anewbie

Sponge filters come in different sizes; in my 10 gallon - i use two small sponge fitlers in the back corner: -- The only way i would use a HOB on a 10 gallon is if i had a fish that thrive in strong current. In terms of longevity this aquarium has been setup for a couple of years - so stability seems fine.

Yea - the 30 inch blade is excellent but pricey. You can of course obtain an adequate light for less money. Btw it seems weird to me they offer the 21 inch blade - is it a freshwater model or one targeted at saltwater.

confused by your comment; there is a 30 inch blade which would fit well on a 31 inch long aquarium.

You can do two harem of cockatoo or two harem of borelli IF the tank is properly scaped to establish clear territories. Btw what you think is 'clear' is not necessarily what the fishes think is clear. Borelli colony are more common as they are more passive. As to being 'cruel' to the fish; no more so then keeping them in glass cages.

First - if keeping two species - just males no females - chances are better; if you add females stick to one species. Likewise with bn - no female cockatoo or borelli. Cockatoo males can be quite territorial and nasty but one never knows for sure - borelli are more passive but also a smaller fish - and can't defend itself from larger species. macs are much larger - not sure about aggressiveness. Trifs are one of the more aggressive species and while quite nice looking i definitely would not mix them with other species nor would i have multiple males together. -

So it didnt' leak or anything - is this the internal sep. between the filter chamber and main body of water or an external piece.

I'd wait and see what the vendor state.

I wouldn't worry too much about the tint at this point. When you do water changes it will thin out a bit and you will want to add extract to restore some of it. The key thing will be to make sure the water you add to the aquarium is 'close' to the tank water; your tank isn't too large so it won't be nearly so bad - but some species are quite sensitive to even slight changes - and while it might not kill them they will certainly get upset if they sense too large a change in the water (very species dependent). I'm probably going to have to use acid to get the new water close to the tank water since I will be dealing with larger volume.

If you go the sump route; jebao dcp pumps are a *lot* quieter than fluval canister filter - i have both. Those jebao pumps are dead slient. Jebao makes a lot of pumps but i've only tested the dcp before going with them so can't comment on the other models.

I'm not a fan of stuff like aquasoil long term; eventually it will be exhausted and you will have to do what you need to do in the first place; and fertilize the plants. For substrate - there are three i like - pool filter on the cheap end; jungle river (caribsea) and estes stoney river (black marine substrate). It is inert so fine for freshwater. There are more scientific study on substrate and some are suppose to have a lot more crc (ion exchange) that will help with plants but for the stuff I grow i find it doesn't make a lot of difference - you can get an aquarium like this with pretty much any substrate:

Did usual water change - here is an updated picture of the white 29: Here is a picture from way back nov 2020: Look at that driftwood in the center; nice piece - right - here is what it looks like today: No it isn't buried - nor did it rot; my L208 has been eating it over the past 3 years and that is all that is left of it. It really was a nice piece when i first got it - and fairly hard but that didn't stop him. Also that soft Cholla Wood next to it - well that is the 2nd one because the L208 ate the entire first one till nothing was left. So those of you who are wondering if wood eating pleco eat wood; they do !!! you might not notice it day after day as it slowly disappears but over time..... expect it to well be eaten. -- And here is a picture of the young L208 on that very piece of driftwood: -- As for the history of this aquarium it was setup Aug of 2019 so it has been running a while - during that period i had major issues - first the substrate was too fine causing large ana. pockets to form and causing real issues so i replaced it with something slightly coarser - you can see the original substrate in the first picture above. Second the aquarium sprung a leak in the bottom seal - so i put the fishes in a pail; ran over to petco and picked up another; removed the braces for the matten filter; and glued them in the new aquarium - waited 2 days for the silicon to set - or maybe it was 3 - and set it up - all the fishes survived and everyone went about as if nothing had changed. The break occur around oct 2020 so before i took the above picture. - If you look at the first picture on the the matten filter (right side) you can see the adult L208 - he spends a lot of time there... or in his Cholla slowly gnawing away.... really lovely fish when he shows himself off...

Ok I'm, wrong; then yea you need to contact them - some software will refuse to send email to a location that blocks receipt. However before they reactive have you told your mail provider to accept the mail because if you have not if they attempt to re-enable it will be blocked again.

It is all on your end - you told your email provider to block the email; now you have the tell it to unblock. the problem with giving you more detail is i can't tell if this is done at the client level or something different. My first instinct is it is done via the client but a bit depends on which client you are using and which mail provider. What client do you use to talk to edison mail - do you use outlook; web browser, thunderbird, .... there are 100's so it is hard to proceed without more details.

