Brandy

Mutt guppies (the kind labled "fancy guppies" in pet stores) are usually sold in a bunch of random colors from 2 tanks--one for males and one for females. Mine, which I got for about $2 each, are the toughest little fish I have right now. I have soft water, and I don't heat my guppy tank (though my house is warm) which is the opposite of what guppies should want--warm hard water--and they have just been bullet proof. They eat, breed, are happy, colorful, and healthy. Out of hundreds that I have had now I have had one causalty, and I am not sure it wasn't just that it was trapped by some tank decor. I have heard imported and inbred show strains can be a whole diffferent thing, finicky and sensitive, so I would steer clear of those unless they are being raised locally in your water for generations. To be honest, if you feed less and don't provide too much cover the guppies will be their own population control. If you want more mouths to feed, most fish that are the size of a guppy will eat the fry, including danios, and I think males of other live bearer species would also be an easy and compatible mix. Looking at your original list, all will probably snack here and there, mostly are compatible, and are very good for beginners. The only fish that will be harder is the tetras. Guppies like harder water, tetras like softer, and if you are going to stress someone out, stress the guppies. The tetras are more fragile. So if it were me I would start with the guppies, let them breed a bit, then corys/rasboras, then the ever hungry and very fast danios and/or other livebearers(population control!), and finally, only if you still want them, the tetras. Other poulation control fish that would focus on fry would be a small gourami, a single angel fish, or a small hardier cichlid like an apistograma or bolivian ram.

Agree that looks like parasites. Api general cure and paraclense have the same ingredients, and that guy looks like he needs some fast intervention. Maybe some one with more puffer experience can weigh in on levamisole for puffers, or some other internal parasite meds. I would agree you are doing the best you can for him. He is going to need to keep eating and hopefully you can catch this, but I think your vets are right. It is going to be tough at this stage.

I have seen adult guppies, goldfish, bettas and most livebearers do goofy swimming a lot. Not so much samll tetras, if I saw it in a tetra I would be concered. Generally speaking if I see a streamlined fish that is fairly zippy and focused I expect them to stay pretty much like that. Guppies and angels are pretty derpy and can do ridiculous things. I have an angel that turned a full somersault trying to reach a vibrabite that was getting away. I am not super familiar with killies, but the golden wonders I have seen in fish stores seem like they are somewhere in the middle, so you may have a goofball? Also they seem to me almost like miniature barracuda, and I have definitely seen a patroling barracuda do a weird sinister double back to check behind him. Not sure if the character of this is more sharp or wiggly puppy? In any case, weird swimming that is really bad generally looks like the fish is stressed, and out of control in some way--either exhausted or out of control and spastic. Anything else is likely idiosyncratic, and I wouldn't worry.

I agree that looks like Flame moss. Java moss might be the easiest to grow in low light. It can grow so well that you end up needing to trim it. Here is a pic of some that I trimmed yesterday. Here is the large chunk I just whacked off and stuffed in my scrap tank:

Mutt guppies are flat out awesome for kids because babies are sooo much fun. So I am going to buck the tide and say get males and females, and then a fish that will eat just fry. I have seen a golden wonder killie eat a near adult male guppy, so I would choose something a bit smaller. Maybe some male platys or mollies, and just add them once your first batch of fry is big enough, and you get worried about overpopulation. The guppies were my childhood unicorn pet, and I didn't get to have them until I was in my 40s. I bet your daughter would love to gift them to friends.

Well, it didn't ride in on the TC plants, but if you have other tanks it probably rode in on YOU. Or some wood or something?

Jinx, you owe me a coke.

Yes and no. You can create an algae farm eventually, but not to the point you are going to kill your fish unless you are crazy out of control. I have accidentaly doubled a dose. It worked out fine.

If he doesn't desist in a week (or the teras seem stressed even during feeding times or are damaged) you probably have a problem child on your hands. In the future you may have better luck adding a betta last. Even in this case, your best option is to remove him to a smaller home, finish stocking the 29g, rearrange the decor a little, and try adding him back in after all the other fish are happy and settled.

I would suspect they came in with rot though, possibly.

I think the floating is more to prove the plant is healthy before gluing it. Also, the rot CAN spread that quickly. It is one reason I am very careful adding anubias to my tank now. I added one rotting plant to a tank filled with anubias and lost 60% of the established plants before I knew what was going on.

It is a big piece of wood, in what is likely soft water to begin with, and some moss that might be dying back. The good news is the angels will tolerate the low ph better than some fish, and with time, both the coral and/or argonite should solve the issue. You don't want to speed-change the water pH. Gradual is far safer. Re: Baking soda, it is basically instant. Depending on the buffering capablity of your water, it could take more or less. The dose has to be tailored to the water you have. You can do this by taking a gallon of tank water, adding baking soda a tiny bit at a time and stirring well, and then testing the result. In this way you can come up with how much per gallon to use. The baking soda will stay in your water until the next water change (it doesn't evaporate), but if something is still acidifying the water (like the large piece of wood) Ph may still alter across time. Again, the best way to determine if this is the case is to continue testing the water. If you do chose to try the baking soda, take a week or two to bring the water slowly to your target rather than rushing it.

