Torrey

@Shadow as long as you don't get Heckel discus, they can be acclimated to cooler temps (~78 was the coolest to not get stress sick). If you breed a few generations, and keep each generation in progressively cooler water, they are more forgiving than adapting adult fish to cooler waters. The rivers can drop a good 2- 5 C over the course of 2 weeks during monsoon season. Nothing to apologize for, and this is amazing!!! Guppysnail and I could hang out on the couch indefinitely, lol How often do you have to gravel vac to keep everything looking so phenomenal? (Serious compersion joy, here!!!!)

Excellent color map!!! Good! She's going to be so much happier and healthier with those tannins (there are other studies that show indian almond leaves/catappa leave also boost the bettas' natural immune system response). From what I can see, you have a copper metallic betta with black "lace" (a black edge to the scales and finnage). If this was only on the fins, it could indicate disease, but it looks like the edge of each scale also has it, which would make it a "lace" pattern on the betta. I'm not a judge though, so I could be mistaken.

Dr. Diana Walstad shared this method with my BiL, and it seems to improve the efficiency of the UGF, and it also makes it easier to rearrange the tank/change out plants if you decide you want to make changes. Put your UGF in the tank, and set your uplift tubes. Put the black trays in between the uplift tubes to give you an idea of how to scape. Remove the trays to put in a thin layer of gravel. Use a sautering iron to put a few small holes (pin prick holes) in the bottom of the trays and fill the trays with the Eco-Complete. Place the full trays on top of the thin layer of gravel, between the uplift tubes. Add the rest of the gravel, so it's thinnest near the front of the tank, and deepest in the back, covering the trays. Plant in the trays. There will be some water movement through the trays, but not as much as at the front of the tank where the gravel is thinnest. You don't need to heavily gravel vac the trays, you will want to occasionally gravel vac the front/center of the tank. The mulm that gathers under the UGF is ideal for plants, eventually there roots will make it down there. If you notice you are losing suction at the front of the tank (extra flake food should be sucked to the gravel in the front and accelerate as it gets closer to the gravel) you can lift up the trays, pull roots out of the UGF, trim the roots, and put the trays back in. Seriously, this makes it so much easier to move plants around. In larger tanks, I leave areas with no UGF (~30% to 50% of the tank), but in smaller tanks you get more effective filtration with the UGF under the trays. Just don't cover more than the back 30% of the tank. (Hexagonal tank you can put a tray in the back middle, and one tray to either side, for example) Hope this helps!

You are the best accidental breeder I have ever known!!!

26C may be too warm for them, and as Guppysnail said... they eat. They graze on the film in the tank, and they eat microorganisms that thrive in benthic algae. Best care information I know of from a friend who bred for a while ( I wanted to get some, still debating whether I'm going to keep waiting for the NANF I want, or add these to the tank) is this Australian publication. My friend quit breeding them, or even keeping them, because he lost over half his stock in a power outage. With no A/C the tanks went from 68 F (20C) to 75 F (23.9C) over 4 days. He used battery pumps to keep plenty of air in the tank, and was pretty confident the heat either killed them outright, or reduced the microfauna population. He smeared rocks with Repashy, and placed the Repashy rocks in direct flow to encourage the Sewellia lineolata to congregate on the rocks. They needed highest protein Repashy for successful breeding. He would add frozen bbs to the Repashy sometimes. Hope this helps!

