Ben C.

Love seeing the photos here. Always amazing tanks to drool over. My favorite tank is currently my little 5.5 gallon nano jungle stocked with Neocaridina, Blue Neon Rasboras, and a mix of snails. It's so low maintenance other than clearing the water lettuce every week, and it just looks so natural. Hard to get a good picture of the rasboras though, quick little buggers, but when the light hits them just right, they're gorgeous.

@Patrick_G will do! Thanks!

@Ragnarok1200 will do. Been using root tabs for my crypts and swords, but things like water sprite, anacharis, etc. won't grow. I have Eco Complete and Flourite for substrate.

Love the progression here! I have the exact same fish, did you do anything special to make them breed or did they just...go for it?

@Ragnarok1200 Thanks for the advice. Yeah they're both pretty heavily planted, but the growth has been slow going. I hate doing the huge water changes, so I suppose the fertilizers are the right route!

@KBOzzie59 The 5.5 Gallon: Room Temp, 7.4 pH, and has been up for 8 months, last addition of livestock was 4 months ago. Some plant growth. The 20 Gallon: 82 degrees, 7.0 pH, has been up for a year, 6 months since last addition of livestock. Slow plant growth, and stem plants oddly never survive..

Context: I have two tanks that have algae problems (surprise surprise) to some degree, and I've been doing around 40% water changes every week to keep it at bay. The two tanks are: 5.5 Gallon with Finnex Stingray for 6 hours, nitrate testing at zero. Crazy hair algae and cyano that I have to pull every week. 6 Emerald Rasboras, and snails. 20 gallon long with Finnex Stingray for 9 hours, nitrate testing at around 10 ppm. Algae isnt as bad, just some BBA will build up on large flat leaves of anubias or such if I miss a week. 10 Red Eye Tetras, 1 Electric Blue Ram, a whole smattering of Kuhli Loaches, Amano shrimp and snails as algae control. I'm attaching a picture of today's nitrate test for context, this is a week after my last water change, no fertilizers. (Left is 5.5 gallon, right is 20 gallon). The question is, should I stop being such a nut about water changes and adjust with fertilizers and light instead? I tried being hands off with the 5.5 gallon but the hair algae just goes bonkers. If I skip a week on the 20 gallon, there's definitely a noticeable buildup of algae. Unfortunately I don't think I can cram in any more clean-up in either tank as they are bit full on stocking I think. Thanks in advance!

@shkote I didn't know I needed this information, but now that I do, life is forever changed.

@BigRedd I like the two lights idea, might have to steal that!

@xXInkedPhoenixX great thanks!

@Fish Folk haha I kid, I'm sure I'll have a cut made organically sometime soon anyway...I'll try the airstone. The substrate is "Imagitarium Black Aquarium Sand". Whatever that is. With a little bit of EcoComplete I used underneath from an older aquarium initially.

@xXInkedPhoenixX thanks. It's not my favorite, but it's got a lot of plants. If I do scrap it, do you think I can salvage the plants? Maybe just a brief peroxide dip to prevent any spread?

@Beardedbillygoat1975 I love the oranges and yellows. Had a colony of oranges for a while, and loved calling them my little Fantas. But yellow would be just as great. A rare color in aquariums, and stands out very well against the backdrop.

@Fish Folk I have several knicks on my hands usually (who knew, chisels are sharp?) and haven't noticed anything, but I could make a sacrifical fresh cut to test. I don't have the exact numbers on KH and GH unfortunately, although I tested my tap a while back (which I use for water changes) and it was quite hard. Should I test again? As for air, I'm running a HOB on decently high flow, but I'm not running a stone. Room temperature sits around 72-75 daily.

@xXInkedPhoenixX - I'm starting to think the same might be necessary for me. The stress is really making it not fun..

Love seeing this develop! I actually got into woodworking myself after my first ever build - a stand for my 20 gallon. Now I have a full shop, and I'm just waiting to get a home to really get into making bigger projects like this! Looks great!

Sorry the bowl didn't work out as hoped. It's a showstoppper even without fish, you have a great eye for plants and scaping. I lean towards the shrimp, just because I love the little buggers. More activity, whereas a betta would give more companionship I suppose.

