Brandy

I have used simple acrylic craft paint on the outside of the back. It wont tolerate being smacked into, so this is not so good if you store stuff behind your tank, but it looks just as professional as anything, and is easy to apply and change if you want a different color. I also used a black plastic trash bag taped on the back of one tank...which I know sounds...trashy. When the tank is filled and there are lots of plants, you can't really tell that is what I did. I decided after positioning the tank an inch from the wall and filling it that I wanted black after all. I meant it to be a test, but it looked fine, so I left it.

Mine mostly sinks too, except if I just did a water change or something.

@Daniel clearly I thought I was funny! 🤦‍♀️

OMG. This is gold. Thank you @Daniel! Put this somewhere safe!

As a newbie I would have loved this list! Thanks! This is a very good start, and reflects exactly the things I use continuously, without adding a lot of superfluous stuff. To this I would add aquarium salt, for mystery issues that seem not to respond to the trio, and a length of regular half inch tubing, for those simple water changes that just need to be fast. You can cover the opening with mesh and a rubber band to keep from grabbing small fish.

I bet I was one of the wildtype hold outs. Skittles packs are for people who are not able to decide, they sell well but aren't a viable strain you can maintain over time. They do look fun tho! stop right here if you either understand genetics already or aren't interested in them! Guppies can cross and at this point not completely revert in a generation, and I suspect the same is partly true of shrimp, but any cool genetic mutations generated from a skittles breeding scheme would have to be culled HARD to develop into a new color strain. Most coloration of these types (bright colors not found in wild populations) result from genetic knockouts of one type of pigment but not another. Typically these are recessive traits, with a hierarchy of layered partial dominance. So as an example, pretend the following (because this is how it works in other species but I'm not a neocaridina expert by any stretch): Wild type is all color genes on. Red is red on, blue off, yellow on but not showing. Blue is blue on red off, yellow on but not showing Yellow is both red and blue off, so yellow shows White would be everything off. Now if you cross red and blue you are back to Brown, say. If you cross blue and yellow, you get blue first, but then a mix after, with less and less yellow over time. Etc. Now these are more complicated than this really, because as we know there are MANY shades of blue, etc. And I don't know at all which is dominant to which, though digging in the literature might yield that. But typically these are recessive traits that we say are "rescued" when the recessive is crossed with a non-recessive. So ultimately, without direction, you get back to wildtype. Mainly because those traits are dominant due to eons of selection pressure from depredation.

@Daniel I suppose that's why the hornwort is gorgeous and flourishing in my one high GH tank, and can frantically melt if I move it to soft water.... Interesting!

Oh I did, the roots have melted already. I probably should add an almond leaf, actually....Good idea!

@lefty o are any of them floating? It would be nice to be able to put some in there with him, but the sacrificial water lettuce at least gives him cover. My real issue is that I have too many other things in various quarentine tanks. This would not work with most fish or most tanks of course. But I was thinking about how fry boxes work, using the heater of the parent tank, and that gave me this idea, and I had the gaint pickle jar, so... 😎

@PlaneFishGuy does your test kit show anything in a cycled tank? So there was this one time someone was having trouble because the nitrate and ammonia tests have 2 bottles, that have to be used according to the instructions...And the test they were familiar with was one step or something... Anyway, my neocaridina are basically little cockroaches. They live in anything. Try to find some bred local to you and you will have better luck. I have had hudreds and hundreds now, and have lost only 6--four were in the first week. In the ensuing months, one was an injury. one might have been old age (this does not count death by acara, betta, guppy, or pea puffer). My pH has ranged from 6.6 to 7.8 in various tanks, and they have thrived in all. The one major factor is that they need a ready food source. Load your cycled tank with a couple of catappa leaves or alder cones a week before they arrive and you will likely be ok.

So we know salt is bad for plants. We know that salt is a good way to treat disease. We know that keeping fish in their familiar environment is less stressful... My betta had a touch of fin rot that did not seem to respond to a combo of maracyn and ichX. So I devised this... The giant pickle jar is floating freely in his tank. It is at his familar temperature, and I am feedinng very lightly and changing the salted water 50% daily. He looks better and seems pretty happy honestly. I vote big win.

@Snwboardaj I think that is a crane fly larvae. Detritus worms are tiny.

It doesn't look flat...it almost looks like larvae? Like a cranefly larvae, but paler...

All of the above and one guppy...Not for permanent. Hold the flamethrowers, I am going somewhere with this... This tank is actually too nice for what I did. I actually got a SMALLER tank, about a 6 inch rimless cube. Horrible little thing was marketed as a betta tank. I made a guppy photo studio out of it! You know how it is hard to get a good pic? Well I can put a guppy in there, add a ton of light, and get a super close up. And because the glass quality is fabulous, it looks way better than putting them in a dip and pour. But after I was done...well the tank wasn't meant to cycle and it isn't very pretty just sitting around. So I am thinking one water lettuce that I can lift out at will, 2 or 3 shrimp, and maybe one nerite. Then it can stay pretty and set up.

Not in the past 3 months in my experience--and lord help you if you move a lettuce and make a hole!

That does look like a close up of healthy java moss--but it is hard to tell what scale that is. This is from a grow out tank:

Heh, it does mean yellow. But I don't think that is "just how they are".😎

I have pea puffers. They can be a little hard to feed--picky. I would wait a little until your tank isn't just cycled but really established. Maybe do a nano with plants, let it hang out and grow a lot of plants and some algae, put in some snails (mini ramshorns and pond/bladder snails are puffer favorites) and shrimp, let those get really booming. Then add a puffer or 3 and they will find SOMETHING to eat in there. If there is lots of cover and lots of plants it becomes pretty self sustaining.

Welll, I mean...Lutea means "yellow" in Latin, right? Just kidding. I suspect it is focusing its growth on roots at the moment and will rebound once it is established.

Those are all crypts. The top one looks like tropica to me, and the little ones could be almost anything. Lutea maybe, or maybe they were emmersed and will convert to a redder tinge. Congrats, those are really nicer than Java Fern in my experience.

This is where mine came from. I was sooo careful, and I was successful for a while, but then I noticed this one interesting seedling growing in some moss on some driftwood...Like a fool I left it there to see what it would become. It is now in all 10 tanks. I have considered waging the war, but I am not ready yet.

It colonizes tank rims and filters and etc. It is a massive undertaking, but it can be done. It is like cleaning up spilled glitter...6 months later it is still sifting out from behind baseboards.

I mean, yeah...in giant 500gallon totes...What goldfish is reccomended for my 5 gallon betta tank? the 7.5g pea puffers? The 83 degree ram tank? They are awesome, but they can't fix everything, sadly. And having them tear apart my meticulous aquascapes would be far worse than the duckweed. Honestly I don't mind it at all. I DID NOT deliberately introduce it, and actually tried very hard to keep it out. Now that it is here though, I am resigned, so I talk up the benefits too. Would I deliberately inroduce it again? NO.

Moving up day for the first batch!! Exploring their new space and making friends....and hunting...something too tiny for me to see.

A lot of my work involves being on call, and iniating long running jobs that need small kicks of attention. If I were working on site I would likely still be on the forum. Better than checking facebook, I figure. You all keep me sane in the boredom in between excitement/emergencies.