beastie

I think the ammonia is coming from elsewhere, like leaching from the rock decorations or substrate and is not related to the cycle perhaps. I have heard about wood leaching it or silicone from old tanks. Couldnt this be the case?

While the ammonia issue you reported having will be helped by adding floating plants ( salvinia or frogbit would be my best guess), you also have mild algae issues and overall not too many plants that they are not doing well. You should be prepared while the floaters will leach out the excess, they will also take whatever your other plants could have used, and they will thus continue to decline I know you are excited about new fish, I personally do not agree with your choice of the fish you want to add and would also overall wait before adding more, until you reach at least a bit of stable environment. You can always add fish later on and it will be something to look forward to, but you have not correct substrate for corydoras, wilting plants, algae and ammonia issues as is, and you will be adding possible fish illness issues, feeding issues and the inevitable plants nutrition issues, if you add floaters. But that is just my opinion and we overall learn best from our mistakes and I made the same ones as you

Today was the day. After heavy feeding live bbs both the fry and the parents tank, I moved the fry to the parents tank. It is about 1/4 of the adult size, and it integrated beautifully It is now swimming alongside the others, so yay Good news, everyone survived my vacation (including me, given we managed to catch the worse possible weather which included snow, at the end of April). I am hoping the eggs I collected last week will hatch out in the bucket in the next few weeks and I will keep the cube for pseudomugil fry

Hi guys. I have an ikea box, 40x30x15 cm or so. I use it to store leftover plants now, i have a sponge filter available and I was wondering: Can I put a trio of sterbai corydoras and hope for a breeding action? Other fish that I have and could try if sterbais would not work are: ember tetras, rummynose tetras, few pygmy corydoras, least rasboras. Everything else is either too big or too young or I don't want to breed that (white cloud minnows) Thanks!

Panda garra appreciation pic

Some pictures of my shrimp, i bought culls and clear but the color morphs are fun

Depends on for how long you want the tank to work, right? I saw a guy here with a 70 liter give or take started with a pair of neolamprologus multifasciatus, was feasible for half a year, maybe year before everyone reached adulthood. I went the opposite way, I had 12 in a 360 liters, had the colony for ten years, while the last two years I stopped adjusting the water and lost the babies and the males became overly aggressive too, an imbalance in numbers and it messed with it. I saw a group of jullies (marlieri) the other week, in a long sort of shallow tank, I would guess 150 liters maybe, just jullies, and they had a very unique behavior, fights for lead female spots, interaction in the group and even care for young. I really fell in love but they do best in larger volumes

I do not have it, seems like some almost long fin, red tipped variant. It might be a pain to keep the line going, I am for example not having much luck with my golds, they seem to have a genetic weakness TBH the normal colored strain looks good enough too, no need to have something special. I know that is a blurred picture and boy are they fat, but look at the red tips n the normal ones anyway. And if you go to my journal, in a post from November last year you can see how drab they looked when I bought the normal colored ones and how vivid the colors are now (just thanks to overfeeding 😄 - nah, joking, I am leaving for a week so I fed a bit more to make sure they are good)

I did a bunch of new pictures of the tank and most came out...horrible 🙂 guess I didnt clear the lense or smth Anyways "big tank" pearls smudged b-ram Asian tank ,the maintenance was pain. Not one but two fish got into the hose between me running to turn the water on/off, so had to scoop them out of the output strainer and return back to the tank. One fish swam into the gravel vac cleaner, had to stop suction and restart it, and then I did a big big big scoop of salvinia out, as it was full surface, and guess what. Two more fish in the salvinia pile I wonder how many shrimp I took out, am trying to figure out how to determine that and save them, if needed and the scooped out salvinia The no longer indostomus tank The horrible after crypts melt dario/annulatus tank side view And a completely meh picture of the cube tank, I put the bbs hatchery there instead of the big tank due to maintenace, I think I scared all the fish, as they huddled somewhere in the background and could not be seen

Sad news, I found not one but two dead indostomus, stuck inside a filter tube. The very same not changed filter that was there for a year... I dont understand The tank is empty, there may or may not be 5 more indostomus in there. I moved a pair of annulatus in, as I cant watch the emptiness anymore. Super annoying, but hey, I guess not all projects are supposed to end successfully... This will be one of the tanks I will reduce if we move which is sad since I like the setup, and it is the newest tank, but it is the smallest volume. Will see

