Ricklax96

It was honestly awful. I had a big SAE and he went right up and out onto the floor and started flopping. Managed to flop under the cabinet. My wife came and got me and I couldn't figure out where he was til I heard him flopping and bashing himself on the underside of the cabinet. If you fish, the sound of one flopping on dry land in unmistakable lol I thought there was no way he'd make it. Had a pretty bad scrape on his side. Dose the stress coat cuz I figured it couldn't hurt. Here we are 2 weeks later and he's totally fine lol

Thanks for finding those and posting it. I always assumed it was just a dechlorinator as well and never really bought in that it was some magical healer. That being said, I did use it recently when a fish jumped out of the tank and and somehow ended up under my stand. I had to use the fish net to get him out from under and back in the tank. He was covered in dust and had a pretty bad scrape on his side. I immediately dosed stress coat and he healed up quickly. Who knew there was some science behind it all lol

Has anyone had an issue with Corys digging them out of the substrate? I had the same issue with them floating so I did the pin prick trick on both ends so they filled with water quickly and no longer floated. After setting them in the substrate I would come back to see them dug up. So I stayed and watched next time and found the Cory cats digging them up and trying to eat the gel capsules. So weird and I wonder if anyone else has seen something similar?

Hey so I know it's been awhile since this was posted, but I was having a similar issue with cardinals, black neons and rummy's with repashy. Anything on the bottom was being hogged by the Corys and the top feeders weren't getting much. I ended up crushing up the repashy adding some tank water and using a turkey baster to feed and it worked wonderfully. Hope this helps and it's not too late.

Only in the gbrs were rapid breathing. And the tetras and Corys I believe had to do with me getting a chemical in the tank because there werr no signs of illness prior. As of today the surviving fish all seem to be happy as can be. Eat regularly and show no issues.

Yeah the Cardinals have been around for about 3 1/2 years and have done well. I think I've lost some to just age at this point. I'm planning on adding more, but I was afraid to have a similar experience with them dying on me.

Hi everyone. Im dumbfounded. I have a tank that has been running for about a year. Here's the tank: 29 gal, fluval plant 3.0 light, oase biomaster, fluvial stratum & sand substrate, air stone on 24/7, heavily planted and lots of driftwood. Water parameters are 80f, 6.6ph, 150gh, 0 Amonia, 0 NO2, 15ish NO2. I dose easy green as needed to maintain NO2 levels. Water change once to twice a week as needed. My home water is pretty hard and it evaporates quick so I change water rather than top off. I have some fluval aquatic peat in the canister to help soften and keep at least one catapa leaf in at a time. Stock: 6 bronze Cory's, 4 cardinal tetras, 3 black neon tetras, 1 oto, 2 bristlenose, 1 SAE. On to the real issue. I started off slowly, cycled properly and added fish as I went. Thankfully I used some filter media from an established tank to start. I added the Corys & cardinals from another tank, then the otos and black neons. Finally I added two gbrs to the tank. They did great, got two spawns and they seemed happy. After a few months I ran into an issue with some filamentous algae ( I think adding iron when it wasn't necessary) so I grabbed the SAE. Did a great job of cleaning but grew quickly. In August of '22 the female GBR died. I think she swam into some driftwood being chased by either the male or the SAE. Back in early December I picked up two more female gbrs. One for this tank and one for another. The female died after about a week or two. Very suddenly with no real signs. I let the tank sit for another few weeks and decided to try adding the other female to the tank. This time the male ended up dying suddenly. I noticed him hiding so I checked all the parameters and everything seemed fine. I also lost a cardinal, a black neon and a Cory. At the time I assumed it was because I may have had a chemical on my hand when reaching into the tank(always wash your hands before you put them in the tank 😢) Flash forward to today and suddenly the lone female GBR is dead. I noticed the same hiding behavior as the male had. This time I know I didn't make the same mistake. All the other fish are fine and doing well. Not sure what might be causing these issues. Could the SAE be stressing them out? He tends to chase the gbrs and the black neons but not super aggressively and leaves everyone else alone. Is the gH too high and causing this? I'm truly upset because I really loved the gbrs. They had such a great personality to them and I really enjoyed having them in the tank, but I don't want to keep killing fish. Please help lol

