Clockwork-crow

I've had 5 sparkling gourami in my 15 gallon for the last few months, and when I first got them they were all about the same age, however over the past month I've noticed one is substantially thinner than the others. I've been monitoring his behaviour and he's eating just fine and isn't any more timid than any of the others, although does have a ripped tail fin, anyone have any idea what could be going on and what I should do? (First picture is the ill fish, other picture is one of the other healthy 4)

Okay I have a tentative hypothesis. Whilst the duckweed (yes I know, I was naive) is thriving I have noticed I have way less elodea than I usually have. Since my nitrates were 0 I would perhaps guess the duckweed has been outcompeting the elodea for nutrients and causing it to die off in an ammonia bomb, and I've forgotten to add fertiliser lately

Should I be concerned by the fact it made its way into my aquarium? I haven't added anything, plants or livestock, into it for a couple of months, and all fish are accounted for

It was waving that thin appendage around on my finger and in the air. I was. Creeped out by it to say the least.

I have a 15 gallon tank with two medium sized sponge filters 5 sparkling gourami and 11 dwarf corydoras. It's been running for about 6 months but yesterday I did a check and my ammonia is at 0.5-1ppm. I feed a small pinch of flake+3 corydoras pellets once every two days, and have a heavily planted tank. The only thing I've changed recently is cleaning one of the sponge filters, I emptied some water from the tank into a bucket, took the sponge out and rinsed it in the tank water, put more water from the tank in the bucket, repeat. I tested my nitrates today and they were zero, but I also have lots of duckweed so suspect that might be causing that? I've added seachem prime but in the meantime, any advice?

Hi, I was shifting the tank around on my dresser today and I think in the process must have pulled the bracket away from the glass, is this something I need to be concerned about?

@CorydorasEthan oooh I look forward to seeing your pictures. Also love your signature. I adore my habrosus, when I've stopped being a student and so have a more permanent place I really want to get a 29 gallon and have a large school of pandas.

Thanks so much! I wanted one sandy open foraging area for the corydoras and another densely planted area for the gourami. It turned out better than i was ever imagining

15 gallon nano community, about 6 months old. Fish: 6 celestial pearl danios+1 juvenile 5 sparkling gourami 8 corydoras habrosus Plants: 2 java ferns+God knows how many plantlets 2 anubias nana 2 anubias nana petite God knows how much elodea A great deal of java moss 1 microsword

I have 5 of them in my 15 gal (not sure of genders, I'm consciously keeping an eye out for aggression and find damage) and I absolutely love them. They very learly and deliberately hunt for microfauna and when they catch the light it's spectacular

Planting right away made it so much easier to cycle my tank, especially stem plants, because it's a very visible sign that "Oh, there are things living here, there are actual biological processes happening" plus I absolutely adored the snails. The first snail I ever saw in my tank I watched and photographed for an hour.

This plant was sold to me as sagittaria subulata but someone on reddit thought it might be a microsword. Does anyone have any care tips? I've buried some tetra initial sticks in the substrate close to it (UK, can't get easy root tabs and these were cheap), does anyone have other recs and suggestions?

Haha, I'm pretty sure I have a video on my phone where I was filming a shrimp eating, and a cory comes out of nowhere bowling him out of the way

@Kirstenthank you! I have some dwarf sag and anubias nana petite arriving in the mail, which is going to go towards the back of the tank to provide extra cover, also the left corner is lacking on account of the sponge filter that was way bigger than I expected, I might try surrounding it with elodea though

I am familiar yes! Thank you. I really like foos style of tank and I'm trying to emulate that on one side, but I've noticed that with corydoras they are way more entertaining if there is a wide open space for foraging.

Planning on getting 3 sparkling gourami soon, and ideally will breed them, wondering if anyone had any feedback on this aquascape for them. I also have corydoras and CPD's so I wanted some open space but also a dense well shadowed part, but if anyone has any suggestions for making the sparklers more comfortable I'd love to hear them.

