Keeg

Can I save this onto a document for personal use? I feel like it would be such a great resource to have on hand for the future as well as the present.

I have this very small patch (half of a dime roughly) of black beard algae that's been growing in my tank. Theres also like 5 hairs on the Anubias next to it. I kind of like the look of it but I dont want it to spread all over the anubias and wood. I have a place and guppies that constantly pick at the surface of everything in the tank but they dont pick at this because they either dont like it or because its in a hard to reach area (under fishing wire to hold the plant down). So what are your thoughts? Should I get rid of it?

Do any of you want to keep some fish rare? If so, why and what fish? If not, why not? Do you wish any fish would become rare? Do you want any fish to be less rare? What is the hardest fish to breed in you opinion? Answer one, two, whatever you want, I just want to see what other people think To me, I feel some fish should stay rare in the hobby because it keeps their status special. Plus I feel like if some of the rarer species were massively bred, they would be abused. Kind of like bettas. I dont really have one off the top of my head, but I feel like the Devil's Hole Pupfish would be a great addition to a tank if it were able to be largely produced for the hobby in captivity. Such a fascinating fish

Spotted congo puffer. People say they're like dogs for a reason. Begging for food, follows me around, eats out of my hand, chases things, eats stuff it shouldn't, bites lol.

You could try tetras. There's a bunch to choose from and they're way to fast to get caught. If you're wanting something they can't even fit in their mouth, I would go with some taller rainbows. Once they get full grown, they can really start munching. I used to keep guppies with one, but he choked on it and died so now I dont put any fish with the new bichir

Im pretty confident that the co-op's plants won't come with anything extra like diseases. Snails. maybe, but snails are a good thing in my opinion. But from other stores im iffy but I dont quarantine, just a rinse if I feel they are safe. But other options are the plants in tubes from big chain stores. They're completely grown in a tube from mother plants above water/ gel. Ive never had any issues with them and they're sometimes cheaper than the submersed grown ones.

Pogostemon Stellatus 'Octopus' is also a very hardy plant. Grows like crazy too!

If you think that your water is too gross to drink, then you need a water change. This is obviously not true to some degree but there's some truth. Like if I had to, I would drink my fish tank water because I know it's clean enough for my standards.

So around two years ago I got some endlers that have the orange lyertail and not too long ago I got some common guppies as food for my bichir. But the bichir choked on one and died so I moved the rest of the guppies with the endlers in my 40 breeder with a puffer. And by chance I was lucky enough to able to get a hybrid between the two where the top of the lyertail is white and the bottom is orange. I kind of wish that the common guppy's spots were on the body but the whole point was the tail. Hope you like it.

I wanted to share with you a picture of my pond after it gets cleaned only twice a year. There are 7 goldfish that were meant as food but moved here because I felt bad. This pond has been running for a little over a year as a quarantine project. I removed 8ft tall black berry bushes by hand , dug the hole by hand, and recycled some bricks from an old fire pit that was under ground filled with broken glass for some reason, and I found the tub outside and put it to use, total cost= free! This is a wonderful project and I recommend everyone makes one. It is completely self sufficient, I dont feed on a regular/ ever, the goldfish as they eat bugs that fall in and they graze on algae all day. The water brings so much life, during the last heat wave, birds would take a swim and a drink. Honey bees regularly visit the flowers. Plus, the mosquito population dwindles because of the fish going to town on the larvae.

It'll be a lot easier to just find some different black rams to breed with your baby rams when they get to their breeding age. To keep genes at their strongest, I wouldn't line breed at all.

Everything is made of chemicals. Spagnum moss does lower the ph but it also releases it's own tannins. A lot less than things like almond leaves or wood, but still releases them. The easiest way to lower your ph is like what @Mmiller2001 said. But the absolute easiest thing to do is to adapt your fish to your regular water parameters very slowly over time.

Do you know the water parameters? Are you dosing anything?

Azar, Crimson, Iroh. Thats what I got, I love the deep red!

I agree that the white marks looks like new growth. To me the wen could be changing colors/ growing and should not be of concern. Just monitor the fish for any changes of behavior and if the spots do turn out to be bad then go off of the instructions from @GardenStateGoldfish PS, the goldfish looks crazy cool with the trio of color

I always find a h202 dip for extreme cases like plants from a contaminated tank with velvet or camallanus worms, but never for moss. Torn moss will not die unless you put it through a shredder over and over again. If your moss is from those baggies that are clipped onto a shelf at like those big chain stores, I just skip the quarantine. They practically grow them above water without fish anyways. But if you want to quarantine anyways, stick the moss in some water from the tank (not siphoned from gravel, just scoop some off the surface), and then wait around a month while changing the water and rinsing the moss once a week with new water (from fish tank). Parasites can't live longer than 5 weeks without a host.

