anewbie

I really like otto the more the merrier. I actually thought the 10 or so i had in the 120 had died off over the past 18 monhts but then one day i found all 10 in a corner last week. Hum.... tricky little devils.

Let us know how it turns out - back a few months i sent 15 mystery snails priority to someone and it only took 20 days. A lot has to do with where you are located and the recipient. priority used to be reliable but there were changes this year a few months before the election and everything went haywired. Of course covid-19 also contributed. My guess is the post office will get better in 6 to 12 months but until then there isn't much choice. I wanted to buy some rams from a breeder up in ny (only wanted a female gold) and i had purchased before from him when he shipped priority but this time around he would only ship overnight. Well.... 63$ for shipping and $12 for a fish - i passed. Pity. There isn't really much of a good work around right now.

I'd just leave it alone. This is one that tends to sleep a lot - it will eventually completely die back and then one day maybe 6 months later resprout. 2 aponogeton i have that have never gone dormant are cripus and boivinianus. I actually prefer boivinianus for several reason from a rich dark green to manageable size. Quite frankly in my tank the ulvaceus forms leaves that are sometime 30+ inches long which makes it a bit messy. It can also send up a very large number of leaves very fast. Puts my giant sword plants to shame.

If you go with angels i would get at most 2 or at lest 10 - with 3 to 5 you are likely to run into problems if a bounded pair forms which is fairly likely unless you get explicitly 3 to 5 of a single sex. Angels tend to form tight m:f bounds and the others are made a bit unwelcome. This is my tank. I had 11 angels but got rid of 2 unbounded males who were causing problems (trying to take mates from other males): -- To be honest i think you have a large selection of fishes - one thing that is kind of nice about angels is they pretty much stay put and you don't have to worry about top/bottom level dwellers. - An alternative approach would be to try a few dwarf cichlid. There are 100's of species to choose from ranging from 2ish inches to 4 or 5 inches. Some spunky some colourful some a bit of both.

Most of the bacteria is in the filter but you can add a sponge filter if it makes you feel more comfortable (to be sure it would need to be in the tank several weeks to have any effect). Anyway i've replaced substrate a few times - what I do is as follows (the specific detail depends on the size of the tank - the largest i've done is a 40B): put aquarium water into a 5 gallon pail - put fishes in pail - put water in another 5 gallon pail - put plants in second pail - finish draining tank - remove all substrate - put in new substrate - fill tank with treated water - make sure temp is normal temp - put fish plants back in tank - put fish back in tank - measure ammonia next few days to make sure cycle is not broken. - I used a pet scoop to remove the old substrate (sort of like what you might use for large bag of dog food).

I don't think co2 or plants are going to help here - trumpet snails or something that burrows might help to break apart the substrate - still i think the easiest solution is a light current across the substrate. Also if you just wait a while it might eventually balance out and go away. In my case i had a zoomed 30 filter on a 20 long and i just angled the spray bar slightly down and that was sufficient current. But as i noted expect it to take a bit of time - couple of weeks or so.

I would recommend borelli over cockatoo. If you keep pandura or hongsoli (I've kept hongsoli and nijjensi) you will need fairly low tds and moderately low ph if you wish to breed them. The nijjensi borderline on a blackwater requirement (at least for breeding). - For tetra if you go with cardinal i would recommend wild over tank bred - neon are hit and miss but once they get settled in they are quite hardy (I purchased 8 at petco - two doa (one on the way home) but the other 6 have been fine the past 4 months. - Other small tetra not mentioned that work fine are ruby tetra and ember tetra and a bit larger lemon and black neon. Btw i keep sterbai with my hongsloi - the sterbai are quite large and a tank compare to the apisto - yes the aspito chase them out of specific areas but there is no much violence - just a threat and the cory quietly leaves. Of course a lot will depend on your landscape. - Pygmy are great and a smaller cory that actually spend a lot of time swimming as a school. Best to get a lot of them - 10 - 15 - 20 the more the merrier. As someone else mentioned pencil fishes is another family of fishes that are often found with apisto. Breeders prefer pencil fishes over tetra since most of the species will not harm frys (there is one exception that i cannot recall which one it is). - Another family of fishes that go well with aspito are rasbora (kubotai, galaxy, ...). The purist of course would reject those since they are from asia but otherwise they make great tankmates.

It is cyanobacteria which is not a true algae. Looking at your substrate it is quite possible that you are getting a bit of arobic activity which breaks down the nitrate and release nitrogen which feeds the cyano. If this is correct a simple solution is to add a bit of current across the substrate (a low power wave maker for example) or angling of a spray bar. While you can treat it effectively with something like chemi-clean I would first try a bit of current and be patient - like at least 2 weeks.

