NofishB4

Thanks! That’s great news! Did they get that thick red stripe the regular cardinals get? The ones in LFS are pretty young so it’s hard to tell

I have quite a bit of driftwood in both of my tanks. But my pH doesn’t change. I don’t really care for the look of tannins and I’m a bit nervous to aggressively alter my pH as I e read it’s better to be stable. I have no idea of the actual hardness of my water but I think it might actually be softer than I’d think with that pH as most of the hard water fish I’ve kept (all livebearers) have not done well while my cardinals, Bolivian rams and rummynose have thrived.

Hi. My LFS brought in some albino cardinal tetras. Has anyone kept them before? Does their care differ in any way to regular cardinals? Did you find them more fragile? My water is not ideal for cardinals with a pH of 8 however my regular cardinals have been doing well in my tank for 8 months and are colored up and full size. Temperature is at 79 I put 8 on hold to add to the school of 15 regular I already have.

We’d love to do a river scape. Unfortunately his current stock would not like strong flow. It would be a whole new world if we weren’t trying to work around them

So 3 months ago my friend asked me for help setting up a tank for her 13 year old. Originally she only wanted a 10G but I brow beat her into a standard 20G. Fast forward 4 months and that 20G is thriving but the moderate planting we did exploded and she feels the tank looks too full (it is at least 80% planted). C does not want to thin out any of his plants as he loves how happy his fish are but does feel like they are a bit cramped (he has 8 espei, 10 green neons, and 8 khuli loaches) His mom bought him a 33L for Xmas and we would love to see some our your low tech, easy to maintain scapes. We will be transferring mostly various species of crypts, an aponogeton crispus, 2 different species stem plants and a couple anubias. I believe we are going to ditch his water lettuce in such a short tank. Maybe go with red root or salvinia.

They’re about 13” long. If food is frozen (usually baby brine or daphnia) and I’ve just plopped it in the tank I just kind of tap it so it come apart. For bigger food like spirulina brine, blood worms and freeze dried black worms I pre soak them and they stick to the wood pretty decently so I can maneuver it between it between my floaters. I use them to pick out dead leafs on my floaters or move algae pellets from being shoved in the corners. I have 2 I glue together to make them stronger and then glue a hunk of sponge to gently clean corners and small spots on glass

1. What is your favorite species of fish or invert and why? All of them. But I will probably always have a tank with honey gouramis 2. What is your favorite species of plant and why? Aquarium water lettuce. Love the long green roots and they are nitrate suckers. Keeps the algae off my second favourite anubias. 3. How many gallons total do you have in tanks? 100 across 4 tanks 4. What is your favorite color in a fish? Yellow (honey gourami remember) or red for most other fish 5. What is the hardest fish you have to net and what tips can you give others to catch them? For me it was rehoming cherry barbs from a fully planted display tank. My advice is to make sure you love them before adding them to a big display aquarium. They were great but too busy for the tank they were in. 6. What was your first ever species of fish and what age were you? A kid. We had 2 of a bunch of fish so they had buddies. So much learned since then. Although that tank ran problem free for years. 7. What fish or invert you have accidentally bred the most? Added multiple colours of neocardina shrimp to a betta tank. I knew they’d not breed true but I thought the betta and hasbrosus cories would snack on the shrimplets. Not only did they not but that 15G has so many I’ve started giving the babies away for free (since they have pretty much no color). 8. What fish or invert that gets in the way the most during water maintenance time? My betta is the most aggressive and will try to bite me. But the cories are the ones who mostly go for a spin in the siphon. 9. If you have a gigantic tank would you add a few large fish or tons of small fish? Small fish 100%. Lots of them in big schools. 10. What is your favorite fish or invert that's not in the hobby? Someone on here posted about a candy darter. I’d love to have some. 11. What's your newest project? A 10-20G shrimp tank (with only ONE colour). I’m squeezing it into a very specific space so my husband is building me a custom stand. 12. What's going well in your hobby right now? My plants. Growing well and looking good. 13. What's not going so well in your hobby right now? Mystery snails. I’ll get one that is bullet proof and lives for 1-2 years but I’d say 8/10 just die for no damn reason! In the same tanks. 14. Do you feed your homosapiens tacos? Of course. Teenagers who play sports. Tacos are a staple. 15. What food do you use the most of? Frozen daphnia or baby brine shrimp. Keeps my food hogs from hogging 16. What is something you wish you had done differently in your hobby? I wish I had gotten the 75G instead of being scared of a big tank and going with a 40G. It’s my main display tank and it’s going so well I don’t want to tear it down but I want to add more to my schools and maybe another school. 17. What is your favorite hack? Dollar store bamboo sticks. I use them for everything. Pulling stuff from the bottom. Spot feeding. Spot cleaning (with a rag hot glue to it) Moving some of my plants or fish. Keeps my hand out of the water as much as possible. 18. Other than declorinator, if you could limit yourself to one product what would it be? (Ex. Bottled bacteria, meds, etc) Fertilizers for plants. Root tabs and liquid. 19. What is more fun, breeding or show tanks and why? Display. I don’t breed (shrimp tank will be my first attempt but it will still be set up like a show tank. My water limits what fish will breed and I only keep fish I really like. 20. What is your favorite part about your LFS? Their knowledge. They know what works well in different tanks and in our local water. Their fish are quarantined and really watched for problems before they sell them and they aren’t afraid to treat them after the quarantine period and they tell you something is wrong with them or they aren’t doing amazing instead of making a quick buck

