vet. So I couldn't have much time to talk to him a lot. He explained stuff but my vitamin b12 lacking brain cannot recall details :') When I was planning to medicate my tanks, I asked him about my snails, as I have nerites rabbits and mysteries, as well as mini ramshorns and MTS, and he just said Ideally I shouldn't keep snails with fish in a home aquarium and explained why, but I cannot really remember. But it def had something to do with snails hosting issues. I didn't have a chance to talk to him for so long and I had lots of questions regarding medicating tanks and the stuff they use/work on, as we don't have fish medicine here directly so gotta work with cat/dog/cattle prazi and levamisole. Odd duck and Colu helped a lot for me to dose those too. Well, even if he did not recommend it, I am on the team snails 😄 I love them. After quarantining them for 2 months, I'm planning to release my snails back to my tanks, hoping it to break any parasite cycle, if there is any. If you are not having disease/parasite related issues, I would not worry tbh.

Believe me it is yucky with mts too. I gravel vac every week, and you can't imagine the smell when I took down my 29g last week. LOL, it the yuck just lays on the bottom 😄

I personally think we should understand no matter what the size is, a small tank sitting in our rooms at home is not a part of nature. I have seen a couple of his videos before and I've noticed that he usually bases his ideas on mother nature. I think our fish tanks are not related to nature in the bigger picture. Just each of us trying to imitate positives of what we see in nature to a very limited extend. Plants adding great benefits, beneficial bacteria and cycle, tannins, critters, etc. yes. But we as humans directly have an impact of what goes into a tank and we manually setup a "lifecycle" there. Which is not really a lifecycle at all. It is a cycle of our individual liking. As a person who has been keeping lots of pets his entire life, I wanna say we are responsible to offer these animals the best life condition and feeding is one of the most important perspective of this. We are responsible for making sure our lil friends are getting their best nutrition their entire life and I find trying to call a system self sustaining is a bit lazy. And let's be real, most fish we keep today are either not existing in nature right now, or never been into nature at all. It is like a chihuahua finding food in a home garden with potential preys and expecting it to have a good diet because well, there are some potential food in the garden! I also believe it is not really different if I release my guineapigs, chickens, tortoises, dogs, cats into our garden and stop feeding them considering our garden offers WAY MORE food to our animals compared to a small fish tank at home. But what do I do? I feed them. I believe this is not different than feeding a fish tank at all. If a chicken finds an extra bug in the garden, or tortoises find an extra wildflower or weed in the garden they like, good for them. yummy! If fish like to pick up on leaves I put into a tank or eat a worm they find, great! But it is my responsibility to provide them their main diet no matter what size the fish has. I personally find it pointless to base everything into a self-sustaining cycle in a fish tank under the name of nature. As I said, I see it no different than getting chickens, guineapigs and tortoises and leaving them in the garden expect them to continue their whole cycle and say well, nature guys, find food! That's all about what your limited garden may offer. The chicken you have lives in a garden. It is not the wild bird back in the day that lives in the forest. In a fish tank, it is even more of a man-made environment where all your "garden" may offer, with much much limited plant and critter options really. Based on whatever you decide to introduce. Btw, as an addition, I love snails and shrimp. However, couple weeks ago, I had a chance to talk with an assistant professor who works on freshwater and fish as a career, and he adviced not to keep snails in my fish tanks at all together with the fish. Yes, they are great parts of a cycle in the mother nature, but our tanks are not nature. But I do respect everyones opinion for sure. But I think it is impossible to make sure your tank is getting a balanced diet this way and considering the majority of fishkeepers and how much time people invest in the hobby, I think this type of a video may harm fish more than benefits. It encourages being "lazy" and this hobby ain't it in my opinion.

He has those too! Here is some pics from his tanks: they are cool but looking a lil creepy to me 😛 Tigers are actually a better choice since I they can go higher ph and I can cull to my community tanks, However, with a lil googling I found out that tigers become a bit sensitive to bacterial infections when the temp increases and in where I live temp increases during summer time no matter what I do. I don’t know how true that is. I can’t easily find someone with caridina experience >_>

I always use Tropica aquasoil in my tanks. So it is black I think majority of shrimp goes better with black/dark susbtrate tbh. Otherwise they tend to have lighter colors than normal Maybe not black roses 😄