anewbie

I see no reason to pay more for food (live or otherwise) UNLESS there is a specific need or benefit. Fishes eat what they eat in the wild because that is what is available not because it is the best food. Fishes in the wild don't always have the healthiest lives. Of course we are talking about generics here - if we want to talk about specific you we should name the species. For example angel fishes love to eat cardinals tetra in the wild. Do you want to feed your angels cardinals ? Can't comment if the angels are better off eating cardinals... - Also something to consider is that many fishes you buy are tank raised and then you have to start asking about what they eat in their 'wild' environment. Anyway I'm all for feeding fishes the appropriate food that will keep them healthy but that is frequently not as simple as the food with the most meat or the most fiber or .... and it does come down to specific species. - On thing is that frys are a bit different. Many frys depends on food movement to trigger the eat reflex so there is that to consider (this does not include tings like guppy frys that will eat anything that can grab including your fingers).

neon and cardinals tetra do not really school. they just sit around and look pretty. sparkling gourami are a bit more active though not great schoolers. kubotai rasbora are very active but again not a tight schooler (i really like kubotai rasbora and aquahuna sell them pretty inexpensively) there are some nice pencil fishes - so you could look into those. - I have both galaxy rasbora (celestial danios) and kubotai in the tank and would rate the kubotai an 8 and the galaxy a 5 with regards to keeping active - looks are a personal matter but again in prefer the green kubotai.

One thing I should have mentioned with pleco - and there are a lot of different types of pleco - is that the males tend to be more territorial than the females. The bn is not esp aggressive but they do like to stake out a cave and they will claim that cave. Beyond that i have not observed too much aggression. In my 40b i have one male with a female bn both quite small. In my 120 i have 7 l204 with 3 bn. Two of the bn are lemon - they are small and a pair that frequently hang out together (bn do not really pair off - the male will grab any available female who is ready to breed - but these two will readily eat together) the third is a very large normal (brown?) male bn that is exclusively solitary. In a 29 i ahve a lemon bn that has gotten quite large much larger than the pair in the 120 combined. - I'm a big fan of otto so hopefully those 20+ otto will keep you entertained. Mine are pretty out going hangout out front and i frequently have to 'shoo' them away when cleaning.

I have a 40B and you have plenty of room for additional bottom feeders. The real issue as to how many is too many depends on a number of factors including biological filtering and how well they get along together. Some bottom feeders will pile on each other and the more the merrier others will kill anything with-in a a few 10's of inches from them. So for example if you had red fin shark (a very popular fish) i would question if you had too many bottom feeders but with panda and otto i would add a few more of each. In my tank i have 10 otto; 11 orange laser and 12 pygmy along with 2 small lemon bn and a clown pleco. One thing about bn pleco I have found is they are not all the same sizes. For example I have 6 lemon bn across multiple tanks and 2 are really quite large - what i would call normal size with the male close to 6 inches but the other 4 are smaller - and it isn't just length it is also width (total mass) - so two of my male lemon bn are quite small maybe 3 to 3 1/2 inches and i doubt they will get much larger. - Anyway i think you could easily add 6 more panda and 8 more otto if you wanted - as to your second question as to a good amount - well in the wild they are found in groups of 100's as are most cory and they actually prefer to be in these huge groups so you will not get anywhere close to their natural comfort level unless you put them in a larger tank so you just have to accept that you will have a small group whether it be 6 - 10 or 16.

There is no single correct answer for the biggest source of ammonia in my tank might not be the biggest source of ammonia in your tank. After all we do not all treat our tanks equally.

What temp are you keeping the tank. It is hard to tell from the picture but most of them look like juvi and need a bit more time to grow to adulthood.

There is no 'right' answers - as long as you provide sufficient filtration. However two things - first I would have a specific reason you wish to change filtration such as (old one too much effort to maintain, too loud, not adequate, ...) and second when you do change them be sure to keep them both running for at least 3 weeks to allow adequate time for the new filter to grow beneficial bacteria. Remember new is not always better unless there is a specific problem with old. In my case - and just my personal preference - i run sponge filters in all my tanks from 5 gallon to 120 gallon though i do have a canister in addition to sponge on the 120.

Been treating a sick hongsloi for bloat. Been nearly two weeks so not sure he is going to recover. As usual the problem with treating bloat is you don't know the exact cause. The last fish that had bloat recovered so i'm still crossing my fingers but as more time passes it seems less likely.

