xXInkedPhoenixX

@Guppysnail Some of them are genuinely prolific eaters so that doesn't surprise me. I honestly hadn't seen BFG in more than a week- I thought maybe he'd passed away in there so I went to get a couple of Nerites and a day later he shows up!! They've got plenty to do to clean the tank- but if I ran out of food I supplement with snail snacks or other food as I'm sure you do. My horned Nerites love cucumber- nobody else seems interested. I've got some picky-$$$ snails. 3 Nerites is a lot for what is essentially a 7 gallon tank but I could move one if needed. They always seem to find something though.

@Guppysnail reminded me of woodgrain hence a door, hence the name Knock 🙂

I got 2 new Nerites for my Flex9 (my solo Nerite, BFG needs help house cleaning) Introducing Knock & Talk!

Welcome to the team, there's nothing but nice and/or helpful people here. I'm sure you have plenty to contribute having kept a gold fish for that long at time! 🙂

Update: Today I've discovered little Verti swimming correctly and no longer struggling constantly swimming vertically. I was so excited/happy to see this. Since it's easiest for them I continue to feed bloodworms- up to 6 or 7 in a day since before it seemed they were expending an awful lot of energy swimming vertically. Today Verti eagerly ate. My hope is they make a full recovery and can either rejoin former mates- or if singled out, live in one of my other tanks.

Ha! Yeah, Mystery snails are a joy to have in the tank, but they're (IMO) adorable little food snobs. Nerites are indeed little Roombas and I've used that exact term when I've mentioned them before. They have just as much personality but are so much smaller than their Mystery snail counterparts it's like playing Where's Waldo with them every day.

Hi @Beccs410. Mine like the Hikari algae wafers, seem to enjoy the Xtreme cat scraper wafers. Shrimp foods are good for them because they're usually high in calcium. I've bought homemade foods from online sellers (Etsy) that have been successful (including snello but mine don't touch the stuff). Try any veggie you can- I've learned they can be pretty picky- in fact my Mystery snails don't really eat any of them- though they will nibble at English Cucumbers every now and then. They're individuals- so what one likes- others don't. There are lots of snail keepers here I'm sure you'll get more answers! I think contrary to popular belief they aren't really great algae eaters. My tanks were a lot cleaner after I added Nerites so I only keep Mystery snails in one of my 5 tanks and have Nerites in the others! 🙂

I happen to really enjoy this aspect of fish keeping, and I don't tend to chase any numbers- it's just interesting to see the changes if any. My aquarium app does all the timings for me and I get to see charts that show the changes and comparisions from when I started all the way to now. It's fascinating! (I track temps too and not running heaters this is interesting- these numbers go into my weekly tests)

Hi @Stef I have 5 tanks and test them all on the same day. I rotate which tank I start with first and the tubes being a little wet does NOT seem to skew the results. I rinse them and tap them out on a clean towel which gets them pretty dry- not perfect. Plus when you've been doing this a while and buy more master kits you'll naturally accumulate more tubes. I wouldn't worry about it. 🙂

@Brandon p I think there's a few people on here who have successfully bred them. I accidently did- picked them specifically BECAUSE they were impossible to breed but..... if you're interested, this is the thread. It was my first post on the forum because I was seeking help! 🙂 Accidental Breeding of Otocinclus! https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/9141-accidental-breeding-of-otocinclus/

Personally I think having a quiet roommate is ideal- home should be your safe place where you can do your homework without interruption, not have an annoying person yapping off your ear. They'll probably be quiet when you're trying to catch a nap between classes and won't bring a ton of people into the room. The friends you're looking for- they're out there. You'll meet them in class and out and about- don't worry. 🙂

My Mama Oto laid on the undersides of a small Amazon Sword, they're kind of laid individually sometimes in groups of 2 or 3, translucent. I actually never saw them darken, the babies are nearly see through. The first time I saw one it was on the glass along the top of the tank- looked like a bug to me at first.

I'll pipe in here and say I raised my Oto fry on crushed Hikari Algae wafer and to this day now 6 mos old they pretty much prefer only Hikari wafers and slices of (ENGLISH) cucumber. I've tried everything else.

