Ken Dyer

If you want to have less snails then feeding less is the quick/easy fix. If you want zero snails then a dwarf chain loach (or other appropriately sized snail predator for a 20G community tank) and feeding less would be my suggestions. Or learn to embrace the "got snails" lifestyle (and still feed a little less) is my go to 🙂

The saving grace for me was before we married the wife and I sat down and discussed "play money" and bills. The rules for us are if you buy it with your play money then no harm no foul. The rules for fish tanks quickly became no more than 3 in the living room (though I had a 5 gallon flex in there for a year or two with a pea puffer at her request). I can run what I want downstairs as long as it stays in the fishroom, or I tear down/clean out the brine shrimp hatchery and python from the downstairs guest bath when we have guests staying with us. Finding the right partner who allows our craziness is key, but I also think one who puts up some guard rails and keeps us from going overboard is probably a good thing too 😉

possibly eggs from what I can see (though my eye sight is less than stellar). Inhabitants in the tank?

Yeah I bought these a year or two ago from petco as an impulse purchase and have never regretted it. Such pretty and happy little fish. Wouldn't be sad to make more of them.

Welcome aboard 😀

Also have the been de-wormed while in your care? Internal tape worms can also really impact growth.

Very nice critters, and welcome!

The updated and now planted 40B. Plants have a ton of growing in to do and may add some dwarf sag up front.

Hard to say, could be that they are just growing slowly, could be they are already fully grown, could be care, etc. Pictures would help 😁

My bristle nose will eat just about anything they can. The will absolutely murder zucchini or green beans (salted French cut preferred), repashy, flake/pellet that makes it to the bottom, bug bites plecco sticks, etc. I doubt you'll find them to be picky eaters, quantity seems to be their chief concern for me 😉

according to google rantara are vegans (and sadly short lived) so sounds like they wouldn't hurt a fly fry 😉

Happy to help where I can, and call in the big dogs like Daniel when needed 😉 Enjoy your discus, they are such beautiful fish and I have thought about bringing up another batch more than once. Maybe some day, but for now I love the pictures on the forums!

A comfy chair springs to my mind 😉 I love summer tubbing, but north Idaho makes for a short outdoor season.

I tend to thaw frozen foods in some water and then pour or pipette into tanks to spread the frozen food amongst the various tanks. So that may be the difference (that and mine now see me as "the bringer of food" and come to the glass like puppies when I come near the tank). Except for the rainbow tank, those pigs would take my arm off if I didn't give them full cubes 😉

Mine also enjoy snacking down normal brine shrimp and mysis shrimp. When they were smaller they loved BBS, but now don't seem to care quite as much about them but will still eat them.

@Daniel may have better advice as I know he has a lot of discus keeping experience as well

Spray foam and vinyl baseboard is how I handled this in our last house. Though the backer rod and caulk sounds like a great solution as well. And no matter how careful, I always assume it is only a matter of time until I kick over a 5 gallon bucket of water in the fish room so preparing for the worst is always worth the peace of mind in my eyes.

I typically find that tetras can be shy regardless of having a background or not until their numbers get around ~10 fish for me. Guppies seem to occasionally start shy, but as they spawn and increase the numbers also get very outgoing (especially if they think food may be involved). But most all of my aquariums are densely planted so that typically helps as well as more cover tends to lead to the fish feeling more secure. For your fish I don't think you "have to" have a background, so up to you if you think the tank would look better with one or not but I can't see it having any negative effects on the fish. I would make sure you have enough plants/cover and if the aquarium is in a place with a lot of activity/foot traffic (or flashing light from a television) a background could help make the fish feel more secure. And as with all things aquarium related time seems to make the biggest difference for me as the fish settle into their new habitat.

I find it can depend on the fish as some like a safe space to back up to and a background can provide a safe side of the tank. For most of the fish I keep they don't seem to care, so the only benefit would be ascetics. What fish are you looking to keep? That would possibly help me give you a more specific answer than "sorta" 😉

I looked it up (haven't used it before so take this as only my thoughts) but I don't see anything that just screams "this product will kill all your shrimp". Whenever in doubt (and really for any shrimp tank) I would run the tank planted for a few months and keep an eye on your water parameters. Then when you feel like things have stewed long enough and you have plenty of algae and micro flora/fauna in the tank give a small batch of shrimp a try. For me I have quite a few shrimp spread across multiple tanks so I would choose a few brave souls for the expedition and if extra worried I would drip acclimate them to the new tank and keep an eye on them during the drip acclimation to see if they start freaking out. If so would halt the expedition, rinse in water from the original tank and add them back to the initial tank.

Welcome aboard! Love the 5 gallon and the white clouds!

I always called those "discus pimples" and saw them occasionally when I was keeping discus. With clean water they always went away for me on their own. But I always took them as a sign to up my water changes (unsure if that really mattered, but was what I did).

I have an odd arrangement with my LFS. I shopped there as a kid and since returning back after being out of town for ~30 years. I am friendly with the siblings that run the shop these days since their father has mostly retired from the day to day. I tend to drop off a bag of guppies or endlers about one to two times a month, plecos when I raise up a batch, and then multies about 1-2 times a year (not a terribly popular fish locally for some reason). I never have asked for any money nor store credit. But, every time I buy anything (I drop in almost every week) I get a discount. Occasionally fish at cost, sometimes a percentage off of my purchase of dry goods, etc. I have joked with my wife that I have no idea how much anything at the LFS costs as I don't think I have ever paid the same price for anything twice. We are a small town (~40K population) and I'd hate to lose my access to "my" LFS so I am very happy with my relationship with them. My hope is they only give me the deal they can afford and anything I get back is just gravy and an outlet for my fry that will hopefully end up making some other local fish keeper happy with some quality fish.

Broke out the little 3" disk saw with the abrasive disk, the saw horses & clamps, and set off to Home Desperate for some poly carbonate siding & drawer pulls. After multiple adjustments and finally settling on "good enough" ended up with tops for the 5 10 gallon tanks in the room and an actual top for the 75G that wasn't comprised of off cuts from earlier projects tetris'ed together. Ended up moving the longfin cherry barbs into the newly planted 40B as it was hard to appreciate them on a bottom row tank and I must say, DANG! they are beautiful against a dark substrate. They thought so as well as they spawned within about 4 hours of being moved so had to move the mop into one of the new 10's to see if we get anything. Expectations are low as the tank is only 1 week old so no good mulm/biofilm for fry but no action means no success. Poor action is at least better than zero 😉 Will snap some pictures and upload hopefully after work today (especially if the cherry barbs want to flare and dance again for me).

If it falls apart I typically find either my water wasn't hot enough or I used too much water. A little less water and make sure it is boiling made the difference for me.