FinalFins

If you plan on getting those, I think any tetra will be fine. I can suggest ember tetras, or diamond tetras. If you want to explore into cyprinids, snakeskin barbs are very beautiful fish.

Do you know your pH? Compatibility will really depend on which species of apisto you decide to keep.. Do you have any specific species in mind. ?

Cories won’t work in a situation where the apistos will want to breed.. a singular male and corydoras will work but a breeding pair is asking for trouble. If you want to deviate from tetras, you could always go for pencilfish.

The red reminds me of Septicemia. I believe this is treated with something like Maracyn or Maracyn 2. Muted colors is typical of a stressed and ill fish. Another note but I would not worry about corydoras gulping for air. This is a normal thing that all corydoras do, but I do not think it is in any way connected to the illness at hand.

I actually want to add, I actually found fry living in the main tank these guys are housed in right now. I'm surprised the emerald eye rasboras haven't found them yet.

I thought I would share some photos of my most recent project - Indian spiketail paradise fish , red spiketails, Dayi, they are called many things. One of my friends actually introduced me to this fish. Ever since I knew about them, I loved them. Alas, I could never find any. Quite a rare fish I think. Fast forward a year and a bit, I actually got a box of these fish up at my door. I think they are beautiful fish. Not as flashy as some others, but beautiful in their own right. I think they have been in my care for around ~2 months, +/- a week. Here is some of mine. Male on top, 2 females below him. This is about a month after I received them, in their final tank. I was hoping for at least a male and female when I got the shipment- I had never actually found lots of documentation on breeding this exact species, and only a few entries. I didn't know how to initiate spawning or how hard it would be. Anyways, into the quarantine tank they went, and a bit of complication happened. Essentially I had to find 3 more due to some unexpected troubles. Luckily I sourced more. I ended up in total with 3m/3f in the end. Only a couple days after [I received them], they bred without me intervening, or doing anything. They didn't require any pre- conditioning, just a diet of flake, which they took quite eagerly for a wild fish. My last group of wild gourami took a while to wean to dry foods. Since it was a quarantine tank, I couldn't really move everyone except the male to another tank. The male actually did fairly well in the presence of conspecifics. He mostly guarded the entrance to his coconut cave. Heres a picture of them actually spawning - you can see some eggs in the nest. The embrace happened right as I took the photo. Keep in mind this is all in a small quarantine tank. Not at all meant to be their final setup. I let the male guard them for about a week, then I chose to try and remove some of the fry. I ended up removing about 20 fry, in 2 go's Here is one in the first fry container. Absolutely minuscule. Duckweed for scale. For the next 2 weeks I grew them out in a pint container. They about doubled in size. I don't think they can actually take anything other than paramecium or rotifers. Didn't have those. They grew up on infusoria on java moss, until I moved them to a 20 gallon with plenty of floating plants and more moss. Eventually, I got to the point where they could accept live baby brine shrimp. That really helps. I also found several more 2 wk old fry in the vacant quarantine tank. They were only added a couple days ago to the main grow out tank . The month & 1/2 old fry and young fry seem to coexist well. I'm now at the point where I am comfortable in their survival rate and growth. The biggest is around a centimeter and little more, and the rest are around the size of a rice grain. All of them are growing out very well, and these will be some F1 fry which I will probably try to get some F2 out of them. Very slow growers though. Compared to honey gouramis and betta fry I see documented around the web, these are very far behind. The fry kind of remind me of parosphromenus. These fish are one of my favorite in all of my tanks - mostly because they taught me so much about labyrinth fish and fry growth in general. I did not think these fish would be this ridiculously easy to spawn. They still spawn in their main tank, but I don't collect the fry. The congener to this fish, P. cupanus, seem to be more shy and difficult to get adjusted to captivity. I've been told they are much more shy and light sensitive than dayi. I think I will have a try at those one day.

This looks more like an example of extreme bloat. If egg bound, it will more look like the female has put on a little weight and has rounded out, but here, the fish is blown up like a balloon.

You will need soft water and water of low TDS- collecting rainwater is a good strategy I found. Emperors aren't very tricky to breed and I would assume that they are similar in most tetras in breeding fashion. So low TDS, soft water and I believe the eggs are light sensitive. Most tetras spawn in the morning so you will want a separate aquarium in darkness for a couple days while conditioning and then once light comes in the morning you should see spawning behaviour. When researching tetra breeding techniques for my lemons I found this video fairly useful as a 'general' guide.

Thats a difference I notice in all my gourami.

I am not familiar in the anatomy of Trichopsis vittata and Trichopsis schalleri but I believe that the males of Trichopsis pulima (sparkling gourami)in breeding dress are the ones that get much more colorful and most commonly sport the blue eye but occasionally I do see images of unsexed individuals sporting the blue eye- and a quick look at T.vittata via google does reveal they do also sport blue eyes- only males I would assume. Lighting will affect the coloration of the fish, as stronger lighting normally will result in a more intense coloration.

Croaking gouramis are Trichopsis vittata, a close relative of the sparkling gourami, and they get at least double to size... OP please specify the species you want to know since Croaking gouramis apply to 2 of the species in the genus Trichopsis, and sparkling gouramis are known as Trichopsis pumila... the care between the two species is much different.

PFK is one of the gold standard magazines, but it costs a hefty dollar.

I clicked the wrong one as I voted, but I'll share my thoughts. Personally my thought is that since the fish have been in the bag water for several hours I prefer to get them out straight away. Ammonia is a dangerous substance and I prefer to have my fish exposed to it for the least amount of time as possible. So I float them for temperature then I put them straight in, discarding the bag water. True acclimation takes weeks, and they won't fully adjust to the new conditions for a bit. The acclimation process when you get a fish is just a quickened version of it, to ease the transition.

If you were to use pH down every time you do a WC you would need to measure out some pH down and add it too the new water, slowly raising the pH of the new water every time. Too much hassle IMO, just add some water every 5 min or so, or plop and drop, which i do. I got some burmese chocolate gouramis in the mail coming from Portand, (higher pH I belive) and just dropped the fish into the tank and they were perfectly find afterwards. I have all 8 of them still going strong. Also I'm sure a stable pH is better then a slowly rising one.

You will be fine. Not harmful at all and they are just part of the ecosystem that a tank has. I call them detritus worms although that refers to a boatful of different species, they will eat excess food/dying organic matter.