I didn't do anything special - i just let it grow and after a month or so it put a few leaves above the water line and then kept going. In my tank it never seem to get past 4 inches - the flowers started to form about a week after it broke the water line - it takes them a long time to open and they last several weeks once they start blooming.

Older picture - bit a a mess but my 29 gallon guppy/swordtail tank:

My guess is also female mostly due to the pink stomach area which mature female tends to have. The problem with sexing these is with all the hybrid out there some of the more traditional sex identifying traits have been lost. Btw i'm not sure i would call that a gold ram it looks more like a cross of some sort. Gold rams while not natural are normally all gold with a slight glittering - no black or blue lines.

You could try a hamburg matten filter. Swiss tropical sells them if you don't want to design your own. It is basically a very large sponge with a strong air bubbler. A lot depends on your fish population and circulation. The substrate can help with filtration but only if you force water to flow through it.

I tend to avoid Osmocote - i know a lot of people use it with great results but i'm paranoid that it is not designed for fishes and might have long term impact on their health. I have several species of fishes that should be able to live 20 or 30 years easily and i would hate to introduce a slow toxic into their system. - To be honest i worry about this with fertilizes in generals - i do use some because the plants i have require it at times but i try to be modest. - Having said that i know a lot of people who use osmocote with great benefit to their plants and if you have common fishes with short life span like guppies i wouldn't worry about it too much.

I mostly feed variety for 3 reasons. I have different fishes that prefer different kind of diets (angels prefer more protein and pleco i have prefer greens the clowns - well they are moody in both direction) also in hope of having a more balance diet - different process foods have different balance of nutrition by mixing it up i hope to cover the full spectrum with hope the fishes will pick and choose (as they do in the wild) what they are missing from their diet. For the longest time i stopped feeding flakes - a rather messy food but to be honest my tetra and angels prefer flakes above all else (well the tetra flakes - they won't touch omega-one flakes). The one thing i do not feed them is live food - i'm sham'ed to say live food is one step of too much effort. I will hatch bbs for frys i want to raise but that is my limit on live foods. One concern i have is those foods that tend to be highly regarded (northfin, omega-one and nls) my fishes seem to not like to much and they seem to prefer the junk food like tetra and warden (well those that contain more filler ingrediants). They do love fluval bug bites which seem to have very little filler so there is that. - Anyway i try to 'turn' off certain foods for periods of time to get the fishes to eat different combination of nutrition. Don't know if it is necessary or beneficial but i do it anyway - if nothing else when they really hate something they will splash me and i sort of get the message.

There is the potential but it comes down to different factors. To be honest just about any fish you have there can be some aggression - it just isn't too bad - they aren't likely to kill each other or shred each other but there is always that potential. In my 5 gallon i have a few stray guppies 5 ember and 6 neons along with a ton of baby mystery snails and a few shrimps. The stray guppies will eventually be remove if they get large but they seem to be oh what is the term - not runts but throw backs. Anyway small tetra neon, ember small rasbora kubotai are wonderful but perhaps a bit too active but i think they would work anyway. endlers are fine - all of these fishes can show some aggression - well i've not seen any with the kubotai (aquahuna sells them) but certainly the tetras will show some aggression. - Anyway if you like endlers i'd say just go for it.

If the tank ph does not match tap ph then perhaps describe what is in the tank. There are substrates for example designed for african fishes that will make the water harder and more alkaline also some rocks will leach. 'cept in special cases (salt water and africans are example) it is best to largely use inert items - the exception to this are wood and live plants. There are a lot of benefits to tanis leached by wood for many (not all) species of commonly kept fishes as well as decay introduce by plants.

I presume you measure tap ph (if not please provide more information). A ph of 8 or 8.2 is not the end of the world for many species of fishes. While it might not be their native ph they can adapt to a higher ph if slowly introduced. Conversely the way many people use RO water for fresh water is they mix it with tap - so depending on your hardness (I suspect you have hard water) you might mix 2 part ro water with 2 part tap water and then use that for your aquarium. - Naturally using tap has a lot of advantages. Most fishes are more sensitive to change than actual parameter. That is using water that is adjusted and then adding water that is not adjusted to the same values can 'shock' the fish with can lead to disease and death. Of course these are generalities and specifics come into play depending on actual values and actual species of fish. One thing for sure is you want to aim for tank bred fishes as wild fishes are going to be a lot more sensitive to hard alkaline water. Conversely you might go with african fishes that actually prefer hard alkaline water.

