Tony s

I have also got a water softener. Bad news first. You can’t use that water. The residual salt left over from the softener will build up over time. Which immediately rules out any live plants. And will stress out your fish. Possibly permanently. it seems like we should be able to. But the people in the know keep telling me no. now. We can bypass the softener and use straight from the well. The next thing is how’s your iron coming from your well. Mine has tons. Turns sidewalks rusty red. If that’s the case you’re back to not being able to use your water. It must be RO water. Possibly could use about 50/50 from the well mixed with RO Guessing with the shrimp it is the salt. Too much. If the shrimp are a neocaradina. They should like the harder water

I’ll help you get the ball going here. Other people will know more. it sounds like your substrate is actively producing the sulfide. It’s probably just getting used to the aquarium. Probably not a problem if it was at the surface. But being capped, it can’t release the gas slowly. Yeah, hydrogen sulfide has the potential to crash the whole tank. And the ph spike it causes can kill your fish. I think you’re probably doing the right thing by stirring it and releasing it. Hopefully this settles down over a couple of days or weeks.

You can get some calcium buildup. On the glass. You’ll need regular water changes. If you only do top off, it can build up, until the next water change. To clean the glass you can use an unscented magic eraser (mister clean, yeah, who knew, right) You can do that exactly. Depending on how much you need. 10-20 gallons is no big deal. If you want to go to 75 it gets tougher. You’ll be stuck doing buckets with RO. The advantage of tap is you can buy a python system to move water in and out of your tank. Pay attention to the species profiles. They give you an idea of what we can raise. He won’t do a profile on something we can’t

And African cichlids we can do all day, and twice on Sunday. Shell dwellers. Yellow labs. Kribensis. All will love your water as do the live bearers. And snails and cherry shrimp

Honestly yeah, I did, @jwcarlson does it. It’s better because it’s stable. When you start to change it, it’s called chasing parameters. It gets really difficult to replicate it exactly every time. You can do mixes. A certain amount of tap added to a certain amount of RO. Which works. But it’s easier just to use tap They must’ve been out. Petsmart usually has tons. They would work great. As would most rasboras. If you can find black or green neons, they would work as well. The genetics are relatively untouched

Try this video. And possibly this channel. It’s from a microbiology professor from Chicago. He keeps his fish in hard Midwest water and doesn’t do anything to his water because he sells fish on side. Wants his costumers to have fish they can be successful with

Same here. I still buy from them. Especially bettas, I try to rescue them from the bowls. Local is relative. I drive at least an hour for one store and an hour and half for the other

You’ll want to be careful where you get them from. I cannot keep them alive for anything. Losing as much as 60% in the first 6 weeks. Yeah, it’s the genetics on neons that are bad. Even the water source won’t make a difference with them.

Read live bearers here. Guppies,plates, mollies, swordtail, limias hard water is actually the most prevalent water in the US. Most fish will adapt just fine. You will usually only have problems with wild caught or sensitive fish discus apistogramma and rams. What you really want to do is not mess with your water and find local fish that are already adapted to it. Otherwise if you try to alter your water, you end up with a somewhat unstable water source that can be hard on your fish. To @jwcarlson’s point. If you do have a water softener, you really can’t use that water. The water softener salt will build up over time and kill any plant as well as be stressful to your fish. In which case you will need an RO system installed. Unfortunately that’s what I have. And tons of iron. To the point , everything that the water touches turns a rusty red. Even grass outside.

Yeah, as colu says, watch carefully for ammonia and nitrite, if you see any it’s time for a water change. Both are toxic and as your beneficial bacteria have not been well established yet. The only way to remove them is a water change. Then Prime to both dechlorinate your tap water and bind up excess ammonia. When you see zeros on both of those and a positive number on nitrates, your cycle is complete. But can still be ovwhelmed by adding too many fish at once. Add fish gradually and you’re good. Then you just need to watch nitrate levels. The only way to remove those is by water changes or growing plants. Shoot for under 50 nitrates with plants in the tank.

You are doing this the exact same way most of us have. By learning the hard way. So no, nobody here looks down on you at all. And you’re here learning, which is actually way ahead of the game. Unfortunately you’re going to learn a lot very quickly. Things like ich. Bloat. Dropsy. Most of these are stress diseases caused from new uncycled tanks with beginner keepers. Please ask questions. All of us are here to help. The ones that aren’t, we get after them. 👍

right? maybe if it lives to 106 yrs

Yeah, Jason Adams had been recommending an over purchase of 30%, I'm thinking closer to 60% at this point, and they still may show signs. I think I have 3-4 left out of 20. But they're closing in on 2 yrs old now. the first six weeks clears them out quickly. Hopefully, @Setiawan has a better strain locally.

Well, you probably could do a 30, for an hour anyways. And an orca in a 10

Love the greens. Have also figured out that the red will disappear with a black background. But the green really pops then.

They’re really great little fish. So much color. Unfortunately, the majority of neons are farm raised and the genetics have gotten off. The fish has become fragile at best. I keep trying them and have loses usually around 50% or more. But,once they get past the first month or so they seem to do just fine. If you can get certified wild caught, they should be fine from day 1. Same of store bought guppies. Big box pet stores carry the week genetic strains. There are places that carry ones that are fine. I think dans fish should be good. just because we don’t usually purchase regular neons doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t. Neons are still one of the most popular fish sold worldwide. Must be in the millions sold per week.

Fantastic! we have actually started to get them coming back to our area (north central Indiana) in the last 10 years or so. Which is impressive because we mostly have corn fields here. have seen them just sitting on old wooden fence posts, kind of like you'd see red-tails do. had one perched on a road-side snow bank a few years ago, right next to my house.

thought these might be helpful

acrylic paint is relatively easy, just roll it on. usually takes about 3 coats to block the light. it's advantage is, it comes off fairly easily. also scratches fairly easily

I have even got one small tank i borrowed someone's idea and ghettoed it. it's got a couple layers of wax paper behind it. so it gives it a frosty, translucent appearance. while hiding the hardware behind it. gives it a unknown depth kind of feel. any product for this should work. they sell specialty pre measured backgrounds all ready for install. depending on your tank. my lfs has it it rolls, they cut to measurements so, the question becomes, what color would you like. and the color can actually affect the color of your fish. some fish display better on lighter backgrounds and substrates and some display better on darker

depends on the look you want. background if you want it to have more depth. or you could use acrylic paint and paint the back glass. I have several of those. If you have black-out curtains already, you may not need to do anything at all

the test strip parts for the ph gh kh are not reliable for hard water. i use sera's gh and kh test kits. they seem to be the most accurate. but i mostly trust coop's for everything else. I think it's more important to pick a kit and be consistent with its use.

one of the reasons i went to the hose. i can now reach everything, everywhere. (14 tanks over my entire house covering most of the flat surfaces, my wife is really understanding, mostly, sometimes...) so, no more buckets for fill up😅. really the lifting of buckets is no good. even for a 10g. and 8 buckets into a 75g is just killer

We raise 100k head of livestock annually. when i was the herd manager, i fought like heck for all of them. You still lose around 4-6% of everything. so not unaccustomed to animal lose. but yeah, i still hate it

smoky mountain rain-sept 1980 driving my life away- june 1980 just started high school then. remember them very well. actually can sing both by heart