laritheloud

Thanks again, everyone, for the advice. We are choosing to get a crested or gargoyle gecko, as the care is virtually the same. I'll be setting up the bioactive terrarium over the next month and getting a precious reptile baby for my birthday at the end of February.

Likely your parameters are fine. If you mail-ordered and drip acclimated your shrimp, I suspect it's mostly the lack of maturity in the tank. Your parameters should be totally fine for cherry shrimp, they're a super hardy species and do well in harder water (and I have an alkaline ph at 8 to 8.2 and they do well, to give you a comparison). If you want to try enriching their diets in this tank, I'd try some biofilm-building foods like GlasGarten Bacter AE and other shrimp foods they sell while your tank is seasoning. Shrimp King has some pelleted food for shrimp that mine go nuts for, too. Hikari Crab Cuisine or Shrimp Cuisine also works.

@Fish Folk nailed it, you have a beautiful pair! Aside from the stripe, another way you can distinguish male and female golden honey gouramis from a young age is to look at the color of the dorsal fins. Male dorsals will always have a lemon yellow/bright yellow outer rim. Females will have an orange outer dorsal rim. EDIT to add: Females are typically much more food-motivated and nibble a lot at plants/algae/microfauna in the tank. Males tend to stay busy patroling around and trying to entice/chase the female(s) in turn. 🙂 Sometimes subdominant males start to behave a little more like females, but they'll differ in that they're slightly less food-motivated and mostly keep to themselves except when guarding food.

Rainbows in general are capable of jumping... but mine never have. I keep pseudomugils and not dwarf neon rainbows, but the way they stuck around the tippy top of the tank made me nervous for awhile. Still, never jumped. I have a lid on half the tank and the other has floaters and tall plants in the way.

I'm having this issue with a piece of wood. Time to find a rock to zip tie it to....

Oh, I'm not planning on getting anything super expensive or fancy in terms of plants. 🤪 I just want to get a few things appropriate to the habitat. Currently leaning toward a crested gecko/leopard gecko (one of those, if a lizard) or less active but cute and grumpy tomato frogs. If I put a pothos in there I'll expect I'll need to hack it back constantly. Thanks for the tips!

You're fine with a ph of 8.2 as long as you don't choose wild caught SUPER soft water fish. Source: My water has an offgassed pH of 8 to 8.2. Platies, especially, should be fine with a high pH and hard water, and that likely isn't the reason the fish are dying. Have you tested all of your other water parameters? When you changed the gravel, did you monitor parameters in case of an ammonia or nitrite spike? Also, water straight from the tap needs to sit in order to off-gas and get a correct pH reading. You can also put it in a bucket with an air stone to off-gas and get the 'true' pH of your water. It might actually be 8.2 from the tap!

Thanks, @Guppysnail, that's what I suspected but it's a hard choice. How do you like your tree frogs? I'm leaning towards easy frogs right now for the slightly lower maintenance but skinks appeal to me a lot for their personalities and cute faces.

Hi @quikv6! I had a diamond tetra that suffered from mouth rot early on when I started my 29 gallon tank. Although he doesn't have an active infection anymore, the tissue is still scarred and a little distorted on the upper lip area. I don't think the tissue will grow back normally and your fish will be scarred for the rest of her life. I actually did not know this, either, as a beginner fishkeeper, so it freaked me out a lot to see it not 'healing' completely. But his behavior is fine, he is eating fine, and he's done very well ever since then. As far as returning to the main tank, if she's behaving fine and there's no sign of intensifying infection, it's at your discretion when to move her back. To me, it sounds like this is just how she is going to be and there's no active infection left.

So while my 20 long is being super stubborn, I want to get busy with designing and planting up something new! I've been eyeing amphibians and reptiles for awhile now, and I'd like to try my hand as terrestrial plants and creating a self-contained terrestrial ecosystem. The issue is, all I know about plants right now is aquatic. 🤪 So I'm getting overwhelmed with all the info out there and I don't know where to start! To all reptile and amphibian keepers out there, if you were just starting out, what would you do: What size enclosure would you go for? Is bigger always better like it is in aquaria, or should I start with a modest size? I was looking at exo terra 18 x 18 x 24 for dumpy tree frogs, potentially, but I'm also considering a leopard gecko, crested gecko, or a small and active skink (emerald tree, schneider's, fire). I also heard White's Dumpy Tree Frogs tend to need more space than the minimum described online, so that makes me nervous. Should I choose a species before an enclosure size? Because I'm having a really hard time with that one. For amphibians, I think Pacman Frogs, Tomato Frogs, and Chubby Frogs are adorable along with White's Dumpies, but I'm having a hard time gauging whether I'll love them (I mean, I probably will, I love all creatures). I know maintenance is pretty low with these species, so that's appealing as a first time vivarium keeper. For Lizards, I'm eyeing leopard geckos, crested geckos, or skinks. What species would be the best 'starter' animal for a person with two young kids (one who is about to turn 7 and really loves creepy crawly bugs and weird animals) and lots of aquariums? I'm still attempting to learn lighting requirements and temp requirements. I'm planning on setting up the vivarium for about a month before keeping animals. I know that vivariums need to 'cycle' just like aquariums, but there's no testing I can do for it. How do you clean a bioactive vivarium? Do you just spot clean? Thanks, everyone. Total newbie here and it's overwhelming to look at all the information out there.