For the dead spots in bare bottom tanks like you described, I use an oral syringe that had the pole thingy removed and airline tuning over the exit hole. Works like a charm. I don't even need a pump or dunking it in water, I can just use another syringe on the other side for starting it/ clearing solid debris.

I've never heard of clown loaches getting their own spotted disease. But I would treat the fish with Ich-X with the directions accordingly. In a separate tank hospital tank with others affected, if no other fish are showing signs remove the infected one and treat accordingly. If the disease seems to be spreading, skip the hospital tank and treat the whole tank. Call the store to ask about if any of their fish have recently caught a spotted disease like ice or white spot, if they have, you can assume they're at fault and you can ask for a refund. A lot of mom and pop stores can't afford refunding fish so they usually have things like a 3 day period of if the fish dies or not. But definitely ask sooner or later.

I haven't tried it with leggings before. That seems like such a good idea because they way I did it, water flow in the substrate was an issue. I used old glass yogurt containers with black gravel and or black sand. I wanted to try both, the sand was from the co-op and I don't remember the brand but when you walk in you'll see it on the bottom of the shelves. Both methods failed, even in an outdoor setting. I think the lack of water flow for the roots was the cause. Your idea looks like it can counter that. But a different solution I have is to just throw it in the water and let it float.

When I want to decrease the flow I usually just use a bubble filter. With my canister, I have stuff covering the outtake like plants and have the water covering the whole outtake. I know some people cover it with things like sponge or a piece of leggings. I don't know what a spray bar is so I can't comment on that.

Does anybody know of an aquatic plant that looks just like nasturtiums? I know there is pennywort but the slit in the leaves are what bother me. I want a nice full leaf with no slits. I love the shape of nasturtium leaves make and I have a scape idea on how to use them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

@Crabby I just found your thread. I love that you're breeding bettas, its such a rewarding experience. I also see that you're a little hesitant on breeding, which is 100% okay and understandable. I too had a female that released eggs before they were ready, she never went on to pass down her genes unfortunately because of this. After years of trying, I found a way that has worked 3/3 times with the same male and different females. I have my female in her standard tank, then I put my male in one of those clear floating breeder boxes. The female can hide if she so chooses but them male is releasing pheromones into the water further conditioning them. I usually leave them like that for around a couple weeks or more. When I decide I want to breed them, I set up a small tank with 3 USA cups of tannin water from boiled drift wood and the rest with regular water, only going to around 6 inches in height. Then I add around 2 square inches of bubble wrap bubble side down, some giant duck weed, and a bunch of octopus plant cuttings. Then I put the male in and let him explore the tank for an hour, then using a water bottle with holes, I put the female in the bottle in the tank so the male can still "smell" her. I wait for two things in the next 3 days, a bubble nest and signs of interest by both parties. The male will shimmy and the female will flare and or show vertical stripes. Once I see these two things, I feed them both heavily and let the female go and the take the bottle out carefully to not break the nest. I use a lamp that isn't too bright to light the tank and I cover the whole thing in a towel. I only check on them at the end of the day of releasing the female (assuming you released the female in the morning), and that night I look for eggs. No eggs= feed more food and turn off the light for the night. Turning it on in the morning. usually a day and a half goes by until they start to embrace. After they're done and the male wants her gone, I remove the female and let her rest. This is where I feed the male one final time before the fry are free swimming, that's when I remove it. Things to note:1 my male is the most gentle fish during breeding, hasn't damaged a female he's interested in, only chases. 2 I let my male betta live with a group of the females before breeding so that he could get used to all the females I wanted him to breed with. 3 making sure your male is a good dad is absolutely key, I don't think I would've had this much success without him being the way he is. Best of luck to you and your fish, they're gorgeous by the way 😍

A lot if not all albino organisms experience poor eyesight. Albinism is the absence of melanin. People usually see melanin as what determines skin color and hair, but melanin is also an important ingredient to developing optic nerves. Without it, the nerves doesn't develop in a regular fashion causing poor eyesight. So they're not blind, they just can't see very well.

@Guppysnail Yeah I get business aspect of it, but it feels more like an attempt to monopolize the market. the co-op started as a small business and I feel like it should be supportive of other newly founded stores. We need a more connected community of fish stores viewing each other as allies rather competition. It would be cool to see other stores making their own page on this forum.

That happens in nature where everything is fighting to survive. By leaving the old leaves you're allowing it to decay in your aquarium causing a change in parameters. Plus a lot of plants "eat" their old leaves by sucking out the important bits leaving brown and or translucent leaves.