Italia val will give that 'densely' planted look:

male + female == territory. In general they are a bit unpredictable but adding a female is one sure way to bring out aggression.

For a 10 i would avoid the larger anubias - but i would get something with a bit of change in tone - a couple include golden nana (lime green) and pinto (dark green mixed with white); another anubia that is larger than nana but not super large like bateri is afzelii anubia which has a different leaf shape than others mentioned. I do like coffee but it is a large plant like bateri and even a 29 is probably a bit small for those two over long term.

There is a spray bar for the non-fx models sold by fluval; pretty cheap and well made. If you can't find it i can give you pointer via messaging system.

I have the spray bar for my fx6 and found it made the current intolerable for my angels (on a 120); while I like the spray bar a lot it does increase the current and you don't have any top dwellers that would enjoy that extra current. I would be careful about turning hte flow down on these units. Fluval does state it won't harm the motor as long as flow is > 50% but it does stress the motor imho and there are other things that will reduce flow (such as gunk in filter) and if you use a pre-filter. The motor it self just turns but maget that turns the propeller but less water will be flowing through the unit and my understand is the 'smarts' in these units will try to compenstate; though I'm not 100% sure here. To be honest I'm not overjoyed with my fx6 as it is a pia to remove to clean - the design makes it a bit of a pain to drain a bit of water out of the filter so it can be moved - anyway i also have an eheim classic and it has its own issues - but my new aquariums will have sumps - and I think i'll settle on mostly sumps and matten filters for my filtering solutions going forward. I was going to recommend a matten filter for your 55 - but i honestly think a pair of plain sponge filters will do the job given your stocking - i prefer swisstropical sponges but any brand will do - they are cheap and efficient. Just pick one that you can squeeze behind some plants - be sure not to put it against anything so water can freely flow around it. This is one of my aquariums with a matten filter if you want to see how that looks - the disadvantage of the matten filter is it takes up space in the aquarium:

FX4 is probably ok for a 55 but on the high end; depending on socking you could just use sponge filter. You don't really have much esp if your pleco (species) is one of the smaller ones - of course if he is a common that is 2 feet long it will be a different situation. Your embers might object to the fx4 current; they are not really swimmers. The pleco will love the current esp if you get it near the bottom (you would have to mod it as sold most of the current is upper 1/3).

They don't bully them; one day one of the large males discover they were tasty .... why bully them when you can swallow them whole.

The florida ones aren't so bad - i forgot the name of the company but when the pandemic hit everything went south. I don't trust anything from asia these days - too much cross breeding and hormones in their breeding farms. Anyway in good conditions cardinals can live close to 10 years. They really are lovely fishes - pitty i can't keep them with my angels any longer...

Actually a large number of cardinals are tank bred either in Florida or Asia; however I have found consistently that tank bred cardinals seem less healthy than wc so only buy wc these days - having said that they are not as bad as tank bred neon which have very poor genetics. Part of the issue is that it is rather 'tricky' to breed cardinals or perhaps i should say takes more than the casual expertise of mixing water and fish. Having said this they will live longer in soft water - it is genetics. That doesn't mean they won't live in harder water but platies like most livebearers really need (relatively speaking) fairly hard water to 'thrive' so at that point you will be pushing the limits of what is tolerable by cardinals long term. Naturally you can keep them together just don't expect them to live as long as they would in more favorable conditions. My tap water is on the soft side of thing with tds 130 but i keep guppies. They breed faster than they die but they don't really live as long as they should. When i move next month i'll be moving them to their own little hard water aquarium as my sa fishes will be getting much softer water. To make matters worse cardinals do a lot better in warm waters - while you can find a temperature that is in the upper range that is favorable for platties that is good for cardinals; I would not keep cardinals at 74... Anyway it isn't really the answer you want but that is the nature of these things.

You know i was thinking about those fly and predators and thinking - what is a predator to one is food to another....

You're the 2nd person i've seen report this - when they remove the frys dad gets pissed and beats up mom. Might make an interesting experiment.

Actually I think i goofed; it was Blyxa aubertii that grew tall. I had three species near each other - blyxa novo, blyxa j and blyxa a and one of them grew too tall. Of course now two years later - my cat fishes ate it all last month and i hvae none. I think - unless it is hiding from the nasty cat.