Nataku

Oh I look forward to seeing how this turns out. I love watching big schools of fish moving around as a group. Do you have to try and direct the outflow from the filter in a particular direction to get them schooling in a direction, or does it not really matter?

Yes they like live (what fish doesn't?) But I didn't find them to be picky eaters. Make sure it's small enough to fit in their mouth. I'd drop a couple sinking pellets in on occassion for the shrimp, the sparkling gourami would go after them but couldn't fit it in their mouth, so they'd just hover over it puffing and flaring trying to claim it as their's while the shrimp just ignored them and ate. Bug bites was taken readily, so was vibra-bites - probably because it looked enough like bloodworms for them to be excited about it.

Florida flag fish are an option so long as water temp doesn't get under 55. Paradise fish are also an option, they're surprisingly hardy to a pretty wide range on temperature. Just don't keep them with tiny fish like white clouds or rice fish because they will eat them. They'll breed in a tub with plants outside pretty easily, at least they did here in Florida, so I'm assuming your temps will be fairly similar.

I kept 7 sparkling gourami in a 10 gallon on my desk. They aren't fussy about temp, the heater I had in there eventually died and I just didn't put another one back in there and left it at room temp. They did fine. Temps were between 74-78. They do appreciate low flow. I had a HOB on it but I also had it heavily planted with a mass of floating hornwort which just caught and baffled out all the flow. They rarely ventured over to hang out in the direct flow. I saw the ghost shrimp there more often than the sparklers. Plants are important! Like betta, every leaf is a new thing to inspect around, above, under, etc. Only they do it as a group instead of solo. They like having plants to dart back into when they get spooked, they also like to lay on/sleep on plants. But it also kept the water super clean. I dont think the nitrates in that tank ever got above 10ppm. They initially started out very shy and would all go hide on the opposite side of the hornwort or java fern every time I sat at my desk or even walked by it. But, after about a month they got settled in and also came to recognize me as the food god, and became much less shy. They came to watch me just as much as I watched them. They have a fascinating social structure, which is a big part of why I enjoyed having them so much. Its like a tiny little soap opera on your desk. Every day a new squabble or bicker - all of which is sorted out with whisker smacking and a lot of bluffing, or even the occassional croak if things get really heated. But part of their social structure actually became 'who got to be closest to the person' as they would all try to cram themselves into the corner closest to me and then shove each other around to establish who had the 'prime viewing spot.' We're watching you human. Now, I never had a lid on this tank. Could they have jumped? Probably. But I had so much plant mass in there that they didn't. They bred after a couple years. They breed like bettas, building a tiny bubble nest (it was only maybe the size of a nickel, it was tiny) the male wraps himself around the female, fertilizes the eggs and then spits them into the nest. The other sparklers just kept around a four inch or so spacing from the nest while it was being tended. I'm sure they ate some of the eggs/fry, but the hornwort was so dense some made it. They probably fed off infusoria that no doubt lived in the tank on the plants in the beginning. I crushed up some flakes and fed the tank with that but I really wasn't trying to raise more sparkler fry. Several still made it. Eventually a friend, who was infatuated with them, asked if they could have my group of sparklers. They had a 33 hex, so I caught all the sparklers and transferred them and the hornwort and gathered up some valisneria from my other tanks for them to set that tank up as planted as well. I think I pulled 12 or 14 sparklers out of that 10 gallon. They went on to continue their little colony in the larger tank and bred several more times in there.

I put some ghost shrimp in the 10 with the sparklers. The ghost shrimp were too big for the sparklers to eat. They did manage to eat a couple of the newborn shrimplets if they found them (watched a sparkler follow about two inches behind a female shrimp as she was kicking the babies off, gobbling them up as they came out. Never touched the mother shrimp though). But the ghost shrimp did increase in number as the sparklers certainly didn't find all of the babies in all that hornwort. Never tried cherrh shrimp with them. I imagine the results would be pretty similar. Adults too big to eat, babies are a snack if they find them.

I don't actually have a 10 set up right now (not even a quarantine tank). So I don't have current pictures of a nano tank. But, when I had my last 10 set up it was home to 7 sparkling gourami. And it was an incredibly simple scape, BDBS substrate, a couple rocks with some java fern tied to it, and a bunch of floating guppy grass. Which they loved and spawned in. Sometimes, simple is good. ....seems I dont have any pics of the whole tank any more, just a couple small pics of the sparklers themselves.

A larger, deep bodied tetra or rainbowfish should be big enough to keep out of a rope fish's mouth. Congo tetras are pretty fascinating, the males get rather fancy fins and their displays are quite nice to watch. Rainbowfish come in an array of colors and school pretty well, and the larger fish are great both to stay out of a ropefish's mouth but also be of interest to young children. Their exuberant feeding frenzy is always a hit whenever folks come over and I feed the tank. If you wanted other bottom dwellers, pictus cats or synodontis petricola should get big enough to remain out of a rope fish maw, and you could have a group of them. If you wanted just a single large catfish then I'd go with a featherfin squeaker as they get sizable and they're another rather distinct looking fish that kids may get a kick out of. They're shy when young and small, and become much more outgoing as they get bigger.

