gcalberto

Do you have any way of getting a lot of live daphnia? When I'm in this situation with fry, I simply get a lot of baby daphnia from my culture and put it in the tank. They won't die and spoil the water, and the fry will eat them in time. That being said, the autofeeder is also a pretty good option

About the cycling part, I agree with Allison. Starting with as many plants as possible is indeed beneficial for the cycling part and helps preventing and algae bloom. On the other hand, I like watching my plants grow, so I usually start with few plants if they are fast growing and go from there. You could also try going to your lfs or friend with a cycled tank and ask for them so squeeze a sponge filter into a plastic bag, then you take this brown water and pour it in your tank. It speeds up the cycling incredibly. Alternatively, you could buy a sponge filter and ask your lfs or a friend with an already cycled tank to leave it in their tank running for a couple of weeks, and then you take it home (this is what I did when I started). I would get 2 sponge filters and an air pump strong enough to run both. It's probably a little more than you'd need, but extra filtration won't hurt your fish at all and it might help offset some common begginer mistakes, like feeding too much. As for your ph. Just put a large piece of wood in your tank. Given how soft is your water, your kh is probably low too, which means that it's extremely easy to change the ph of your water. That happens to me and can be troublesome, which is why I recommend a log to naturally decrease your ph and help prevent your ph from skyrocketing. As for stocking, your plan seems solid. I'm partial do bristlenose plecos, since they are pretty effective at eating algae and breeding them is easy and rewarding. Plus I like the long bristles in the males

Most likely they already bred and the famale became hyper aggressive. You should move the male to another tank and let the female take care of the eggs and fry by herself, otherwise she might end up killing the male

Thanks for the info! It looks like the skin started growing more than it should've, and it it's not white, so I'm not sure it's the same disease Cory talked about in the live As a matter of fact, I'm not sure it's a disease at all. I've honestly never seen anything like that in 15 years of (on and off) fishkeeping

So my apistogramma cacatuoides recently developed a "bump" on his chin. Does anyone know what that is? Do I have to worry about it? Sorry about the bad quality of the photos. He is very shy PS: I noticed a few days ago, but I don't know if it took days or weeks to develop it

Also one of their tank mates is a siamese tiger fish (datnoides microlepis) and despite having read everywhere that those are only aggressive towards the same species, mine absolutely hated the red head tapajos geophagus (but ignored all other fish), so much so that I had to move him to another tank

They absolutely love sifting through the sand, so I highly recommend a sandy substrate. In that sense, ever since I got 3 for my 65 gallon tank, the sand got pretty much spotless and I don't have to clean it anymore! On the other hand, they sometimes decide they will do a massive hole in the tank, and there is nothing you can to to dissuade them from that, and too bad if you happen to have plants in that part of the tank. They will uproot them. They don't grow very fast either and do take a while to actually color up, so don't get worried and think you were sold a dull strain or another species! They are also super personable in my experience, always beg for food and eat everything. Despite being cichlids, they are generally peaceful, but will fight themselves to an extent. I haven't had any serious injures appear from those fights. I also recommend you buying 6 or more. I got 3 and now half the tank belongs to one, the other half belongs to the other one and the third has no territory and get bullied sometimes. I'll probably rehome him

For catfish in particular, I prefer planetcatfish.com. It has a lot more species and detailed descriptions than seriously fish. Also, o forgot to mention, but I also feed my l333s axolotl pellets. They work great, because they sink extremely fast and are made for more carnivore animals, unlike pleco wafers

The only time I had that happen to me was when I was sold a cacatuoides pair, but the female was actually an agassizii. I'm no expert in borellis, but this could explain the aggression

I'm not sure, which is why I would test it every 12h. better safe than sorry 😁

There are some Chinese sites, like aliexpress, shopee and wish that sell cheap aquarium stuff and ship it worldwide. It's extremely cheap, but also takes very long to arrive

I'd do another 50% water change and gravel vac as much as possible. I'd also measure ammonia and nitrite every 12h or so, just to catch any ammonia spikes before they get bad enough to kill the fish

You could take them to your local fish store if you have one. They might even give you some credit back depending on whether there's a high demand for the fish you are giving them, though I wouldn't count on it

I have l333s. They love frozen bloodworms, brine shrimp, thin slices of tilapia filet and sinking pellets. I haven't had success with earthworms and plecos either for some reason

I'm pretty sure they are omnivorous, so they should eat pretty much all vegetables mentioned on this website, but should also be fed meaty foods. Just keep in mind that common plecos get over 2 feet!

That heavily depends on the pleco species. In fact, most pleco species are actually more carnivorous. Some won't even touch vegetables. What was said here about feeding mostly vegetables and not protein is fine for the more herbivorous plecos, like bristlenose and other Ancistrus, but is straight up wrong for a large amount of plecos species

Do you have any other treatments you recommend?

So I recently got a batch of eggs from a apistogramma agassizii pair i have and I wanted to use something to help prevent fungus from forming and/or spreading to the healthy eggs. Which product should I use? I currently have acriflavine and methylene blue. Can I use both without risk damaging the eggs?

Yes, he should be fine there. I have heard (but never tried myself) that they will nip an angelfish fins as well, so he might not be such a great choice for your 55 gallon

I wouldn't do guppies. As the angels grow they might pick on the guppies and kill them. They will definitely eat the fry. You could do a single geophagus. Your tank might be bigh enough for one of the smaller species. They spend all day sifting through the substrate and really help with that, as long as you have a fine substrate

They should work. You might also want to get a bigger cory species that actually stays at the bottom to help more by eating uneaten foods that fall in the substrate

I'm relatively sure he'll eat both fry and adults as he grows up. Also, even if he doesn't, Amazon puffers are fin nippers from my experience. About the last thing a guppy tank needs lol. To sum up, I really don't recommend you doing it 😁

Not sure if that applies to mollies, but with cichlids, the more water changes you do, the faster they grow. Some people (usually with discus) go as far as doing 100% daily water changes

Looks a lot like a juvenile Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps. I am by no means a pleco expert, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. This pleco doesn't get as big as the common Pleco, but it's still huge and can get to almost 18 inches. If you want a more experienced view, try posting in the planet catfish forum. They have a session dedicated to pleco identification. That's a photo taken from the internet of a young Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps:

Pretty sure that's not a Commom pleco. They don't have dorsal fins nearly as big as that one. I don't know what pleco that is though