Biotope Biologist

Nope no disease here. Your fish just gained pigmentation. Could be because of your food. Fish respond especially to carotene, krill, spirulina, and spinach. Could also just be the fish maturing. 'Gold' and 'Albino/Leucistic' are not synonymous

hardware stores have some see through 1/4" I assume either PVC or Vinyl tubing that is clear. This is the same material as normal gravel vacs. Then you can buy a PVC reducer coupling to make a mini gravel vac. Although there are nano specific gravel vacs on the market if you don't want to fuss with that.

Oh good well I am glad you got that resolved then! I would imagine like I was saying earlier you likely had a partial die off in your canister filter that is now recovering. I would in that case go ahead and do a 30% water change every other day. Of course observe your fish closely for any signs of stress, but too many water changes and your beneficial bacteria won't be able to have time to get situated and reduce your levels. Also if you have a friend with an established tank or pond you can grab some of their water to help vitalize your population in the canister filter.

These are all just recommendations of course. If you feel confident in your abilities, go for it. I just wanted you to consider all possibilities before purchase 🙂

In that case I would consider your tank capped. Common plecos are slow growers but they hit 15" in aquariums and 2' + in the wild. They produce considerable bioload and I would worry about your discus that are very sensitive to nitrate, and ammonia spikes.

Of course they recommend buying charcoal. Charcoal won't do anything in this situation. Unfortunately you are going to have to go old school until you get consistent power. Your temperature solution is great I have nothing to say about that. But, the biggest thing is without water movement your nitrate levels will sit high. Here are 2 solutions that you should try. Take your canister filter intake out of the aquarium. If you have a sink nearby clean it thoroughly. Close the valve in the bowl and fill the sink bowl as much as you can. Dechlorinate that water. Put your intake in the sink and establish suction to siphon that water into your canister filter. Leave the canister filter out tube in the tank. You may need to elevate your canister filter to establish outflow into your tank. Grab another tube or your gravel vacuum and establish suction from your aquarium. Put that tube on the bottom of the tank and have that tube exit into a waste bucket or your bathtub if you are close to a bathroom. You will cycle your tank water doing this every couple days and you will want to exchange about half of the tank's capacity. It is old school and this is how we ran our wet labs with minimal electricity at university. Running water through your canister filter will make sure to not shock your beneficial bacteria to death and essentially you would have to restart your already established tank. The other solution is essentially the same just using 10-20 gallon buckets of water, it's just annoying because you have to establish a gravity feed for the water. and constantly refilling and lugging buckets is annoying. Also, bonus tip. Buy 2-3 battery powered air pumps. Hook 2 up in the 72g and 1 in the 20g. We used to use these to transport salmon fry in university that need 80% oxygen saturation in their water at all times (finicky little things).

ichX does not kill adult ich which is the white spots you see. It stops reproduction and kills the free swimming parasites. The adults will reach the end of their lifecycle and fall off eventually. Are your Acara's exhibiting stress behaviors? ie: darting, scraping, "flashing" If not I would just be patient

I have kept many betta with tank mates in smaller tanks. Seems to very on how nippy they get based on personality. Also faster fish and the betta eventually just gives up. I had a 7 gallon high planted tank I would throw depressed bettas I adopted in and re-home them when they got better. I voted chilli rasbora

You may notice them slowly start to disappear. As cute and friendly as rope fish are they are still a bichir. Kuhli loaches would be snack size unless you got them at adult size. The rope fish could easily mistake an adolescent loach as a large colorful earthworm. If you proceed with caution id imagine 5-10 would be fine. It also depends on what species of pleco you have. As that is your bioload constraint with discus. If you have a smaller species of pleco such as a bristlenose or a snowball (L201) you could potentially do more.

Test your kH and gH for me out of the tap and post pics or let me know where you are at. We can go from there.

Bumblebee gobies and desert gobies come to mind as well, they are a bit on the slower side. I am not sure if you are salting the tank for your livebearers as well as keeping it hard? There are a plethora of goby species now in the hobby, but these 2 species have been the easiest for me to find in any locale.

Make a PVC planter stand is one of my favorite cheap tricks. You can either make a floating structure or an "island" structure for the fish to hide under. You can also make a false shoreline that extends over the actual pond structure so the fish can dart under and escape to safety

congrats you are doing something right and your fish are rewarding you for it! You can give them away to friends and family. If you have a LFS (local fishstore) sometimes you can pawn them off on them.

Yeah it's your tap that is the issue here. Do you live in a mineral rich environment? I'm thinking states like Colorado, Montana, Utah, etc. Mineral rich tap will dry with a chalky white residue left behind. You are at about a ~7.4pH it seems and you ideally want to be at about a 6.0-6.5. As @Colu suggested organics will help produce acidic conditions. But remember pH is on a logarithmic scale dropping one whole point of pH is a 10x order of magnitude. What I would advise in this case is find a source of water that is lower in pH to about neutral (7.0). Rainwater, water from an established acidic tank, springwater. Do not use distilled water. Then you will want to use that for your water changes for about a week or 2. Doing small water changes of about (5-10%) every couple days will slowly reduce pH down to the desired acidic conditions. Long term you will want to stop using your tap water and find an alternate source. As for pH alters. I used to sell them for years. It's not really right for everyone's situation and in most cases is just an expensive gimick. All it does is bind free OH- or H+ either causing the pH to go up or go down. It will only harm fish if you apply it to the tank and cause huge swings in pH. It is best used on tap water before the water change. If you are dead set on using your tap water I would test the gH and kH as well. Any mineral or carbonate buffers will cause your pH reducer to be less effective and therefore more expensive in the long term. Free water chemistry lessons for all 😁

I was including the loaches in that colloquial classification of "catfish." Although not technically accurate I was using the name because all your catfish and loaches exceed a foot in mature length and have similar feeding behaviors.

