Nataku

Water change day today. Did changes on the 47, 58, 65 and twin 29s. Trimmed some vals down that were getting too long and tangled in one of the 29s. Pulled a bunch of guppy grass out of both 29s. Fed that and the val trimmings to the rats who love their salads. Had a helper when I went to refill the 29s. Petting was required before I could add water.

Oh these species profiles are gold, I want to see more! Also the Princess Bride ones hold a special place of 'aww!' For me.

Yes I have them growing in three different tanks. I initially just dropped them in the tank and let them sink - one of three floated for about a day, then sunk. The others went right down. One came with a small sprout already, it was the quickest to show signs of growth, sending out several more shoots and the start of roots in about a week. Oddly enough, shoots and roots came from the same side of the bulb. I just let it go, and it figured out which way to send the roots. After the first two leaves unfurled, I pushed the bulb down so it was half buried in the substrate. And there's where I left it. Its since grown and sent more than a dozen leaves to the surface. The other two haven't gotten leaves to the surface just yet, but they are also in deeper tanks, and I think rate of growth is definitely affected by the amount of light getting to the plant - deeper tanks equals less light. So slower growth. Frankly I don't think that's a bad thing. In the tank with the biggest plant, I've already had to trim surface leaves because it took over more than half of the surface area of the tank! I was willing to let it have half of the tank surface, but not more than that. But a couple quick snips near the base of the stalks clears that problem nicely and the plant certainly doesn't seem to mind the trimming, it just sends out more stalks.

My bad! I'll edit my post. Didn't realize kickstarters counted as selling things, but thinking about it, that does make sense.

None of my turquoise have that orange stripe in the rear like that. On thmop of the head, sure they have that strioe they flash when they're fire up, but never seen one near the tail like that. Please post more pictures when he's back in a tank and warmed up! I'd love to see if he still looks the same.

My suggestion is get another tank to house a predatory fish or two and all the unwanted fry go in there as food. Leaf fish are fascinating, and there many beautiful killifish that enjoy guppies - blue gularis are one I'd certainly suggest trying. The males are stunning, and you don't need a huge tank to house them- a 20 long or a 29 will do nicely. But I realize that not everyone enjoys watching a carnivore eat. The other thought would be to give them to an LFS - be aware that unless your guppies are producing some very fine looking fish, they will just be sold as feeders by the LFS anyhow. If you don't like that idea? Separate your females from any males, and be prepared for a few more batches. Livebearers will hold sperm up to six months, so they'll have several more litters drop. They'll just get successively smaller and then eventually stop.

With guppies especially, get a colony going that is something YOU want to look at. My usual suggestion is: what's your favorite color? Got two favorite colors? Look and see if that exists. Got a fin shape you like? If you don't already have a set answer for this, have a look around, you'd be surprised just how many different shapes there are in guppies. Get a shape you find appealing. Get that combo and begin breeding from there, culling and selectively breeding as needed to maintain your line. Find a shape you really want, but it isn't in the color you want? Well there you go, that's your breeding project, you're on the way to creating a new line of guppies!

Fully? Give it a month. I've seen people sneak by with just two weeks but especially given three sponges (you did still leave at least one old sponge right?) is a lot of new surface area to colonize? I'd err on the side of caution and aim for a full month.

Many in fact. Alas I don't reccomend any of them as thus far all the ones I have found contain some extremely hostile individuals, as well as advocate for many practices I don't approve of (ie yeah sure, put that oscar in a 20 gallon, it'll be fine! Add a betta while you're at it, because that's plenty of room for a betta too!) I usually just lurk in their questions sections and provide advice when it pertains to a subject I am familiar with. Look at pretty pictures when people post em. I would love to find an aquarium discord that had the same vibe as this forum. Actually, that's a thought. @Cory are you familiar with discord? Would you ever consider a C.A.R.E discord?

As someone who provides many board, dice and card games for a local convention, I'm always on the look out for new games that present different things that haven't already been beat to death. Haven't seen a crossover in these two things before, so count me intrigued and pledged.

