anewbie

Green spot tends to be hard to scrape off and requires a bit of umph; green dust (i think that is what it is called) is fairly soft and can easily be wiped off without much effort. I believe green spot is caused by low phosphate and not sure about green dust.

I really don't want to have this debate; i don't know how many angelfishes you've owned or what sources they have been acquired from or their age/sexes. Since I know of at least one really large male koi that is sufficient to say that some koi do get large. Genetically there is nothing that prevent a koi from getting as large or larger than any other domestic angelfishes; though as I noted in theory there might be a gene that control size and someone could domestically breed them around that gene. I have a small black male angelfish but i'm not going to claim all black angelfish is small; i have a smallish platinum male but his siblings are a solid 1.5+ inches larger. There is a wide variance in size and growth rate. Having said this i am curious how many male koi anglefish you owned and their ages; so to see what sort of sample points you are using for your claim.

None of your fishes are substrate shifter so the grain size is totally up to you. There are advantages to both coarse and fine gravel with regards to long term (multi-year) upkeep. I have a personal liking to pool filter sand (cheap-i use hth); and estes stoney river (black substrate that is not painted; as it is very fine with high density); i've found plants grow well in both substrates and i've not had any issues with either (though my aquarium with hth pool filter sand are not that old yet); I'm not as pleased with jungle river or torpedo beach - both i've used - but both look nice and then it comes down to colour preference. For a 10 cost shouldn't be a big deal but for larger aquariums it can be a factor. I can't really say why the estes stoney river (black) has done so well over the years compared to my caraibsea substrates - something about the properties but i've not had any issues with gas pockets forming in it (which has been a major headache with all caribsea substrates i've used; though the fine stuff like moonlight is far worse than torpedo beach and jungle river).

This is hogwash and i wonder why you make this claim. I've had koi that are very large; and others not as large. A lot depends on the sex as females are naturally smaller than males; but there is a wide variance among individual fishes. Now someone might be breeding a 'smaller' koi through selectively picking smaller fishes but then I would be concern about inbreeding and other recessive traits working into the strain. Having said that some people keep adult angelfish in a 29 but i generally consider it too small. If you have a known female (young angelfishes are virtually impossible to sex and some one who claims they are selling a young female is a person you should not deal with); then it would probably work ok in a 29. People use 29s to breed angelfish but I would not keep them in a 29 full time. I had a male i had to move to a 29 for time-out (his mate rejected him after a couple of years) and when it became clear she would never allow him back into the 120 i had to give him away since the 29 was just too cramp for him (he was not my largest male but he was large). My koi male i have now is about 6 to 7 inches top to bottom and he is only 2; so will probably grow a bit more over the next few years. There really aren't great aquariums for angelfishes - maybe a 70 which is 18 inches wide and 21 inches tall. A lot of folks keep them in 55 but i find them too narrow. Of course what you can do is get some dime size angelfishes for a 29 and keep them until they become too large and then sell them back to the petshop; there is a chance they will get stunted but that is hard to predict.

Well the perfect aquarium is the little 10 you put in the bathroom; here is mine:

Some bored clown loaches asking me to join them: To put things into perspective this aquarium is 10ft long and 4 feet wide; my desk is 3 feet away and i'm sitting at my desk typing when they showed up....

Well you can just ignore when they spawn and most of the frys won't make it; or if you want to reduce the stress remove the female. Btw cory are general bad fish to keep with breeding dwarf cichild since they dont' recognize territories; i.e, they will swim into the cichild territory multiple times only to be chased out causing unnecessary stress; though it is possible over time the cichild might learn that they mean no harm and ignore them.

