Nataku

@varanidguy who's eating the dubias? I could see varanids eating them, sure. I fed them to my beardies, but what fish is getting that treat?

I wouldn't do an angel in a 29 with silvertips. Their activity level and their nature to fin nip in such a confined space may end badly. Either the angel could get fin nipped and constantly be fighting fin rot, or the angel decides this isn't going to fly and starts killing your silvertips to stop the nipping - never underestimate the destructive nature of an angered angel. I had a lone male that I moved to my 65 with tiger barbs because he just couldn't play nice with other angels. Tiger barbs tried to rough house with him like they do their own kind. He took offense to that and proceeded to run down several tiger barbs and slam them into the side of the tank while biting them to kill them....he lived out the rest of his days in a 20 tall with some snails. A female dwarf gourami seems like the better choice given those two options. Their fins are smaller and so not potentially as much a target. And they're less murderous than angels.

In what size tank? Planted? Silvertips are one of the most active tetras I've ever kept.

Yyyyyup some apistos do get nasty like this. It seems to be really random too, based on each individual pair. Some raise their fry together just fine, sometimes the male gets the snot beat out of him. Sometimes the females gets totally psycho and kills the male. Definitely move the male to another tank to recover and give the lady some time to rear this batch. Once the fry are old enough you can either separate them to a new grow out tank and re-add the male, or if they're actively feeding and you want to try leaving them all together if the tank is big enough, you can try reintroducing the male with the fry once they are at least a month old. The female usually has gotten over herself by then. Just be aware that if she acts like this once she'll probably do it again, so just be ready to make a regular routine of sending the male into 'protective custody ' in another tank.

Can I just say I love seeing all of these lists that everyone feeds! My husband always thinks I have way too many different fish foods, but I tell him we don't eat the same two things for every meal, why would they? I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with a bunch of fish foods. Flake foods - I've gotten away from these for the most part. My remaining three are medicated foods from Angel's Plus. These come out for the fish in quarantine, but otherwise live in the 'not for human consumption' fridge/freezer. Yes, I have a second unit out in the garage that is just for foods for all of my pets (not just fish). I am that person... I don't plan on ordering more. I haven't found them to be amazing and capable of handling an infection on their own without me also treating the water. The usual suspects - Dr Bassleer is similar to Bug Bites, just an even finer grain. For tiny mouths like cardinal tetras and guppies, these are both enjoyed but Dr. Bassleer is preffered over the bug bites. Larger mouths will go for it too, but it really shines with small fish. I'll get more Dr. Bassleer, I'll pass on the Bug Bites. Sera tabs were on a 70% discount as a store was getting rid of their Sera stock. They are the favorite of the rainbow shark and SAE. Plecos like em too, so do the angels. I wish the otos would eat them but they don't. Once my supply of bottles I snagged is gone, I won't get more. Hikari algae wafers - the syno's favorite. But also eaten by all the other catfish and loaches. Guppies and swordtails like to pick at them too. Otos won't touch em. Hikari Vibra Bites - the staple fish food of my house. Everyone loves these (except ottos, but they hate everything). I buy a large bag every three months and divide it down into smaller containers for ease of access near various tanks. Cichlid Gold - came with a used tank I bought, they had a 2.5 lb bag of it that I'm still working through. The dojo loaches, pictus and syno eat these readily, but the smaller corydoras and kuhlis struggle with them as they're too big. Occassionally handfuls get thrown out to the pond goldfish. The angels and rams don't like them. Won't be getting more when I use them all. Unnamed pellet in ziploc- a local fish breeder makes these and all of my catfish and loaches go ham wild for it. So do the rainbowfish and the congo tetras. The gourami fight over it. The goldfish snap it up too. It was originally a cheap bulk purchase to feed the rescue pond (all the goldfish people drop off to me) but its been such a hit with the fish I keep getting more. I have no idea what's in it. I hope its not drugs. Frozen foods - baby brine shrimp, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, krill, daphnia and two different brands of bloodworms - one brand has giant blood worms and the other has tiny bloodworms, this works out for me feeding both large and small mouths. Live foods - baby brine shrimp, blackworms, green water for fry, veggies such as cucumber, zucchini, spinach and bell pepper. And algae covered rocks for the picky picky otos! Next to try (ie ordering from Aq Co-op) xtreme krill flakes and repashy soilent green. I tried super green with the otos before and they wanted no part of it, maybe soilent green will be more to their liking? If not at least I figure the other fish will enjoy it.

