JettsPapa

But make very sure you want duckweed before getting some. It's much more difficult to get rid of than it is to acquire.

Mine turns brown before it drops needles, so if you keep cutting off and discarding the parts with brown needles there shouldn't be an issue.

I do believe that one is a male.

I think that's a female also, but I'm not 100% sure. I know it can be difficult, but can you post a picture looking at the shrimp more from the side and less from the top?

All those are females.

Are you sure you have both sexes? The males are smaller, and usually have less color, so it's not difficult to buy all females.

Or sell some to me. I have a 40 gallon breeder tank with ten or so, and I'd love to add at least that many more.

This reinforces my belief that many fish don't need the narrow range of temperatures that many people struggle to maintain.

This is a wild guess (and so I get notified of replies), but maybe a killifish of some kind?

Is it one of the chain pet stores, or a locally owned individual store? I'm asking because I've struggled keeping commercially raised guppies alive longer than a few weeks, and I've seen numerous reports on this and other forums of other people with similar experience. Hopefully this one will be okay, but I always encourage people to buy guppies from hobby breeders, or from locally owned stores that buy from hobby breeders.

Aquarium Co-op is only one of Aquahuna's customers, so I don't see why they shouldn't sell plants also.

That is not the issue. Baby shrimp will not die with nitrates at 15 ppm (or even considerably higher).

Don't believe everything you read. Using Easy Green according to the directions shouldn't be a problem, and I strongly suspect the shrimp and snail deaths weren't related to the fertilizer or the nitrate levels.

I just wanted to point out that algae wafers really aren't very good for corys. They need more protein.

I don't know where you got that information, but I keep neocaridina shrimp in tubs outside year-round in southeast Texas. This past winter the temperature got down into the upper teens, and the top of the tubs were iced over for several days. The shrimp were fine when it thawed, and they're still thriving. Maybe that's referring to caridinas?

I agree with the others who said not to feed while you're gone. I'd much rather come home to hungry fish than the mess that could result from an auto-feeder malfunctioning and dumping all the food at once.

Some of my best looking crypts are in the 5.5 gallon tank on my desk at work that doesn't have any mechanical filtration or water movement, so maybe. On the other hand, in my other tanks I'm disrupting them occasionally to pull plants to sell, so maybe not. I'm interested to see what others have to say about it.

I tried red root floaters in several tanks. It died a horrible screaming death. Duckweed also did very well for me. I didn't mention it above because I'm trying to forget the experience. Every time I think I have it eradicated it rears its ugly head again.

I have very similar water, though maybe not quite as hard, and I've also struggled with some floating plants, and most the ones that do well seem to only do so in one or two of my 10 tanks. Dwarf water lettuce did great everywhere I put it, but then I learned it's illegal to keep in my state so I got rid of all of it. I recently got some variegated frogbit that I introduced to about half of my tanks. It's doing great in one or two, growing and expanding slowly in one or two, and just hanging on in the rest. Hornwort does well, if it can get past the initial period of being introduced to a new tank. When I do that it seems to either keep growing without missing a beat, or drop every needle in the first two days. Guppy grass and pearl weed do well, but they aren't classic floating plants. Anacharis is finicky, but once established it does well for me. Oddly enough, it's doing best in a 5.5 gallon tank with no mechanical filtration or water movement.

As mentioned above, color and fin shape don't matter, but I would like to mention that some guppy strains will ignore fry, and others are relentless fry hunters (looking at you, albino koi guppies). I'm not familiar with the female you mentioned, so I don't know what would happen with yours.

Turkey vultures were very common in my area years ago, but have just about disappeared. The black headed vultures (I'm not sure of the correct terminology) have migrated up from Mexico and displaced them. Turkey vultures wait for an animal to die. If an animal is too injured or weak to get away or fight back the black headed ones will just start eating.

My well water is 8.2 pH, and harder than OP's (gh and kh both close to 300 ppm), and I keep a wide variety of fish, plants, and invertebrates. Unless there's something going on with your water other than pH and hardness I don't see why you couldn't use it as-is (other than adding conditioner to neutralize chlorine of course). There are some things you wouldn't be able to keep, of course, but here is a list of some that have done well for me. There are probably others that I'm forgetting. Guppies Lake Kutubu rainbowfish (turquoise rainbowfish) Pearl gouramis Green corys, panda corys, and Corydoras trilineatus Serpae, pristella, lemon, and black neon tetras (though the black neons started dying off after about four years) Amano, along with red cherry shrimp and several other colors Several crypt varieties, corkscrew val, several stem plants, guppy grass, pearl weed, susswassertang, hornwort, and anacharis I see no reason African cichlids wouldn't also do well, but since I enjoy the plants about as much as the livestock I haven't tried them.

Ammonia is less toxic with lower pH, so yes, it might matter.

No, but keep an eye on it and do a water change if it gets much higher. That's not a problem. I'm perfectly fine with 40 ppm. I don't believe it's really needed now, but if it will help your mind it certainly won't hurt anything. That's a very good question. If nitrites are high enough to show up when tested I would definitely recommend doing a water change.

Being 62, it's probably not surprising that I like mostly older music, but when I listen to Pandora on Shuffle (based on my stations) I never know what's coming next. It could be Bonnie Raitt, or Hank Williams Sr., or John Lee Hooker, or Stevie Ray Vaughan, or John Prine, or Jerry Jeff Walker, or Bonnie Bishop, or Ray Wylie Hubbard, or Ray Price, or CCR, or Gene Watson, or Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Freddy Fender, or Otis Redding, or Albert Collins, or Junior Brown, or Cody Jinks, or . . .