Thank you all so much. I did contact the seller and the 30 breeder is 36x18x12. So it is wider. While I agree with many of you that that would add dimension to the tank I’m not sure it will work in C’s bedroom. I’ll get his mom to measure their stand dimensions (they already have one that held a 55 that cracked from another friend). Nabokovfan87 thanks so much for your chart! It was extremely helpful. Good to know about the weight!

Unfortunately space limits the tank to 12” deep. It’s in a kid sized bedroom. They really like my 55 but don’t want to go that big one the second floor

So my friend’s 13 year old son got a 20G high aquarium for his birthday 4 months ago. We set it all up, planted it, seeded it with bacteria from my established tanks. He got neons, espei rasboras, 3 honeys and 5 panda cories. Fast forward several months and everybody is doing awesome. Plants have grown a ton, fish are doing amazin. Parameters are 0-0-10 on water change day. His parents have agreed to let him get a bigger tank if he uses everything from his old tank (I have a plant light for him). He would like to up his current schools and get a bristlenose and khuli loaches. He is looking at the 33long (48x12x12) to give his fish ultimate swimming space. But the seller also has a 30G breeder (36x12x15). Which would be better?? Would you take extra length or extra height?

7-9 honey gourami OR 4-5 pearl gourami. Honeys are brighter and super peaceful. Mine don’t bother my cherry shrimp at all in my 40G. They are with cardinals. The pearls are new to me in a 55. But they are very graceful and you definitely notice them! Even though they are not as bright as the honeys the are super elegant.

Thank you everyone who shared your experiences with pearls!! After speaking with our LFS and a couple local hobbyists we have decided to try the pearls. They had a lot of interest in trios and were not confident that the females (we hope) would last. We have several breeder nets and other tanks that can serve as backup if aggression becomes an issue. After being quarantined for 3 weeks in a tank with no cover and absolutely no aggression (according to the owner) we are hopeful that our plants will fill in before any problems might pop up. Dither fish include cories, cherry barbs (LFS recommended over Kubotai) purple emperor tetras. We are going to leave the cardinals out. We’ve also stolen more water lettuce, frogbit, and val from our other tanks

That makes sense! I have 2 male and 4 female honeys in my other heavily planted tank and while my one honey constantly builds nests they never stay together and none of my females even bat an eye at him. I know the honeys are more peaceful as a rule but I really like the gouramis which is why the pearls seem the next logical step. Did you add all 11 at once? If aggression becomes an issue would adding more pearls help to diffuse it or make it worse (in your opinion obviously) I’m hoping to add more plants eventually but want to see how these ones grow and fill out. In my other tank I have mostly anubias and crypts with water lettuce I really like the seaweed look that the val will bring if it spreads well and stays healthy. My floaters (I have all of them in various tanks) grow amazingly long roots as well for cover so I expect these ones will too. I would have just done driftwood but this is the family tank…kids 🙄

More than what’s in the tank? The jungle val, red tiger lily, 2 aponogeton and dwarf lettuce should all fill in pretty fast. All of them should reach the top of the tank. There is a decent clump of susswassertang which grows pretty well in our other tanks (started with a gold ball sized portion). I was going to baffle the flow of my HOB filter but maybe I will leave it to discourage bubble nests. There are lots of calm spots for them to breathe from the surface.