My test kits appear to be accurate. Nitrites read as 0 in my other established tanks. I think my frustration is stemming from 'oh, those 0.5ppm nitrites should clear overnight--' and I'm setting myself up for disappointment with that mentality. 🤪 It's just bizarre that it's not stuck on a high spike, but on a NEAR clearing of nitrites... I'm definitely staying on top of pH, as my water is alkaline regardless of dGH. It seems like the winter aquifers have a natural softener mechanism going on before it reaches the municipal wells, so I get that 'awesome' combination of high-PH no-GH water..... I never thought I'd long to get my hard water back, but here I am! I have my temp set at 82F right now, and I actually had the temp lower before I remembered to crank up the heater. That's my bad, I was so jazzed by the 'low nitrites it must be over soon!' and then the continual disappointment of it not being over soon to remember. 🤪 I KNOW it'll happen, I just figure I can vent it out here.

I've actually read his stuff and honestly tried BOTH methods for 3 weeks each. I tried bombing the tank with ammonia to see if it'd grow a bigger colony -- sure, ammonia's disappearing pretty much as soon as it hits the tank, but nitrite? Nope. Then I changed out the water, started dosing from baseline 0, started at 2ppm, watched nitrite spike then fall back down to 0.5ppm and stay there for 24 hours straight. It's enormously frustrating. The only -- *only* difference -- between this tank and my previous tanks was that my 20 gallon long is being cycled with my winter city water source, which has a rock-bottom GH of 0 to 1 dGH. My spring and summer tap water was 10 dGH, and cycled very quickly even with 4ppm ammonia dosed. Is cycling quicker in harder water? Is there any scientific literature about this? I did add wondershells to the tank for remineralizing and bumped up dGH to 8, and I've had to monitor my KH and PH for crashes throughout.

Oh, my nitrates are sky-high. I know the cycle is working because nitrites make it down to 0.5 to 0.25 ppm before it slows to a near stop for a day (after spiking up to 5+ppm off the chart).

I can definitely add another! I have one that isn't in use!

I have a 10 gallon ACO sponge filter and a 50 gallon HOB AquaClear on the tank, so I don't think that's the issue. I dosed to 2ppm after a big water change and I'll see what happens. It's definitely testing my patience, because I have green algae growth, lots of plant growth, and general scuzz everywhere, AND YET.... not cycled yet. EDITED: it's a 50 gallon HOB lol

I'm honestly just about to go ahead and do this. It's almost less hassle to do daily 50% water changes to manage Nitrite (at 0.5ppm or less) than it is to sit through this. 😭 I keep trying to resist because I've done successful fishless cycles before. It's supposed to be a quarantine tank (yes, I plant my quarantines) and I want to get a pleco to quarantine for about 5 weeks before placing it in my 55 gallon.

I've tried both and it just seems to compound, but I'll keep at it. The only reason I have ever changed water during cycling is to replenish minerals. My buffer got completely eaten up and my PH plummeted to below 6 during this cycle; ordinarily my KH is 11 and my PH is 8.0, to give you an idea. This does slow down the cycle significantly.

I'll try the 50 percent changes... It's just insane how much seeded material I put into this tank and it's still not cycled.

I put in plants 4 weeks ago.

So I have a 20 gallon long that I've been cycling for 5 to 6 weeks now with no end in sight, and I'm getting frustrated. I think I've dumped 4 bottles of bacteria in this thing, changed the water a couple of times when KH bottomed out and PH dropped, raised the temp, kept adding ammonia up to 4 ppm, added plants, seeded the filter with sponges from another tank... and this 20 long is stalling like crazy with the nitrite. 😞 Ammonia is gone in under half a day, but nitrite is taking up to 48 hours to completely clear, usually hanging at around 0.5 ppm for more than half that time. My first tank cycled in 2 weeks. My second and third tanks took about three weeks. I have no idea why this tank is being so stubborn. GH and KH are still at a good level, lots of organics, feeding the bacteria with ammonia whenever it crawls back down to zero on both ammonia and nitrite... and still. It's been stuck at this level for about two weeks. Has anyone been stuck at this stage for this long? What else can I do to foster bacteria growth, or do I just have to be patient? I feel like there's been no movement in the cycle at all, and it's stuck at 0.5 ppm nitrites for two days straight after dosing ammonia.

Normal posturing trying to figure out their place in the hierarchy. I'm top lady, no, I'M top lady! Pretty harmless and they certainly shouldn't injure each other. My ladies do this plenty, and I've never seen any real injuries. 🙂

I wouldn't get more than one unless you can get a 40 to 55 gallon tank. I love goldfish. Someday I'll get my goldfish tank. Good luck!

They really are! After resisting for awhile, I completely understand why they're so well-loved. He's so cute and interesting to play with.

OK, it's not as bad as I thought. I thought the shop owner might have given you Dwarf Flame Gouramis, which would have been a huge issue. What you actually have are two female Thicklipped Gouramis (trichogaster labiosa, same fish that's in my profile picture). Your honeys are Trichogaster Chunas. Both are quite peaceful fish and you put them in a large enough tank that it could work long-term. Thicklipped gouramis get about 3 to 4 inches big, so they will always be a little bit bigger than your honeys. They also tend to be more outgoing and social, and they'll greet you at the glass and eat out of your fingers. I absolutely love them. If you notice them chasing your honeys around relentlessly, it could become a stress issue; BUT even with the chasing, they should not physically harm one another and I've never seen them actually hurt one another. To be extra sure, you can always prepare a backup plan. The thicklips would be happiest in the bigger tank, but if you have to use a divider or separate the honeys, they could do fine in a 15 or 20 gallon, just FYI. I have heard of this pairing working in the past, though, but I want you to be aware of what you're in for. I hope everyone turns out happy and healthy in the end, and I'm so sorry for your sick lady!

I love him so much. He already jumps to my fingers for his morning and evening pellets (3 per meal). Otherwise, he’s so incredibly chill and doesn’t really flare at anything. Loves to greet me at the glass. my daughter is asking for a girl fish and I’m already planning a second betta tank! God help me 🤪🤪🤪