mynameisnobody

I would just buy a new one, however it does present you with practice, in case you ever have to do it again, you’ll have a bit of experience.

Look up betta mirrors and make a call, don’t overthink it.

It couldn’t hurt. You can buy one that’s connected to a floating ball. Then you could use it on all your future bettas.

Age and fin type. The longer and larger the fin, the harder to swim with as they age.

That seems adequate as long as the canister is large enough. Also shrimp will be a no no. They’ll get decimated once they hit the water with the fish I listed above. Traditionally Denison barbs are perfect tank mates for rainbows. My favorite would be Odessa Barbs and rainbows. Corydoras are also perfect. I prefer aspidoras.

To truly go filterless, plant it up and load it with nano fish. Personally this would be my 39th choice.

@GPounda 20 is a great size school of rainbows. You can mix it up if you like, however the effect you get if you stick with 1 species is spectacular. The uniformity of it all makes it complete, imo. Also if you ever decide to dip your toes into breeding, you won’t hybridization to worry about. This is highly frowned upon. Boesmani are a great choice. For something stunning but a bit different for roughly same price tag you can check out Melanotaenia Trifasciata ‘Goyder River’, Chilatherina Alleni ‘Wapoga’, or Glossopelis Wanamensis. The Wanam’s are incredible, when fully matured the males sport long, ragged fins, it’s quite the eyeful. If you approach rainbows with patience, you will be rewarded with daily spectacles and breeding rituals. I always feel gratitude when observing them.

@VanDogh I have extras of a bunch of stuff. PM me and maybe we can work something out.

Unless you have fry, I’d go max 1 feeding per week while you’re away. IMO, I’d do 1 feeding on Day 7 and next feeding when you return. Or if I was feeling confident in the auto feeder, 1 feeding on Day 5 and Day 10. Obviously you can feed daily and nothing can go wrong, but if it does and you’re not there, then you have a problem. Good luck

Im sure I’ll eventually get out. The problem is that when it comes to purchases, I’ve narrowed it down to only buying rainbow fish. I prefer 75 gallon species only. As you can imagine, I don’t set up a new tank often so I don’t even attend the LFS. Everything I need is online, which is really convenient, yet unfortunate because I’ve stripped the interactions out of my hobby. Thanks for the pep talk, it’s appreciated.

@Scaperoot just curious, why did you find eco complete to be a nightmare?

@Wadikus well at least you know that the attitude is coming from a protective place, and as long as she has something to protect, you’ll be a happy keeper. Congrats, pandoras are beautiful. My biggest weakness has got to be that I can be an idiot more often than I’d like to admit. For example, I have 3 prominent fish clubs around me and I haven’t been to 1 meeting in the 4 years we’ve lived here. Different conventions or expo’s and nope, not those either. I work full time and raise a 2 year old so my time is limited, especially factoring in aquarium maintenance. Eventually just maybe, I might crumble and attend something and realize I’ve been correct this whole time, I’m an idiot. 😎

2” should work fine, but 1” is really shallow, hence the tabs popping up. Not sure of the size of the other root tabs you use, but if they’re smaller than the ACO then that’s probably why those have worked.

Killifish can go in a 5 gallon, there are tons of options out there. 2.5 is ridiculously small so I wouldn’t suggest anything in there.

Excellent points. The only thing that sticks out in all of this is, explain the popularity of the hobby in Europe and Asia? It’s a part of their social structure. As far as I know, they also do not have magic in a bottle, yet the hobby excels there.

How deep is your substrate? I haven’t heard of any fish actively digging them out unless they are general diggers.

Did you actually see them dig it up? Sometimes when I use root tabs, if not inserted all the way down, they tend to pop up and make a bit of a mess. None of it affects the fish, but it’s def unsightly.

@Lennie there are non annual killi’s, but for a newbie that’s not a bad point to highlight.

+1 on killifish

Or drop some below the water line

Definitely up the water changes

@NOLANANO I respectfully disagree with you

@AdamS but you’re not describing the hobby. If people can’t fall in love with the hobby because of the effort involved, then we don’t need those people in the hobby. When caring for a living being, easy should not be your go to option. What’s best for the animal should always come first. Will the effort to remedy a sick fish be too much for some? Probably so. The person you’re describing is not as asset to the hobby. Also, you can further the hobby by exposing more people to aquariums in their daily life. If more people encountered seriously kept aquariums as a norm, the hobby would explode. Unfortunately, most people’s ideas of the hobby is what they see at a big box store.

Bag up the stratum in media bags.

I’m an hour south of Tampa, I’m pretty sure we are talking about the same spot, it’s an hour or so east.