Maggie

How adorable! Look at those orange bellies full of BBS!! How I wish I could see this detail in my danio fry! Look at the beautiful fin and color development!

Ich but it is icky.

Sanded down rough areas on future betta's enrichment, then just watched my fish in their grace and beauty. This weekend the otocats have FINALLY started eating the algae wafers! I'm going to start adding fresh veggies in that location, too. The rasboras are getting two very, very special tankmates/future tank "bosses" soon, and I absolutely can't wait!! Watching YouTube vids on the soon-to-be new arrival for care info. I'm extra excited because I won't even have to quarantine this little guy/gal, which frees up the quarantine tank for some new honey gouramis or maybe guppies for my 20L. So many choices!! I'm tempted to try guppies since they seem so lively and happy, and the danios would take care of a lot of fry, especially if my 10 or so danio fry make it to adulthood. This one stem plant is less than 2" from the top now. I really want to see what it does when it gets there! If anyone has positive ID on this plant, please let me know. So beautiful!

I started out with 8 harlequin rasbora in my tank, lost one to injury, and last month I added 12 more. They're amazing in larger groups, no matter which species you have.

Not quite big enough for baby brine shrimp yet. She tried!

Other people on here use marine salt. I use regular non-iodozed table salt and that works too.

For a couple of bucks, they're worth it, IMHO. Even if you keep the air pump up high now, its one extra safety measure to avoid a possible catastrophe.

They love hanging out on cryptocoryne and sword, too. Any leaves wide enough for them to lay on are good.

I keep the main package of the "special" foods in the freezer, and keep smaller containers in fridge. The pellets and flake are just kept in fridge.

Can you have it lab tested to see the exact contents? It sounds ominous but maybe it is good water!

1. Harlequin rasbora 2. Betta 3. Honey gourami (can't wait to get some of these - everyone raves about them!)

Today I picked up my order and set up the stand, washed/inspected the tank (there are a few sealant smudges) and lid, rinsed the substrate, put the filter together, put a neat solid blue background on, which I may or may not keep depending on color of betta), picked up some moss balls at the chain store, and got airline ready for the sponge filter. I also went ahead and stuffed the new HOB's filter into my other tank (extra filter material is already in there) while waiting to finish. @Irene, I found what appear to be several clutches of various types of eggs on the moss balls (really small for snail eggs though) and a couple of single eggs (what could they be?) and numerous tiny life forms swimming around in the water, which I changed as soon as I got home. I changed it out again to the alum water, which I calculated to be a tad more than 1/8 tsp for 1 cup of water, using your formula of 1 tablespoon per gallon). As you didn't mention moss balls (type of algae, right?) in your video, I can report back on how well they fare - I'm pretty confident all the critters and eggs will be gone!

Hi @Gloryview Farm, I originally found them in the bucket after a water change as I've seen lots of breeding and was wondering if there'd be any fry. I have found a bunch since then and use a plastic cup to either trap them and slowly pull out the cup when they swim into it, or gently "suction" them in if they're close to the surface. Others I just leave in the tank. Here's a day 19 update. Six of them hang out a lot together so I guess they've started "shoal" and are in kindergarten! 💜 (note proper social distancing 😀) There are at least 3 younger fry in there that apparently aren't ready to hang out with the group, one of which I pulled from the tank this am. I couldn't get a pic of those 3 but here is the Kindergarten class having breakfast - zoom in to see them all! They are definitely perfecting their swimming skills and though they're still tiny (about 1/8" or so), they've grown alot! I feed them spirulina powder and Hikari first bites, and freeze dried brine shrimp ground up as fine as I can get it. Also add a little of these to the tank for my shrimplets and any other fry lucky enough to grab a piece. I took a break from hatching BBS but going to start a batch today.

Sorry to hear! I got 12 of their cousins, dwarf emerald danios, from my LFS. They were tiny juveniles, 1/3" at most, and still grey in color. I lost one in quarantine and two since then, but it seems these tiny fish are really shy and stress out easily. Full grown they're only about 3/4" and I have trouble counting them or checking on their health. As Garren said, if they're shipped from overseas it is a lot of stress on such a tiny fish to go through that process. Mine were locally bred and I think that had a lot to do with my success.

Shrimp and snails having a smorgasbord on algae wafer that they dragged out of their dish! Close up of lily roots

Blueberry is beautiful! I'm just a few days away from getting a betta and it could be either male or female depending on breed - the females of the breeds with very long, flowing fins are just stunning IMHO. I am happy to see another betta photo!