Parameters: 5.5 Gallon, No Heater, 7.4 pH, 0/0/10 ammonia/nitrite/nitrate, HOB filter, only Dwarf Emerald Rasboras and Ramshorn Snails So I've got a bit of a stumper, and I'm starting to believe this tank is cursed, or something is very wrong. Over a year ago, I had a betta only in this tank with snails, and while he did fine for a while, he began to develop fin tears and rot, and I assumed it was because he was flaring at the snails constantly (and I mean constantly). So I gave him to a friend, and left the tank empty except for the snails for a month. Did several large water changes, let it stabilize, and then added some Neocaridina shrimp, only for them to die one by one, with seemingly no cause. So I left the tank empty again, let the snails multiply, and the plants grow. Then I added 9 Dwarf Emerald Rasboras after the same process. All was fine for a while, but now after about 4 months, 3 have randomly died overnight (on separate nights, spread out by about a month each). Only one was continually pale, but that one actually lasted the longest strangely enough. None showed any stopping in eating, or other behaviors such as odd swimming, lethargy, etc. Would just wake up to a dead fish. I can occasionally see one (and not any specific one) flash, darting into the plant leaves and out. But nothing consistent. My only guesses at this point are: 1. Some resilient disease that has survived the long gaps of leaving the tank empty? All the Rasboras were quarantined after picking them up for 3 weeks, but there were no deaths in the QT tank. 2. Something is tainting the water - but all that contained in there are some unknown stones from the LFS, live plants, plus inert black sand from Petco. Snails have never slowed down, though. This tank does grow hair algae and cyano like crazy though. Despite when testing very low nitrates, and beginning a routine of 50% water changes and shorter light schedule, it still persists. 3. The largest Rasbora, which I've attached a picture of, is bullying the others to death. He's the only one that looks like that in the tank and has that size, so I'd assume the others are females, but I'm unsure. But he chases the other 5 tankmates any time he sees them, especially in the evenings around feeding. I have no idea if any of this is related, but I'm at my wits end after the third death today. This tank has been nothing but grief for a whole year, while the rest of mine are thriving. Any help would be appreciated, thanks for reading my novel!

Very cool! I've thought about doing something like this but I only have nano tanks. My question is...would veggies grown in there be edible? 🤔

Thanks! Yeah I was kind of stuck on where to put them until I built this bench. The aquarium hobby did get me into woodworking (wanted to build my own stand) after all!

Biggest advice I can give is pair the betta with another pretty quick eater, like ember tetras mentioned above. Bettas bloat so easily and are such fatties that I had a really hard time with them in communities - even getting food to snails was hard - so I gave up and kept them alone. Also, need to get to know the betta first. Some are chill, some are genocidal. All of mine have been murderers..shrimp are too risky in my opinion.

Like the title says. Darn you Aquarium Co-Op and your brilliant practice of keeping me coming back for...free stickers. Heres mine accumulating on my workbench!

The betta had what I'm guessing was a rough bacterial infection that knocked him in out in 3 days, despite medicine. So nasty stuff. I could remove the snails, but with QT, I wouldn't be getting a new fish in there probably for at least 4 weeks. Maybe a combo of both then? Leave it for a good while and do some big boy water changes? As for the loaches - I did seed some filter floss for almost 2 weeks in my main tank to move over, but it didn't really do much...maybe I will give it a few more days. They're fairly confident little guys who gobble stuff down though.

Thank you for the advice! Yeah I've been stuffing them silly because they were lookin rough at the store, so I'm sure they can go a bit now without any food. I'll give them one more day in the sun and then begin the process...

Hello all! So I've recently got some emerald dwarf rasboras and kuhli loaches who've finished their second week of QT. All looks good, but if I recall correctly, kuhli loaches are generally wild caught. They've had no medication, but would it be recommended to run a paracleanse cycle on them before I put them in their respective tanks? Only 1 loach is still a bit small/paler, but he readily eats. The rest are chonkers at this point. My hesitation is that the QT tank is uncycled, so I'm keeping the ammonia as low as possible with daily water changes. The paracleanse would get in the way of that. My second question is, I just recently lost a betta to a mystery disease, and now his tank is uninhabited other than snails. How long should the tank lie empty in your experience before it's safe to add fish again? Thanks!