So, luminatus fry has been in the box since 11th of March. It is growing slowly, I feed it once or twice a day, microworms, bbs, hikari first bites. It is like 3-4 mm I would say However, next week I am going to be away for 4 days. Does the fry have higher chances of finding food in the box, or in the tank with adults, who should be not able to eat it, as it may be large enough? Thanks

Yeah they are not that tiny a fry, you can still see them. I have the pseudomugil luminatus and the epiplatys annulatus, those fry are TINY :)) the minnows are easy, hikari first bite, they find the infusoria in the mops/moss/plants and are quick to accept hatched bbs, two weeks tops. But after half a year they are still noticeably smaller than my adults, so I feed my fish the same, live bbs, live microworms, frozen anything, mosquito larvae, daphnia, cyclops, rotifers and sometimes will do an algae wafer or dried food. Mine are fat all the time 🙂 Overeaters

Btw i had no trouble breeding them when I did the following: I moved two plump females and three males or just one female two males to a different tank with no other fish. I left them for 24 hours and removed them. Five days later, i had fry. They are not hard to feed. Infusoria microworms, powdered fry food and in a week or two, hatched bbs. In a month and half i moved them in with the adults. No loses. But feeding is harder with adults and they grow much slower. Btw they take at least six months to sexually mature since buying. So beware of that

I may have to move this summer ,so I am not going to be buying any new fish, because i will most likely even have to downsize. I moved the spawning mop from the clown killifish tank to the 25 liter with the indostomus. I am unusre if there are eggs, but I dont care at this moment. Will see We had a nice weather and then sudden temp drop, not fun. But I collected some nettles, fed today to the shrimps in asian tank, otocinclus and the tylomelania tank. The pseudomugil fry in the box survived my long weekend away, the fry I saw last time in the main tank, I cant find anymore. Weird. Anyways, I was at this place, called a public aquarium, the owner does a lot of ecosystem talks, young kids and fish talks, but what he focuses most on is father fish method and weirdly specific ways of having a tank, and for him it works. He has like 100 tanks, most single species, loads of them large. His focus is a branch of cichlids, for us they share a common czech name, in english/latin it is a variety, I know I saw a midas cichlid, elliots cichlid, blue eye cichla, heros. He had one last 14 year old pirhanna and I never seen such colors. He had many old fish, an emperor tetra, visibly blind and not well, 10 years old. Several tetras, worse for wear but ignored by the rest of their shoals, around 9 years. He also had an amazing pair of oscars and plant eating piranhas there, a sucker of like 60 cm length and a mouth that would eat a baby 🙂 His methods are not what I would do, he doesnt do water changes, he has filters only in some of the tanks, he has so much plants it is hard to see the other side of the tank, he has colonies of some sponge things that start of on the surface, then fall down to the substrate where they create a mulm and so much algae, like a small african dwarf frog tank, filled half with hair algae 😉 or even cyanobacteria, he says it comes, cleans glass, is gone in few months. He had so many babies in these tanks, including red neons, including emperor tetras, colombian tetras ( those should be called pirhanas), he had many variants of the Phenacogrammus not just the congo tetra. Was an experience for sure. I loved the most a special tank he had with Cutter's Cichlid, it was wide and long but shallow and he had two males, lots of females including a grandma of the line and so many youngsters under one year. No plants, LOADS of mulm on the sand and the tank was hit with a sunlight beam and oh my, the fish behavior was amazing and there was zero aggression and the fish looked amazing. Oh and he even had Yunnanilus cruciatus which I havent seen in europe and I love them. And he had the choprae danios too, love the colors on those guys. I will use some pictures from his fb page, since there was no photography allowed, but I spent over 2 hours there. Really massive oscars the last pirhana Pygocentrus nattereri ( they have the other 13 in a freezer for a taxidermist, as they are not shown in these colors anywhere else except the amazonia) the cutters cichlids, too bad he doesnt have the full tank picture this was one of the old old old fish and few of the tanks It was a wicked experience, I chatted with him about corydoras, he said a perfect tank for them would be a long wide shallow sand filled dunes with a flow 🙂 I am so tempted to do a long shallow wide one, maybe if/when we move He also knows personally Heiko Bleher and some other fish famous people that I know only because the fish are named after them. My tanks now look too clean and too empty 😄

