PonyPlantedTanks

I love cherry barbs. That is all.😂 PS - I’ve already seen a few of them spawn!! They’ve only been in this tank 3 weeks! Maybe in the future I’ll have to try raising up the fry!

I cannot for the life of me figure out why I am cursed with the ability to grow every algae under the sun and not a single plant. My new 29g (yes, it is new, which will mean algae… but I think we have other issues going on) already has BGA or Cyanobacteria. I feel like this is not normal for a new tank. My other 10g recently ish had a major outbreak of BGA as well. Along with that, I’ve got diatom on all of my plant leaves, green hair algae on the glass and the beginnings of BBA on the gravel (just the purpley flat looking stuff so far). My goal is just a simple, low tech tank. I just want to have a jungle!😂 I dose Easy Green once a week after I water change (and manually remove as much algae as I can) so my Nitrates reach 20ppm. I have a Nicrew SkyLED at 30% for 6 and a half hours each day. Inert gravel with root tabs The thing I think might be a sign of the problem is by the end of the week, my nitrates never reach 0. In fact, they barely dip below 20. To me this tells me that my plants are not utilizing the fertilizer, but I don’t know if it’s because they’re not getting enough light/not a long enough light period/too much light etc. I am looking for guidance from someone who knows more about this than me and can help me decide what to do going forward. FTS - it’s a 29 so maybe not enough light is getting to the plants at the bottom? BGA on the sponge filter ^Hygrophila angustifolia getting it’s fair share of algae🙈 BGA starting to creep onto the gravel Thank you for any thoughts

Your tanks are beautiful! Sorry about your loss of the cute ember tetras, but glad everyone else made the journey well. Your 20g still looks incredible! I’m envious of your Val and crypts😍and what a cute Bolivian Ram! I can’t wait to keep one of those someday, too! Keep us updated on how things go with him!

Has anyone else had an issue uploading a profile picture? Whenever I try to select one from my camera roll (iPhone) it always says it was larger than max file size and skipped. I also don’t know how to make the file size smaller which is probably what I need to do.😂

I love my cherry barbs. They’re quite peaceful as long as you get a good size group of them (8 or more) so they can spread their aggression out amongst themselves. But I still would add more harlequins. You’ll see more interesting behavior with a bigger group!

I second Cherry Barbs. The males get super fiery red (not so much the females) and are very entertaining to watch. They’re all over the tank. Has he considered Cardinal Tetras? I’ve heard they’re shy but they’re basically a beefier (and sometimes hardier) version of a Neon Tetra. Lots of color in a small package.

Thanks @Whitecloud09! A honey gourami is the plan 😉 Yes, no visual issues with the little hillstream. I wonder if they’re already a sensitive enough species that going from his origin to the store to my tank was just too much. Still so sad! Thanks! It’s getting there. Hoping I can get everything dialed in so the plants can really take off.

You’ve got lots of options - there’s so many tetra spiecies as well as barbs, Rasboras, killis, rainbow fish, livebearers, etc. lots to decide from and play with 🙂

Looks pretty darn close to 0 to me. You mentioned you liked Harlequin Rasboras? I’ve heard those are pretty bulletproof. I think Pandas are supposedly pretty easy too, you just got stuck with a sick batch I think 😞 Maybe you should try something locally. All the fish I’ve gotten from my LFS have done really well. Even if it’s a PetSmart, if they look healthy you might be better off. I’d probably wait until you get back to buy fish. I’d rather be home to monitor them for the first full week or so before heading out. But totally up to you, if you think you’ll be good then go for it! Probably wouldn’t start with those if I were you. Unless you have a really good source (like Dans Fish) I think they’d do better in a more established setup because they’re so tiny and a bit fragile.

Probably a 40 breeder or 55 (or heck, why not a 75!) community tank super heavily planted with community fish, gallons of Cory’s on the bottom and Pearl Gouramis or an Angel for centerpiece. I would also love to keep an Oscar😍 And my slightly more possible bucket list tank is a 7g rimless cube (or rimless long tank - the bookshelf style is so cool!) for chili rasboras and blue neo shrimp. I’d really like to try a dirted tank and make it a crypt garden.

I lost my hillstream loach today 😞 Still trying to figure out what the cause was. Any ideas would be appreciated because I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. He/she was acting normal the whole 2 1/2 weeks in my care until this morning - swimming around, munching on the diatom algae on the glass, colored up pretty darkly. I’ve been checking water parameters every day. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and about 10-20 nitrate the whole time. Tank is stable at 77F. The cherry barbs in the same tank are doing wonderfully. The only thing I can think of is I scraped the algae off the glass on the front and the back, but I purposely left the sides untouched so the loach could munch. Did he/she starve? I haven’t bought Repashy or any sinking wafers yet. This morning it was down on the gravel and had totally changed colors and was super pale. I read that they change colors sometimes to blend in with their surroundings or bc of stress. I do have light substrate so it makes sense. But the poor little thing was gone😢

Algae💩mainly stupid cyano! Also test kits not matching up - aka nitrate on a test strip showing 20 and 40 on a liquid test kit. Drives me nuts bc I don’t know which to trust! Wanting bigger tanks… but also wanting smaller tanks… but they have to be rimless and low iron because it’s fAnCiEr🤓

Ok this is the flex 15 but maybe you could do a similar thing. I don’t know what the dimensions are for your tank but maybe the 24 or 30in would work? Here’s another option:

There were a few posts about this exact thing on the Facebook group - let me see if I can find it…

The Co Op light is so easy! The moonlight is essentially just using blue LEDs. And it’s just a personal preference thing - plants don’t necessarily benefit from it, so if you like having it on at night you can just manually switch it on. Otherwise, the daylight is the “normal” setting. If you have easy - medium or low light plants, I would start with 30% for 6-8 hrs a day (or more, depending on how long your light is on for right now).