Biotope Biologist

That is beautiful! Mine had more blotchy spots whereas yours are more uniform and yellow, I wonder if mine was misidentified? We will never know it died of kidney failure a few months after I got it. Okay so for sure not gold nugget.

It’s either a gold nugget or gold spot pleco (L001). Need to see it’s caudal or dorsal fin to be sure. Gold nuggets have a yellow blotch on the tips of those fins whereas gold spot do not. Also this was posted in photos and journals it might have better luck moved to general discussion. But we are going to need another photo for clarity 😂 I had to look and there is a L double O 7. How is it not called a Bond pleco or Agent pleco… whoever is in charge of L numbering I need to have a word

Plants with deep substrate have more room to expand their roots. Just like potted plants, aquarium plants can have their roots bound by shallow substrate. Yes aquatic plants can absorb nutrients from the water, but some still need to come from the soil. A plant with a strong root system is more likely to succeed long term. Also similar to terrestrial plants, aquatic plants can benefit from tunneling insects and fish. That agitate the soil and bring needed nutrients from the surface. I have my emergent plants now in about 11” of soil. And it took about a year, but they are really starting to take over now. Although my gobies tunneling habits are probably more detrimental than good 😅

Of course! And im going to nerd out on you for a second. Angelfish and discus were part of a really cool study that showed even with water that had 0 gh for long exposures the angelfish and discus had no issues with ion exchange in their gills. And what they found is that these fish possess a unique ability to pump ions across their gills mechanically. Meaning without the help of calcium and magnesium they were still able to absorb needed nutrients from the water! The same goes for many fish that comes from the amazon where the water is extremely lacking in minerals. All this is to say you are totally fine with your water parameters.

Calcium and magnesium are measured by gh. General hardness. So if your calcium test kit is accurate most of your gh is magnesium. Adding calcium salts will increase your gh, because gh measures calcium. Again chasing water parameters is more of a headache than it’s worth. Calcium is needed in some form by fish for ion channels in their gills, but they can also get this from their diet. If you want you can add crushed coral, which is calcium carbonate. It will slowly dissolve into calcium and carbonate ions thus raising your gh and kh. But again I believe it to be unnecessary in your situation

Only way to get these guys is a video. My 4 whitecloud fry have been accepted by the parent school. Did the gobies attempt to eat them? Most definitely. You can see Frog poking his head out in the background.

65 gallon tank I wouldn’t worry too much about floor load. While it is a lot of weight it’s being dispersed over an area. Keep in mind refrigerators full of food easily can weigh 600-750 lbs and take up a smaller square. If your husband is building the stand I would use support beams running the bottom and top, and I used sanded panel boards on the bottom and top so as to not scuff or dent the floor. And panel boards not particle board. It also helps evenly disperse weight across the floor. Fish- the world is your oyster. You can go with a large school of more rowdy fish like barbs. They are absolutely stunning in large planted tanks. In large schools their aggression is typically aimed at eachother and not other fish. I like large fast swimming danio or tetra too. They are absolutely fun to watch darting around the tank. Here are some orange fin hill trout for reference (not a trout, but a danio, they just look like adolescent trout) Plants- I think the list you have is perfect. Jungle val is so beautiful in larger tanks when it bends over and sways at the top of the tank.

With the gills not being red it is highly likely the water conditioner converted the ammonia to its non toxic form. I agree with others monitoring and time are your best bet if ammonia burns were suffered. Gills can regenerate relatively quickly.

Please take this to the DMs @schmofam is asking about their water parameters and potentially what these parameters mean. This conversation is both inaccurate and detracting from OP. Aquatic Plants can derive ‘essential’ nutrients from both the water around them or the soils. Keep in mind essential is the biology term meaning they cannot produce it themselves. Not that it is required. In fact most essential nutrients like cobalt and manganese are required in such small concentrations that any amount of fertilizer over 1 microliter solutions is overkill and can potentially poison the plant. The tank is beautiful and the plants are clearly happy with whatever you are doing.

Yes depending on the fish breeders, typically try to get as close to natural conditions or whatever water conditions that these fish prefer breeding in or that will trigger spawning. ammonia is more toxic the more basic water is. So it’s best for breeders sometimes to use a different water source to ship them in. Other things too can be a factor. The tank could have heavy biological activity or decay that could contribute unwanted nitrites, nitrates, or ammonia during shipping. Also also water conditioners have a target pH range where they are most effective. Any of these could be factors as to why this breeder chooses this method.

The nitrates are coming from the fish waste. Not the distributor’s tank. The ammonia and nitrites and nitrates are all detoxified. I imagine too the DOA fish had something to do with abnormally high nitrates. But this subject has been beaten to death on these forums. “History of prime” is a lovely writeup for anyone interested on how it works. There are other brands that use other chemicals but they all generally do the same thing which is to make transport of fish easier and safer for the fish. And like most other things in the aquarium hobby, it was designed with humans in mind and later adapted to our fish friends. Maybe half, more than half? Of the medicine you see on the shelves for fish are topical treatments originally patented for human use. I attempted to be succinct in my original post and in so doing it often misleads. Qualitative data abounds on this subject and there are resources on these very forums to utilize.

