[Hillstream Loach ID]

The bottom photos do look like the more commonly discussed sewellia lineolata, the reticulated hillstream loach.  The first one looks a bit like the ones I have in my 20L, which I think is Beaufortia kweichowensis, often called the butterfly loach or chinese hillstream loach.  It is almost certainly a different species than the others.

[Mystery snail ate my cherry shrimp??]

Your snails will 100% eat dead shrimp, but I doubt they are the murderer.  One of the sad parts of fishkeeping is, sometimes your livestock doesn't survive for reasons you might not be able to work out immediately.  

Shrimp tend to not to the best in brand new, uncycled/newly cycled tanks.  They tend to be the most successful in established, "Seasoned" tanks, where there is lots of biofilm and algae to graze upon.  Could just be they slowly just died off, and you didn't find bodies because the snails found them first.  I know in my seasoned 20L, if something dies, and I don't spot it and remove it immediately, there's not much left to find.  I've seen fish alive, but looking a bit pale one evening, then only finding a bit of spinal cord with a bunch of snails and shrimp picking at it the next morning.  I don't ever see dead shrimp in that tank, because there are more alive than I can actually get a count of, and if something does die, the rest of the tank will take care of it very quickly.

[Black spot Gold White Cloud]

On 11/4/2022 at 10:28 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Exactly what I mean! 

Are you a maths teacher? They always make concise concepts last forever!

🙃

I'm a High School Geology teacher.  I focus more on chemistry and rocks, but I am moderately familiar with biology and genetics.

[Black spot Gold White Cloud]

Yeah, looks like some cross breeding, getting that black spot near the tail.  I know my regular whiteclouds have that black spot right at the base of their tail fin.  Looking at photos online of golden white clouds, I see some without that black spot, and some with.  Gold White Clouds are the same species as the regular, just bred specifically for those lighter colors.  Looks like the genetic lottery in your tank spit out some interesting mixes.  Two of the ones on top look like mostly golden coloration, but with the regular coloration on a portion of the tops of their bodies.

[most fish dont need a heater but which ones do?]

I haven't kept them myself, but from observing advice across the internet, I figure the fish that need them the most to flourish are some rams, discus, clown loaches, and such.  

I, much like @Robert Keeney, try to avoid using heaters where I can by choosing my livestock carefully (WCMM, hillstream loaches, cherry shrimp, pest snails).  My main 20L is all species who thrive and are happy at my general room temperature (~68-78 throughout the year).  You do get some amount of thermal energy in your tank from things like your lighting, pumps, powerheads, etc, that can help do some amount of heating over just room temperature. 

I have a 10 gallon with a betta, so I have a heater set to 77 for that fish, but in the summer, I will often just turn it off and let the tank make use of the warmer average temps.  It's mostly important in the winter when I let my interior temperatures drop at night.

[Shrimp nets - round or square?]

Yeah, I'd go with "Why Not Both?".  I currently only have rectangular nets for my aquariums, and I wouldn't want to give them up to exclusively go over to circular nets.  But, I would definitely want to add a circular net to my pile of tools at some point.  Having the right tool for the job can always make stuff easier.

[Snail ID Please?]

On 10/25/2022 at 9:10 AM, Froggirl said:

Thanks a lot for your reply! I'm mostly looking to ID the one in the middle as I have absolutely no clue what kind of snail that is lol!

Fair enough!  I just saw more than that one, so I'd toss it in.  (It also helps keep your thread near the top, so maybe someone else might be able to ID it!)

[Snail ID Please?]

Not entirely sure about the big one in the middle, it's a bit different looking than any of the small snails I'm familiar with.  Left side, I see what looks like a small bladder/pond snail, and the other small ones scattered more on the right side look like little baby ramshorn snails.

[Does this look like aggression?]

