Ragnarok12

If we are bragging on the Co-op's shipping speed, they had packages and shipped my most recent order with 11 random products within 1 hour 37 minutes of the moment I clicked confirm. I have never in my life seen such a fast shipping speed.

That is such a cool tank. What strain of killifish are you breeding? They look fantastic

This is so cool, thanks for sharing! I have new goals now for my Buce tanks 🥇🥇🥇

TBH because I'm lazy and impatient to see my new plants in action. I also don't move fish, plants, or equipment between my aquariums if I can help it, so anything that is introduced into an aquarium stays in that aquarium only and I can deal with clearing it out as needed.

As a trusted supplier, I also wouldn't quarantine from the Co-op. I take them straight out of the box and toss them straight in the tank, Unless I don't have time to plant, in which case they go straight into a bucket!

Oh phew, cool cool, glad to hear it! Yeah, all my hydra were gone in like 48 hours as well. Good to have another example of Panacur-C working well for shrimp thanks.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying Josh, but I'm so sorry if you experienced a die off from the treatment! I will say that while my nerite did day, the never-ending hoard of bladder snails didn't even take a hit. I'm not exactly sure what the dose is that would cause a die off of shrimp, but I would probably feel comfortable doubling the dose and seeing what happened. If my shrimp were literally nibbling on the medicine granules and it didn't mess with them, them I'm not sure how much it would take to actually do damage. Let us know how your tank goes from here, and remember that you can always pull the meds out by adding activated carbon if you encounter an issue.

@OnlyGenusCaps You're all good, no offense at all. It's a legit conversation, and I'm glad to be challenged on it! I'm not trying to co-opt this post and turn it into "woke" tirade or something, so apologies if this is taking away from the initial spirit of the thread. When I say that events should be representative, I am speaking only within certain contexts. For example, I work in the field of promoting democracy around the world. I specifically supporting democracy advocacy groups in West Africa. A desire for democratic government is not tied to one particular demographic, country, or culture, so an effort should be made to bring all kinds of people into that conversation. A women from East Africa and a man from South America have extremely different experiences with democracy, and their voices should be highlighted. If we has an open democracy event and only have white American men on a panel discussing global democracy, we are missing out on A LOT. Nobody is asking for people of East Asian decent to be knights at the renaissance fair, there is a logical reason for everyone to by white in an effort to be "historically accurate." IT would be really out of place. and yeah, Tibetans should take front and center at a Tibetan folk festival, no questions asked, and nobody else can claim to know their culture better than them. But would it be jarring to have a Filipino women as a speaker at ALA? Fishkeeping is different. It isn't tied to one demographic, culture, or country. It is a hobby for everyone, and there are extremely experienced fishkeepers of all genders and races from all around the world that can each bring something unique to events like ALA. They are out there, we just need to make an effort to find them and showcase them. If you think about it, by only featuring older, white, male hobbyists, we as a community are really missing out on a whole lot of really good knowledge out there. Gianne Souza is a great example (shoutout again to the Coop). Was her presentation any less interesting than a presentation by a white man? I would argue her experience as a Show Betta judge is different as a young woman, and that is a perspective I'm really interested in hearing more from. And more so, seeing her as an Aquarium Coop featured speaker is an important message that the Coop believes that experts in this hobby come in all races and genders.

Lol you are definitely too kind @kammaroon

I would also really like to see more women featured as speakers at aquatic and fishkeeping events. I really appreciated that the first speaker for Aquarium Coop's club was a young women. I was looking at the lineup of speakers at the ALA convention in Florida in October, and it's literally all older white men. I work at an organization where we are responsible for organizing a number of panels and events, and we have made it a company policy to avoid "manels" - all-male panel discussions - by featuring at least one woman as a speaker on all panels. We also try to feature at least one non-white speaker as well. If we want this hobby to feel open and welcoming to everyone, large conventions and even local clubs should work to have a more diverse representation in the speakers and experts that they bring in. Aquarium Coop does a great job with this, and I would love to see it use its influence to encourage other businesses and organizations to do the same. On that note, I would be interested in seeing statistics on the racial makeup of this hobby. I have to say, I have seen an overwhelming number of white faces representing the hobby in various venues.

