Lavender

I tested…no ammonia, but Nitrites are above 1.0. When I started testing, I think I was testing wrong or something.

Welp, the tank is finally past the ammonia stage. Think it should be about two weeks to the full cycle from here.

I have a 75 gallon tank, and what I’m hoping to have as a centerpiece is a betta. My dad used to keep two bettas, male and female, in a extremely lightly stocked 30 gallon, with the other inhabitants being barbs and danios. The aquascape was a massive amount of Amazon swords and nothing else. They did fine. They never bred, as the male was deficient at building nests, but they did well together, and he never observed aggression. Is a 75 gallon big enough for a male/female pair with floating plants and heavy planting?

I see the same…half the store is salt, and I love salt, don’t get me wrong, but rarely anyone can house those things and they sit there for years on end. And they’re not even cheaper. They’ve just sat there. And some of them are extremely creepy-looking and/or get huge, like the massive blue fish they have that has sat there for a year that has tiny teeth in its mouth. Then they’ve got this tank full of cichlids, which encompasses half the freshwater section. Not even easy cichlids many people keep…they’ve got oscars and African cichlids and stuff. The very last section of the store is bettas and tetras, otherwise known as the common stuff people like to keep. The tetras are mostly random things you can buy from petsmart, plus Rummynose tetras. The bettas…they’ve got a bunch of fancy long-finned females, which is great, but like…how many people do you think are making a sorority in a tiny town? Otherwise, they have plakats and regular-colored bettas. No halfmoons, ever. I’ve only ever seen deltatail and plakat. The rest is one large koi tank, a beautiful angelfish display with some random electric blue Acara in it (why?), and a weird little 2 gallon cube where they’ve stored a bunch of random inverts, kuhli loaches, plecos, and otos. I’ve got two quarantine tanks set up for each of them. The female will likely stay in hers (I put silk plants in all my quarantine tanks, so she has hides and such) until my 75 gallon is mostly finished and I’m ready to put her in. The male will stay for the regular time period of six weeks there and then go in his tank, which is a 5 gal Iwagumi (Giant hairgrass in the back as cover.)

The female is a very nice betta they’ve called “Blacklight”, with a black body and blue fins. Looks almost…glowy. Very, very beautiful fish. The male is a mustard gas betta with a strange light coloration that I really love and can’t find outside of the Thai fish sellers. His tail looks almost…blond instead of the regular yellow and his scales are shimmery, but as far as I can tell, he’s not a pastel, because the look is too light. I have no plans to breed either Betta: it would be a nightmare to find females and males for both and then house them. The shops around me are one non-chain store that mostly carries saltwater fish and cichlids, one Petco, and two Petsmarts. It’s good to know the shop is trustworthy.

So, I might be about to order a betta (Or possibly two) online from a shop in the US, Prism Bettas. They are both beautiful bettas, both with a extremely rare color pattern that I can’t find in my four local fish stores. I have separate quarantine tanks set up and cycled for both. One, the male, will be going into his own tank, but the female will be going in my 75 gallon community tank (Was supposed to be a Amazon river biotope…but whatever, she’s a cutie.) I plan to overnight them to my area. The shop where they come from is about six hours away, but my parents won’t drive there just so I can get a betta. I’ll be checking out petsmart in the morning, just to make sure I can’t find anyone I like more there, but I think I’ll likely be getting my bettas from this shop. Any insights on shipping the fish? I’m really worried, and these bettas are both very beautiful, and very rare, so it’s a huge thing if they are DOA.

Well, that makes a lot of sense: he’s swimming around perfectly fine in his new tank, acting like a normal betta. I think I’ll veer on the side of caution and keep a eye on it, but that’s a lot better than a crashed cycle. Thanks, everyone! I’m feeding the same, yeah.

In that case, I’ll look into it!

My vote here is either a very nice bristlenose pleco, or a Koi or Red-colored betta. I’d suggest a shortfinned variety, as while longfins don’t normally impact quality of life, almost every fish in my experience becomes a fin nipper when they see the fins. They would constrast nicely with your stocking and love all the room. A BN might be pushing it in that tank, but they come in beautiful colors (Lemon-blue eye, Super Red would be good choices for this tank) and get along with just about anything.

I don’t think I can do that: the scape for this tank is a lot of rocks and driftwood. They’d likely just find a hole in the driftwood and breed there.

I have this betta, named Bluey. He had to be moved from his old tank for a new tank I’m setting up. Anyways, I cycled his tank until my plants began growing, nitrates showed up with my test kit, and some algae happened. My filter was precycled from his old tank. However, now my ammonia levels have spiked up to 0.25, so I have a sneaking suspicion it didn’t cycle, or the cycle crashed, and now he’s in a cycling tank…do I leave him in and do a fish-in cycle, or do I get out a big Tupperware and put him in while his tank cycles? I immediately did a 50% water change when the ammonia showed up, but I’m worried. His tank is heavily planted, so that might help. I think it might also be a ammonia spike, which isn’t much better, but at least it doesn’t mean the havoc of a fish-in cycle or putting him in a Tupperware. It’s blackwater, if that matters. Water parameters 0.25 ppm Ammonia 10 ppm Nitrates 6.4 PH. 0 ppm Nitrites

I plan to drill holes in my driftwood for caves, so they probably can’t get trapped. Probably all-female BN plecos, although I am researching on males.

