Tony s

Never thought of that. @fishdogs mollies and platys would both prefer ph above 7 and hard water. All live bearers do. And snails for that matter

looks very much like swim bladder. That can be hard to treat. Does she still eat fine. Sometimes it can be caused by overeating, putting pressure on the swim bladder. sometimes it's a bacterial infection. For parameters what we need is usually your ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite numbers. Hardness also helps. @Colu is our expert

You have room for several more fish. Platies get along with everybody, so you're good there. I'd get 3 honey gourami, they're peaceful and they like to be in groups

That's a lot of fish! Could you do it? Yes, but maintenance is going to be a full-time job. One of the first things we learn is even large tanks are not large enough to hold everything😔. That's the number one thing driving multiple tank syndrome. So many fish, so little space. I'd probably cut back by at least 25%, or more. One of the other things I noticed. Odessa barbs temps don't align well with the others. Odessa's are a colder water fish

Water parameters and a picture or 2 would be great. So we can give you a decent answer

Mopani wood is my favorite. Not my wife's.🤣 We have an arrangement; the tannins stay in for a month, then they go away. Absolutely no appreciation of tannin waters. In planted tanks I used chemipure green. in others, either regular chemipure or purigen Water changes will gradually remove it. If you can wait that long

@ItsMeDario it could easily be epistylis. I was just commenting on your mineral content. If it’s epistylis also, that’s a huge problem. Epistylis looks sort of like ich. Less uniform, raised white patches. Also covers the eyes. It’s deadly and contagious. And does really well in higher temperatures. @Colu has the best treatment plan for it.

At the very least, it will be a source of stress. Stressed fish easily get other diseases. Guppies and other live bearers like hard to very hard water. And fry may actually fall apart in the wrong water conditions. So. yes you need to remineralize. Crushed coral, wonder shell, or seachem equilibrium works well. I use the equilibrium for my ro. The other choices are cheaper. Equilibrium is fast acting

Imagine 30-40 of them. That would be stunning.

@GPounda found this a minute ago. At the start Bob has a multicolored rainbow tank. The torpedo shaped fish with the large black stripe and red and yellow patches is the denison barb. This is really stunning

In my opinion, plants actually grow better in gravel. There's more space for the roots to occupy. Sand tends to be very dense. It's the bottom dwelling fish that have more problems with gravel. My crypts do really well in gravel.

@GPounda Yeah, for shrimp you really do need large swarms of little fish. But it's still cool to imagine. Still, something to be said for large numbers. Jason Adams tells how he once had a very large group of silver tipped tetras. 50-100. and they swam around in a kind of silver tornado. and hasn't seen that behavior since. And large groups of corys behave completely different than the 6 everybody says you need. My skunk corys were shy at six. Then I doubled their number, and they were all over the tank

I know, right? The possibilities are endless! Have fun! @johnnyxxl I am contemplating them. I have a 45g unused. purchased on a whim because it was on sale 50% off with stand. Absolutely no idea what I want in it. Was looking at barbs and the Tanganyika tank, and ... of all things... Orandas. Haven't done any of those before. Wish I'd of got the 125g though. That would have been the geophagus and severums, and firemouths and...

Honestly, I would too at this point. Have thought about Tanganyikan actually. In a smaller tank. Large schools of little fish are great, but time for something else now. @Gannon's tanks with the eba's and archer fish is amazing. Or a good school of severums and geophagus @GPounda with the Tanganyika, you can have plants. To a good extent. The drawback there is a lot of the fish are not as colorful. But great personalities

They're exploring their new home. I don't believe it will do anything to them. Algae wafers are fine, not actually a lot of difference between them and carnivore pellets. When is up to your schedule. Mine are usually just once. but twice works well.

I feed them algae wafers all the time. Not really a bunch of algae in there. First ingredient is fish meal. seaweed is number 6. all by percent of composition from hikari... Fish meal, wheat flour, wheat germ meal, cassava starch, dried bakery product, dried seaweed meal, dehydrated alfalfa meal, alfalfa nutrient concentrate dehydrated, brewers dried yeast, soybean meal, fish oil, krill meal, spirulina, garlic, DL-methionine, chlorella, astaxanthin, vitamins (including stabilized vitamin C) and minerals I find it interesting they use dried bakery product. So do I, when making feed. Dried bakery product is bread, pizza dough, candy, pasta, coffee. Anything that's made for human consumption and is expired, leftover, or going to expire. Dried down and then ground up. And reformulated to hit the same nutrient specs every time.

rainbows, absolutely. Gourami's no. some of them are too aggressive. But you'd want to stick to a single species in one tank. Pearl gouramis would be a good fit for that tank. A bit smaller would be honey gourami. I believe most can be kept in groups. But you'd want to do a bit of homework on multiple males in one tank and male to female ratios

Excellent choice. And you really don't have to limit to boesemani. I believe rainbows will mostly school together. My Praecox and boesemanis did. And there's all colors. Emeralds, turquois, yellows, reds. You could quite literally make a rainbow of rainbows. Congo tetras are nice. Diamond tetras are shiny. for a centerpiece I'd look at electric blue acara.

I still have no idea why you fight ammonia like that. I never have to. Could easily be something they out in your water. Whereas mine comes straight from the ground, with its own issues.🤔 And I like to help. My wife and I have partially raised 30 kids, because they needed the help. Then adopted our daughter. Being helpful is one of my favorite things. I like to see people learn and grow. Should have been a teacher, but too much social anxiety

That would work fine. Ammonia above .25 is a definite one. around 50% then give it a couple of weeks there and you can add more pandas😄

It should still be okay for now. but water changes never hurt anything anyway

Understand completely. We avoided sulfur, but incredibly high in iron. gh is around 12 and so is kh. ph about 8.2

I'm just thinking to myself. You do know how to cycle a tank, right? You'd be surprised how many people don't know that "

I do too. An hour to one lfs. 2 hours to Indianapolis, 3 hours to Chicago. All of which are my lfs. Lfs is all relative. All the info is on Youtube. Primetime Aquatics, Kgtropicals, Cichlid brothers, Aquarium coop

There is only one magazine I know of, called Amazonas. Books are not readily available. I know, I keep looking. But there are a lot of basic fish profile videos on YouTube. Just figure out what you might like and search there. My favorite sight for that is Primetime Aquatics. Plants have their own sites on aquascaping. But, yeah, I'm kind of annoyed with the lack of books. But nobody reads books anymore 😔