Nope I don't keep my quarantine tank set up. I keep spare sponge filters running in several of my tanks. Whenever I need to set up my quarantine, I fill it up, dechlorinate it and transfer a sponge filter from one of my main tanks to the quarantine, so it will be instantly cycled. I then take a dry sponge filter (I keep spares) and put it into the main tank I just took the other sponge filter out of so it can begin growing a new BB colony. I usually also throw a handful of dwarf salvinia into the quarantine for floater cover and some guppy grass or hornwort, whichever tank is closer that I can stick my arm in. The fish remain in quarantine until they are cleared to go to their permanent homes. After the fish go into the main tank, I break down the quarantine tank. I throw out all the salvinia and guppy grass/hornwort (I grow tons, once it comes out of a main tank it does not go back in). Tank is drained and washed out - I use a vinegar solution and lots of rinsing and then put away into a cabinet once dried, to sit until it is needed again. The sponge filter is rinsed out thoroughly under tap water and then it is also left out to dry. It then goes back into the pile of dry sponge filters waiting to go back into a tank next time I set the quarantine tank back up and need to replace the sponge filter from the main tank. Why don't I leave a quarantine tank set up? Because I'd be too tempted to make it a permanent home for something. And because I want to make sure anything that could have ended up in the quarantine tank is 100% dead before the next batch of fish goes in. I don't know any aquatic parasites that survive a dry, washed tank and filter.

Some years back I had a paleatus corydoras get themselves stuck head first in the gravel substrate and die because I didn't find them in time to see if I could have pulled them out and saved them. Was not something I enjoyed coming home from work to find. That weekend I caught all the fish and tore the tank down to remove the gravel and put sand in. So I don't keep corydoras on gravel personally, though I know many have done it successfully for years. I use BDBS or ecocomplete in all my current tanks, and while the ecocomplete is somewhat rough, the grain size is much smaller than gravel and I've yet to see a corydoras manage to get themselves stuck in either, despite their snuffling and rooting around in the substrate. So I don't really know if that one was a fluke or if they could actually do that more often, but I'm not going to take the chance to find out. I've never kept any of the 'smaller' corydoras species so I don't have any input there. I've kept paleatus, aeneus, sterbai, brochis and two species that I'm currently not sure on, though one may be ambiacus or aggasizii. Either way, they're not small either, around the same size as the c. Aeneus.

He would like you all to know he is not okay with the fact that I put in smart plugs and now the tank light doesn't stay on all day. How dare the light turn off without me going over there to physically turn it off. Now he can't reach over and put a paw on me and whine to beg to keep the light on longer. My dog would like to report animal abuse. This is inhumane.

A rainbow shark would go great with a big school of tiger barbs in a 75. I kept a rainbow shark with a group of 30 tiger barbs in a 65, and that tank was a blast to watch. Tiger barbs are always active and always doing something. The rainbow shark will be pushy about food as an adult but that's fine as tiger barbs are more than capable of handling that.

Seconding the testing for ammonia every 12 hours! Having had children get in and 'feed the fish' to my tanks before by dumping in the entire container of food, you'd be amazed how much of that gunk get sucked into your filters and substrate, only to cause havoc a couple days later when it gets really rank and spikes the ammonia. Its not over after the first day. The fish have jammed themselves full of food, they will poop for the next couple days more than normal. Plus, all the rotting food they don't manage to get to will also become ammonia. Keep up the water changes and monitor parameters closely for the next week. Stuff sometimes gets funky several days down the road from the spill.

I saw an individual who kept a 90 gallon with discus, angels and a single betta along with corydoras. Keyword there: single betta. Even then, he said the tank wasn't without its squabbles. He'd had to remove angels that paired up because they became disruptive. He'd had to change which betta he kept in the tank because one of them went after angels/discus fins and subsequently got its own tail bit off. Its not a tank I'd personally do. Too many combative species. And that was with a single male betta. I certainly wouldnt do it with a harem set up. That's just asking for a three way turf war.

My last discus tank also had angels, cardinals, GBR and emerald corydoras. Yep, pretty standard fair! But the husband loves cardinals, GBR and angels so why fix it if it ain't broke? The tank was wonderful to watch.

I've used local magnolia leaves and cones before. The shrimp really seem to enjoy all the crazy crevices of the cones, but the leaves are used too. The kuhlis love to dog pile under the leaves and seem to become much more active in general with leaf litter in the tank.