@Josh333 Yeah, my bad, I got my units mixed up. Dissolve the 1 gram packet of Panacur-C in 100 ml of water, and then dose 5 ml of the mixed solution into the aquarium. Volume is in milliliters, mass is in grams. My high school chemistry teacher would be shaking her head so hard at me right now...

I can confirm Ken's experience. I recently used Panacur-C to clear out hydra from my tank, but one correction to @Ken's post is that the dosage is 0.1g per 10 gallons, not 0.1mg. Panacur-C is usually sold in 1-gram packs, so the easiest way to do it is to dilute the entire pack in 100mg of water, and then pipette 5mg of the resulting slurry into the 5 gallon tank. Don't worry if it doesn't all dissolve and you get chunks of powder in the tank, as they will dissolve with time and won't hurt your shrimp or fish if they nibble on it. I left the meds in the tanks for about a week, did a partial water change, redosed the same amount, waited another week, and then put activated carbon into my filter to start pulling the meds out. If you have any carbon filtration in your tank, pull it out before you dose, or it will strip the meds straight from the water. Take out your snails during the treatment time; I can confirm it kills them (lost my nerite during treatment). I lost all of my shrimp (60+) to the hydra infestation before I cleared out the tank with Panacur-C, but have since reintroduced new shrimp and have had zero deaths. I would definitely recommend the treatment, but keep in mind that the effect isn't immediate and it will take a few days to clear everything out.

This is such a cool journey, amazing work! I could only have wished that I was where you are in this hobby at age 16. You are really going to go far my friend.

Shrimp all day every day. I just set up my 2 gallon Fluval Spec (the first model before the increased the size to the Spec III) and I'm going to get some shrimp going in there.

I would second using a base layer of aquarium soil capped by sand in places where you want to grow root-feeding plants. In addition to the lack of nutrients in sand, it also doesn't allow roots to spread out and breathe very easily. I have pure fine sand in my five gallon and I'm having mixed success. I definitely wish I had a base of aquarium gravel under the sand to allow room for the roots to grow. My crypts have done decently well, but I would avoid putting swords directly in the sand. the EP could work out pretty well, I think.

Yeah, I would agree with @laritheloud, I had an excellent experience purchasing off of aquabid. It was my first purchase and it went very smoothly. I'm not going to drop a link (per forum guidelines), but I got these from Mason Brando off of aquabid (profile name is Brandofish). Very easy and satisfying purchasing experience. He even has more of these endlers that I purchased up for sale right now, if you are interested in the look of these. But yeah, Aquabid is where you should start. I'll give an update with how the population is going if they do well. I'm on vacation right now, so fingers crossed that they are doing okay when I get back.

12 hours of light is definitely too much. Don't underestimate the power of the default lights, they can still do some damage, especially if your plants are close to the surface or if its a low tank. I agree with the wifi timer and set it for like 8 hours a day. otocinclus are lovely. You can also look into a hillstream loach, they're super cool and would fit well in a 20 gallon. I would clip anubias leaves that are too far gone and completely covered, and hopefully you'll limit algae growth with the lowered light so that new leaves that sprout don't grow algae.

I wouldn't be too afraid of diatom algae, I agree with Mmiller2001 that it tends to stablize on its own over time if you have enough water circulation. Just keep doing water changes too, that will help. Are you seeing any other kinds of algae?

The dead snail suggestion is a really good one, I would definitely look and see if you have any snails that are deceased. They are ammonium bombs. Also, you can probably smell ammonium if it is truly at 4 ppm, that's super high. How does your water smell? I had a single nerite snail die in my 12 gallon and I could smell a difference in the water. Are you still seeing die off, or has your snail population stabilized? I would be more inclined to believe that the ammonium readings are off if everything in your tank is doing fine. I would expect ammonium of 4 ppm to start murdering everything pretty quickly, so if nothing is dying anymore, then I would say watch your tank with great suspicion.

