Lavender

Aw, I’m sorry for your loss- hopefully you’ll find a nice fish to replace him with. Lol, there’s actually a video on the actual listing of him, and he’s definitely got a personality on him. I’m not gonna decide on a name yet, but I’m betting he’s likely gonna end up Malibu the betta. After all, what else can his colors bring to mind?

(Just to clarify- this betta will NOT go in my 75 gallon- that’s going to be a small, shortfinned female- not Sprinkles, my absolute sociopath of a female, but some other female.) So, with that out of the way, here’s the boy! I’m deciding on names. Either Malibu, Sunset, or…S (my favorite character’s name). I’m arranging with the seller, and he will be shipped on the Monday of next week. I’ve got a nice 20 gallon set up for him- it’s supposed to be a walstad, but there’s filtration and heating anyways. Will make sure to send many fish pics when he arrives.

Gah. Of COURSE my gmail doesn’t update me when y’all post. Well, I’ll be looking over the suggestions. Thanks, everybody!

I did…it turns out I’m a idiot and forgot to adjust the temp on it. They are now heated. As for the wood bridge…whenever my pet store finally stops telling me the cholla wood isn’t here yet. So far, I’m expecting that to be in about a eternity or so. Thanks!

True, but Bluey is also the laziest betta I’ve ever had. He’s very sweet, as far as bettas go, but…I think I may just have a penchant for acquiring bettas with very strange personalities, as Sprinkles demonstrates. He mostly lays somewhere when I’m not feeding him. Working on getting a mirror for him, but…honestly, Reddi is the only normal betta I own. The other two are extremely strange and very cute little fish.

I think I’m likely going to set them up in the old betta tank once it’s time to add the betta. Honestly, the old tank may just become my shrimp tank if they don’t breed. Thankfully, I think I have shrimplets, so they’ll probably start soon. I like dwarf cories, my first pick, but…I’m worried they’re going to suddenly hide one day and I’ll never find them until I break the tank down. Plus, temp. I figured I’d either do green neons or dwarf Cories. Will probably get nerites and a mystery snail as far as inverts.

Just planted this today- few shrimp in here, shortly getting shafted to a breeder net to test my betta/grow out without getting lost. The shell is a feeding dish. (btw- the heater isn’t working. Idk why. I’m fiddling with it, but I get the feeling it’s busted and I need to buy a new one)

Yeah, this may just end up being a betta tank anyways for that reason. I was hoping to have something that didn’t require lots of movement. Aka, small solitary fish like bettas that still don’t move a lot. I might end up with annual killifish or something.

So, I’m shifting my bettas to new tanks. Sprinkles, my female, is much too aggressive to live in a community, but my other betta, Reddi, is fine with most types of fish as long as they don’t go to the top frequently or bite his fins. What would be a good stocking choice with them? I’m really hoping to keep Cherry shrimp with them as well, so if the fish/inverts are shrimp-safe that would be good. It’s fine if they aren’t shrimplet safe.

So, I brought two three-gallon longs a few months ago. These tanks functionally have the same size as a 5 gallon, but are only 7 inches long and 5 wide. They make up for it by being 18 long. In one, my old betta Bluey lives. The other one I brought for bettas also, but now I’ve decided to shift the betta currently living in it (Sprinkles) to a ten or a five gallon. What can I do now in terms of inhabitants?

I’m thinking then that I can keep the guppies out until it hits around 50 degrees, then I’ll take them inside to live in a 20 long.

Wow, those discus are incredible! Nice aquascape, too! Well…I do have a 75 gallon I thought would be a good choice for discus. I’m still looking at other options, of course- I wouldn’t call myself a novice, but I also wouldn’t call myself a total expert. Still, this is a piece of hope- I was planning a more rigorous maintenance routine on it for just tetras. The only other big thing that’s giving me pause now is feeding. Worried I’ll get 40$ discus and they’ll starve. I kind of want tankmates, but with discus, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Can I ask how you heat them in the winter if they’re outdoors? I’m thinking I could just take one of those old, big ceramic planters (easily 50+ gallons) and use it as a pond for the guppies. Outdoors would admittedly be much better, but I’m worried about my fishies freezing- it normally doesn’t get too low here, but it does get cold enough for water to freeze every so often in the winter. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a very well-lit guppy pond- the only plants I could see were varieties of lotus, and the guppies were the brightest things there. Couldn’t exactly verify the substrate, but I’m betting it was just potting soil. Was probably about a foot or two deep, so…about 3-4 inches of soil?

That’s impressive. I’m honestly unsure if the goldies were for sale or were like…store pets? Maybe hand-ins? I can’t see them being kept in bowls at this size, so I bet the store either raised them as a example or someone had to move and couldn’t take these two chunks with them. Either way, one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in a store for a while now.

So, to people with discus- what does maintenance on the discus tank look like for you? I’m seeing tons of discus lately, and I mean…how hard can it be to keep them? If my LFS can do it I can definitely do it, right?

So, I found a fun idea going through a pet store. They had a small guppy pond inside- looked super cool, and I want one now. Think it was about 100-200 gallons. Obviously mine wouldn’t be that big, but how would I go about setting up one? Plus, is there any way I could turn it into a walstad and thus need little maintenance?