I think 10-12 galaxy rasboras would look amazing in that tank. Their orange fins would compliment the orange bodies of the ember tetras and they have a busy without being hyper way of swimming. They stay more in the bottom half of the tank. Or green neons would also look amazing. I’d also bump your embers up to 12. Mine spread out all over when I bumped their numbers up.

Here is the tank currently. If you look near the plane there is a tiny red tiger lotus and we plan to let the water lettuce grow fairly thick

I just got a 55G (hooray!!!) and would like to get 4 Pearl gourami for my centre piece fish. Is is only moderately planted now but I have more plants coming and plan to keep my water lettuce quite thick as I deliberately choose low light plants. I’m going to baffle my hang on back filter this weekend.The final stock will be:10 skunk cories (in)15 purple emperor tetras (in)15 Kubotai rasbora (in)15 cardinal tetras (to be added)1 long fin green dragon pleco (to be added)6 mystery snails (to be added)My LFS has some beautiful pearls that have matured. I’m like 50% confident I can pick out a male and 3 females. Is this a good number? I don’t want to add too many but I also don’t want to add too few. How bad is the aggression if the male wants to breed? I have 2 male honeys and 4 females in my 40G and they rarely hang out and squabble with each other at feeding but they have never really fought or bothered anyone else in that community tank ever. I’m really looking for a calm, peaceful tank for this one too. Is the stocking looking ok? I’d like to see how it looks and flows and then bump up the schools if they need it.

Adding tannins to the water might help too. It’ll darken the water so not as much light gets through. If you were thinking a dither fish I have found chili rasboras to be pretty confident and they stay small, have a really interesting swim pattern, BRIGHT red and like similar water parameters

Long fin white clouds are beautiful. They are the main school for my next tank!!! My LFS keeps them with golds, dwarf neon rainbow fish and long fin cherry barbs with panda cories and a long fin green dragon BN pleco rounding out the bottom.

I think that’s awesome for your grandkids! Glowfish are also not my jam but at least cories are very peaceful and fairly hardy. The other glowfish are hyper and semi (some even full out) aggressive for a community tank. My daughter wanted some so bad but I refused to dedicate a tank for just the danios or just the tetras (as housing both adequately required such a big tank). She now keeps several planted betta tanks.

I have found it totally depends on the betta, the betta gender, the age of the betta, the order to which you add the other inhabitants and the size of the tank. 1 of our males is completely intolerant to all other forms of life. Could not settle in a divided tank either. He is living his best life in a 10G by his grumpy self. He In our divided 20Long (3 male bettas) 1 of our bettas is shrimp serial killer and all 3 of them exist perfectly with snails of all kinds. Our last male (also in a 10G) has lived peacefully with chilies and has cories, neocardina and amano shrimp with him currently but kills every snail he sees…even the pest snails (escargot anyone???) We found male bettas got picked on and stressed in our big community tank (all long finned) but our dumbo female is fine with all the other fish (she mostly concerns herself with getting ALL the food and laying over what she can’t eat…the cories swim all over her)

They are both gorgeous! Our water is 8. But it’s not overly hard. Embers, cardinals and rummynose all thrive in my tank but I killed every livebearer I’ve had. That being said my neighbour runs crushed coral in his tanks and they are all amazing there. I’ll look into rainbows (you are the 2nd to suggest them)

That is gorgeous!!! I love it. I don’t think she’s ready to try her hand at CO2 yet but wow. What size is your tank? Any aggression from the swords?

My friend recently got a 55 (I’m so jealous) and is completely open to what to stock it with. It will be planted and will have mystery snails. The substrate will be black diamond blasting sand. She would like a peaceful community. What has been your favourite combination of fish and why? Pictures encouraged if you have them

My honeys love any and all frozen foods ( big bloodworms all the way to tiny baby brine shrimp). So I bet they will go crazy for your cultures.