Jungle Fan

If you've got space and budget for a minimum 300 gallon tank, and about $400 to invest on the fish you could be shopping for an up to 8 foot electric eel, maybe not the scariest looking,maybe not the most vicious in terms of biting but it could definitely help you get a buzz on during tank maintenance.😄 I've always seen that the novelty of keeping the fish capable of the most violence, or the scariest looking, and the like wears of fairly quickly. I know someone who raises Piranhas in Germany and has supplied them to zoos besides private customers, and he once told me that he can't count the phone calls he received from customers later on that stated that they were disappointed that their tanks didn't turn into a swirling mess of food and blood at feeding times; and they were now looking for an aquarium, or zoo to take them off their hands. Of course none of them jumped at the chance to have to immediately build another display at the drop of the hat. I believe if you are interested in a particular fish because you find it interesting after having read about it and studied about it is one thing but the sheer fact that it is the "meanest" fish around is a motivation that won't hold its fascination for long. My oldest brother once ended up with a dwarf caiman that one of his friends got to pawn off on him, he fell for the "dwarf" portion which still means up to 5 feet; the whole family ended up helping him find that reptile farm that agreed to make an exception and take it to add to their collection of crocodilians because they didn't yet have a Cuvier's dwarf caiman. I'm with @sudofisheven the "monster fish" with the worst publicity generally ends up by itself in a tank looking boring; a tank with colorful fish, or fish with interesting behavior has more to offer in my book (i.e mudskippers, archer fish, if you want some unusual looking, or unusual behaving fish).

Wasn't me! I had to wear hats for work outside back then and made it a point not to wear one in my time off. So no, might have been some of the British fans, I stood close to them and they were getting pretty rowdy at times.😄

The Bolbitis should be fine, the Bacopa and Tiger Lotus could be iffy as they are both medium to bright plants, You probably won't see any red on the Bacopa, or Tiger Lotus, and they might take a good long while for growth, so if you want to do without the filter the Hornwort and Amazon Frogbit might be your saving grace at that point but they will lower light levels even more for what lies below.

I generally give them a good rinse that's all, I don't care about hitchhiker snails either. The stone wool from pots I get every last bits removed though because some overseas growers use pesticides and I once lost lots of expensive fish that way. I don't care how long I've known the seller, sometimes their wholesaler can switch sources, not tell them and the regrets at that point would be mine.

So, I've got this fish and I need some help identifying.

May the farce be with you!🤣

If you want to use sand then I would advocate for using the diamond blasting sand that many forum members have used. Personally I'm not a fan of sand because it easily compacts and many plants don't do so well with it. I would go with the aquasoil as @Patrick_G and @Biotope Biologistadvocated, if you are not comfortable planting in straight soil, then you could always top it with some sand as @Patrick_G indicated. If you want to go the Walstad route then @Streetwise in one of his recent posts had posted a link to his source for organic soil, and his results speak for themselves, and I would recommend his journals In a 3 gallon for ghost shrimp I would use aquasoil and several pieces of driftwood with Phoenix and Christmas moss, a Staurogyne repens carpet, and maybe some Anubias, or Bucephalandras, and either two, or three Cryptocoryne, or Helanthium quadricostatus. Maybe a Java fern, or some Dwarf sagittaria. Just be aware that a lot of aquasoils have ferts added so that when a tank is new they release quite a bit into the water column so at the beginning frequent water changes are a must with those. The one I use did not do that, and it differs in that it is more stable, and quite a bit pricier. If budget is a concern you can also always go with gravel, maybe even add a layer of laterite underneath, worked for me like a charm for many years as well.

What you said about the bladder snails might be a clue, although I tend to agree with @HH Morantthat your tank is still not quite established. I presume the bladder snails were hitchhikers, they could have introduced something to the rest of them whenever you introduced the last batch of plants that eventually led to a mass die off which then could have led to the nitrite spike as they rotted, and the nitrite would be what led to your fish dying. Bladder snails are invertebrates and as most invertebrates their blood is not based on hemoglobin, so therefore it was not the nitrite that led to their demise. That's also the reason why I always introduce snails, and shrimp weeks before I add fish. Now this is just the most logical scenario I can come up with based upon what you posted, however there could be something that's overlooked. Your MTS are doing fine? No corpses hidden in the gravel? Your Wisteria doesn't look too bad, I would continue doing more frequent water changes for a while, keep an eye on those snails, and watch how much is being fed. Are you dosing ferts?

Ghost shrimp sounds good, are you planning on plants?

One of my Bolivian rams is now 8 and still keeping the younger ones out of his territory, not viciously, but very determinedly.

Bubu is 14 now, he loves his cat tree from which he can watch the Amazon tank, he's got several beds throughout the house, but he is always on the lookout for other comfortable options from where he can observe the peculiar actions of his humans.

What type of critters are you planning on housing: shrimp, snails, fish, and are you planning on plants. All of that would influence my choice of substrate, and whether I would layer, or not.

When I kept floaters in my open tanks I first learnt the hard way through a duckweed disaster, I then tried different types of floaters and finally settled on red root floaters, they look cool, consume mass quantities of nutrients, and are a lot easier to get someone to take them off your hands than duckweed, unless you compost it.

If you had a high level of nitrites it wasn't the water change that went wrong, it would have been something that came before. How long ago was your tank cycled before you added the fish? Nitrite is a blood toxin that does damage to the gills of fish, and destroys their blood cells ability to carry oxygen.

Are you feeding your shrimp the shrimp version of Soylent Green?😄

Looking great! Looking forward to more pictures as it fills in.

