ForestJenn

My favorite tank here at home right now is a 10-gallon with some cherry shrimp and a small school of chili rasbora (rasbora brigittae). There are a handful of snails in there too. It's just a really fun tank to watch.

It's worth mentioning that the ancistrus species of catfish that a lot of people call plecos do grow quickly when young. We bought my little Rio Ucayali bristlenose when she was about a 1.5 inches long in late June / early July. She's easily doubled in size since then but has slowed down recently. Our really little long fin green dragons are growing more slowly but it definitely seems to happen in spurts.

If it were me, I'd plan on trading in the angel fish and the sharks. Based on what I've heard and read, neither will work well in a 29g long term. Then I'd beef up the cory population and settle on one or two mid or top level species. Aquarium Co-op has a video with some great suggestions for a 29-gallon tank.

It's a new plant for me, but I'm really like the Bacopa caroliniana that I picked up a couple weeks ago. It's so pretty. I don't have a picture handy, but here's a link: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/live-plants/products/bacopa-caroliniana

I don't order a lot because the brick and mortar store is only a few miles away. But I buy lots and lots of plants! Non live purchase - the tubing. That stuff is lovely.

Spent the evening setting up a quarantine tank and then working on the plague of algae in my 40 gallon. At this point I think I'm ready to leave the lights off during the day and just turning them on for a few hours in the evening. The tank is not in front of a window but we have large windows all over the place and I think it's getting too much natural light. It's the only tank with a problem and a problem it is. Lots of long green hair algae!

My son is the catfish fan in the family and he has a couple of these in his tank. We're hoping we have a pair, but it'll be a while before we know. In the meantime, I've fallen in love with them. They're cute and gorgeous all at the same time. Here's hoping for babies sometime next year!

I forgot to pick up an air stone when buying materials for the shrimp tank. Since the shrimp were moving out of my little quarantine tank, I used the air stone from that sponge filter and got on with it Unfortunately, I kept forgetting to buy one during subsequent trips to the Co-op. Which brings us to tonight's bedtime story: If you scavenge an air stone from your quarantine tank, one of your fish will get sick. When you try to set up the quarantine tank, you'll probably need a sponge filter. When you realize you don't have an air stone (for the filter) you'll dig through all your old supplies. When you pull out that old HOB, you'll realize you don't have any cartridges. When you look for some course sponge (to cobble something together), you'll realize that your husband threw it away. When you go back to the drawing board, you'll pull out a random cartridge (for a filter you might not own anymore). When you realize that it's way too big, you'll get out the scissors and chop it up, ditch the carbon and fold it up to go inside the filter. The End The shrimp tank with the coveted air stone: (Yes, I know that the top of the filter popped off. It must have happened when I was moving cords to free up a few outlets.)

We had several fry make it through the first week, and I saw them eating. But they were all gone shortly thereafter. Mom was guarding eggs again recently but I'm not sure what happened with them. She's still hiding in the rock caves, so there may be more fry but I haven't seen them. The quarantine tank is empty right now, so if I do see more fry, I can move them over. I don't think they're going to survive in the community tank. In other news the chili rasboras bred in the new 10-gallon shrimp tank. Our lone fry there is growing like a little weed. We've seen a couple baby shrimp in that tank but either they didn't make it or they are harder to find.

I was thinking the same thing. You're not alone! 94 / 18.8 / 5 This doesn't include the quarantine tank that is housing detritus worms and plants. I need to clean that out, but I keep wondering if I should feed the worms to the other tanks. None of the other tanks have any visible. I think they showed up in the quarantine tank because my son was over-feeding the shrimp.

We started up a 10-gallon tank for cherry shrimp and added some chili rasboras as well. I knew they were egg scatterers and assumed that we'd never see any fry. But lo and behold, we spotted a tiny litty fry swimming around near the surface in the tank. I can only assume that all of the cover we added for the shrimp allowed this one little guy to survive. I happened to have some Sera Micron growth food on hand. So I was actually prepared for once! It turns out that the rasboras love the stuff as well so at least I'm not over-feeding the tank trying to get food to one fry. 😛 Unfortunately, no pictures. He's super tiny!

When I read this, I thought you were talking about something like a Roomba for aquariums. Now I'm wondering if that's my dream aquarium device.

Ooh! I used to love that stuff. Did an old lamp after college. That's a smart idea! I'll have to try that next time I have an empty tank. OR! I could put some on a poster board and try attaching it to the bank. I usually use black cling-ons. (Scrape them off Jim!)

I currently have a 40 (standard? tall?) and I'm wishing it could be just a little larger. I have a schools of 12 tetras and 12 panda corys as well as a pair of dwarf cichlids and it feels like it's on the verge of being over-crowded. I assumed that the 55 would be the next best step (not likely to happen as I, like @Ken Burke, enjoy being married.)

I use one these and like it, but they aren't always easy to find. Our 10-gallon shrimp tank is also a Topfin and it's sounds like the lids are similarly awful. I'm thinking of going with the suggestion made by @Streetwise.

