Ulrum

So what I've read on the subject varies a lot, from saying that the filter carries the majority of the beneficial bacteria, to the idea that the substrate carries the most because it has the highest surface area, to the idea that every surface matters and can cause a problem.

So when I first got my tank, I filled it with red and black colored gravel and plastic decorations. As I've been slowly moving away from that, I've hit a wall because I don't know the right way to replace the gravel without a lot of the surface area for beneficial bacteria being destroyed. Any thoughts?

Thank you so much for your response! I've been adding fertilizer consistently and the plants are doing great so far, so it looks like I'm on the right track. Since water wisteria is the one plant that seems to grow like crazy in my tanks, I'm really excited to get a lot of this going by having the plants in there already growing and thriving.

I'm fairly certain that dumbo ear are still the same species, in which case those fry would not be sterile. I am not an expert, though.

I have been using a really helpful site called aqadvisor that you can input your tank size, filtration, and fish stock into in order to figure this kind of question out. It's not foolproof, but it's still super helpful.

So I'm getting my 10 gallon up and running, and I have some water wisteria growing in there, and no fish yet. As I cycle it and get it ready, will adding ammonia to the tank in the form of a bottled product hurt the plants? I want to try to do the full fishless cycle, but I'm honestly not sure what will or will not hurt the plants. The hope is to have fish in there by Christmas, and have it all cycled before then.

I definitely was considering the candy cane tetras. I haven't really seen any in local stores near me, but if I can find a store or an online source within a reasonable distance of me, I might go that way.

I'm not an expert on this, but I read somewhere that if you boil the wood for a while, you can get a lot of the tannins out and reduce the leeching. Paint might work. Again, not sure, but on the chance that it chips and breaks off, you'll be stuck with both the potential for toxicity from the paint, AND you'll be back to square one on the tannins leeching.

Hey all! So here's my current thought process: I have a 20 gallon tank with 10 Black Phantom Tetras, 6 Danios, and a Mystery Snail. Got some cool looking plants. All is going well there. I also have a female betta who I'm going to be upgrading into a 10 gallon tank. My thought right now is that I want to move the Danios and the Betta into the 10 gallon (barring of course any aggression from my betta, but this is just throwing thoughts out there under the assumption that the danios and the betta get along), and figure out some things to go into the 20 gallon with my Black Phantoms. Off the top of my head, some of the fish I've considered are Serpae Tetras, or maybe a Dwarf Honey Gourami, but I'm not at all sure yet. All I know is that I tend not to like a lot of the sort of narrow bodied tetras like neons or cardinals, which are, of course, the easy and obvious options. Any ideas are appreciated~

I appreciate your response! I've noticed my tank's first bit of algae growth as I've added some of these plants in, so I'll have to keep in mind that the algae is also taking advantage of the same nutrients, so adding more may not always be the right call.

So right now I have two medium sized java fern, a small anubias, and a medium sized water wisteria. I have some hornwort as well in a separate tank that I may be adding into my main tank soon. I was wondering if I should be adding more than the recommended amount of fertilizer , or if I'm at the correct amount just dong what it says on the bottle. I'm currently using the Aqueon brand general fertilizer as well as the Seachem bioavailable carbon supplement, but I'm planning on getting my hands on some Easy Green soon instead since I'm almost out of my general fertilizer.

So I know that a lot of the good bacteria I'm supposed to maintain in the tank is on my filter cartridge, so how do I replace the cartridge without tanking the levels of those bacteria? (For reference, I have an Aqueon Quietflow 20, which has just one cartridge, and a little sponge at the output)

I've been trying to use algae wafers, but he doesn't seem to go for those, so I've made sure when I drop fish flakes and such that some makes it to the bottom of the tank. I'll drop in some extra when the light goes out tonight, and see if I can pick up some zucchini when I go to the store tomorrow. Do you recommend blanching veggies first, or just rinsing and dropping it in?

Update: Unfortunately, when I pulled them out to put them into a bowl, they did not respond at all. Since they had responded yesterday, I was hoping that they were still alive, but I was wrong. Sucks, but hopefully I can do better by my remaining snail and any others I get in the future

So the main reason I guess I've been holding onto some hope with these two has been that: 1. They still have muscle responses. They each close their operculum pretty quickly if it's messed with at all. 2. The third snail was in a similar position for about a week and a half, and about two days ago got up and started movng around like nothing had ever been wrong. I will definitely try the jar idea, and hopefully they pull through. If not, I'll at least be able to say that I tried everything I could. Thank you so much for your response!

Hey everyone! I'm going to be upfront with you all: when I set up my new twenty gallon tank about a month ago, I knew absolutely nothing about fishkeeping as a hobby particularly with regard to the nitrogen cycle, and for the most part I've gotten super lucky in that I happened to pick really hardy fish. Right now I have five black phantom tetras, five pearl danios, and three mystery snails. The fish are all doing super well at this point, so I'm not too worried about them, but the snails have been having some issues that are almost certainly coming from the fact that I just dropped all of these live animals into the tank without cycling, because I just did not know what I was doing. All three snails, over the course of the last week and a half or so, have gone into a sort of flipped over position with their trapdoors slightly ajar, and I can't find any resources for what specifically is wrong. I've been reading everything I can find, and I've been doing periodic checks to make sure they're still alive by smelling and checking muscle tension on the trapdoor, but they haven't moved from that position at all. The good news is that in the last two days or so, one of them seems to have recovered finally, and is moving around the whole tank doing snail things, but the other two are still stuck, and I'm getting more and more concerned. I've been making sure they have plenty of appropriate food, I've made sure the water is at a good range for them in all of the appropriate parameters, but I don't know if there's anything else I can do, and I would really appreciate any advice I could get, because I really hate that I may have sent these snails on their way to their deaths because I started this new tank up without doing the research first. Below is a picture of the two snails as they've been sitting for days: