Elizabeth Power

Thank you @AllFishNoBrakes That was helpful.

Also, how many babies can I have before I need to start worrying about the bio load?

I bought a few coral platy's from my LFS. I needed an easy fish for my 20 gal aquarium. They had babies and they all got eaten even though the tank had lots of plants. I just wanted a few to survive. So I made some adjustments. A few months later I had counted 50 babies and that's just what I could see and with more on the way. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I certainly can't keep them all. I'm chronically ill so it's been hard to give my tank and the fish the care they deserve, let alone dealing with all the issues that goes along with trying to sell them. There is no local aquarium club or other group. So taking them back to the LFS as a donation seems to be my only option. I've looked at some of the posts that I thought were relevant and that helped some. But I still have questions. If there is a relevant post that I've missed please let me know. Here are my current questions: How big do the babies need to be for them to be ready to be sent away to a new home (LFS)? Is there an easier way to catch them other than a net? And an easy way to separate them if I catch the ones that need to go along with ones that still need to grow?

Love the pictures of the birds.

Thank you for all your input. It was very helpful. @Yanni @Mmiller2001 @lefty o @Isaac M @Fish Folk

I have a 20 gallon tank that is heavily planted. Do I still need to vacuum the gravel? Right now I try to do it every time I do a water change which is about every week, sometimes two weeks apart. It's getting harder and harder to do so as the plants fill in more and more of the space, and I add new plants that are not yet established and would be uprooted by vacuuming. I have rock in the center where my corys spend a great deal of their time. Now I mainly just remove the rocks and vacuum where they were sitting.

Good luck! I love saltwater aquariums, but I am too poor and too lazy and too impatient to actually try one myself. Instead, I enjoy others' work. Looking forward to seeing your progress on your tank.

Thank you. Your input was very helpful. @anewbie @CorydorasEthan @Colu @Dwayne Brown @lefty o

Also, how much do I feed him? I don't want him to starve, but I also don't want him to be so full he does not eat ant algae.

He's hard to get pictures of. Someone else from the forum looked at the pictures and said that his is a rubber lip pleco, but considering he's not acting like one it would be nice to get a second opinion.

I have what I have been told is a rubber nose/rubber lip pleco. Since it was my understanding they were vegetarian I purchased algea pellets for him. He ignores the algea pellets (even crawling over them) to get to the Cordy's food (ground feeding fish food) and eats that instead. Is that ok?

Thank you. That's a relief because I do really like him and really want to keep him.

@CorydorasEthan You are in luck. I decided to try feeding the pleco and the other fish to see if I could coax him out. Seems today he was willing to get his picture taken. Ihope that helps. I'd really like tp know if he's going to be a problem noe so I can deal with it. He's been a great at eating the algae. So far there have been no problems with other fish. And right now he's pretty small so his size is not a problem yet.

@CorydorasEthanThank you! My understanding is I have Neon tetras, Serpae (red minor/jewel/callistus) tetras. The pets store said my corydoras were Julii, but when I researched them further online it seemed to indicate most Julii corys were not actually Juliis, but some other kind. I think they are actually the leopard cory. I was told (at the same pet store) that the pleco was a rubber nose pleco. I have a 20 gallon community tank, so I specifically ask if that pleco was peaceful, that it would fit in my tank (not get too big), and that it would eat my algae. They told me yes to all these, so I bought it. But when I looked up the rubber nosed pleco it did not look like it and the internet also said this one is often falsely identified in pet stores and is usually a rubber pleco, which from my understanding is not a good fit for my aquarium. The rubber nose has stripes, mine is all dark gray. I can't get a picture. I rarely see him and he disappears almost immediately after I see him. There's been a number of times I thought he was gone and he finally shows up again a number of days later very briefly. I've even looked for him by physically moving stuff around, but I was not able to find him. He's almost the same color as my substrate and my aquarium is heavily planted. He is the newest addition so I'm hoping with time he will feel more comfortable and he will come out more. But even then I'm not sure if I can get him out without ripping apart my whole aquarium. But I can send you pictures of everything thing else.

I never thought of a riparium but I did at one point time, when I was a kid, have fire bellied newts. I loved them. I think I had a ripatium at that point in time. I do have plants hanging off the back. I figured they would help me control the nutrient levels in the water, making managing the tank easier. I think they are various philodendrons which I got from stealing clippings from my mothers plants when she was out of the house. 😇

This is my aquarium.

Hi. I'm new to aquariums. I started a year or so ago with a goldfish. That was a mistake. Big fish, small tank, lots and lots of problems. I started because I wanted a dog, but because I live with my parents and they don't want dogs in the house I got fish instead. Probably a better fit for my life right now anyways. I have a degree in horticulture because I love plants, but found that I didn't really like working with them professionally so I left that profession and have not really worked with plants much since. But of course when I started my aquarium I HAD to have plants (also didn't work well with a goldfish). Having learned my lesson, I sought to make my aquarium experience as easy as possible. So now I have a 20 gallon tank and have filled it with easy fish; neon tetras, jewel tetras, cory catfish, and a pleco (another possible mistake). Also I filled it with easy plants; sagittaria, vals, crypts, Amazon swords, water lilies, etc. So far a much better experience.

Thank you for the input. I looked up Nymphaea Thermarum out of curiosity. My lily's largest leaves are significantly smaller than Nymphaea Thermarum's average sized leaves.

I just bought a dwarf water lily and planted it in the same aquarium also. It towers over this little guy already and its only been in my aquarium a few weeks. This lily has been in here for at least 6 months. It is loaded with leaves and still has not grown taller than 1.5 inches. I'd guess it has arpund 35 plus leaves. Recently, I'm having nutrient issues that I have been working to resolve, but the dwarfing of this water lily began long before this problem and my other water lily has not been affected in the same way so I'm not sure that's the cause of the dwarfing. Right now my nitrates are high (~40ppm). I'm also having inerveinal chlorosis on the new leaves and general chlorosis on new leaves (depending on which plant you are looking at). I am sick right now so the care I give to my tank is sporadic. Since my nitrates are high I've been avoiding a general fertilizer since that will just add more nitrates and make the problem worse. I've been dosing once or twice a week with iron (whatever Flourish's bottle recommended), which has not helped much. I've researched nutrient deficiencies and am having difficulty finding one that matches (other than iron). So I started dosing with Flourish's micronutrients once a week. Also, I know a NPK imbalance can cause problems and without a general fertilizer there is no input of potassium or phosphorus to balance out the nitrates. I think this may be a partial cause for the nitrate build up since a deficiency in either potassium or phosphorus or both can affect the uptake of the nitrates. So just this week I added some phosphorus and potassium to see if that helps. I also started adding Flourish's Excel (carbon) this week. I keep dwarf water lettuce which I am using also to take out some of the nitrates since I periodically remove large quantities. But these have the worst chlorosis which is worrying me. This week so far: Iron - 2.5 ml of a 10,000 mg/L solution Potassium - 3.3 ml of a 50,000g/ml solution Phosphorus - 2.5 ml of 4500 mg/L solution Sorry. I don't know the exact amounts. For the trace nutrients I attached a picture of the bottle if that is helpful. I also took added a photo of the whole aquarium.

More pictures... Better pictures... In the first you can see two of the bulblets in the very front. The second is a close up of the original plant. The third is a better top view of the original plant.

Hello, I am looking for input on a plant I purchased about a year ago. I was hoping you could help me. I purchased a water lily bulb from Petco. I think all that the package said was nymphaea sp. I was expecting large leaves averaging about 4 inches at least with long stems that would eventually grow to the surface of my 20 gallon tank. I planted the bulb. It grew immediately. But it has leaves no bigger that an inch long, with stems about the same length max. They are reddish green. The plant is covered with 25+ tiny heart shaped leaves and has produced at least three bulblets in the short time I've had it, all growing in the same manner as the parent plant. The plant has grown to be about 1.5 inches tall. It looks like a water lily, just a tiny version of one, much smaller than the dwarf water lilies I've seen. It's a great plant and I love it. It is my favorite plant in my aquarium. In general, it appears healthy other than the small growth. At this point in time I'm expecting it to act more like a ground cover as it pops out more and more bulblets and eventually cover the ground of my tank. I have a degree in horticulture so I know that it's natural for plants to occasionally and unexpectedly pop out variants or mutants in general, but I am unfamiliar with aquarium plants, especially water lilies. Could you give me your opinion? Do I have a micro dwarf variant of a water lily or did they send me the wrong plant or have I done something wrong? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Elizabeth Power