That one’s actually a koi- mouth whiskers give it away. But yeah they still get massive. Seriously this is the first time I’ve ever felt threatened around a fish.

So, I went to a fish store in another city. Brought some orange rili shrimp and plants for my bettas…but the real crown jewel of the trip were these two common goldies. These were easily the size of my hand. Those are little feeder fish beside them for reference. So, yeah- I’ll just post this as a little reminder of how truly CHUNKY these fish get.

I have little idea about why she’s this aggressive- gonna bet she was a isolated cup betta from a big pet store, so that probably contributes, but still, when they said female bettas could be aggressive, I didn’t think they meant this aggressive…It was a awfully put together sorority tank, though, so that could have contributed. Sorority broke absolutely every rule- apparently some kid wanted a bunch of bettas and decided to just follow the pet store employee. So, there were like 5 in a 5 gallon. Poor girlie…it’s miraculous her fins aren’t nipped. Likely, as your theory is, she was just so aggressive nobody even got close to her. So now, she’s a slight sociopath. A cute sociopath, but a sociopath nonetheless. I will say she’s the most entertaining betta I’ve ever had- super cute little girl, always up at the front of the tank. She even looks around the room for me. It’s like she’s part Oscar or something. Hopefully she’ll mellow like you said, but…well, I’m pretty sure I’m just in possession of a Oscar-like betta and that’s that. I might put her in a cup and show her to one of my two males (Bluey and Reddi respectively- pet tax below), see if he starts acting like he’s around a girl or if he just flares at her constantly. I’m just kind of sad for her. This little girlie was supposed to go into a 75 gallon and have a whole four feet of space to zoom around. She’ll probably just end up in my ten gallon now. Oh well. If she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t like it. I will say she’s my new favorite in terms of personality- so fast and zoomy and Oscar-like. Wow, I went on about Sprinkles for a while. Well, I’ll go back to enjoying her rampant zoomies.

So, I got my girl Sprinkles from a broken-down sorority tank. She’s young still, very sweet, but she was planned to go into a community, and although I have a backup tank for her, I would like her to go in first try. However, the more I plan, the more I wonder. As Sprinkles has short fins, a softly rounded belly like most female bettas, and what is probably a egg spot (hard to tell, because her belly is white). However, she’s also the meanest little betta I’ve ever had. And that’s saying something. My most aggressive male doesn’t hold a candle to her. She’s the only fish I’ve ever had leap out of the water to bite my fingers. Not the food. JUST the fingers. She literally pecks at the exposed part of the nerite snails I’ve put in her tank. She’s that mean. It’s incredible. I have no clue how I misjudged her personality this badly, but is she a male or something? She’s the rudest little girl I’ve ever seen. This is a pic of her- excuse the water, it’s a old picture from the day I got her. Anyways, Sprinkles here will be tentatively tried out, but she’s pretty obviously going to be in the backup tank, unless she has a real major change of heart soon. I’ll show off my next new girl (or perhaps plakat boy) for actually going in said community tank whenever I get her.

So, I’m planning a 75 gallon filled to the brim with tetras, kuhli loaches, a female betta (Sprinkles), and some other soft-water fish. Big problem is, my tap water is liquid rock- 7.5 ph, but the GH…it’s literally off the chart of the little test tube. Now, I’ve heard that normally this isn’t a problem, but I’m wary, as when my dad tried to keep tetras, they all died. ONLY his tetras. Everything else was fine. While I will do a RODI system if I have to, I’ve realized it’s going to add around 300 bucks in total to my aquarium price. I know normally PH and GH don’t matter. But..I am quite wary. The tank was old, and he can’t remember how he kept it, so it could have been husbandry. It could have also been that they were neon tetras. They died slowly over 3-4 days every time he got them. Do I need the RODI system, or can I leave it?

Ok, first off, WOW am I sorry I abandoned this thread. My IPad gave up the ghost about a month back, and it took a while to recover my password. I’ll read through this. Thanks, SO sorry.

So, I’m planning my 75 gallon, and I want some above-water action. I already want peace lilies in it, but there’s no other place in the house to grow orchids and it would be a nice place to put them. Could it work?

Mine has a heavily planted part in back, but for actually seeing the fish I have a open space in front. I expect the apistos will choose the heavily planted spots to nest, so that does worry me- might have to shift a lot of stuff around to get them to nest where I want. I don’t know if she’s agoraphobic or not. She seems pretty energetic, even for a short-fin, so probably not, but I’ll see when she goes into the tank.

Well, it is a 75 gallon, so hopefully my sand-sifters won’t kick up the sand so much that it gets into the HOB filter. I’m not incredibly worried about gravel-vacuuming- I do very fine sand in a lot of my tanks and it’s still alright to gravel vacuum. I’ll look at pool filter sand- it’s a good sand, I use it in my betta tanks. I just want black colored sand. Yeah, I want to see the sifting behavior- sand for me. I guess I’ll perform some filter surgery and cut the intake tube down to size, then.