Yeah, I would 100% get some rounded cobbles or a good piece of wood or something to act as a line of sight blocker/a place to hide.  I have a few hillstream loaches in my 20W and they spend a lot of their time just chilling in areas of high flow, or in places that they feel" hidden".  I almost never see my loaches swimming around in open water like that.  They almost entirely stay low, and they "hop" from surface to surface in a manner that reminds me of watching a gecko navigate their environment.  They only swim higher like that if they are chasing each other around for a moment or two, before they settle back down into their "chill" spots.  Attached is a semi-recent photo of my tank.  There are two hillstream loaches that live in here, and they often hang around in the pile of cobbles below the powerhead to the right side of the tank, the single big cobble more to the left, or near the airstone.

[Remineralizing RO Water]

Mixing is probably the best, cheapest choice.  You will have to play around with it until you find a ratio that works for you and your livestock.  But, you already have an immense source of effectively free mineralized water, you just want to reduce it to match the water you have been using..  Diluting the well water with treated RO water will be the cheapest option for your desired result.  

[Algae Growth]

Do remember, it might take weeks/months to notice a difference in the amount of algae based off the change in lighting.  It's one of those things that can take a lot of patience to get perfect.  Algae will react to changes much faster than your more complex plants, but both take time to grow/die back.

[Nitrite battle rages on]

Also, if you haven't checked your tap water, check your tap water for nitrites!  I was trying to cycle a tank once, and kept finding excessive nitrite after water changes, before realizing that my tap water was spitting out ~2-3 ppm nitrite at that particular time.  My cycle was fine, I just kept adding more with the tap water I was using.  Once I let it sit, then my values dropped, and the tank appeared cycled.

[Winter is Coming]

Get a battery powered air pump and/or a usb powered airpump.  Keeping air going will keep the tank habitable even if the power filtration has to stop for a while.  It will ensure oxygenation.  

Additionally, one thing I did during the big Texas freeze a while back, was wrap my tanks in sleeping bags.  That kept the tank insulated, and kept it warmer than the air temperature in my home.  I didn't have a single loss even with power being out for over 48 hours and the temperature inside getting to ~45F, but I did not have any specifically tropical species.

[Opinions on aged water]

Just remember, aging water only gets rid of chlorine, not chloramine or other additives.  

I personally often age even my chemically treated water in a bucket, because my main tank is a room temperature setup, so I might fill it up one day, but actually do my water change the next day.  It gets the temperature in the tank and the bucket to be very close with little effort.  This doesn't work as well if you have heated tanks.

[Water pump for water changes]

I honestly just use a cheapo-but-reasonably-reviewed-off-amazon water pump in a bucket for putting water back into the tank from a 5 gallon bucket.  It's the same kind of pump someone might use for a pond, so I'd look for pond pumps with enough lift height to reach your tanks from your bucket. 

I've had my cheap pump for over a year at this point, and have had zero problems with it.

[Do snails out-compete each other?]

In my tanks, I have had my bladder snails go extinct as far as I can tell, outcompeted by MTS.  

On 9/28/2022 at 7:56 AM, Tanked said:

Snail populations are largely controlled by the availability of food.  Either my Bladder Snails and Tetras have developed a taste for MTS eggs, or the Bladder Snails have eaten most of the food that my MTSs prefer.  The MTS are still in there somewhere, but on the rare occasion that I see one, they aren't any larger than a young Bladder Snail.

MTS are livebearers!  They don't lay eggs, and give birth to fully formed little snails.  MTS are also I think better at hiding than bladder snails, as they can dig into your substrate.  I imagine you have more than you think.

[Alternative substrate]

A lot of that is probably chemically fine, assuming that material is coming out of the Banded Iron Formations that most of Michigan's UP iron ore comes out of.  My biggest worry would be the angularity.  As with what @TOtrees said, some of that might be incredibly angular for any bottom dwellers you may put in your tank.  Chemically, the banded iron formations are fairly benign, they don't have a lot of sulfates, which can weather into unpleasant products in your tank. 