What are '6 powder blue famous' ? Also you mention you have a betta. And these were very small fish in a rather small tank with a betta. I suspect your betta, like many, may not be friendly to other fish and saw them as a threat to be killed. Whether he actually caught them, or just chased them to a point of exhaustion and death, its hard to say. But it may be that you have a betta that is best kep with only snails and shrimp as tankmates. Also that siamese algae eater is going to eventually outgrow this tank, the adults get very big. Do you have another place arranged for him to go to? You mention 'water is perfect' but you don't actually state your parameters. The parameters are useful to help diagnose what may be going on in this tank. What one person may think is perfect, may not be in reality. But we can not help you fix it without knowing the actual parameters.

If its non-planted you only need the light on when you are looking at the fish. So an hour around feeding time in the morning, and then however long you're going to be looking at the tank in the evening until 11pm, but try to keep the total hours per day under 8, and use a low powered light if you've got one to help prevent algae blooms.

Levamisole works to treat camallanus, however I don't know that a sufficient dosage is being supplied to every fish if you are just dosing with a food. A fish could be choosing not to eat, or not enough levamisole may be present in the amount consumed to effectively work on the worms. I always treat the whole volume of the tank water. Fish can't be picky and sabotage themselves about that.

That is a neat difference. My hornwort grows more like yours does in the 40 breeder. Perhaps the lighting is much stronger in one tank vs another, and thats what causes the different growth pattern? Pooka is much cubbier than my syno. Then again, my syno isn't anywhere near as friendly. If it was, I'd hand feed them a lot more.

Big tank. Lots of breaks in line of sight ie plants. Driftwood. Plants. More plants. Bare tanks are battlegrounds. Did I mention plants? Warm temp. 84 works for both in my experience. Feed often, small meals. I was doing 2-3x a day. Keeping them full keeps them much more tolerant of other fish when they don't feel like food is a limited resource. Water change a lot. Lots of high protein food for lots of big fish equals big stinky poo mess. Stay on top of that water quality. The plants will help but they are not going to do the job on their own. Keep a group of each. 6+ of each. Preferably 8+. Be ready with spare tanks to deal with problematic individuals. Have a hospital tank (or two) ready. Do not leave a sick fish in the main tank. It becomes a target and everyone wants to pick on them, regardless of species. They go downhill real fast that way. Let them heal in isolation. Return to tank after big water change and some rescaping. Introduce fish around the same size. Don't put adult angels with baby discus. Discus can be slightly larger than angels and that will be fine. But no more than an inch body size difference on introduction. When they become mature, watch out for pairs. Some pairs can exist peacefully in a big community like this. Some cannot. Be ready to separate if it happens.

I've had a few fish jump over the years. Swordtails, by far the most common. I'm not sure why, they've done it when they've been in small (20long) tanks and big (75 gal) tanks. Only tanks without lids/several inch wide gaps from edge of tank and lid. They've jumped from tanks with and without floating plants. They've jumped when they were the only swordtail in the tank (an overly aggressive male) and when they've been in species only tanks with tons of swordtails. I think swordtails just jump because they can. Thankfully since keeping lids on tanks with swordtails, they haven't gotten out. Though several have sure scrambled their little brains smacking them against the lids trying. African butterfly fish - these absolutely need a tight fitting lid. They have excellent vision, an in the wild they will jump out of the water after bugs. I got to see just how precise they could be one day when mine spotted a fly that had gotten in the house and been buzzing around, and launched itself out of the tank through the small gap between the lid and the filter return pipe to go for it. Was less than a one inch opening and this is a four inch long fish. My husband and I who were sitting on the couch were both stunned. Did that really just happen? Sure enough she was angrily flopping around on the tile. I put her back in the tank and she was totally fine. We made extra covers of plastic mesh that snug fit around the pipes to make sure she couldn't do it again. Congo tetra - they're really excited feeders for a certain small pellet they get a couple times a week. I had taken the front lid piece off to put the pellets in. One of them went for the pellet so hard they launched right out of the tank before I'd had a chance to close the lid. They held one pectoral fin at their side for several days after being returned to the tank, but eventually regained used of it and were fine. Kuhli loaches - honorable mention. These aren't jumpers so much as escape artists. Is there a filter intake tube they can squeeze in? They're leaving your tank, your filter is clearly way better housing. You'll find them in your HOB or your cannister. Still alive if you're fast to notice the sudden lack of kuhlis in your tank. Dead if you don't notice and check for more than a week. I find a pre filter sponge on the intake stops them from going up that way. Although Ive also found if you've got a return from your HOB that touches the water, they'll swim up the current there to end uo in the filter. Its why I prefer sponge filters with kuhlis - nowhere for them to leave the tank to.

What work requires research of the furry fandom?