Just the other day on a discord group we were walking someone through setting up their co2 system and calibrating it for their set up.... only to learn they had no light on this tank! Talk about putting the carriage before the horse. But the poor guy just didn't know. He wanted lots of great looking plants and growth. He was a new hobbyist and had heard that the best planted tanks had co2- so he went and got it. Totally missed that they also need light and ferts BEFORE you worry about co2. So yes, there certainly can be more gadgets than the beginner hobbyist knows what to do with. But you know, I'd like to think that's why so many aquarium communities exist. So we can help each other through the mountain of 'stuff' that we could buy for our tanks, and figure out what it is we really do and don't need and want. There's as many different ways to keep an aquarium as there are aquarists out there. So we can all offer advice on what works for what we do, and what didn't work out so great.

Daniel's right. Its a female crown tail betta.

My concern with guppies is both the short life span, and the breeding aspect. If the young gentleman is incapable of maintaining the tank on his own, putting a species in there that can quickly overpopulate the tank without human intervention may be a poor choice. Something which is active, colorful, but not as likely to breed/overpopulate a tank seems like a better idea. To that end, white clouds, corydoras and a paradise fish seem like a good plan. Paradise fish can be extremely personable, just like bettas.

I've ordered in fish that came from Ohio before and those fish adapted to my local water easily. I imagine they're fairly similar parameters. Yeah they're not the fastest fish to mature, that's for sure. Getting them from the store as 1" juvies meant I was in for a long, slow process of them growing out. But I found watching them color up as they matured to be a neat thing. You'll really start seeing the males get distinctly more colorful than the females, and the males will begin 'racing' each other around the tank in between bouts of dance battles. When you start seeing them doing those behavoirs frequently, that's when you know you're close. Soon (within a couple months) after they start these behavoirs they'll start dancing for the females.

I certainly don't use rainwater/r.o. in the tanks with the congos. They get my florida rock water from the tap. They particularly like spawning over the amazon swords in their tank in my case. But I imagine any fairly thick, leafy plant bunch will do .

I've bred p. Interruptus before, not sure if that'll be useful in your endeavor. They're fairly slow to mature, so it took me more than a year before I started seeing the males displaying breeding behavoirs. They flick their dorsal and pectoral fins while dancing around the females. I keep a fairly large group, 3 males and 11 females. The males will display to each other to determine who is top dog and then that top dog will dance for an egg heavy female, separate her from the school and then its just a couple seconds of shimmying with the male usually slightly above the female and they release the eggs and milt into plants or a spawning mop below. If you want the eggs to make it, I'd separate the egg heavy female and male to a tank where they can lay the eggs on their own. Other congos will dart over and gobble up the eggs as soon as their laid. Get them ready to spawn with lots of frozen foods. They gobble up bloodworms, krill, brine shrimp and daphnia. The females get notably heavier in the belly when they are full of eggs. Looking at them from below it almost looks like a rectangle shape. Temps during breeding were recorded at 78, 80 and 81 when I remembered to write it down. PH of 7.8-8.0. Breeding always observed mid-afternoon.

Acronyms are hard! Don't feel bad, I frequently find myself asking about what an acronym stands for as well. There's many out there that are 'common' chat speak like AFK (away from keyboard) but many more that are specific to what forum/hobby/topic you are discussing, just to add to the confusion! Most people know I'm talking about a filter when I say HOB (hang on back) here, but what if I wanted to, say, talk about BARF diets? I doubt anyone here would guess that Bones And Raw Food was what that meant. But its a very common acronym on a wolfdog forum I frequent.

@Daniel BDBS is Black Diamond Blasting Sand. Which you can purchase in 50lb bags from Tractor Supply for something like $10-12 a bag. You'll find it in the sand blasting area, grey bag typically. Its a nice black sand substrate that is infinitely cheaper than anything 'black substrate' you'll find at a pet store. Okay my rams and cardinals may not have been awake yet so they're a touch grumpy about me turning the lights on but here's BDBS in a tank.