Hey everyone, I recently picked up a new German blue ram. At the time I thought it was a female as I have a healthy male and wanted to get him a girl to share the tank with. When I first got it i thought it was a female but now that it's in the tank with the male I'm questioning it. Any help on a definitive answer would be awesome. Thanks!

Hey @Slick_Nick. How did this end up resolving? I woke up this morning to a red bump on my male gbr pictured here. Is this similar to how it started on Franklin there too? If you medicated what did you end up using?

Love the discus, looks awesome

I also really like some brazilian pennywort. Totally different leaf shape and pattern to the tank and rather easy. No co2 needed. Grows to the top of the water and mine grew in so fast. I got this from co-op only a few weeks ago and reached the top of my 29gallon today. Also, I agree with @Colu, try to get those plants in there sooner rather than later. It's so much easier to get the layout down without the fish being in the tank, the plants will have some time to get established, plus the bacteria that will come on the plants will help your cycling process, as well as the plants using the nitrogenous wastes. Good luck with the tank!

See, told you I suck at social media lol after all that I uploaded a photo of a single snail lol

Hey everyone! So I'm going out of my element here. Not a big social media kinda guy, but after listening to Cory's most recent live show, I wanted to jump into the nerm community! So here it is.. I'm Rick, live on Long Island Ny. Love everything about aquarium coop and what they do, and am so excited to be back in the hobby. Had fish my whole life, grew up with a whacked out pacu that probably never got the love he deserved, lots of live bearers, built ponds with my grandfather for awhile and then was out of the hobby for nearly 7 years. Got back into it in 2013 but failed when platys bred like platys do and overwhelmed the tank ( I was never meant to be confined to a 6 gallon cylinder lol) Last February I talked the fiance into letting me get a 20 gallon, which I just upgraded to a 29. (It's the small victories in relationships sometimes, one day I'll talk her into a 75 lol) . So..I currently have the 29 set up with 4 gold inca mystery snails, 8 cardinals, 6 black neons, 6 emerald corys, 3 otos, and a pair of German Blue rams and lots of plants from Co-op. Running the fluval 3.0 plant light (amazing light btw, totally worth the cost), oase biomaster thermo 250 (overkill, but George farmer talked me into it and I'm loving it so far) and I've got an air pump that might be from the 90's running for some extra O2. No Co2, plenty of easy green & iron, root tabs, fluval stratum and some play sand and catappa leaves for good measure. As I said, I rarely post on forums or social media, but I'm really excited to be on here and share the tiny bit of knowledge I have and share my journey in this hobby with people that actually care and not just humor my fish nerdom to get me to stop talking about how cool I think Brazilian pennywort is lol now enjoy some pics

keep in mind that the ph will come down as part of the cycling process, so that's a good thing. I've used eco-complete a number of times and never had any issues with high ph. If that is the imagitarium sand, it tends to be very fine. Once you get fish in that tank, a lot of it will sink down into the eco complete. The advantage of eco complete is that it will pull nutrients out of mulm and the water to help deliver those to the plants. If that sand doesn't allow this to happen, it loses some of its benefits. When that happens you can also run into issues with anoxic layers as well. Probably a little late now lol but for future reference eco complete works best without a cap.

The biggest problem I've ever had with carpeting with cory's is not the fish, but the plants. Cory's just uproot everything. I have 6 emeralds and they just run around the tank in a super cute but totally destructive posse lol you may want to give the plants some time to get rooted prior to introducing any loaches or corydoras, although so far the dwarf sag seems to be fine, I find myself replanting a staurogyne repens every couple of days lol