Well i had a heavily over stocked tank (20 long) with 3 inch very fine substrate that had the nitrate remain around 2ppm for about 6 months. So we can speculate why the nitrate level was so low but i'd put my coins on bacteria. The test i ran was quite valid as i have multiple tanks and test them in parallel and consistency this was the only tank that had ultra low nitrate.

Mistaken - not sure I've seen them... There is at least one pearl scalar in the group and a couple of ghosts.

What is special about this angels that prompted this question ?

If you are breeding strictly to make money there are some less common variety like pinoy alibino ghost and some of the bulgarian varieties. if you are breeding for your own curiosity then i would start with a pair close to what you find pleasing and then play a bit with the genetics to produce something closer to what you find pleasing. An example might be koi and trying to produce a different pattern or pearl-scale platinum zebra. The fact that you mention selling online in your question makes me believe it is the former - then look at what is selling for the most $$ and go down that route. Before you start down that route you might check into how angel genetics work - this page might get you started: http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/cichlid/angelfish-genetics.php and this link might help a little http://www.theangelfishsociety.org/phenotype_library_2007/ as well as this link https://angelfins.ca/index.php?main_page=genetics_calculator

They are located in the bottom of the tank; the tank in our condo (which was very old) had 2 3 inch tubes that stick straight up in the middle of the tank. You can hide them with drift wood or similar. They serve as the intake and outtake. There is no overflow box or similar on the side of the tank. The only trick is muffling the noise of whatever you use for filtration under the tank. This can be partially accomplished with sound proofing of the stand or as someone else suggested if you have a basement below the room running the piping to the room below.

price seems pretty high - also they don't quite look like fire red but a similar colour or colour mix (which isn't a bad thing). To be honest these names that describe the colours are quite arbitrary so i'll just say that other fire red i've seen look a bit different. - While the price is pretty high if mail order is the only other option than as noted by @pete you have to factor in shipping. If you do order on line i'd go for 4 or 6 young ones instead of a pair - besides as harem breeders it works out well if you end up with multiple females; though you'd want to remove the extra males unless your tank is fairly large.

You can drill the tank in the bottom and have the filtration under the tank. I've seen several offices and city condos with this configuration.

One of the smaller dwarf cichlid like borelli but i've always been partial to parents that take care of kids. For egg droppers where there are thousand of choices so i'm not going to go that route 😉

You don't clean ugf. The concern over ugf is long term issues that can arise in a planted tank; but there are other issues that can arise in planted tanks depending on the type of substrate you use and if it compacts. Long term is usually several years. I had on in a 70 gallon tank a long time ago and liked it but after a couple of years the tank began to break down - i can't say this was due to the ugf but it might have contributed. There is also some benefits to a reverse ugf (instead of sucking water down through the substrate you push it up). I've read a lot about ugf but there is usually not enough details to correlate the problems folks run into with ugf but i've seen some interesting desings where people run pipes (small pvc) through the substrate to keep the substrate aerated (the pvc has tiny holes drilled in it). Anyway good luck.

Just remember that water is heavy so if you are transporting in your car and you use a larger container in the car you will need to siphon water out to lift it... Conversely you could use the 5 gallon pail for driving and the larger container at your parents house. Did i read correctly that you have 17 dwarf gourami? That will take several containers also you might trigger some bickering in too small a container.

Hum. I know my sterbai don't pair off - when a female is ready to lay eggs every male in the tank follows her to 'help out'. Do pygmy pair off ?

I'm surprise he is alone. When mine swim they usually swim in a pack; like a little army moving forward....

Post count is not a good metric. There are other fish forums that rank quality of a poster by post count. Unfortunately they do not measure the quality of the actual posts. Now that would be an interesting system if they could automate point system based on the quality of the posts. Would win an aware in AI if one could manage that feat....

I took a picture - it isn't a very good picture but hey it is a picture: The tank used to look like this - i'm trying to decide which i prefer:

Sparkling gourami really do better in groups of 4+; this isn't strictly required but something to consider.

Young discus will need exceptionally clean water and frequent feeding. A lot of people would put them in a bare bottom tank; do water changes 2 or 3 times a week and feed them 3 or 4 times a day. The issue is that discus are very messy food and esp young discus need very rich food; since they require clean water the mess they make esp with uneaten food bits will require constant cleaning. Target temp for the youngster should be 84-86. Once they get a bit older they will still require clean water but things will be a bit easier with less feeding et all.

Nothing special - i just set it in the tank - if it has branches they might pick a spot between the branches or if it is blocky they might dig a little hole under a corner (if your substrate is fine and soft). I dont' really make an effort to encourage them to use driftwood - they just find the spot they like.