So when stocking tanks, its usually advised to go from least agressive to most agressive, as well as hardiest to most delicate. In this case, corydoras or tetras first. Then, after several weeks, add whichever group you didn't add first. Then, several weeks later, dwarf gourami last - the dwarf gourami is most agressive, and in this case also most sensitive since these poor little buggers are pretty much always diseased. Also, its recommended you quarantine your new fish before adding them to the final tank. This requires having a quarantine tank set up. Be aware that's also gonna be a really crowded 10 gallon so you may run into problems having crazy parameter swings and agression issues (the agression at least could probably be solved by just sticking to tetras and corydoras and no gourami). So watch your levels closely to make sure you don't miss an ammonia spike or anything that could suddenly cause big problems in your tank.

They don't even have to have stripes to get called kuhli loaches! One store I went to had young dragon gobies listed a kuhli loaches. Those things get huge! And also arent even a loach.

I wouldn't have a couch specifically placed so the old man can sit and watch his favorite fish tank.... noooooo who does that? Its totally not got extra pillows on the couch that he can arrange to his liking and lay on until he falls asleep watching his fish. That's just crazy talk. (I'm pretty sure if I ever don't have congo tetras in that tank he's never going to stop whining.)

Well not quite in a planted tank, but in a garden, sure. Story time! So in central Florida, public drinking water is pulled from our underground aquifers, run through filtration (to various degrees in different municipalities) and then off to the pipes it goes. One central Florida county which a family member worked for for a number of years back in the 80s-00s, had a big tank in the front of their main office at their largest water plant. Some eight feet long, I don't recall how deep or wide. But it was fed entirely by the water pulled up and processed there at the plant - no declorinator used. Just water that had been pulled from the aquifer, and run through the skids (think of these as ginormous, industrial RO/DI systems), and then they had two lines - one the filtered water, which went to the fish tank, and the other the 'wash' line as it was called, which was the 'waste' from the filtration that ran to a bed of roses. Those roses were practically hedges. So I think they liked the 'waste' water. The fish tank held a group of oscars that had been pulled out of local waterways and been put in the tank (oscars have been an invasive species in Florida for many years). They got very large, as oscar do, and bred. Once a year they held a picnic for the utility workers - one of the popular things was a fish fry, where they pulled the largest oscars out of the tank and fried em up. They were delicious. There was always so many babies there were plenty to eat the next year.

Yes yes yes I love these little dudes. Such a funky unique shape and yet super easy care. Ever kept plecos or corydoras before? They're basically just a mix of those. Like. A really laid back cory or a slightly more active bristlenose. Only slightly more active though. So, they like driftwood. Driftwood with algae or moss growing on it? Even better. I always found that was one of their favorite perches so nice broad pieces they can sit fairly horizontally on. They aren't huge on hanging vertically, at least mine weren't. I'd see it maybe once or twice a week, and then they'd float/glide back over somewhere they could lie more horizontally. Especially if a group of them can lay near/see each other. They aren't schoolers, but they definitely have way more calm if they know their own kind is around. I had to pull one out to quarantine once for a badly split dorsal fin, that one was a nervous wreck despite being in a super calm, high tannin tank as the only fish. Was always so pale during his solo quarantine. Added him back to the main tank and he darkened right back up after sitting on the other whiptails for a couple days. They prefer calmer tankmates. But honestly they pretty much go about their own business and ignore other tankmates. I've kept them with angels, apistos, rams, corydoras, cardinals, rummynose and Silvertip tetras. They weren't super enthused about the activity level of the silvertips but once I provided them with some lower driftwood pieces that met their desired perching specs and some big amazon swords to provide a bit more cover? Chill. If doing other territorial bittom dwellers like apistos, be sure to provide plenty of areas so the apistos can claim their space, and the whiptails still have plenty of room to chill... away from the apistos. Wouldn't really recommend them with other plecos because just about every other pleco out there is more pushy than they are. And they let themselves get pushed around. Bristlenose? Way more pushy. I removed the bristlenose from the tank with the whiptails when I watched the bristlenose basically coral them into a corner and then take all the algae wafers for itself. They're good with shrimp! Harmless to all but the tiniest of babies and even then, not active hunters. The shrimp basically has to walk into their mouth to get eaten. Diet is like a pleco. Lots of veggies, algae, spirulina tablets are loved. Sinking wafers. Ocassional bits of more protein, I've seen them take frozen bloodworms left sitting on the bottom, as well as brine shrimp and krill (as adults). If you do Repashy gel foods, I figure they'll take that easily, I never tried that with mine but that was.... many moons ago.