Aaron Hanson

Moving some super red bristlenose fry to my fry tank, and trimmed some of my Madagascar lace plant leaves. Prior to trimming, the leaves go to the surface and drape down to the substrate.

This is a future set up I’d like to do as this type of habitat and group of fishes are my favorite. Very cool set up, and I’m very jealous!

@ApolloJoe is your main piece of driftwood all one piece? It looks great! The Val and Pogo should take off in no time. I love your fish selection too. All are classic, super cool species.

@Tomdobbins I remember when I started getting into aquariums I would watch hours and hours of YouTube videos. It’s quite a powerful resource indeed. welcome to the forum by the way!

Welcome to the forum @JamieB513! I really like the mossy tube structures on the right. Are those something you bought or something you made yourself?

Other than the lift tube, I would add bags of peat, crushed coral, carbon, or bio rings/ cycling media behind to keep out of sight, but still reap the benefits. Finding the right balance of space behind the filter to house the equipment and unsightly things, but minimizing it’s footprint in the aquarium proved to be a challenge for me when I used them. They do make photography and video easier for tanks that are end-on-end, however. Always pros and cons😅

I’ve never tried adding water after the initial mix, but you could always try! No sense throwing it away if you could possibly fix it. The worst thing that could happen is if something goes wrong, and you have to throw the batch away. I was thinking you could just add a bit more boiling water to your mixture, but microwaving it could work too (I honestly have no idea). let us know how it turns out if you try a little experiment because I would love to learn!

This is one piece of advice that I’ve implemented that’s helped me a lot with raising fry. Keep the food as close as possible to the fry. I’ve found sera micron will get the fry to a big enough size to take newly hatched baby brine shrimp (typically 3-5 days in my experience). I use a small measuring cap filled with tank water and a pipette to mix the sera micron together with the water. Then, I’ll disperse the solution near the fry to graze on.

I agree with @Anjum. 1:3 repashy to water ratio seems to work the best for me in terms of the consistency once the mixture has cooled. If you don’t need a lot of food, I would also recommend measuring with tablespoons rather than cups, as previously mentioned. I also bought separate utinsils like a cheap sauce pan, whisk and measuring devices for “fish food cooking” only, but don’t feel like this is necessary. Keep experimenting with small batches, and you’ll have it down in no time. good luck!!

I have an LFS that constantly has these in stock. I bought a group of 8 two years ago, but I lost two along the way due to stressful moves. They are great beginner Cory that are a bit different/ unusual. I’ve primarily used community plus, bottom scratcher, soilent green. The catfish will kick up a bunch of food particulates that the smaller tetras and pencilfish will swoop in and pick off. I typically feed in the morning before I leave for work, and I may feed again at night before bed. I find this super helpful for the grazing aspect— fish are held over for a longer period of time. pictures are of my super reds feeding on soilent green, various corys feeding on bottom scratcher, and a female apisto with fry feeding on community plus fry powder.

Wow what an awesome piece! +1 to leaving out to dry, scrubbing down thoroughly with soap (animal safe of course lol) and water, and wrapping in multiple trash bags on the way home. It’s A quick, short term solution that should work just fine. for me, I just collected three pieces and taking them through my “sterilization” method (these were all collected from a freshwater source). I let them sit in the sun to dry. I’ll scrub with dawn dish soap and warm water to get off all the surface remnants and let dry again. After the wood is dried, I’ll dilute hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle, then spray it all over making sure I get it in all the cracks/ crevices. I’ll spray the pieces down with a garden hose after. I repeat the spray and rinse, so I’ve done it three times total. No real science behind doing it three times, I just find that this is what has worked for me in the past. I also spray and rinse in a black tote I bought from lowes for like $10-20. Good luck getting your treasure home!

Here are the stands that I made with 2x4’s. 6x10g’s and a double 20g long stand, as well. In my experience, DIY wood stands are a bit cheaper monetarily, but will take longer to plan, acquire materials, and assemble, versus fabricated stands you can assemble in about 15 minutes. Another consideration is the dimensions of the stand. Obviously, you can customize the dimensions of a wood stand when designing it, but with the fabricated stands, you may be a bit limited in dimensions. Also, I just found this out, so I thought I would share: most fabricated stands include the upright posts in the length dimension. So, if the stand says 48”, the length that you have to work with to put tanks on may actually 45”. One thing I’ve done is rewatch all of the fish room tours of breeders. Look at the design of the stands they use and try to figure out which one(s) would work best for your application. For example, a stand that’s a little more heavy duty, maybe a DIY stand for King of DIY or a gladiator fabricated steel rack. If you need one that saves on space with less tanks, maybe one using 2x4’s and bolts to support the sides of the tank. Aquarium Co-Op retail store uses this stand design, and one of Dean’s walls has a similar, but also different, design to this. Again, it’s all up to you in finding a design that works best for your application, but have fun experimenting and designing. Don’t settle on a design for the sake of having it up sooner. I found this process very rewarding when I finished. Good luck!

Thank you for your experience because this was my exact question… I was wondering if the length measurement was taken for the actual shelving space or if it included the extra length with the legs/posts. I wanted to get the 48 inch to fit four 20 gallons, but I was unsure about the length measurement. I have been searching the internet for a long time trying to figure this out. Very helpful, thank you!

You are in a bit of a bind with the other two tanks. If you aren’t too hard pressed to get them breeding, you could just wait to see what happens. Some sort of dither fish sounds like a great avenue to go; I really enjoy pencil fish as an alternative to tetras, but tetras are an obvious choice, as well.

If you have another tank on hand, you could separate the two from each other. Take the presumed male out and put him in his own tank and keep the presumed female in the tank you want to keep them in long term. This has helped me with two things: identifying “sneaker males” and allowing the female to establish herself in the tank before the male. For the first point, when you remove the dominant male, he is no longer suppressing the less dominant fish in the tank. So, if your presumed female is in fact female, she should start displaying female coloration naturally as she settles into the tank without the pressure of the male. If your female is actually a male, when you remove the dominant male, the less dominant male will start to show it’s male characteristics because it no longer being suppressed by the presence of the other more dominant male. If she is a female, she will establish her own territories within the tank, so when you do add the male back into the tank, she has the “advantage” of the tank being her territory. I’ve found this helps balance aggression between pairs I’ve selected in the past, but this idea is also purely antidotal experience and no actual science backs this theory. With all that being said, this does hinge on you having another tank to temporarily house the dominant male😅. But, This has been the easiest and most definitive way for me to select male and female apistos from a group without physically watching a female lay eggs or buying a big, boisterous male etc. In reality, less dominant males can suppress their male characteristics as long as there’s a more dominant male in their environment. Hopefully this helps, or at least I’ve entertained some thought into adding another tank to your current situation!