PotatoFish

My male guppy's spine did the drooping bend toward the end of his life. How old is your guppy?

Definitely try this. Also, do you have a sponge around the HOB intake? It would make for a "bigger trash can" for maintenence, and it's betta-safe. Having a couple floating plants like dwarf water lettuce or frogbit would help decrease the amount of waste. I'm not sure what you're feeding. But, live foods tend to leave less waste than flakes and pellets. Most of all, I hope you recover faster than danios dash during dinner!!!

I currently have a bunch of fishies swimming around in my community tank (17gal). What do you have in your tank in terms of filtration, hardscape and plants? I think that the surface area (aka bacteria real estate), hiding spaces, and plants (which provide surface area, hiding places, and soak up waste) play a big role in what you can keep together. I guess folk might say mine is overstocked, but I have a jungle of plants low and creeping into midwater as well as lots of floating plants (dwarf water lettuce and water sprite). There are currently 6 zebra danios (3 striped, 2 with dots, 1 greybino) 4 bronze corydoras 2 male fancy guppies 1 male variatus platy 1 male teacup platy 1 male gold dust molly 1 otocinclus All of them get along just fine, and the water is clean. It's really cool watching danios zipping through the vegetation. You should be able to keep more danios if you want to. As for those babies, keep them away from the parents and gouramis. Danios are notorious egg eaters, and fry are just food that swim slowly.

I concur. It helps to hide a lot of the "machinery" and allow the eyes to focus on the fishies, plants and hardscape.

They can be finicky eaters. Grab a good-sized rock and put it in a clean tank that will get lots of sun. Let it grow algae and then swap it in for a rock in your current tank. Make sure to watch the oto tummies to make sure they have a bulge like they do in your pictures above (EXCELLENT job, btw!). Another thing I had heard of but never tried was "painting" Repashy Gel food onto a rock or driftwood (preferably the underside if it has one), letting it dry, and then adding it to the tank.

In college, I kept my pea puffer in a 5 gallon tank by herself, and she did perfectly fine. She got re-homed to my brother's place when I left for Korea, and his visitors always got a kick out of watching the little fish eat snails. There was a great piece of driftwood that had spires sticking out like fingers and a flat area like a palm. It looked like an aquarist's version of a sacrificial altar. "Please accept our humble snaily offerings, She Who Thirsts!"

You could try using tape and black foam board instead of paper. I think it holds up better, especially if you accidentally get some water back there and wet it.

Goldfish will get rid of duckweed. They LOVE the stuff. Also, I never really had many issues getting rid of duckweed without the goldfish. After fishing too much of it out with a net, I was kind of afraid I had killed my "duckweed garden," and the goldfish would not have snack food any more. For me, small amounts of duckweed seemed to have far longer "doubling times" than larger amounts. I don't know why that is. Did anyone have similar observations?

That wisteria looks great! I like that banana plant too! I kind of want to do a wisteria and water sprite set up just to see what they look like next to each other growing like mad crazy.

Yes, but the MTS will have been cured *nods knowingly*

The cure for MTS is to get a pond...maybe 2.

Welcome to the forum! I had to look up what that fish was. They're very beautiful fish!

Welcome! By fishless cycle, did you mean plants or no plants in the tank? Cory's video on cycling might be worth watching. The scientist in me was like "*nods* mmmhmm, yeah, that makes way more sense than what I was doing before...damn, why didn't I do that?"

Having lots of baby plants grow off of healthy water sprite is totally normal. It's not like java fern where it's a sign of distress. I think of water sprite as the aquatic version of a "spider plant." Because it's a rosette plant, I agree with @JettsPapa that it tends to grow more like a bush than a tree.

It's all a learning process. Just be glad you learned it without that CAE nomming on your other fish's slime coat.

The "Big Box" stores usually have the following: assorted fancy guppies (lemons, silver males with different colored tails, tuxedos, and maybe some cobras), mollies (mostly orange, black or white balloon), otocinclus, Chinese algae eaters, corydoras (salt and pepper, bronze, and albino), angelfish, assorted fancy goldfish, baby koi, assorted tetras, neon tetras, assorted shrimp (quality is a coin toss), cichlids, common plecos, zebra danios, mystery snails, and betta fish (some Koi bettas look AMAZING). Lotte Toys R Us section near me sells baby sturgeons. Most also sell annubias petite, annubias nana petite, mosses, water sprite, water wisteria, and assorted others. Local fish stores are varied. Most have all the stuff the "big box" stores have and a few more choices. My favorite has amazing variety in terms of plants, animals, equipment, and it's kind of like bordering on being a wholesaler. I plan to visit them next week.

I'm sorry to hear about that. Did it look emaciated already? Sunken in belly? They should have pretty round tummies when you pick them. With some of the young, longfin varieties, it was a little harder for me to judge fitness. Perhaps I am misunderstanding. Did you mean it was in the QT tank and you put it in another container to gradually introduce the tank water?

Excellent! A "Legacy Decoration!" Perhaps something to pass on to the next generation aquarist in your family?

There should be WAY more than enough space and hideaways for guppies chasing each other. You should have a lot of fun with those. I would make sure the guppies "hear the dinner bell" when you feed. A tank that big might be a bit difficult to get baby guppies enough food. But with enough plantlife and an established/seasoned tank, babies should be fine. Maybe drop some food so it catches on the plants or wherever the babies end up hiding.

Those are great suggestions! You can also use a smart phone camera and the zoom feature. I use mine to take a look at small things in the aquarium and read super tiny text for work.

As @TheSwissAquarist mentioned, they are fertilized outside (external fertilization). With livebearers, males have a specialized shell that allows them to transfer sperm packets to the female so she can fertilize eggs inside (internal fertilization) and carry them until she gives birth to developed babies. If you want to try breeding egg scatterers, you can add in java moss for the eggs to collect in, or a spawning mop made of yarn or even "Easter grass." Then, you can separate parents from eggs and raise them up to have lots of babies OR keep it in the tank and maybe get the occasional baby fish. I recommend trying to raise up fry at least once. You can learn a lot from the experience...and it's fun!

To build on the "bad stock" idea, did the otos from the store have a nice, round tummies when you bought them?

She might have eggs. They are not livebearers like guppies though.

Yeah, I had to unlearn a lot of stuff my old LFS "taught" me. "Sure, those ghost shrimp would go great with that figure-8 puffer...sometimes they might be aggressive towards shrimp. We got you a docile one though."

That's an amazong tank! May we get shots of your other tanks, please? 😄