Ogpulchra

I don't know how interested in plants you are, but they are super helpful in maintaining water parameters and general health of the tank. I haven't really had to deal with water quality problems and I attribute that to having heavily planted tanks before fully stocking them. Depending on what you choose, plants can be challenging at first, so you might start there to make it easier in the long run. They really cut down on maintenance and look gorgeous. I wouldn't have nearly as many tanks if it weren't for plants.

He's a glo betta. I probably wouldn't buy another one, but he got me into the hobby. I love the little guy.

My betta carries sinking wafers to one spot in the tank and only shares with the kuhli loaches. He chases the rasboras off.

That's what I suspected. They are about the same size, so I imagine they are mature. Hoping they color up with live food and time. Thanks for replying!

Both were sold as strawberry rasboras/Boraras naevus, but they look like different species. Can anyone help identify them? I'm pretty bummed because the second group I bought aren't coloring up like the first one. Both were bought at the same store several months apart.

Ignore the obvious issues with cord/airline tube management... I don't have a lot of free time outside of work and this was a big project. I'll be moving equipment around this weekend. I'm basically planning on doing an insulated rack this winter. I have 2" rigid foam board for the back, sides, top and bottom of the rack and the tanks will be insulated with reflectix. I'm going to be plugging the heaters into smart outlets to get an idea of how well the insulation works before temps start dropping. I might also use velcro to attach reflectix to the front of the aquariums at night and cover the front of the rack with heavy drapes. 77" Husky rack with (2) 40g breeders and (2) 29g. The basement has been about 70° all summer and the heaters don't come on very often. I can give you info from the smart outlets in a couple of weeks if that would help. I don't think you'd have any trouble keeping your temps up if your basement stays around 68° year round. My basement drops down to 50° in the winter, possibly lower.

Youtube algorithm. I have a slight preference for a couple of smaller fishtubers now, but I go out of my way to support Aquarium Co-op specifically because the employees are paid a living wage. I take pretty much every opportunity to throw money at the store and youtube channel because of that. The community is pretty great too.

Let us know how the bottle trap works! I have 15 kuhli loaches to catch this weekend.

Thanks. I wasn't too worried until I asked about it on a fb puffer group.

I found this in my pea puffer tank and was worried it might be a parasitic worm. I messed with it in and out of water for about 5 minutes and it didn't move. Any idea what it could be? The tank is heavily planted and just has the pea puffers and a small bristlenose pleco. *I posted about white stringy poop from one of my puffers not too long ago, but all of my puffers are healthy chubsters and I've only seen normal brown poop from them since then.

I don't think overloading the tank with snails would work since pea puffers tend to go on murdering sprees and only take part of the snail meat. They would probably deplete their food source within a week and the leftover snail bits would pollute the water. A 10 gallon would be too small for the snails to hide effectively or deal with that much waste.

I bought a Fluval 3.0 not too long ago for my 40g breeder. My plants immediately perked up and started growing like weeds, especially my water wisteria. I'm not sure where you are located, but Aquarium Co-op sells them with a 3 year warranty.

Adding more plants to break up line of sight might help. I have 6 in a 20g long and they chilled out a bit when the stem plants filled in.

I upgraded from a couple of 5g betta tanks to two 20g longs, and now I have two 40g breeders because of this. I like having tiny ecosystems with lots of activity and diverse behaviors.

I can understand if smaller stores can't afford to quarantine new stock, but having clearly sick fish on the sales floor just seems like a bad move. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't being overly critical. I did assume each tank would have a different filtering system.

I've seen fish with ich in nearly every pet/aquarium store I've been to, even a highly recommended one in the Portland area. Should I avoid buying livestock from those places or is that a normal part of the hobby? Shouldn't those fish be pulled from the sales floor and treated? Is that generally too expensive for most stores? I usually don't see signs on infected tanks that would indicate they aren't for sale or that they are being treated. The Co-op doesn't have some of the fish I want or I would just buy from them every time.

There's an awesome YouTube channel called The Blind Fishkeeper. Alexander Williamson from The Secret History Living In Your Aquarium interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. The guy's name is Brandon and he's rad.

I have a recurring nightmare that my bedroom is the aquarium and I'm desperately trying to swim to my empty 20g tanks to breath air. I'm worrying about the cost of the water damage the whole time too. Gotta love stress dreams.

Is this normal poop? My puffers eat well and have rounded bellies, but I see them swimming around for hours with their poop attached. The runt of the bunch had a bit of stringy white poop hanging from the usual pellet shaped poo today. Could that just be a blood worm casing, or should I be worried about parasites? Shouldn't healthy poop drop within a minute or two? I'm more attached to my little pea pod than I expected to be and might be worrying too much. I purchased them about2 months ago and did 2 rounds of paracleanse about 2 weeks apart. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 15 nitrate, 7.4 pH and 79° F

I had the same problem until I started dosing Easy Green according to nitrate levels.

Same here haha

Thanks, Patrick. My power is actually .09 per kWh, so that's closer to the number I was getting. I think it will be doable if I just have the 40g breeders down there. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything because I saw some wild numbers on forum threads.

I must have misunderstood something... I calculated something closer to .13 per kWH. $13 doesn't seem right

I completely overlooked the issue of heating aquariums 20-25° above ambient room temperature when I started setting up a fish rack in the basement. I have a 77"x 24"x72" rack with two 40g breeders and two 20g longs. The basement ranges from 50-65°F. All of my fish are tropical. Would covering the rack with 2" sheets of insulation make much of a difference? Should I cover the concrete walls behind the rack too? I can cover the front of the rack when I'm not viewing the tanks. All of the tanks have glass lids and I bought two 150w heaters for each of the 40g breeders and two 100w heaters for each of the 20g longs. Should I get more heaters or higher wattage for each tank? Is my electric bill going to shoot up an insane amount? More than $100/month increase? The basement is unheated and has no insulation, so heating the entire room isn't really an option. Anyone have advice or experience with this issue?

I had planned to upgrade my two 20g longs to 40g breeders, but ended up having to treat for ich in both tanks (noticed white spots on 3/15 kuhli loaches and 1/10 strawberry rasboras. No signs of ich in dwarf puffer tank but I treated because I used the same equipment). Thankfully I didn't have any losses and behavior has returned to normal. I neglected the crushed coral in the loach tank and was putting them through ph swings every time I did a water change. I think it was either stress from that or new plants that caused the ich outbreak. I'm worried about stressing the loaches and puffers when it comes time to catch them. Should I wait another week or two? I brought heat up to 82F/28C, treated with ich x for a week (ich spots gone on 2nd day) and the last dose was yesterday.