Right now the lower of my stacked pair of 29s is competing with my 65 for 'tank I like the least. The lower 29 is currently home to some guppies and 'Jerkface' the three spot gourami who used to be housed (years ago) in the 65 with a group of 8 other three spot gourami. He systematically attacked and tied to kill all of the other gourami - he got about half of them before I removed him and threw him in the 29 where I expected he would go after the guppies and I could use him to cull them. Nope. He doesn't eat guppy or guppy fry. Just hates other gourami. The remaining group of gourami aged out around two years ago, but Jerkface? I think he's carrying on just out of spite. So the 29 is just an Amazon sword, overgrown with jungle val and a bunch of guppies, and one grouchy grumpy old murderous gourami. I want to tear that tank down and redo it all so bad. But it is how it is until Jerkface ages out. The 65 gallon is currently my handicap tank. Aside from my blind congo tetra (who schools with her own group just fine in another tank) the tank holds all of my various fish that I've acquired over the years that have.... issues. The dojo loaches with spina bifida. The dragon goby who was given to me with a broken jaw. The angelfish that have lost fights and lost an eye or a ventral fin or had a chunk ripped out of their side. Fish that I've fixed up and are doing better but that I feel will probably never fit in in a more active, healthy community tank. I love these fish and I've learned a lot working with them, but in nature there's not a shadow of a doubt in my mind they would all be dead. Its not a bad tank, it houses my jungle of java fern, but it just.... could be more. But as I'm not one to euthanize a fish if its still getting on just fine (and these fish are, regardless of their imperfections) they remain with me in the 65.

I think a big part of it comes down to knowing what water you have and so what species would be easier to work with in your individual case. Most beginners don't hop into the hobby by getting an R/O unit or even getting the tests to test for things like kH and gH or TDS. They're doing good if they even get the API 'master' test kit and that's only pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. They don't know what sort of water they have, they don't know it matters, and the stores usually do nothing to educate them on that matter. I live in an area with liquid rock for water. Guppies? Breed like weeds for me. So fancy guppies are pretty popular with beginners (understandably so!) but they usually do alright in these parts because we have the water for them. African cichlids? Well the water parameters are usually workable for them out of the tap, its just the 'assorted african' mix is really misleading to people because they have no idea what they are looking at other than its bright and colorful. Who doesn't love bright and colorful? So they get some of those and inevitably a few months down the road the carnage happens... Rams and angels along with most tetras are what deceive many people around here as 'good beginner fish' and they usually aren't. Not around here with liquid rock water. Rams do not like 8.2 pH out of the tap and most people have no idea why their rams keep dieing. Thankfully we have folks around here who have bred angels to be much more hardy to higher pH, but many beginners don't know the difference of getting those angels vs ones sold in the big box stores that are already struggling in the store, soon to fade away when taken home. Were we to live in another area that had soft water? I bet these would do better with new aquarists. New aquarists who read 'cichlid' on the tag at the store and think 'those all go together!' I have seen so many folks that have bought apistogramma and blue acaras right alongside a bunch of mbuna and plan to put them all in a tank together because 'they're all cichlids and those go together'. And the store does nothing to try and educate them that an African cichlid and a central or south american does not go together. One of my favorite little LFS actually divides their freshwater fish up into rough types by their placement in the store. They tell people 'everything on the left wall is a friendly community fish. Every fish on the back wall is a semi-aggressive so it COULD go in a community but please ask us first so we can help you. Every fish on the right wall is a mean brat. You've been warned.' They will of course explain and answer any questions someone has, but as you can guess the right wall is african and central american cichlids. Its not perfect but I think it helps group things better for the average beginner aquarist to grasp : stick to the left wall.

Wow that looks like it'll be great! So much room for tanks! And a pond! Have you ever considered a recreation pond? I want to build one eventually at our house so that I can swim with koi, because that's a dream of mine. The wood paneling looks great, and that nice long bar, oh that's gonna be a great room to lounge and be cozy in.

You mentioned Orlando. Do you mind my asking what city you are in/near? I'm about half an hour's drive north of Orlando, always a pleasure to meet more Floridian fish lovers. If you go up to Daytona, I know there are at least three LFS around there, at least one of which I know does take in fish for store credit/exchange.