I'll be following this Biotope/Aquascaping collaboration project with interest for the next few years. 50 - 60 tanks in 2 years sounds like hearty chunk to digest maintenance wise.

Depends on how many tanks you have, In my opinion for anything under at least 10 tanks I can do better things with that money. I used one a few years ago that had been a present but decided I get better results by visually inspecting each tank before dosing than by automation. I was so underwhelmed by the performance that I don't even remember anymore what brand it was, I do remember it cost my wife somewhere between $160 - $190 some bucks and made a clicking noise when it operated. I really love that she always tries to support my hobby and has an eye out to find new gadgets I might like, but we both agreed to sell that one, and buy more plants instead back then after fiddling with it for about three months.

The ones that get me giggling are the Lord of the Rings descriptions when you read signs like "Dwarf Arowana". Will they ever be surprised!🤣 Actually saw that one at least 15 years ago, was a small specimen, clearly a juvenile but "Dwarf".

I know my explanation would probably make botanists cringe,I just thought it might help visualize what's going on.

I do 50% water changes every week, and have for years, decades actually, I also do canister filter maintenance at the same time. I fill several 5 gallon buckets with tank water and use them to rinse the sponges, and tray with the Siporax sintered glass, I replace the water polishing pad every two weeks. Never had an issue. I use Prime when adding new water, and also sporadically add Stabilty, and, or Pristine, although the latter two are really not necessary considering, no beneficial bacteria were being harmed by rinsing in old tank water, just a little boost now and then for the huge established colonies in the filter media, and the substrate. I think your routine is fine, probably exceeding the standards of most discus keepers, I know they exceed mine from when I used to keep discus as I used to do water changes about twice per week. Preferences in filtration media, and frequency, and type of maintenance are much varied, many insist that their standards are the only correct way, but I have to say as long as your water parameters are within the norm, you're fish aren't showing signs of deficiencies, or disease, algae isn't overtaking the tank (unless so planned), the tank doesn't make guests think they took the wrong door to the bathroom, results speak for themselves and you must be doing something right. There may be some roads that lead to aquarium hell, but there are many more leading to the goal of a stable, and healthy fish tank as well, more than quite a few are willing to admit.

@Fresh correct, all else are just nice to haves, and what accrues over many years. of temptation in LFSs.😄

Would be nice to have @Irenelift the mystery!

Forgot to mention that my definition of "damage" is holes, turning brown, turning translucent, everything affecting leaf structure, not so much chlorosis, turning yellow, which is an indication of lack of chlorophyll, the plant is perfectly capable of repairing that with addition of proper nutrient levels.

@CalmedByFishYou asked a question that requires a lot more than the few words it took to ask it, and it is worthy of in depth exploration as volumes have been dedicated to it specifically, and while I'm not a botanist, I merely sat next to some aspiring ones during my biology college classes to get my BSN in Nursing, I will try to give you a distilled answer that doesn't bust the framework of this thread. A lot of time we think of plants as simply requiring the nutrients, and if we provide them all is going to be fine, but plants have a physiology of their own different from ours. Yes, they do possess the ability to shift nutrients from one established leaf to another growing leaf, they can access stored nutrients, and it will work for a while to rob Peter to pay Paul, however when you begin to rob Peter to pay Paul, Luke, Simon, John, and Matthew; Peter's stored up nutrients are not enough. Meaning certain nutrients can be transferred but when the overall demand becomes overwhelming and not enough stores are available you begin to see damage to internal structures that are necessary to transport these nutrients, also some nutrients cannot be transferred, cannibalized, or "eaten", as it was referred to, this is the case with manganese, boron, iron, calcium, sulfur, and copper. The bigger a plant gets the bigger the requirement for those nutrients gets. When the plant has transferred nutrients that are available for transfer we see leaves turning brown and becoming translucent. Since the plant is an organism the breakdown in its internal structures necessary to move nutrients, veins for one, will cause exposed open wounds (I'm borrowing a bit from nursing wound care here to not have to do bigger detours). The more decaying leaves you have that are simply rotting, the more open wounds you have where nutrients are not just released from the decay but you are having the rest of the organism hemorrhaging nutrients from a wound that is not able to be closed because the tissue where it is located is not healthy, and unable to perform the healing process of repairing its outside layer. At this point because the transfer of nutrients stops other leaves will show in this way also because some nutrients are limiting others from being used to facilitate transfer. Trimming off leaves that are turning brown, and translucent is, if it helps to envision it, a form of what is termed debridement in wound care, the surgical excision of dead, contaminated, infected, or damaged tissue. When a plant is suffering from nutrient deficiency it experiences stress and finally shock, and while we don't think of plants a lot in those terms, stress depresses their immune system, not like ours but it still enables them to fight off certain types of organisms that go along with decay like fungi and bacteria, the more open wounds there are the more the decay accelerates, until the plant organism is overwhelmed. This is very much simplified, however I hope it illustrates the point. If you think of trimming off a damaged leaf as debridement, or amputation the good news is that as long as you fix whatever the underlying deficiency, or deficiencies are the plant because it is a much simpler form of life than your fish, or a human can, and will regrow new leaves, which is not the case for a human leg, or arm, or the gills, or eyes of a fish. Now I'm aware that I've borrowed extensively from Peter medical wound care to pay the description of Paul plant physiology to try to explain why it might serve the plant better to trim (debride, or amputate) the damaged leaf but I hope this makes sense.There have been literally tomes filled with what happens in pathophysiological processes, and decay in plants, this is my attempt at giving you the simplified Cliff Notes.