Too early to make an over all comment but two things i noticed right off the bat: a) THe tank is 10000x quieter. The theory is that since the return are below water level sound isn't resonating up to the overflow box. You can tweak the water going into the overflow box to make it quieter with the sand pipe; and put weight on the lid to help seal it (again quieter) but having the actual returns below water level made a huge difference. Remember this is a 600 so we have more water flowing. b) I was being forced to clean the bloody socks once a week on this aquarium and the holder for the socks are not bolted in - so before you install the sump you might want to replace teh plastic pegs with one that screw in (ca should be able to send you some) as the clip in ones are not very sturdy and it is a pia to re-insert them with my small head room. - one potential negative is the water might be slightly less clear - i'm unsure if this is the case - it is hard to tell without direct comparison. Also for some reason ca ultra clear class causes a *lot* of reflections when taking photographs - you don't see reflection with the eye but the camera makes them look like mirror. - It will be a while before i can comment on the pia of cleaning the sponges - the issue is that they are large so i'm not sure how much of a hassle cleaning them will be yet; but my guess is it will take 4 to 8 months before the front one begin to clog.

And be sure to eat your peas !!!!

What camera are you using?

Your plan is generally a good one; it is good to leave the frys with the mother as she will care for them and teach them a few things in the process. The negatives is if you have predators in your display aquarium they will be eaten. As for the male it depends; in a small enclosure like an aquarium they can pester the female before she is ready to breed again; though sometime the male will leave her alone while she has frys. This is very male dependent so there is no right/wrong. If things go well the female will care for the frys 3 to 8 weeks again this depend on the female though some species tend to raise them longer. While i've not bred trifs with the species i have truth be told i never need to remove the frys until they get large enough that the male starts chasing them away; this is more territorial but they don't actually hunt/eat the frys. If you have predators (most tetra are predators); and you want to raise the frys then you might have to remove them sooner than later. I found ember tetra pretty passive and reluctant to challenge the female but cardinals can get pretty aggressive at going after frys and forget it with the larger diamond shaped tetras. Your aquarium seems to be fairly large - i noticed that my female would move the frys to the very back where the male couldnt' really find her and if your does the same you might not have to remove the frys for a while. I use a turkey blaster to inject bbs. I found that for most apsito bbs is a must if you wish to raise the frys; though after 3 or 4 weeks i can switch to flakes or powder food. Sponge filters are also great as they provide munching grounds for young fishes.

For the pygmy I'd try a drip acclimination. Basically take a 5 galllon (or even 1 gallon) pail which has never been used for cleaning; put the pygmy in there with their water and then slowly drip water via an air-tube hose with a knot into the pail - I'd do that for an hour or so at 1/2 gallon per hour drip rate (the numbers don't have to be exact). RO water is closer to their native environment than hard-water. You are at a cross here because if you make the water super hard like 180 ppm the pygmy won't like that much; so you will have to compromise. I'd suggest something closer to 60-80 which is more favorable to the pygmy. KH isn't super important but the molly will want some calcium. Also if you add kh the ph will rise and that will impact the cycle and bacteria in the aquarium.

It is unusual for tap water to have 0 gh; do you know the tds or ec? This water would not be suitable for molly if the parameters are correct but of course very good for the pygmy. As to the death - how long has the aquarium been running; a mature aquarium should have 0 ammonia and very small amount of ammonia can be deadly to many species of fishes but yes the tiny pygmy are going to be more sensitive to it. However acidic water will reduce the impact of ammonia. You can add a few drops of something like prime to help neutralize the impact of traces of ammonia but the bigger question is why does the aquairum have ammonia in the first case. Pygmy are definitely a more 'fragile' species though once established they are hardy. I would not add salt to the aquarium esp if you plan on growing live plants. Having said that the molly will jump for joy with you add a bit of salt.

My green wavy (buce) is about to bloom. Expect another picture if the flower is something special or for me to forget the whole thing if it turns out to be a dud (i find buce submerse blooms less exciting). I should probably have planted something a bit more exciting in the buce family but green wavy certainly grows easy enough emersed. Maybe recommend something 😉 I'm really happy with how my discus aquarium is doing (even if it is a spare basement aquarium that gets little attention); the plants are growing very well: (the weird fish to the left of the sponge filter but before the cardinal and bit below is the male a. lineta and the female is near the bottom in front of the leaf). I discus have really settled in and behaving very calmly as a group with only very minor bickering among themselves (remember these are wild caught). The plant with slight purple colouring growing in front and behind the leaf is a a. cripus (actually two plants). In person it is a very nice plant with lots of structure in the leaf. Not sure why this aquarium has such a high reflective index (to the eye the reflection isn't really visible); one of these days i'll order a mirror less thingy and polarizer but it is super low on my list of things to do; mostly because a bit unsure which system to use - either a newer body on one i have (fuji or olympus) or bite the bullet and get a sony. Pity i can't put a polarizer on my phone camera as ultra wides are a bit pricey.