I would just watch her and feed her and not worry much, Daniel tells a great story about a betta who was out much longer. Mostly you would be looking for fuzzy white areas indicating fin/body injuries that are infected with bacteria or fungus. Treatment would be ichx+maracyn, and prevention would be keeping up with water changes.

Alternative1: add a type of creature that will stir the sand for you. Depending on your stocking, I have had grand success with shrimp and guppies, and I strongly suspect corydoras are literally made for this. Likely most livebearers will stir substrate with their pecking. Alternative2: (somewhat silly maybe, depending on your design) add a layer of larger pebbles or carpeting plants to your tank, and give the waste somehwere to go.

Looks like they are a non-native english speaker, and they did their best to give anubias info in a form letter. I would say the info is mostly accurate.

Yes. If you are ever concerned, you can always add an airstone. The HOB will likely do the aeration for you tho. You are in far greater danger of poisioning your fish due to toddler, than suffocating them.

@SarayParay First test your nitrates and keep them >10ppm consistently. As your plants grow they eat more, you may be under dosing. That is what I discovered--there was no way to do once a week any more--it was gone in 3 days. Then I would try dropping your lighting back to 8h, and removing as much algae as you can by hand. Watch how fast it grows back. If it is fast, lower lights another half hour. If it doesn't grow back you can start upping your lights about 10 min a week until you see it start to come back. Then you can hold it there. Likley as the plant growth starts to really take off the algae will be less of a problem and you can bring your lights up a little at a time. I am assuming you have cheap lights that are either on or off--not the fancy kind you can change the intensity of. I don't have the fancy type, so I use raw time. I also noticed that that kind of algae is in the top third of the tank--I decided it must really like higher light, and that was my reason for lowering my light timing.

There is another type of hair algae, aka "thread algae" "string algae" "blanket weed" that this is NOT. (See pic) That kind is annoyingly not eaten by anything in my experience, and has to be removed by hand.

I have heard this called "hair algae" and "filimentous diatom algae" and so on. The good news is many fish love to eat it, including guppies, otocinclus, and many other livebearers. The other good news is that it generally can be manually removed and eventually disappears on its own. Personally I would go with a cheap guppy unless you had long term plans to put something else in there (ie otocinclus).

Your algae looks like staghorn to me. I tried many things, but what worked the best was lowering the amount of time my light was on and fertilizing more. I found I only had trouble with this particular algae when I had high light and low nutrients. Of course that is just a sample size of 1.

This is a really cool plant. It will grow low lying leaves until they start to shade each other, and then it starts to go higher...Most often if it gets a shoot to the surface it will start sending out just lily pads after that, and some people don't want them. So in that case they cut off every leaf that makes it to a certian height and over time the plant decides to stop trying, and sends tall shoots up less often. All of the above comments speak to this behavior. I WANT them to stay short, so they won't block the light to my other plants, but if you are patient it will eventually try again. Give it a root tab and stand back.

I don't know for sure, but I would assume that the hydrogen sulfite ion is reactive enough in most cases no matter the amount of buffer, but you might need slightly more? Most reactions of this kind dose to such an excess that there is so much more than you NEED to complete the target reaction... I know some people can smell the sulfur when it is working, generally I can't. Whether that is because it is less quick to react (more correctly, there is less for it to react WITH) in my low ammonia, very soft, low ph water, or if it is because after years of labwork I am nose-blind...Who can tell?😄

@Fish Folk BOTH fish that seem interested in spawning do that. From moment to moment. It looked almost like they were flushed, then would get distracted by something and change back. The third wheel, who is not welcome anymore, doesn't color shift. They are fascinating to watch.

Presumably the HSO3- creates excess H+ in the water, creating a surplus temporarily, thus the temporary effect of "binding" ammonia.

Ok, @CT_ and @Coronal Mass Ejection Carl I am a biologist, not a chemist, but I used to be good at organic chemistry, so I will do my best. Please take this with a grain of salt--pun intended. I could be completely wrong. If one of you has an alternate explanation, or someone else can explain this better please go for it. Seachem's web site mentions a "reduction reaction" and "complexed hydrogen sulfite salts" which I don't have a specific structure for, but I was assuming something like sodium bisulfite. [(Na+)(-HSO3)] (could be slightly different) First the ionic bond between the Na+ and -HSO3 the would be dissolved in water, and the sodium would fall off, leaving HSO3-. The hungry sulfur wants to refill its orbital, reduction reactions would split the chlorine atoms apart, bind the chlorine to hydrogens and then the "hungry" sulfur would grab oxygen from a water molecule. In the same way, the hydrogen can be attached to NH3 (ammonia) to convert it to ammonium, and I am not good enough to draw you a reaction for all this without the structure of the original chemical, but I suspect that with google magic it can be found. This is all well and good, but the HSO3- doesn't have to get its oxygen from a water molecule, free dissolved oxygen (O2) is also acceptable. And we tend to use an excess of catalyst, to get ALL the nasty chlorine...Hence the potential to reduce oxygen incidentally, not much, but some. And if we add other things that do the same, or had a low oxygen environment to begin with, we can stress fish.