Fair, I kept mine at 22 celsius (71 F) with dwarf corydoras and everyone seemed to do fine. I eventually rehomed them because they were just a tad too aggressive for the kind of community tank I wanted.

Kind of a funny story. A while ago I had a 10 week old WCMM swimming around in my tank, I'm assuming my WCMM's bred before I rehomed them, and I was doing some mulm vacuuming, doing this required me temporarily removing some plants, which I put into a small 5 gallon box full of water I was intending to use as a shrimp breeder, so I pull the plants out, put them in the box, then put them back in the tank. Two days later, I'm preparing to cycle it, so I go ahead and check the ammonia levels, and in the middle of the test I notice something moving in the tank, and it turns out, it's the baby white cloud! Presumably the morass of stem plants I have acted like a net as I was pulling it out, a couple of minutes later I look back at the ammonia test and it was 4ppm. So this 10 week old fish lasted two days, utterly neglected, in 4ppm of ammonia. If you're a new hobbyist, get a school of white clouds, maybe 8/10 in a 20 gallon long, they will likely shrug off most beginner mistakes.

I have celestial pearl danios, dwarf corydoras, and shrimp in my tank, and one thing that has struck me is how little the shrimp are bothered by my prescence. As soon as I put my hand in the tank the corydoras and CPD's swim as far away as fast as possible, meanwhile I have to do everything short of actually touching them in order for my shrimp to move. I initially figured this was a result of their exoskeleton, but the corydoras are literally armoured catfish. Do neocaridinia simply lack much in the way of natural predators?

Thank you! My approach so far has been "buy a handful of rhizome plants attached to driftwood, arrange them in such a way that it provides enough open space for whatever fish you have, then buy enormous amounts of stem plants and throw them in at random". This tank is currently setup so I have a relatively wide open sandbar area for the corydoras to forage in, but also some densely planted foresty areas for the incoming sparkling gourami. Having a wide open foraging space has been a massive boon to my cory keeping experience.

Hi! I'm Crow, 20 year old University student from the UK, I used to keep fish when I was a kid and do lots of research on forums for my stepmother who had multiple FW tanks and a gorgeous 120 gallon reef tank. At the beginning of September I realised I was in a position to have fish again and have been obsessed ever since. The image is of my 15 gallon display tank, currently home to 8 corydoras habrosus, 6 CPD's+1 juvenile, and very soon to be home to 3 sparkling gourami (they're arriving in the post on Wednesday, I'm incredibly excited). At some point I really want to do an ecosystem tank, i.e look at a few images from underwater in the Amazon and decorate a tank+use stocking that would be found in that habitat. I adore my current tank and the way it looks but at the same time I really want to feel like I'm staring at a piece of nature, my current aquascape is as natural as a golden retriever. Edit: also home to some number of shrimp, I got a random assortment of 18 neocaridinia for £18 and some of them have been very berried lately

So, over the last couple of days my ammonia from the tap has been about 0.5ppm, nitrates are at about 5ppm greater than tapwater but haven't increased over the last few days. Do I just dose with seachem prime and bitch at my water company?

Just tested my tapwater, seems to be at 1ppm from the tap, also yes I'm regularly dosing with seachem prime

I've been dealing with a cycle crash since december, and last week it looks like I was getting some real bacterial growth, ammonia levels were <0.25ppm for a solid week, did a water change, then did a water change two days later because although ammonia was consistently <0.25ppm there have been elevated nitrates in my tap water, it's been 3 days after that and ever since the ammonia levels in my tank keep increasing, like it was never cycled. Test kit is two weeks old, kept in a drawer under my desk, I did shake the test vigorously for each test. What's going on? What should I do? Also stock is: 6 CPD's+ 1 fry 8 Corydoras habrosus in a 15 gallon tank Also filtration is two sponge filters, one running on an APS 100 and another running on an APS 150

Ooh, ty ty. I look forward to my LFS getting the sparklers in stock, absolutely love the idea of this tank.