ro water is very cheap. You can setup ro water for under $200 easily and make that back on the first set of frys. I can't tell you what breeders do; but i can tell you that most species of apistogramma are unable to breed in very hard water. As i said earlier there are very nice central america dwarf cichild that are often over looked that do well in their native hard water environment. In fact i don't keep these fishes because my water is too soft. Apistogramma get a lot of press but beyond that there is nothing that special about most of the species esp when it comes to interesting behavior. In fact most species of Apistogramma are a pain to keep due to their polygamous behavior and aggression pattern. Most fish keepers are better off with pair forming cichild esp if they intend to breed them as a hobby (as oppose to a business). Last but least because the term 'apistogramma' is thrown out there so much many fish keepers confuse the genus with individual species. This is esp important because there is a wide variance in behavior among different species.

I am very surprise that silicon does not stick to Acrylic; but havent' researched it myself. You could of course make the horizontal bars out of glass. swisstropical sells corner matten filters (very similar to your filter) with pre-cut glass bars. Of course there is probably a certain joy in doing it yourself.

First you are not building a blackwater aquarium with hardwater. I realize you said dark water but blackwater is not a reflection of the colour of the water but the mineral content. Apisto is a genus not a species. Many domestic species of apisto will 'survive' for a short period in hard water; but they won't live 4+ years. There will be no point in buying a female as nearly no species will be able to breed successfully with water that hard. -- There are many very nice central american cichild that will do a lot better in hardwater; rather than focus on a genus that is not suitable for your water i'd look for one that works well.

Well today was a very long day - and a heck of a lot of work but we replaced the sump on my ~600 gallon aquarium. @xXInkedPhoenixX might find this interesting since they are about to setup the same type of aquarium: This is what it used to look like (picture from 8x4): And this is what it looks like now - minus some cleanup work:

Male tails are distinctly different than females; but i can't tell a thing from your pictures.

My favorite type are wc dwarf cichild. Those with their natural colouring. Some species i have or will soon have include a. winkelfleck, b. cupido, i. bimaculata, a. ortega, m. ramirezi, a. cacatuoides (mean suckers), a. lineta, ... I guess we are suppose to post a picture so this is my male a. winkelfleck: and a. bitatina and laetacara dorsigera and ... well was going to do b. cupido but don't you think this is enough pictures ? I mean how many pictures do you all want ? Oh well we will do the cupido family and that is it: All photos are fishes i actually currently own; i have excluded pictures of fishes i owned in the past like this one:

A couple of updated pictures posted elsewhere just adding them here for time lapse: First the discus aquarium after adding a black background: And a couple from the 4ftx30 inch blackwater: The picture below is side to side where you can actually see the full dimensions - from the glass to opposite side is 48 inches and from front to back is 30 inches; so nominally 90 to 100 gallons or think 4 29 glued together. Population is a bunch of hatchet fishes, some emerald eye rasbora, a few pencil fishes left and 5 to 8 apisto (8 were put in but i don't actually know all 8 are doing well though i did see 4 yesterday - normally i see at most 2).

Did a little work on my blackwater aquarium:

I feed my discus (10 5 inch); 2 cube of freeze dried black worms (one in the morning and 1 at night) with some other stuff with lots of green. In the wild discus like many cicihld eat mostly plant matters and so i try to limit the amoutn of fat and meat they get. They do go after the worms first and i worry they aren't eating enough green but all the food vanishes between feedings so i presume they are grazing during the day which is normal behavior.

I'm confused - they look about the size of angelfishes - maybe 3 inch? Mine are nearly twice that size - or am i missing something ?

Just a few leaves and driftwood; nothing special. It will get a little lighter over time as i do water changes; though i tend to add more leaves overtime.