The long answer to your points would involve talking about politics on how laws are made which is a forbidden topic so I guess we should leave it at laws and rules are political in nature.

While I love 20 longs for various fishes a 29 might be a better fit for your dedicated live bearer tank. The 29 is a 20 long that is taller. I use mine with guppies and swordtails. One thing i've learned is swordtail frys love to stay in the substrate while guppy frys love to stay at the very top (can't comment on molly frys). Also if you have a petco near you they frequently run these $1 per gallon sales so a 29 is $29 and a 20 long is $20 - they are't kits just bare tanks but still pretty good price for the glass.

I have and i know a ram breeder who swears by the stuff for his ram frys. kenfish sells it{ I've been told by someone named daniel that ken fish is a competitor and may not be linked so i am removing the link.

If you want to mail order fishes one place that has relatively cheap shipping is aquahuna. Aquarium coop has a 5% off coupon on their page. I believe their shipping is $12 flat regardless of number of fishes you order. As for fake vs real plants. A lot of people use fake plants but i recommend live plants. If you want to give live plants a shot one thing would be to understand what type of water you have and what sort of lighting. There are these cheap flood lights you can use - they are a little ugly but they cost only $20 on amazon and work fairly well. Then if your water isn't too hard you could try some pso and frogbit. Another hardy plant is jungle val - anyway a bit depends on if your water is hard or soft. If you water is well water in new mexico it might have a lot of salt or mineral which would indeed make it more difficult to grow plants.

Not an answer as to specifics but there are two types of fishes illegal - those that are endangered and those that are pests but it isn't only fishes - for those who send plants to friends there are many aquarium plants that are illegal in certain states....

I believe it is more important for the cardinals to be in softish water than the live bearers to be in hardwater. I can't really make any definitive comment on water hardness and longevity but certainly in my experience with live breeders they will readily breed and live many years without special water treatment but the cardinals are a bit more demanding. While the cardinals can adapt to hard water (tank bred are better at this than wild caught) there are limits. - Also we throw around terms like hard water and soft water without qualification. I keep my fishes in water that is gh 7 kh 3 which is not super soft but also not exactly hard. Anyway my swordtails and guppies have no problem producing more frys than i want or for that matter any of the other fishes in the tank want and my oldest swordtail is now 4 years old - though just looking at him you can tell he is a bit long in the tooth. Sadly i cycle through the femals giving the to the lfs as my fish population grows so i've not kept a female more than 18 months or 2 years. The guppies are not as long lived lasting only a couple of years... - Anyway unless your tap is extreme in either direction i would try to stick to tap as treating the water risk shocking the fish when you change the water (new water not same hardness as old water). There are exceptions to his - as african cichlid require hardness water 10+kh and many more sensitive south american cichlid require very soft water (0-1 kh - 50 tds). - Guppies and mollies do ok in brackish water but i cannot state (again) the long term impact relative to fresh water.

You have a 20 long. The double red is most likely a cockatoo but it could be an Agassizi. Double red is a colour not a species. The cockatoo tend to stay torwards the bottom while betta will mostly stay near the top but with a 13 inch tall tank there is not much of a top or bottom (I have no experience with agassizi). As others noted it is likely territory but the problem with simply removing and re-adding if the fish is establishing territory it will eventually try to re-establish one as it ages. You can of course try that and it may work for a while but i would worry about the long term stability. Adding plants, driftwood or rocks to sort of create a territory might work as the fish will use natural barrier to establish a perimeter. Also a taller tank might help (which you will soon need for the angel). A 30 breeder will not be a good fit for the angel as it is also 12 inches tall. Probably the 50 breeder is the smallest tank that is a 'good' for the angel though a 29 is probably ok for a single angel (the 50 breeder is 19 inches tall and the 29 is 18). With the taller thank the betta will also spend more time near the top causing less friction with the low swimming apisto.

There are a lot of problems with this setup. You didn't state which species of apisto you have - there are over a 100 different species with different behavior and requirements. You also didn't indicate the age of the fish (juvi or adults) nor if your tank is a 20 long or 20 high. You also did not provide the sex of your apisto. It is marginally difficult to give an answer to a long term solution without these details - though removing the apisto and re-adding short term might work chances are long term there will be an unhappy ending. - Last but least a 20 long or 20 high is way too small for an adult angel; i suspect your angel is a juvi or runt but if it is not a runt by the time it reaches adult age (less than a year) you will want a larger tank.