That was my assumption, but you made me curious. Google says that it takes anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. I watched a video of a gentleman demonstrating how quickly hydrogen peroxide reacted with a purple solution. (Reaction cleared the purple in the water) in 200 liters of water. The water cleared in about a minute while he mixed with his hand. It seemed like a reasonable demonstration, but I'm not a chemist. I think the question boils down to how much exposure the fish get during a partial water change. Something to consider.

When using buckets, I added dechlorinator to each bucket. I've been using a python for the last few months so add dechlorinator just before flipping the switch to start the flow. So far so good.

40 Gallon South American themed with neon black tetras, panda corys, a breeding pair of Nannacara anomola and a bristlenose (Rio Ucayali locality). 29 Gallon Bristlenose breeding tank (once the itty bitty long fin green dragons grow up). Currently also housing a couple honey gouramis, black neon tetras and some otocinclus. 10 gallon betta tank with one Betta splendens and 6 cardinals. 10 gallon shrimp tank with 9 shrimp and 12 chili rasboras (so tiny!) 5 gallon betta tanks with just the single betta. I'm not feeling so sad today. Pretty grateful that we have the room and resources for this many aquariums as it is. 🙂 By the way, my son is drooling over your gobies!

I have this tank too! I'm currently using it to house a single betta. It's not ideal for a betta but he seems to be doing great. All I did was beef up the sponges and ditch the carbon for the filter. I'm also housing a small heater in that back compartment. I have mixed feelings about the lid. I like that I can just slide it back to feed, but I'm noticing evaporation problems. I don't change the water weekly since, with one fish, it doesn't need it. But after two weeks the water drops significantly. I should probably worry more about Rowan escaping, but there are a lot of floating plants at the top so I feel like jumping is unlikely (knock on wood). Regarding the pedestal, I use it. My understanding is that it absorbs any small irregularities of the surface where the tank sits. Mine is sitting on a smooth counter surface but I figured better safe than sorry. I like the way it looks too. You could get away with some scrap yoga mat or something similar if you don't like the look of the pedestal.

So my husband put his foot down. One last tank. He actually wanted us to stop at 4, but I pointed out that the shrimp in quarantine really need their own tank. He was super reasonable about that and agreed. We set up the last tank today. It was fun to pull it together. We currently have 8 shrimp. They're mostly female but it looks like one of them is carrying eggs. We'll be picking up more males as they become available. We also added a nice size group of young chili rasboras, Boraras brigittae. There's some new plants for me as well as a new substrate. (I'll add a picture to the family aquariums thread soon.) All of the various tanks have different kinds of communities going on in the right now. So it's not like I expect to get bored or anything. But... I'd really like to set up some sort of stream tank for gobies. Shell dwellers look interesting. I didn't think I was super interested in live bearers, but there are some really pretty mollies at the LFS right now. And some of the larger tetras look like a lot of fun. I'd really like a species only pea puffer tank. Amazon puffers look like a lot of fun too. I'd like to try outdoor ponds too (I may be able to duck the max number of tanks limit there.) It would be really fun to try my hand at breeding some of the less common fish out there. Do you see my problem? Obviously I'll live with it. I'd rather have my husband than another aquarium (most days). On the bright side, I'm lucky to have Aquarium Co-op as my LFS. I still get to stop in and visit Murphy when I pick up food and root tabs. On that note, since I don't have a picture of the new tank yet, here's a shot of Adrian feeding Murphy this morning. He finally remembered to wear his shirt and since it was early the store was fairly empty. He got his chance!

I'm so sorry for your loss. Based on a quick Google search, my initial thought is chlorine in the tap water. Levels can vary from district to district and can even change over time. Green neons are very small so maybe they succumb more quickly? That said, I can't be sure that it was chlorine toxicity. I think that your hunch that is something introduced to the tank is spot on. Especially since it was so fast. I can imagine your horror. But, I've also read that small water changes are ok without a dechlorinator, so please don't beat yourself up. Even if it was chlorine, you thought you would be ok based on the information you had. Please don't give up! You sound like a thoughtful and caring fish-keeper.

I don't know a lot about the rope fish, I had to look them up. Based on a brief search it sounds like @Nataku is right on track. One of my favorite things to do is find a something that might be found in their environment, or a similar species. My brief search didn't turn up anything obvious, but I might look later when I have more time. Sounds like a fun project. Now, I know you've got your heart set on rope fish, but they're nocturnal. What about Amazon puffers? You can keep 3 or 4 of those in a 75 gallon tank and based on what I've seen they can be pretty tolerant of other tank mates as well. I think Aquarium Co-op has a video on them.

Cory mentioned a trick for catching them at around 2:35 in this video. He suggests fine sand that can sift through your net or luring them into a cave so that you can just remove the cave. Another suggestion might be to leave the net in the tank and bait it with something they love...then sneak in and scoop them out while they're in the net.

Do you have to worry about leaching from the roof? I haven't done any research on this and I know a lot of people use rain barrels to collect water for gardening, but I worry about leaching. I may be preoccupied with this concern because we had a torch down roof for so long before we switched to PVC. (Very low slope roof)

I was just reading up on this because we started up a shrimp tank. If you want to start feeding vegetables it looks like Kale is far and away the best bet, but spinach, broccoli and green beans are good sources of calcium too. I don't normally blanch veggies before putting them in a fish tank, but it shrimp may prefer the blanched vegetables over raw.