Congratulations! Before I knew about RR (Reverse Respiration) I did this as a last ditch effort to nuke the planaria and leeches out of a tank😅 Glad you moved the fish out, sad you lost the little snails and didn't save any...they are phenomenal and I've been looking for some. Dasaltemelosguy touched on the chemical (add crushed coral to bind it and make it easier to remove) 1. remove any aeration 2. let it sit for 24 - 48 hours. If there are any leeches or anything else left, this will generally take care of them 3. Thoroughly gravel vac until there's no water left in the tank. Refill 4. Wait 24 hours and gravel vac again, until no water left. Check your water to see if there are any living leeches left. If not proceed with carbon and daily gravel vacs that completely drain the tank. After a week of daily gravel vacs I had no hitchhikers, the cleanest gravel since I set it up, and water that the pH stayed stable in for 24 hours. I still did 2 more 100% gravel vac water changes. 5. Add a snail, see how it does for 3 days. If you don't have a snail, add a fish that isn't your favorite. Monitor for 72 hours. If no changes in behavior proceed to next step 6. Since I had effectively removed most of the BB, I slowly restocked my tank, moving one group of fish/snails/shrimp at a time from Q/T back to the tank (my tank was bigger...by a lot. I had 3 large groups of schooling fish... plus shrimp, snails, and a center piece ghost/lace half-black angel. Leeches squick me. This was my first nuking event, but not my last) Now I know about RR, and I have also made peace with hitchhikers (except leeches). You don't have to wait as long to learn a trick that will keep you from **ever** having to do this again. If at step 4, you still have leeches, may as well take advantage of everything being out of the tank. Copper is the most effective, and will be removed with the 100% water changes, just like the alum. In about 2 decades, you will be able to look back on this, share the story with other fishkeepers, and laugh hysterically. Right now, I'm sorry you are going through this. I can tell you that I considered tossing everything and starting over... Oh wait, I **did** do that the second time I found a leech. That method took longer to re-establish beneficial bacteria and I lost my centerpiece fish. Back in the 80s and 90s we ddin't have as much good information on how to Q/T plants, pretty much all plants were grown outside, and hitchhikers were common. And we didn't have a forum like this to help us out, so we made far more iterations of the same mistake, before we learned better... or met people in here to save us from ourselves. 😉

If I still lived in Washington state, I would be driving down from the Canadian border and buying my fish and shrimp from ACO. A battery pump airstone, seeded sponge filters, and enough coolers to safely transport what my budget would allow me to buy would totally be worth an overnight trip to Seattle/Edmonds. Would probably plan a 3 day weekend trip, hit the Peace, Love & Happiness Plant store, the Butterfly Pavilion, meet up with friends in the University District and Capital Hill to see my cousin-in-law, and then ACO on the last day and drive home. That's just me, though. I regularly took the mass transit and bussed down to Seattle on Thursday and came back up to the border on Monday. I don't even know if the busses still have county line stops like they did then.

It depends on what kind of frog you have. Our natives aren't really a threat, but the invasive bullfrog tadpoles can clear a summer tub pond almost overnight. Look up what kind of frogs you have in your area, their diet, and their tadpoles' diet, to determine what kind of a threat you are looking at. Here, the bullfrogs typically get served up, and the rest of the frogs (and tis summer, birds and any other wildlife that needs water) are left alone. I do have a shallower pond for the native inhabitants to get their needs met, typically they leave my summer tubs alone as long as they have their needs met **somewhere**

It's gonna be a Mo'Ju kinda night.... @Beardedbillygoat1975 that sounds awesome!!! The only radio not bought out by corporate conglomerates here is the radio station from the college, and they keep getting their budget cut. 😕

I'm feeling homesick.....

Who's going to be in the livestream today? Remember to smash that like button!

Update for Leon;

This weekend's update!

If one has it... there's a very good chance it's living in your tank now. I've dealt with it ...once. Then I got religious about Q/T and properly treating shrimp proactively. Shrimp don't seem to be fond of a lot of medications, but PraziPro at proper dosage levels (1 tsp/20 gallons... 5 cc = 1 tsp ==> 1 cc per 4 gallons) and for the full duration (1 whole week! Water change after 1 full week! Wait a week for eggs to hatch, and water change & treat again. Then a week later, water change. Wait a week, water change and treat again. 3 total treatments) seems to prevent this, and other worm related problems. Definitely remove shells of sheds as fast as possible, until you have completed the 5 weeks of treatments, so you 1. Don't keep perpetuating the cycle, and 2. Don't develop resistant population

I wouldn't get females for a 10 gallon scaped tank...unless you are willing to take it apart and rescape every 4 to 6 months. That picture I posted of the water lettuce roots? That's a 10 gallon tank😅 I currently have 6 platinum endler/guppy cross bachelors in a 3 gallon tank, so heavily planted I rarely get to see all of them at once (I need to trim again, I am slowly recuperating from pneumonia) Originally there were a dozen in there, but I sold 3 and the 3 best went to breed with my new platinum female. The remaining 6 didn't keep the pure platinum color I was going for. With plants, and how small the bioload is off of male endler/guppy hybrids, 3 males/ gallon is very reasonable. Platies are a bit bigger, and have a wider size range and appetite, in my experience. As long as you don't accidentally add a female, and don't overfeed for the amount of fish and plants, your tank should be okay with 2 - 3 male guppies/ guppy gallon and 1 - 2 platies/platy gallon. And good amount of plants.