I think it is a time for a change The indostomus are with me for over a year now. I know when I moved them last June, there were 8, as I managed to count all of them when moving their bamboo tubes, easiest fish to catch ever. I know I lost one a month ago, and I know I have two for sure, cause I keep seeing two fish. However not more. I keep feeding like there are fish int here, which creates an algae, and with the removal of shrimp, noone cleans up. The tank looks empty all the time and having the fish did not result in them breeding, removing the shrimp didnt result in breeding, so I am done trying to breed them. I want to add something to the tank to liven it up. I have two options: move a pair of clown killifish (and get a lid) from my other tank, or get least killifish (Heterandria formosa), have a trio perhaps, two pairs, something like that. People here keep them in small volume without issues, should have their own breeding cap. Or I could move my last remaining endler male in here Not sure yet, advice much appreciated! spot the fish The darios work so far, trio is not having issues, I saw only two for a long time but during feeding the third popped up. Also issue with algae, because darios are slow eaters and force me to overfeed, also crypt melt. I am not as in love with the dario as lets say the clown killifish. Maybe I was too excited, or maybe I have a spring gloom, not sure. I mean it is nice, all works, the colors, but... The spawning mop is there for some day, to collect clown killifish eggs, once the luminatus fry grows up and moves from the cube behold the "crypts" Speaking of the fry in the box, it is doing ok, growing steadily. Will wait some more before moving it to parents tank. No picture because... tiny 🙂 So what do you think?

They are a lazy fish, same behavior was when I had 60 of them. Microrasboras, once settled, are no shy or skittish fish at all, that was a nice surprise for me too ( i have least)

Nice, so you are saying more is better. I will have to test it. I have a sort of skirt too but not too big, I was stingy I guess 🙂 Thanks for the tip!

I read your and was like = well I better check my constantly empty mop and I found a fry in the tank again 🙂 I am also raising the other fry in the box. I still would love more eggs to plop in the infusoria bucket, as that obviously worked, so am waiting for the mop to dry to see :))) Arent they the best fish ever 🙂

Basil is doing fine btw. I still have not eat it, but it is doing ok. I also planted a bit of a cilantro, but I doubt it will do half as good

All the crypts melted, the tank is very strange now. I put fertilizing tabs under the roots and will wait. The three darios work ok, the two new in the cube still do a lot of chasing, the male will chase pygmy cories or rasboras away, especially from his food, but no damages. I lost a sewellia. No reason, was active, was feeding and suddenly dead. It was the female purchased in June last year. Ah well. I hope the remaining one will do ok, and I am never trying them again. I even have no idea what to replace them with, if anything. The garras are ok and fun, the minnows are doing ok and there is so many shrimp I cant even put anything in, they go on my hands, to all the plants, during the water change it is so hard !!!

Because I suffered an unexplained loss of most cryptocoryne leaves in the clown killifish tank on two out of three plants there and basically overnight, I had to make a quick/rash decision. The crypts were most of the tank visual barriers and without those I feared the darios would not be doing ok, so I caught the pale striped one and one of the colored males and moved them to the cube with my remaining (four?) pygmy corydoras and least rasboras. The footprint is 40x40cm, so two should be ok there, tunnel, coconut, large plants... I had to reduce the temp a bit and did a cold water bucket change to not have such a huge temp difference, since dario tank is 22, this was 25, after the change 23 I saw a pygmy swim up to the dario to say hello 🙂 Wil monitor closely, ofcourse, and I know I lost any chance of the rasboras breeding naturally, but it was always a small chance. I hope the remaining three in the clown killifish tank will have much easier time

Indostomus paradoxus/crocodilus they have a minute differences and I am not sure which one I have

No, it is in a seahorse/pipefish family 🙂 also they are super small, look at the picture next to a regular red cherry shrimp. I have had them for a year now, and they are interesting but sort of very specific. Live food required, and not even all of them ( mosquitoes are a no go)

I have since cut it into several other pieces. All anubias in all my tanks come from one that I had 12 years ago and I just plant them, bathe them in bleach sometimes, cut them and they do that. It was sold as a nana variant, though I do not really believe that, some leaves are large as a hand..

Fry is still alive, so yay Now who is volunteering at helping me decide what to do with the darios, if to catch few and move away. I assumed I will be able to tell by behavior and I was wrong. It has been a month that they have been in the tank, and the behavior is consistently the same. Two hang out under the floating plants, these fish are lightly colored, one has bands, one doesnt. Three are hanging out in the right corner, right middle, left corner. Those three will chase each other but stop and posture, chase the pale banded one, not chase the pale one. I assume the pale banded one is a submissive male the other pale one may be a female. How long should I wait to be sure and when to remove the fish that is getting bullied the most? I would hate for any of them to sustain injuries or suffer due to my neglect. Any tips appreciated.