Water parameters are fine you should have no problems with most fish species. Chasing numbers is more headache than it’s worth. Gh is calcium and magnesium, kh is carbonate. There are a bunch of interactions that take place between these ions and your water, fish, and plants. But it’s not important information (to the average hobbyist) and tends to get confused, so forgive me for not going into more detail.

Leave your water as is. Colorado water has tons of minerals that are beneficial to plants and fish alike. If it starts getting too limescale-y you can always soften the water before adding. But generally your water should be find unless you’re chasing certain biotopes and sensitive animals/plants.

You won’t test nitrite or ammonia because they ship with a chemical that locks the ammonia and nitrite. It can’t interact with anything even tester chemicals. Nitrate is high because in the 48 hours the fish were still producing waste, albeit at a slower rate. This is generally why you see Cory putting a net over a bucket and adding the fish to the tank dry. All that waste is best not added to your fish tank. Even reputable brands cannot get fish to stop pooping and there is so little water that it amplifies your tester results. PPM is density of a given chemical. And with so little water the density will always be higher than say a 1500 gallon stock tank

The bottled bacteria helps little. You also don’t know how long it’s been sitting and the expire dates are of little help. bacteria takes time and patience. If you disturb a mature bed like @Pepere even for a few hours you can have significant die off. But the core population should stay alive and recover. back to bottled bacteria. It’s not that it isn’t a bottle full of bacteria, it’s that is it a bottle of the “right” bacteria for most people’s needs? The answer and general consensus seems to be ‘no.’

The second pic bubbles I see often. I tend not to worry. It’s the first pic that worries me. It looks like the surface was not properly cleaned prior to silicone addition. While the inner silicone layer will hold them the glass edges need to be bonded well. If I were building a tank and I saw this after the cure, I would 100% pull it apart and retry.

Do not add more of the color droppers then is instructed on the package. It will mess up the results. As soon as the water turns green or yellow, the test is done. You can invert the test tube several times when it is a pale color. If it reverts back to clear or a color otherwise not indicated on the package , you need to add one or two more drops. These are titration tests. Once the color turns and stays turned any drops past the initial color change will be inaccurate.

Usually I say let it ride. But those ones are not just factory defects, they are structure weakening. Return it.

Try Porcellionides. They are typically cheaper. Not the rolly-polly variety. Otherwise if you have your heart set on armidillium there is a North American introduced that is usually cheaper. Vulgare. Vulgare has a ton of morphs and can have green spots that rival the much more expensive spanish varieties

Look at pet stores or farm stores for pet bedding. You can find it much cheaper there. Especially for hamsters and horses, it’s low dust and untreated wood shavings as these animals have sensitive sinuses

I’ve never been able to maintain cultures for longer than a few months. They always seem to crash, I kept them in just a lightly aerated jar with some hornwort and fed them flaked fish food They would reproduce readily for a few months then bam! Wake up next day whole culture is dead. Not sure if it’s in their nature or what. I think @modified lung had cultures journals

Soil doesn’t super matter as long as it retains moisture. They do chew on rotting wood as a part of their diet so make sure to have wood chips. I also used peat moss with organic soil mixed with boiled wood chips from the woods near me. If you do this method make sure to practice considerate harvesting methods. Ie take a bit from one rotting log then move to another and so on. Only taking small amounts from each. They will eat plants, and are voracious so make sure your plants are well established, poisonous, or can outgrow grazing habits. Thats all I got! I feed them stale bearded dragon food for calcium and random ends of vegetables from dinners and lunches. I started with 24 I now have somewhere in the ballpark of 500-750. I am actively trading in the local isopod community to get a good genetic pool. As far as I’m aware they don’t seem to hybridize.

Copper pipes now are lined with a chemical lining that prevents leeching. Even before this technology I don’t think the water sat still long enough in the pipes to oxidize them. Unless there was bad plumbing. I worry more about the concrete water pipes that the city uses to pump water into homes than home pipes. Some of these pipes are so old that pockets of bacteria form. Our water district is good and keeps up maintenance, and doesn’t use chemical water treatments that can chemically score pipes. But some townships in other areas you may have to worry about more.

Decoy birds work well against snakes especially fake herons. Herons naturally stand statue still, so snakes will avoid areas with these decoys. Herons will also mostly avoid these areas as they are fiercely territorial over hunting grounds. Make sure to move the heron several times during the summer and take it down in the fall, animals are good at recognizing patterns and if you leave decoy birds out year round, they will get wise and know that it’s not real.

The mangroves eventually died out. I will try it again once my stream tank runs its course. The 50g lowboy I have will be perfect for the mangrove tank