Even the part with the iron ore is likely fine in the tank.  The biggest worry is definitely the grain angularity, since all that material is probably crushed, and not moved enough by water to round off any of the angular edges.  I would probably be cautious about using it only for the shape of the grains over the chemical composition itself.

[Easy Green]

Yeah, mirroring other responses, you might want to tune your Easy-Green use based off the plants you have.  If your plants aren't using the nutrients, the algae will.

[Leaving fish with roommate while away]

I use a weekly pill container to help my friend who comes over to feed my fish when I am out of town.  I actually go super light on feedings while I'm away, and often only leave food for every other day.  I put a mixture of the foods I use (xtreme nano, xtreme krill flake, vibra bites) in each day I want fed, and it makes sure the tank gets fed, but not so much that the water quality will go bad while I'm out of town.

But, I can confirm, weekly pill containers are great for helping make sure your fish get fed right while you are out of town!

[What’s the easiest type of stone to create good hardscapes]

On 9/14/2022 at 2:21 PM, Ištvan Bećar Pecaroš said:

I found that the best aquarium rock is a free rock. Buying substrate and decorations for aquariums can get very expensive very quickly. To rest the rocks if they’re safe for fish I pour some muriatic acid. If it fizzles I don’t use it.

Muriatic acid is a commercial term for Hydrochloric Acid.  It is the default method for testing for carbonate content in rocks as a geologist!  When I go into the field, I always try to carry a little bottle to let me know if there is any carbonate minerals in a sample.

However, muriatic acid will only tell you if it has carbonate materials, and won't fizz up with some other (admittedly far more rare) earth materials that won't be great for your fish.  

If anyone wants to add hardness to their water, rocks that react with an acid like that will very likely have a similar effect as putting in crushed coral or one of the other options people often use for adding hardness.  Just NEVER use green or blue rocks that react to an acid like that; they are probably copper carbonates like azurite or malachite, and could have negative effects on your livestock.

[What’s the easiest type of stone to create good hardscapes]

Boiling some rocks can make them explode, but most rocks you can boil just fine.  I would mostly worry about rocks that are very porous but with poor permeability (AKA, the rock has lots of open space inside, but those spaces are not well connected).  So things that appear very smooth, like stream cobbles, are perfectly safe to boil.  Sandstone, some lava rocks, rocks with a sandy texture and obviously layered rocks can have a less fun time.

As a geologist, I am comfortable picking rocks up out in nature to use in my tank, but it's often more complex than you might think.  @Chick-In-Of-TheSea the video you posted will look at rocks with carbonate reactions, which can be good or bad in water depending on your species and yoru tap water.  However, it will miss things like sulfide minerals.  Sulfide minerals (things like pyrite or galena) can weather to put metals and sulfuric acid in your water column.  And these minerals are not always obviously visible in a hand sample.  Nothing widely sold for aquariums will have these sulfide minerals, but if you are out collecting samples yourself, you might run into unexpected stuff.  In my 20L, I have some stream cobbles I collected at the headwaters of the San Juan river in colorado.  They are a mixture of rhyolite and tuff (rhyolite is compositionally like granite, but very fine grained and tuff is compressed volcanic ash).  I'm comfortable enough with identifying the constituents, but for most people I would be cautious picking up rocks to use in your tank because unless you are good at identifying minerals, you might miss something and have a slow killer in your tank. 

For example, in the attached photo, I have a large piece of what most people would call Granite.  it has a fairly smooth texture, not a lot of sharp edges, and looks quite pleasant.  However, in a portion of it, there is a fairly reasonable amount of pyrite.  Pyrite is made up of Iron and Sulfur bonded together.  In the environment of a fish tank, that could start weathering into lots of iron in your water, alongside sulfur compounds like sulfuric acid.  However, there is nothing that would necessarily react immediately to a pH change like some of the carbonate minerals shown in the video. Those chemicals would also not react to Gypsum, which is also known as selenite.  Gypsum is hydrous Calcium Sulfate, and if you put it in your water, it will dissolve into increased calcium and sulfate in your water, which most of us would not want in our tanks.  Some bacteria will eat that excess sulfate and produce hydrogen sulfide and other sulfur compounds.