So red tailed botia are great fish to watch in a group of their own kind. Seriosuly entertaining. Like most loaches, they are social and prefer to be in big shoals of other loaches where they will play and squabble about who gets what cave or spot under the driftwood and then ultimately you'll have six of them crammed into a hole you thought only two could fit in, and they're all asleep in this dogpile of fish. This is normal for red tailed loaches. Problem is, a red tailed loach gets eight inches long. I've even seen a (particularly plump!) old female red tail loach that was sitting more around ten inches. So, these are not small fish. Its sad, but I wouldn't keep them in a 20 long because they're just going to get too big even as one fish, and they'd really prefer a group (like 6-10, at least) of their own kind to hang with. And you really can't fix six adults in a 20 long. I usually see a 75 gallon being recommended as a minimum size for an adult group of this species, just because they get so chonky. A lot of people put them in 55 gallons as growouts, which works for several years, but a fish approaching ten inches in length can have a hard time turning around in a twelve inch wide tank, hence why the 75 is usually recommended. Does the store offer a return or exchange policy? If so, it may be a good idea to take this one back. OR. This is the incentive you needed to get another (much bigger!) tank. Come on, 75 gallons are a great size!

So I actually do this six days of the week, not just today, but figured the pics might be amusing. This is the 'otto buffet' - I keep a small tub out side with a few inches of rainwater and dirty tank change water in it, and I throw these rocks in there to sit out in the sun and grow algae. I then pull two or three rocks a day and put them in this tank for the ottos to have fresh algae since they've done a fine job cleaning up the rest of the tank. These rocks will be cleaned in a couple hours. I will swap them back out to the outside tub tomorrow and bring fresh algae covered rocks in for them.

I kept ropefish with whisker shrimp, which are much meaner than amanos but similarly sized, and more capable of holding their own against a hungry medium sized fish (they worked great against they gobble gut pictus cats so I could keep a shrimp in that tank). It worked for about half a year until the rope fish got big enough. The whisker shrimp were great at cleaning up after the rope fish, who are kind of messy eaters. Then the whisker shrimp (who had also grown, but not enough) ended up in the rope fish's mouth. Rope fish just get big enough that that size shrimp is going to be food to them.

Avoid duckweed. Once its in a tank it nearly impossible to get rid of. Dwarf salvinia is my go to floating plant for my tanks. Super easy to grow, doesn't need any special conditions, has roots that stay relatively short and don't get broken off in flowing water. After dwarf salvinia I like frogbit as another easy to grow floater, tiger frogbit if you want an interesting pattern on your floaters. Red root floaters are nice if you have good lighting and want a bit more pop of color, but I actually found in tanks that already had a bunch of bright, warm colored fish, that the red root floaters were kind of detracting from the fish. Now in a tank with predominantly blue/green/purple fish? I plan to try them again. Water lettuce is nice if you have low flow and want long, dangly roots. They were a favorite of my dojo loaches who likes to wriggle their way into the roots and hang in them like hammocks.

I am so jealous of y'all! I've been telling the husband for years that a fish tank in the bathroom would be a nice thing, something to look at while having a seat. Sadly he thinks its an absurd concept and that no one actually does this. I need to show him this thread and all the throne room aquariums. Although I also wonder where I could put a tank in our bathroom. The shower is directly across from the toilet, and directly to the left is a wall with a window, and to the right is a set of enclosed shelves for towels. Not sure that I have any place in my bathroom that is in a direct line of sight from the toilet that could fit an aquarium.

Agh, a hard choice indeed! Could I just say cichlids and call that a type? Then I'd still have plenty of choices to keep. Ah but that'd be too easy, I think you mean a single species? I'm torn between swordtails or discus in that case. I love the shapes of swordtails, they've been a blast for me to breed for years, but, for a fish that could really keep and hold my interest over time? I guess it would have to be discus. I love the social interactions and sadly swordtails, though I find them beautiful don't have much of a social interaction past 'hey baby, let me show you the dance of our people. Wanna make babies? No? More dancing then?'

I will post pics when I get home and have some light to get decent shots, so probably tomorrow. The water section of the tank houses 20 or so rainbowfish, a dozen c. Aeneus (bronze) corydoras, a single longfin albino bristlenose pleco, and currently only a single angelfish- the plan had been to have a nice big school of angels in there but my tank crash thread would be why that didn't happen. Here's a little clip of feeding time for the fish, rainbows are wild.