I agree that neons would work pretty well. If you aren't tied to neons though, then you can also do a small school of corydoras or khuli loaches to inhabit the bottom of the tank, out of the way of the betta. Ember tetras would be a fun alternative to neons too, depending on the color of your betta and the contrast you are looking for. Ember tetras are small enough that you should be able to get a school of 8-10 in there with the betta. Alternatively, I love microrasboras and will always recommend them for nano tanks, even with a betta. You could get yourself a school of chili rasboras (if you're lucky enough to find some) or kubotai resboras. Both are very small schooling fish that will not raise your bioload much, but are active and quick enough to keep their distance from a betta. They need very clean water, so make sure your water tests are coming out clean before adding any. You could also potentially try emerald dwarf rasboras or galaxy rasboras, but I would get a second opinion if you think about doing that.

If your water is 78 degrees, then you are probably good without a heater. My tanks stay at 74-76 during the summer and I just take the heaters out altogether. The heater will probably be more important for you in the winter. I would add neons first, give them a few days to get comfortable, and then add the betta. Whether or not it will work in a smaller tank like that depends a lot on the betta, as some are much more aggressive and territorial than others. Make sure you have lots of plants and decorations so that the betta doesn't just hyper focus on the tetras all day. I'd say you'll likely have a pretty high chance of success though. Let us know how it goes!

Thanks for everyone's feedback, this is helpful. I went ahead and took the plunge. Here are some photos of the new acquisitions. Definitely a hybrid endler, but man is it a pretty fish. Can't wait for the EXTREMELY pregnant female to start growing the colony. I'll update when it comes time to offload the fry.

Hey everyone, I would like some advice on stocking my 29 gallon. I know I want to do a school of congo tetras, but I read that electric blue acaras can actually work starting at 30 gallons. Does anyone think a school of congo tetras (like 8, maybe), a solo electric blue acara as a showpiece fish, and a school of something loachy (maybe 5 or 6) for the bottom would work out? It feels like a lot, but idk. I would be going heavily planted, including floating plants to pull out nitrates. Thoughts?

Maybe go for a floating plant for your sump that isn't as much of a pain as duckweed, but still grows crazy fast. I clear out about half of the salvinia from my tank once a week and it's super easy and quick to remove. It grows extremely fast and dense though, so I know it's stripping nitrates out like crazy. Otherwise yeah, stuff that tank with hornwort and go to town. I like the idea of pothos as well, since you could just stick a stem in and have the rest of the plant trail outside of the tank. I love this idea and can't wait to see what you come up with.

Well, there are a couple of different options that I would recommend. First, address the source of the problem. I was getting a TON of green spot algae on my anubias leaves and finally got it under control by turning the intensity of my light down and getting my tank in balance. I bought a $10 LED light dimmer on amazon and it worked liked magic to stop new algae growth. I have mostly low light plants in my tank, and all of them actually benefitted from this approach, including my bucephalandra which suffers from the same slow-growth algae problem. To address existing algae, you can get nerite snails or other algae eaters, but I haven't actually noticed mine making much of a dent in the problem. For leaves that are too-far-gone and completed covered, I would probably just clip them off altogether. The more you clip off existing leaves, the more your plant will put out fresh new leaves as a replacement. If you get your algae growth under control (again, probably lighting), then you should get new leaf growth without the new algae buildup. If you don't want to take that approach, you can also manually take out the anubias plant and hand scrub each leaf. Anubias leaves are surprisingly sturdy, so if you have some finesse, you can remove the plant from the tank, take a knife, and scrape all of the algae off the surface of the leaves one by one. Sounds crazy, but I actually just did this last week and my anubias looks good as new. If your plant is firmly fixed to your hardscape, though, and can't be removed from the tank, then clipping the algae-covered leaves and waiting for regrowth is probably your best option. My anubias looks significantly healthier after I pruned off the old, sick leaves and forced new growth.