Also, sand is a grain size term, not a compositional term.  Quartz is a mineral name.  Much sand like you find on a beach is quartz, but you can have sand made of any material.  Most beaches will be primarily quartz, but often have small amounts of other minerals present as sand as well.  White Sands National Park has entire dune fields full of sand that contains almost zero quartz, and is almost entirely Gypsum.  You can also have sand entirely made out of crushed up coral.

Most commercially available materials sold specifically for aquariums will be perfectly fine to use with little risk other than hardening water, or having sharp edges that might not be ideal for all species.  If something has been tumbled about in a stream, it is probably fine, but could possibly contain minerals you don't necessarily want to have in a small, relatively closed system like an aquarium. 

If anyone wants to take and send me good, clear, in focus shots of rocks they want to use in their aquarium, feel free to message me and I can take a quick look and help inform you of what it might be and what risks it may pose.

[Co-Op (Nano) Coarse Sponge Filter issues]

Sadly, taking the whole thing out is one of the downsides of a sponge filter.  They are more annoying to clean than a hang on back.  But they are very effective for their cost/energy use outside of having to lift the whole thing out carefully when cleaning time comes around.  They are a pain to clean (more so than a hang on back, but much less than a canister filter), but it is extremely good at acting as biofiltration.  I have my nano sponge in a 10 gallon, where I also have a very small hang on back.  The hang on back gets cleaned a lot more than the sponge filter, but the sponge filter also fills up with gunk much more slowly.  

You pull up the whole sponge filter, with the airline, to take it out of the tank to clean it.  I usually lift it up by the airline, and get it into a ziplock bag carefully to reduce the amount of stuff that falls off when pulling it out.  Most of the time, I just squeeze the sponge portion of the sponge filter into my water change bucket, and don't bother pulling it off the plastic case.  The main goal is to remove the visible gunk while leaving as much of the beneficial bacteria in place as is possible/reasonable.

[Pest snail convert]

Funny enough, in my tanks, the Malaysian Trumpet Snails have outcompeted the bladder snails I used to have, leading to their complete disappearance from my 20L and only one or two left in my 10.  And I now have a lot of Malaysian Trumpet Snails.  I'm slowly transferring excess from my 20L into my 10 to let nature take its course.  I think the trumpet snails are eating all of my WCMM eggs, as I haven't had any fry really show up since they started to grow in population.  I also think they drove the bladder snails to near extinction by eating all of their eggs.

[Shrimp love bio balls]

Nice!  I bet some of the bits of food get stuck there and they get the biofilm.  A shirmpy dream!

[Panda Garra vs Hillstream Loach]

On 8/23/2022 at 2:34 AM, Jaspyjasp said:

Thank you!! 🙏🙏🙏  It sounds like they do enjoy the company of their peers, which is always fun to watch. 

How has it been with just the 2 loaches? I hear it’s best to have 1 or 3 due to their territorial nature - but, i’d love to have 2 🤣 My tank is pretty long at 36x12, so im wondering if that could be large enuf territories for just 2 hillstreams? 🤔 3 would stretch it for me. I don’t want them to feel lonely tho if I just got 1 hillstream (or garra), which is sort of where I’m headed…

It seems mostly fine.  One is more dominant than the other, but they are willing to be within line of sight of each other.  The do the occasional hillstream loach shuffle around each other, but they mostly seem to be fine with one another's presence.  This could be because they are male-female pair, as one is noticeably bigger than the other.  Your tank sounds bigger than mine (20L is ~30x12x10).  Around feeding time, they will both shuffle around on the "dominant" pile of stream cobbles, grabbing up the bits of xtreme nano.  A lot of the time, they have resting places, and they move around from day to day.  The most popular spots are right above the air stone on the glass and the pile of cobbles underneath my spreader bar/hang on back return.