Also, how many plecos can go in a 75? Am I pushing the limit or can I safely add one or two more small-sized plecos? I also want a Gold Nugget and Green Dragon pleco…but I can live without them.

Aww, you have beautiful plecos. Thanks for the tip, by the way: the store sells lemon-blue eyes at about one to two inches, so I can probably tell by the patch. Likely screwed on the reds and starlights, though: they don’t sell those anywhere near me, so I have to just ask them to order three or four with those and hope I get lucky. I will check with them on the returns. They probably would allow a return, but still will check.

In that case I’ll just buy the Koolermax.

I’m just using a API freshwater test kit. I’ve been adding a small pinch of flake food every other day or two days. My other betta tank did cycle like this, but that was a combo of a precycled filter, blackwater, and plants. I’ll let it keep on doing this for another two weeks. If it’s still not climbing, I guess I’m buying a new test kit.

I think I’ll just do all females. I like the idea of all males, but I don’t really want to push the boundaries of my 75 gallon like that. My store is a local fish store that special orders fish for me sometimes, so I could ask them about getting 3-4 of each pleco, growing them out, and returning the extras. They’d probably say yes.

Mine’s going to be extremely heavily planted…I guess I could just pull the eggs out, but I am slightly worried since my plecos are planned to have a lot of caves in their driftwood. I am planning the rest of it to be a tetra tank, so maybe it would be ok, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’ll look into all-females.

So, I don’t want a million pleco fry, but I want three different morphs of bristlenose pleco in the same 75 gallon. From what I have found, they don’t sell them at a sexable age. I want one of them (a Super Red) to be male, and the other two (A Lemon blue-eyed and starlight) to be female. Just a preference in what my plecos look like. However, it seems they spawn like crazy, protect their eggs like cichlids, and have fry that’s weirdly shaped and thus won’t be eaten by other fish. I seriously do not want to deal with setting up a extra breeding tank for plecos I don’t want: if they breed, in this community tank, will the fry survive to adulthood?

So, I’ve got a cycling betta tank. No betta in it as of yet, but I’m hoping to order one soon. Anyways, it took me about a month to order the filter as the first one I got was busted and then we went on vacation for a week. Then it took another week to come. Anyways, so now I’ve only had it set up and cycling for about a week. I’ve been testing the water every day, and there’s not been a ammonia spike. There has also not been any nitrate or nitrite showing up. I’ve been adding flake food, so it should logically be making ammonia, and today I had a minor algae bloom. Is my tank cycled? There aren’t any plants in it besides the algae, and there won’t be for another day or so.

So, I live in a area with extremely high GH, numbering above 500 GH, and don’t like any of the hardwater fish (I plan a amazon river biotope). So I’m buying a RODI system. The saltwater folks say to buy a Spectrapure, but that seems fancy, since my only goal is a lower GH and PH. Would the Koolermax work for me?

I think I’ll do a really big harem of borelli. That seems better for all fish involved. Either that, or I’ll look into Bolivian Rams.

I like the idea of single males (Don’t want them to have kids, although it is quite fun to watch them with fry), but isn’t that cruel to the fish? I guess I’ll nix the pleco if he’s a problem. Can always get another tank. Can I do two separate harems of cockatoo of different color variations? Or a single harem of borelli?

I think it’s enough space for two apisto species as long as they both have plenty of girls. I mean, I am trying to leave room for my bottomfeeders, but it doesn’t seem like the apistos claim very large territories. I’m thinking I’ll put about 13 coconut half-shells into the tank, make Java moss grow over them, and get a nice effect and a breeding cave. I think I’ll go with a macmasteri. Borelli are nice, but I don’t think I’m going to try a risky pairing for my first tank, and I already have a very nice school of cardinal tetras in the stocking. Yeah, I probably should add them at the same time. I’m just worried about the prospect of quarantining them together. I’m a newbie to dwarf cichlids, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I can fit roughly six of the apistos, right? One boy of each species and two girls? Neither of these species seem to be terribly aggressive from what I’ve read, so I think they should be alright in a regular community tank. Im also considering a pair of Bolivian rams instead of the Macmasteri, but that seems like it would push it a lot more than a second apisto species. Ooh, a rack of apistos? Lucky. My closest good one is mostly saltwater stuff and…glofish, for some reason. I’m probably going to have to order almost everything I get online.

Hi to you as well!