Test your tap water as well with the same test. 7.6pH is high for a corydora that prefers acidic water. What other fish do you have in the tank and do they appear to be showing signs of stress? I would think a pH spike would cause other fish to be exhibiting stress behaviors. I forget do the API master kits come with a calibration solution? This is usually a solution that has exactly 7.0pH so you can make sure your test kit hasn't been fouled or contaminated

Well @DanielI am glad that I am not the only one that loves the "unlovables." I will have to go with Myriophyllum heterophyllum (2 leaf milfoil). I was always bad at growing finicky plants, so I find myself going back to the ones that are just happy to be alive.

So only having 3 cichlids will raise the aggression towards other fish. Ideally you would have 5-6. But the big thing here is you have 10 catfish that all reach 1' plus and all need their own territories and caves. The clown loaches will share caves for a time but once they get to adult size they will likely be too large to share a cave. You are already aware of size, but mainly my concern is 10 adult catfish will need lots of food and lots of filtration to manage their very messy eating habits. The smallest tank I would go, personally, for these fish is 350 gallons. Clown loaches especially in schools seem to hold their own even in more aggressive tanks. I have not personally kept clown loaches with african cichlids so I do not know if the water being more alkaline then they like will cause health issues or not. But it is something to be aware of, as I would not house african cichlids in pH below 8.0

Have you figured out which species laid the egg? Since both species are scatter layers. Either way congrats on the free fish!

That's good! Yeah I always hesitate to diagnose things based on pictures because you never have the whole story. I figured you also would have known not to buy a fish riddled with ich. Better to say something and be wrong then sit in silence and wonder 🤓

I miss lab work! Although when I worked in a lab I was an agricultural pollutant tech, so not as fun as bugs. Also I think Drosophila would be my preferred choice because they are cheap and easy to breed.

Zebra danios have lots of energy. Fin nipping behaviors have been observed commonly. The tank should have plants, rock, wood, or some other form of shelter for your tetras and to break up the line of sight. Once the fish settle in to the tank aggression usually wanes, although danios are also voracious at feeding time so I would attempt to feed in localized areas so your tetra have a chance at food. A turkey baster works marvels here.

Uh-oh looks like you might have some uninvited guests hitch hiking on your Blue Acara. At first I thought it could just be a reflection of the light off the scales but then I saw the white speck on the eye. It has been far too long since I have dealt with ich, so I will leave the information to @Cory . Luckily it appears to be mild, so no need to panic

goldfish are perpetual grazers. Having a snail problem? Goldfish. Leeches in your pond? Goldfish. Too much milfoil or other alien plant? Goldfish. I had an adopted one for pretty close to a decade. Her name was Bob and she ate my $100 Anubias nana down to the rhizome. It recovered thankfully. Anyway, if you collect pond duckweed I would highly suggest quarantine. If you have access to a blue light or uv sterilizer, it will make short work of unwanted pests. You can also buy foam or plastic circles to corral your duckweed to keep it from overtaking your aquarium. Fun fact duckweed has the smallest known flower measuring only 0.3mm. If you see a small yellow or white spec on your duckweed chances are it's a flower.

Dragonfly are interesting prehistoric insects that have survived multiple extinction events with little changes throughout. It's hard to decide which are more fascinating the larvae or the adults. The adults are aware that humans and large animals attract flying insects and often stay close by, practically showing off their aerial maneuvers. I may be anthropomorphizing a bit on the last bit. Then you have the larvae which can spend upwards of 5 years patrolling streams and ponds with their creepy projectile labium or lower jaw (although jaw implies bone) stalking fish, tadpoles, and anything else it deems worthy of death. Not only that but scientists are finding that our aquatic insects are pivotal to fish fry growth and therefore healthy wild fish stocks. Which even extends to marine ecosystems for anadromous fish. Don't even get me started on lamprey, Although if you are curious I can post some links for scientific articles from my workplace and the lovely researchers at OSU. Anyway, back to the larvae. They are expensive at $2 a piece because as far as I am aware captive breeding can be labor intensive. First, the adults are more likely to mate if there are aerial prey items at time of breeding. Then, the females must be separated immediately after mating bouts. She must be provided plants to both escape drowning and to lay eggs in. Once the larvae get to about 0.3cm each individual must be separated to prevent cannibalism. Then comes the issue of feeding. Although they have proven to be scavengers in the wild, that is only about 47% of their diet (according to various papers) and therefore must be fed a diet of live foods. The labor of all this is the hard part, but if I can prove to do it with a minimal labor (15-20 hours a week) I will count that as a success. Each clutch can be up to 500 viable eggs. at a conservative 80% survival 400 larvae will hatch. Of that 400 let's say 70% survive to size leaving me with 280 per batch. That is alot of pipetting! But I have a large audience if I can pull this off. Feeder food for large insectivorous fish. Astronotus ocellatus come to mind. Scientists needing large quantities for lab work and of course local fishermen looking for a more effective bait. TL:DR dragonfly are labor intensive but cool prehistoric insects Source: https://www.nparks.gov.sg/nparksbuzz/issue-19-vol-4-2013/conservation/the-secret-life-of-dragonfly-larvae