Tony s

Petco for plain tank, PetSmart for kits. your filter and heater should be good enough from 5 to 10 you could reuse your substrate and add more keep everything wet and your bacteria should survive. so, with a plain tank you'd need a lid and light.

Yes, unfortunately they can be that way. Bettas live usually only 2+ years and there’s no way of knowing how old they are at purchase.. and poor care from some places shortens their lifespan even more. Genetics can be poor. And, unfortunately, we also make mistakes. I keep rescuing some poor quality animals from big stores. Some don’t make it long at all. But some do.

They’d need to be really tiny for 5 gallons. Chili, dwarf, strawberry Rasbora. Celestial pear danios. Neon blue Rasbora . Green rasbota(kubotai) cpd’s are borderline too big. Looking for something 1/2 inch long. And only a few and the more you put in, water stability becomes an issue. 5 gallons can fluctuate a lot. Much more than bigger tanks it may be easier to just stay with the shrimp

You could pick your shrimp color to contrast with your tank. Cherry is good. As is blue dream shrimp, orange pumpkin looks very cool. Even greens or yellows. Just look up Neocaridina shrimp. Lots of different ones. I like amanos(good algae eaters) but they’re not very colorful

Absolutely correct. Must have been a brain freeze

I use dwarf Sagittaria, swords. Hornwart as a floater(destroys nitrates fast). Anubias and Java ferns are tough and take nutrients from water(don’t bury the rhizome on these). Red tiger lotus, don’t bury the bulb. For higher lights cryptocorynes work well. Pros rave on rotala And bacopa . I haven’t used this one

Depends on what you’re interested in. If whole cycle of life is what you’re after, birth to death, buy a few, pick one color (colors tend to go to brown if mixed). Let them grow and develop. You’ll have a bunch. You could even get enough to trade back to a lfs. Get some fine leaved plants to protect the fry. A snail to clean molts and carcasses. You could add in a few micro fish as well

Nerite or mystery snails. Otocinclus. Bettas won’t bother any of those. Unless , certain bettas may nip at antenna of snails. Bettas will usually leave non bettas alone Diatoms will disappear as the tank ages. Every tank I’ve ever started has had them. Feed the snails or otos. Then it’s gone. Can be quite a pain in a heavily decorated tank

Okay. I figured. but if you clean acrylic with glass cleaners, it can put a permanent haze in the acrylic

acrylic or glass?

Not normal. I have 3 koi and 2 marble, i haven't seen anything like this before. Is her behavior off? actively feeding? moving about? Honestly that looks really inflamed Is she hiding? or down at the bottom being still? I think I'd double check ammonia and nitrates. Next question. Where did she come from? she might have come in with something already

how about brilliant green rasboras. very hardy and one of the best schoolers. MY daughter was playing with them at our lfs. they'd follow her hand around the tank. Bigger than scissortails smaller than roseline sharks. Another completely different direction. How about something bigger. Some kind of geophagus. you'd have to rehome your embers though

There Is a YouTuber that has had HITH and documents how he got rid of it, Ben Ochart. might be of some use. Seems to me that Geo's and Oscars are the ones highly susceptable to HLLE (head and lateral line erosion) = HITH

Then when that is back down to zero, you can slowly add your fish. you have a basic cycle with a small bacteria colony. adding too many fish will overwhelm them. and cause ammonia spikes. Take your time, add slowly. Within a month or so you should be able to get what you want in. You may even change your mind about what you want.

Most bottles say to take it up to 2 again and wait for it to clear again

You and do water changes or not. if you have fish in definitely do one. keeping your nitrates under 50 for planted tanks, under 20 for no plants. The beneficial bacteria don't actually care about your nitrate levels. But getting in a habit of seeing higher nitrates and changing water is good. your bacteria don't inhabit the water. they live on your tank's sides, filter material, plants. So, water changes won't kill your cycle. Then water add dechlorinator and Dr Tims after. chlorine will kill you're cycle

Right, you have to use what you can get. I just happened upon that brand by accident. Now I'm hooked. 😀

I find that strips are not that accurate. coop strips had my kh at zero. Sera had my dkh at 2.

kh and gh are really easy to convert, it's 19 ppm for 1 degree of either. I use 20 for the easiest. So, you're 60 ppm gh becomes 3dGh. which is close enough.

yeah, i so wanted the coop strips to be accurate. but i no longer trust them

I only have the Sera, haven't tried the API yet. but have been impressed with the Sera. going to get more test for iron, phosphates, etc... Does Api us liquid suspension and reactive drops. where you count drops. I find that's the most accurate.

No, you have to get those separately. API still makes them. One of my lfs’s has some from a company called Sera. I find them much more accurate than strips. Coop strips always seem off to me

Exactly correct. breeding is a different matter. Supermassive's water from my perspective runs soft to neutral. so, a great range of options. mine run 14dGh and 8 dKh so hard to very hard. I can grow everything except rams . My problem is I have massive amounts of iron in my well. So I'm running everything through RO. I can only aspire to create what he gets naturally. I could probably use softened water but eventually the salt would kill the plants. Well, and the fact we use hydrogen peroxide injector to elimiate iron bacteria from our well. it also eliminates the beneficial bacteria

I love the appearance of discus very beautiful. But very specialized care. Makes me very nervous. If it comes in sick. Or worse, I accidentally screw something up and lose it.