I'm sorry Jennifer. I've battled dropsy 1x w/a betta (the betta pictured in my board profile here even). I've come to the conclusion it's not treatable- I've never come across someone who cured it and won. I believe I cured the dropsy but there was too much internal damage for my little guy to recover from it. It's not a consolation, but know that some of us have been there and you did the best you could.

@Jennifer I would always remove snails when medicating out of an abundance of caution.

@Guppysnail yeah I can see where a pleco plethora would be harder to maintain. The Otos are so small that my initial daily water changes weren't really needed. Now I do maybe a half gallon a day just for spot cleaning or use a turkey baster if I'm feeling "lazy". Even when they are full size I feel like their bio load is small. The cleaning I do is more from the Hikari wafers than their waste (they're in a bare bottom with pots).

@Guppysnail I'm not a med user unless I see a need so that fits my philosophy fine. I will be the witch in the Hansel & Gretel story minus the unhappy ending and puff the little suckers into happy fatsos. I hope to have good progress updates 🤞

@eolith welcome to fishkeeping!! We all have shelves full of foods. I've been in your situation before with a betta. I concur with the bloodworms answer. Get the small block frozen, put it in a designated container overnight in your fridge. Personally I target fed my singlton fish- so get yourself a pair of non pointy tweezers and feed them one bloodworm at a time. I probably would only start with one big one, maybe 2. If you target feed, you know how much food they are actually eating. Unfortunately with only one fish you will end up throwing away most of even the tiny blocks of bloodworms, I toss them when they start to turn from red to well, not red.

@Guppysnail, thanks for the recommendations I'll likely get some of that too. As with everyone else here I've got lots of foods! My tiny Embers needed smaller food too so I'm slightly prepared for them since on the Huna's website they look super duper little (great for me). Only concern is they come in an 8 pack and I'm sure they don't know boy from girl when so small. I may have to pull some if the aggression I've read about comes out but I have back up plans for that. You'll have to school me there.

I haven't updated this thread in a long time. So the little ones are now between 6 months and 5 months (depending which generation they were in 1-3). I have given away a half dozen to a friend (she had 3 die, and I haven't asked her since), put 11 in my other tanks which leaves approximately 35 specimens in the 10 gallon "grow out tank". The tank, even when not performing daily small water changes (I usually just spot clean nowadays), tests well. I have an HOB and a sponge filter in it due to the amount of fish. This week it was a balmy 78 degrees (remember I run no heater), 7.6 pH, 0 ammonia/nitrite, and is testing pretty regularly at 40 nitrate no matter what kind of water changing I perform- the swords in there are doing really well. Alkalinity is at 3/53.7, gh tests around 107.4. Here's what I'm thinking. I don't want to take them to the LFS. I may give a few more away but I sorta want a species only colony tank (yay so much for an always available quarantine tank). They may or may not end up breeding more but if they do maybe sell the results of those spawns and keep my original babies. The tank is no trouble and as they are a shoaling fish when I do see them at night and early morning they are very active and move in their groups. Since they've all grown past fry-hood I've had no deaths in that tank save for one that jammed it's little self into the HOB's intake (which is now covered by a course sponge prefilter. I know there are others on here that have high capacity tanks. I'd like to hear anyones thoughts on the subject.

I ordered some apparently "extra small" CPDs from AquaHuna, let the experiment begin!

@Odd Duck I have tried sourcing as I have had several Bettas in my fish keeping experience. Their life spans have been erratic at best where I can keep several other species of fish easily in the same tanks. I've had them shipped, gotten them from breeders, LFS, big box. Honestly I've had the best luck with the big box fish but not by a lot. I've had males and females different "types" all the way up to this female who was a GloFish which some have said seem hardier than others. 😐 I'm just over it and don't want to keep them again. I am hesitant to have a pea puffer as they do seem to be moody fish and do enjoy the company of others, maybe I'm just anthropomorphizing them- also I have a harder time feeding live foods though I have a love/hate relationship with my bladder snail population. So ultimately I may be going with the CPD suggestion if I'm keeping fish- or, my Mum's 3 gallon ADF pair have been doing so very well in her tank that I set up, I could go that direction.

@GameCzar I'd probably only do males if I did them at all with guppysnail's comment--- I'd be the one that got the pregnant female. Nope. Nope. Nope.

@Guppysnail what are your tank parameters for them?

@Guppysnail ok so that's a BIG no to guppies then!