I did soil about 1.5" with a 1/2" - 3/4" BDBS cap. When I put the soil in, I added a little water so I could pat the soil down and get it settled as it would be once the tank was filled and there wouldn't be any major air bubbles left in the soil to start. So basically I played around in some mud. Then capped with BDBS. Plants. All of them. Just, so many. Swords are great, so are vals. I think I started with four swords in my 54? And 30+ valisneria - mind you I had val already growing in other tanks that I was just able to pull a bunch out of and put in the dirted tank to start with. I imagine purchasing that many would get costly fast. But, they'll multiply like weeds in the first couple months. Plant the vals to the BACK of the tank! Because of how they reproduce via runners, they will send them everywhere, and fast! If you put any near the middle of the tank they will have runners shooting up at your front glass in a week, maybe two, tops. At least if you plant them to the back it will take a little longer for them to get to the front of your tank - they'll still do it though. And moving them is not really a good option as that would involve disturbing the dirt, which is a mess. Be ready to trim your val. Mine were getting leaves six feet long. Which is ridiculous in a tank that's only 2 feet tall. They ran across the surface and then were forming knots, so the scissors came out a couple times in those early months. Later on, year or so down the road, I wasn't trimming so often. Stem plants are also good. I stuck rotala and heteranthea zosterifolia (stargrass) in my tank because its what I had. Started with maybe 10 stems each - put one species on each side of the tank. I shortly found myself cutting and replanting these because they grew so fast in the beginning. Used long tweezers to plant the trimmings in an attempt to disturb the soil as little as possible. Built a pretty dense bush on each side of the tank of those two. About two years into the tank, I found the stargrass struggled and eventually died out. So I must have been running short of some nutrient they needed. The rotala, val and swords continued on without issue. Monitor your levels and dont add fish for at least a month. Preferably two. I found dirt to be volatile in the beginning and even with tons of plants could swing from no/very little ammonia in the water to a whole lot (4+ ppm) in a very short period. Had I had fish in there, that would have surely killed them. But, by only having plants, I just let it ride it out and let the plants grow. After it was stable, then I started stocking with fish.

Ghost shrimp are adorable and certainly have personalities of their own. In several tanks of mine they have totally lost all fear of me and now any time I stick my hand in the tank they clamber over through the plants to come ride around on my hand and groom me. They seem to enjoy taking a 'ride' around in my cupped hand and there's often squabbles about which shrimp gets to claim my hand (some of the big mommas don't want to share). And they do indeed breed in fresh water. Just needs to be decently hard water (Florida liquid rock water works great) as they need that calcium and they need to have plenty of food available for the fry (green water, and plenty of plants so they can go after biofilm) and not have fish that eat them. Or, just have enough plants that some of the babies can hide and live to outgrow the fish mouths. That's how I've let them do it.

Phantom tetras or bleeding heart tetras are a larger option that could work. So could skirt tetras, they come in a white or black option. Diamond tetras are also a neat option. Very sparkly. I wish emperor tetras got a bit bigger as their tail shape is vaguely reminiscent to the fin shape of the male congos.

Online? Aquahuna is who I believe Aquarium co-op suggests. I also love hunting around on Aquabid.

@RovingGingerhas a great idea! I'd love for there to be more 3D background options out there. Especially ones that could have customer service as amazing as Aquarium co-op 's! I've got a matching pair of tanks (size wise anyhow) on each side of my living room and I'd love to get some 3D backgrounds to give them that extra 'wow!' factor. But the options I've found out there have been lackluster or a shipping nightmare to obtain. How is something that should be so popular in the hobby so niche and hard to find? Also, potential crazy thought - what if Aquarium co-op could sell a 3D background with spots in it to attach plants a-la easy planter style? Come on. I can't be the only one who wants that.

Craigslist is a great way to hunt for big tanks if you're willing to drive - just rent a uhual when it comes to moving them. And bring a team and equipment, those big tanks are a pain to move. My 240 was a beast. Something like 600+ lbs empty. Other option - go directly to a tank maker. There's several on ebay that make very large tanks, all custom. So you can get exactly what you want from the get go.

My go to suggestions with an angelfish are von rio or Columbian tetras. They're both a bit bigger and deeper bodied than neons or cardinals which makes them outside of angel eating size, quite colorful, and in my experience have played nice with angels. They also do nicely in the warmer temps that angels like.