JettsPapa

As far as stocking, I'd start with getting more Corydoras pygmaeus. I'd add at least ten, but you could get many more than that if you want (depending on your other stocking). I have shoals of Lake Kutubu rainbowfish (aka turquoise rainbowfish), lemon tetras, and black neon tetras in my 65, along with two Bolivian rams. I'm pretty happy with it, so that might give you some ideas. As far as filtration, I have an AquaClear 70 HOB and a good-sized sponge filter. It seems to work fine.

Hello, I don't have a 60 gallon tank, but I have a 65 (same footprint as a 40 gallon breeder tank but taller). What information are you looking for?

I agree that crypts are great beginner plants, but disagree about the root tabs. While they might do better with root tabs, mine thrive without them in inert substrates. I pull them up, thin them, replant, and sell the excess at least yearly in all my tanks. They apparently get enough nourishment from the water column.

Pearl gouramis are one of my favorite fish, but I wouldn't put just one in a tank. While they aren't shoaling fish, like tetras, rasboras, etc, they are social and seem to do better in groups. I currently have eleven in my 40 gallon breeder, and it has been as many as fourteen. It's not unusual to see all eleven chilling almost stationary in a group taking up less than 1/4 of the tank space.

I have a 65 gallon community tank with Lake Kutubu rainbowfish, lemon tetras, black neon tetras, panda corys, and two Bolivian rams. I'm pretty happy with it, though if I was doing it again I might skip one of the tetra species.

There is a link below to the thread where I posted that information. I also wanted to mention that if your gH and kH are high enough you might want to discontinue the wonder shell. While I haven't experienced it, even with my gH and kH near 300 ppm, I've heard of cases where they were so high that the shells get too strong and hard, and it caused the shrimp to die because of failed molts.

I suspect YouTube doesn't care. Even if they did they'd need an army of employees to check the accuracy of all the videos being posted.

That one certainly could.

Hello. I have similar water parameters. My suggestion would be to add more substrate, as mentioned above, and get some crypts for the background. They do well for me. I would not get corkscrew vals. They also do well for me, but I wouldn't put them in a 10 gallon tank. Did I understand correctly that you have two lights? Maybe that's too much light for a tank that shallow?

Within the last year or so I found John Scalzi (science fiction author), and really like his books. A few days ago I finished his "Agent to the Stars". It's a first contact novel different from any other one I've ever read, and also one of the funniest books I've ever read. There is some adult language, but not a great deal, and is otherwise is okay for a broad audience.

It's a long story, and I might not get the sequence of events exact, but no, I didn't add them all at once. I started with just one male, then my daughter-in-law gave me one she didn't want. About that time I had some store credit at my favorite LFS, so I decided I'd use it to get some females. As you probably know, they're difficult to sex, and most of the new ones also turned out to be males. At that point I had somewhere in the neighborhood of seven, with only two females. Then my daughter-in-law's friend was breaking down her 55 gallon tank (that had a group of pearls in it) and selling it to my daughter-in-law, along with all the fish and equipment. DIL didn't want those pearls either, and offered them to me. Of course I said "Sure, why not?" Thankfully those were mostly females. That got me up to fourteen. I've since lost three, which leaves me with eleven. As I said above, I've never seen any aggression from them. While of course it changes occasionally, the tank is always at least moderately planted, so there are always plenty of hiding places, which I believe helps.

More plants is rarely, if ever, a bad thing, but I think it's fine. Mine have never shown any breeding behavior. Maybe because of my high pH, gH, and kH?

Thanks. That is a good deal. For an even better one, click the link for blue handles instead of black.

That reminds me of a story my father told about when he was working as a carpenter many decades ago (probably in the 1950's). They were hanging cabinet doors, and one of his coworkers was driving the screws in with a hammer. When asked about it he replied "Those slots in the screws are for taking them out."

My wife has several orchid plants on the windowsill above the kitchen sink (north facing window). They do well and bloom frequently while being pretty much ignored. Before she passed away it frustrated my mother-in-law to no end because hers would never bloom.

I haven't kept them (8.2 pH liquid rock here), but caridina shrimp prefer soft water and low pH. You might take a look at them.

I have both. I prefer the round ones, until I'm trying to catch a shrimp or fish that's in the corner of a tank or specimen container. (By the way, they're not just for shrimp. I like them for catching guppies also.)

I also don't have heaters in my shrimp tanks. In summer the thermostat is set at 72°, and in winter it varies between 60° at night and 68° during the day (unless the outside temperature gets higher than that, which it frequently does here in SE Texas). They also do just fine in my tubs outside. They're in the shade, but above ground. Air temperatures range from around 28° in winter to well over 100° in summer. Last year we had a cold spell where the tubs were iced over for about two days. The shrimp were fine. To sum it up, neocaridina shrimp will be just fine in a wide range of temperatures, as long as the changes aren't abrupt.

By the way, I don't store my stuff in a cup. I have a shallow cookie sheet lying on my desk beside one of the tanks. It works great. I don't have to worry about putting wet stuff on it.

Thanks for the advice, but I use either pool filter sand or sandblasting sand in my tanks. Both are relatively inexpensive, so I will continue to not reuse substrate.

If those are adults (it's difficult to get scale from the picture, but I'll take your word for it), they're both females.

Did you always have them with other gourami species? I'm asking because it's always been my understanding that it's best to not mix gouramis in the same tank. Also, I have eleven pearl gouramis, with roughly equal numbers of males and females, and they don't show any aggression at all.

They are. They're probably the most docile, other than honey gouramis.

I'm just now seeing this discussion, but wanted to say that something similar happened to me a year or so ago. I wanted to move my colony of blue shrimp from a 5 gallon tank to a 10 gallon tank. I wanted to keep as much of the beneficial bacteria colony as I could, so along with plants and the sponge filter I used the same substrate from the old tank. Almost every shrimp died in the first few days. I will never re-use substrate again.

It won't fit in your cup, but I like having an assortment of different sizes of measuring cups handy. You'll use them more than you think, even if you don't use them to measure anything. I use my small one for dipping water when I'm catching fish or shrimp. I use a larger one to set the bag of water in when I'm catching shrimp to sell (I like to put them straight into the bag instead of into a container and then pouring the container of water into the bag because shrimp will frequently get left behind when you do that).