@DanielI store my python on a J-hook next to the slop sink in the garage. Its a 50ft hose so its pretty long and the husband isn't a huge fan of me connecting it to other sinks in the house, so keeping it next to the slop sink it is. 50 ft from the slop sink is enough to just reach all the tanks around the house. I disconnect it after use and wrap it back up on the hook since the boys are still active in the garage and they still use that slop sink as, well, a slop sink. It gets messy. I tend to leave the end that connects to the faucet hanging in the sink so any residual water can drop in there instead of the floor. To the left is the R/O system and the storage tanks, the extra little faucet on the left side of the slop sink is RO water, although I have a line (the blue one) connected to the tanks that I attach the python directly to when I want RO to put in the aquariums. The boys primarily use the RO faucet when they want that water for their drinks (I personally don't like the taste of the RO but, whatever floats your boat)

When I end up with the same species scattered across multiple tanks and then find their numbers starting to dwindle I usually go ahead and add them all back to one tank to keep up the 'school' for as long as possible as they age out. Perhaps it is me anthropomorphisizing the fish but I figure if they're schooling fish they'd like the company of their own kind. Given that, I'd put the white clouds in the tubs with the other white clouds, and then who gets the 16 and who gets the 20 is down to which tank you like more and which fish you want a larger school of. I personally love the look of CPDs and a good size school of them in a 20 seems like a neat thing. I suppose there is also the consideration which tank is better set up to meet the needs of the species in question. But both tanks are planted so I'm not sure this is as big of a concern unless you were planning on rescaping?

I've used some of those slate like tiles in my paludarium for the above ground platform but hadn't thought of using them as a tank floor! That's a nice clean look without being barebottom but seems like it'd be just as easy to clean.

If I could only keep one of my current tanks it'd be my 220 - because it's actually a paludarium and houses my boa, not just fish. I think my beloved snake would be might unhappy if I took away his ability to have 'swimming pool' and had to go back to a smaller enclosure with just a water bowl in the corner. Its the best of both worlds for me, I get my fish tank and my snake enclosure, all in one space, which, were I in an apartment, would probably take up less space ultimately than a fish tank and a separate snake enclosure. Now, if I didn't have my snake that may be a different answer but as boas live 49 some years and my guy is only 5.... he'll be with me a long time yet.

@MickS77I use the API liquid drop tests, HDE infrared thermometer and an HM digital TDS sensor. I have also wondered if it could be because its dirted. Its currently the only one of my seven tanks that is dirted. The other two dirt tanks I used to run have long since been broken down and given away to friends who wanted a tank or wanted the entire stocking I had in the tank. This 54 tank that crashed was started January 12, 2017. I had always assumed that when dirt tanks started to 'run out' of nutrients that the plants would slow down in growth and start to show nutrient deficiencies and then die. The plants were still growing great in there, valisneria spreading all over and still having to be trimmed regularly (once it gets over about four feet long in that tank it got trimmed) and still pull hornwort out by the handful weekly. I wasn't aware that dirt tanks could release anything so toxic to fish this far into the established game? Aside nitrogen bubbles but its a dirted, capped tank - I don't gravel vac it so I don't stir that up if its in there. The guppy and the pleco are still in there, still alive and active. I see no red gills or abnormal behavior from them. I know plecos can be bulletproof but that little male guppy? I assumed whatever it was would have gotten them too. The guppy and pleco will be moving soon. I'll be breaking this tank down shortly and letting it and all its equipment get cleaned and sit dry for a month before I restart it. Maybe longer.

Yes I love watching my tanks! Our living room has a large TV in the middle, but four feet from each side of the TV is a fish tank. The husband likes to watch shows or play video games, but me? I'm sitting next to him on the couch watching the fish tanks. I don't care what's on the screen. I don't know when the last time I really cared about what was on the TV. He's not a TV addict either, I see him regularly watching the tanks too. It took him some years, but eventually he asked me to set up a tank in his office too so he could have one to look at while he's at work. I take care of it but he has chosen all the stocking. I'm so proud, he's been converted to an aquarist too! I know, its a silly thing to be proud of. But I am. I have positioned tanks strategically around the house so that any place I am regularly sitting or standing I am able to watch a fish tank. So the dining room? Tank. Living room? Two tanks. Bedroom? Tank. Library/study room? Two tanks. Really the only place I don't have a tank is bathrooms or the kitchen. But I can see the living room tanks from the kitchen. I just love having my eyes on a tank if I don't have to be visually focused on something else.

I see the angle you are going with, and I thought about that as well! I am on city water, and I am in Florida, so the city water is drawn from the aquifer and treated with chloramine. I use Prime as a dechlorinator. Have for years. I did test the water straight from the tap as well after the 50% water change after the first set of dead angels, wondering if I could be exacerbating the issue somehow. The water from the tap tests out at pH 7.8 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 5 TDS 190 kH 5. I did water changes on four of my seven tanks that day, and did the remaining three the next day. None of the other tanks have experienced any deaths. The 54 runs two sponge filters and has an 8 inch airstone bar as well. They all run off one air pump with a splitter to run lines to each. Tank is also well planted, so I don't think even with the tank at 82 degrees, that it could be insufficient oxygen. I do not have cO2 on any tanks, so I can't have overdosed too much of that into my tank. Sadly I am doubtful I will ever know exactly what happened to this tank, although if we can put our collective heads together and figure it out that would be great. I just don't want this to ever happen again, but its hard to prevent something from happening when I don't know how it happened.