Wowza!! Do you know your plants, or what? They're gorgeous!! Give up the secrets! 😀

Hi James, this is supposed to be only fish we actually own, right? Could you wait a couple weeks till I get my betta? (j/k) All my other fish are only so-so for competition-photo purposes 😀

It takes days or weeks for water agitation to affect them. The bubbles from a sponge filter alone might be okay - I have a HOB and sponge on opposite sides and the HOB was relentlessly battering them around, pushing them into the bubble area, then the bubbles moved them along back to the HOB, and back around again, in a circular path. And if red root is anything like salvinia minima, it grows like wildfire and squeezes itself out of room every single week, causing browning on the older leaves. I have to remove at least a cup a week. So if your red root does that, you might have to remove a lot of it regularly (and hopefully can sell or donate to your LFS). Good luck!

@KenI've all but given up on trying to make the 20L really pretty. As long as everyone in there is thriving, then I'm happy. I want my betta tank to be pretty and really need to do some homework on how to make sure the algae doesn't get out of control. I don't want pest snails in there either and am going to do the alum dip on plants. I have quite enough snails in both of my other tanks! I know I feed too much and they're talking care of the extra, but feeding one betta will be much easier to control than a gang of hungry rasboras or danios.

I'm sorry, I don't know much about different types of algae - only the black beard as it grows so long and is so unique in appearance. I don't want to get rid of all the algae in that tank as I have shrimp, so have only used it as a spot treatment on my java fern. I'm considering a hillstream loach for that aquarium, but also trying to breed more shrimp.

My only advice is don't put them with any other floaters or they might be drowned out (my water sprite did mine in). And they don't necessarily like a lot of surface agitation, so keep them away from the filter waterfall and sponge filter bubbles - if you're handy you can make a flowting corral out of airline tubing and plastic items, or they're available to buy.

Did you try Easy Carbon from the Coop? I am using that as a spot treatment for some black beard algae in my 20L and it seems to be working, but it does take time. The "balance" needed for plants is the most difficult part of fishkeeping for me. I let my 45 go absolutely wild with algae, and have had 6 otocats in there for 2+ months and still have a ton of it. They won't touch ANYTHING I put in, except once I found two of them on top of an algae wafer (I though they chowed down on the whole thing, but found it had mostly just dissolve into the substrate). I'm actually worried about my otocats surviving if they ever do manage to clean it all out. I sprinkle in a little spirulina powder now as it sort of ends up sticking to surfaces, just in case. Someone in there is eating it (100s of snails, probably).

Do you have plants? How often do you change the water and what volume do you change?

Good morning! After yesterday's fiasco of trying to locally find a "fancier tank and stand" for my betta project, and a lot of further searching online and working the budget, I decided to go with a regular tank. I asked myself "why spend all this money and time, and go through all this stress, when the REAL beauty is going to be on the INSIDE of the tank?" So after that mental breakthrough, the ideas came flying and here's what I ordered (and already have some equipment and items): Tank: Aqueon 10 gallon regular glass tank with hinged glass lid and 20 gallon wood stand (20 gallon stand "just in case") Substrate: natural river rock shallow creek (larger, smoother pebbles that I have in my 20L, easier to vacuum than one might at first imagine); larger pebbles for fill-in areas Filter, light, heat: small HOB, mini sponge filter, 50 watt adjustable heater, Aqueon LED light (borrowing from the quarantine tank until the Fluval 3.0 in my size is available from Aquarium Coop - on the wish list!) Ornaments/enrichment: "rock" (and rock) hardscape, ceramic betta log caves (2), flosting log, exercise mirror (for occasional use only), betta leaf bed, almond leaves Plants ordered from Coop: anubias golden, red dwarf lily, cryptocoryne wendtii, anubias barteri. Not going to be afraid to superglue it to the hardscape this time (thanks for the betta video, @Irene!) Plants to get from LFS/chain: red root or frogbit, possibly moss balls. Are there any other floaters (besides water sprite which i have in my 20L and for some reason is not doing very well in there after totally taking over the whole top of my 45 - must like softer water with lower pH) that bettas really like? Food: Hikari Betta Bio-Gold, plus all the live/frozen/freeze dried goodies I have for my existing fish Possible future tankmates: a few nerite snails, maybe some yellow shrimp from my 20L and/or blue bolt shrimp from my 45, if betta seems mellow - if they start getting attacked I'll put them back So now I am just waiting for pickup notification on the tank and stand, and can get started on the setup. Playing around with the scaping, which is my very weak point. Here is the empty, lonely spot where it will go ☹ (took some work to move stuff around) next to my 45-gallon, and one idea for hardscape. Once this tank is set up, I'm also re-setting up the quarantine tank so I can get fish for one of the other tanks at the same time I pick up a betta. Filter media has already been stuffed into existing filters for seeding. I'm loving all the YouTube nerms' videos on betta care in the meantime.