laritheloud

My husband just asked if we could consider SUVs instead of minivans and I gave him permission. 😉 Nissan and Hyundai weren't on the table. I expressed the same reservations about the Kia despite my husband's love affair with the new model. I was most interested in toyota because of their reliability, but they didn't have any cars on the lot to test drive. I wasn't as big a fan of Honda. We're mostly biding our time until the market eases up, because the dealers around here just don't have much on their lots to test! We absolutely love our Subaru, I'm not sure if the Outback has improved cargo space over our Forester but we'll investigate.

7 or 8 seats for a car load of kids, USB chargers in the back, easy to clean faux leather or leather seats, sliding doors for kids and elderly to climb in and out easily plus leg room, safe and reliable, collapsible back row for cargo space, Apple CarPlay, everything else is bells and whistles. We love hybrids but we also know the Toyota Sienna is the only hybrid so it’s not a must have. We want to keep it under 40k ideally but we have wiggle room.

I have water lettuce, floating water sprite and anacharis as the bulk of my plant life. I water change once a week out of habit, but I only have 3 male endlers in the tank right now along with the snail — nitrates are near zero even when I fertilize. Tank has been cycled for months.

So it's official, I have MTS, I'm converting my 'OG' quarantine into a full-time running tank and have a spare 10 gallon that I'll only use for hospital purposes (I SWEAR, FOR REAL THIS TIME). That said, how many male endlers can I comfortably keep in a 10 gallon planted tank with one giant ramshorn snail? It has mostly floating plants and a couple epiphytes.

Definitely a major selling point for my Subaru.

Absolutely, API meds have been out of stock like crazy. I'm glad I managed to stock up my fish med cabinet before the stores near me ran out, but what a pain 😞

I've got nothing exciting, just a very dependable Subaru Forester 2015 for my soccer mom self. Looking to upgrade my soccer mom status with a minivan and my husband's sold on the Kia Carnival. Looking to hear your thoughts and possibly selling me on a different make/model of minivan 🤣

I would follow Colu's advice here, @RyanU. I hope the treatment helps!

Unfortunately, it might be dwarf gourami iridovirus, which is extremely common with this species. It is currently incurable. You can try to treat the fish with antibiotics and aquarium salt, but if it is DGIV, it is fatal. 😞 I'm so sorry for you and your fish.

This is absolutely normal and a great sign! This fish is a male honey gourami and he's starting to color up and put on his 'breeding jacket.' Male honeys get a black throat when they're in the mood. Enjoy! EDIT: The dominant male also wears the black coloration, so they might be competing for dominance if they are both male.

I would try Levamisole if paracleanse isn't doing it. Two or three rounds, one week apart -- (follow EXPEL-P's directions) OR use Greg Sage's dosage guide if you bought from him.

I went out of my way to buy a cup of the small 'pest' ramshorns. They started breeding immediately, and they breed quickly enough to replace themselves, but they are very short-lived. My giant is a Colombian Ramshorn I think? I went to the LFS to buy an ivory mystery snail, which they didn't have, and impulse bought that guy instead because they had a whole tank of healthy-looking snails just like him. Best impulse buy ever.

This is cooper the giant ramshorn btw. Super awesome, actually related to apple snails and mystery snails @Guppysnail

The ramshorns mostly appear to be rather short-lived, but there's a ton of them in my 10 gallon (where I left them to breed along with my blue shrimp -- you can see tiny ramshorn-shaped balls all over the place, and I intentionally leave food for all of my snails). I still see bladder snails around! But not nearly as many as a few weeks ago. I kinda miss the 'snague' (snail plague) I had. 🤣

Ammonia is always 0 and I test two to three times a week. GH/KH are both 10-12.

Yep, seems right. We had a huge explosion in population and then I reduced feedings and algae is under control, so that's probably it.

So I'm one of the weird ones that really likes the "pest" snails (Ramshorn are my favorites, followed by bladder snails). I keep them along with my mystery snails, nerite snails, and giant ramshorn snail. Recently, though, I've kind of noticed a pretty large die-off of bladder snails and ramshorn snails. The bladder snails, particularly, seem to climb above the water line and just die on the side of the acrylic or on the lid. My mysteries, nerites, and giant ramshorn are all fine. Is it because I reduced feedings in the tank? Are they just short-lived? 🤣 My imagination tends to run away from me, and I'm scared it means there's something wrong with my water. But my parameters are amazing (Amm 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10 ppm) .... so who knows.

I wouldn't worry about water hardness, livebearers LOVE hard water. FTR, our water is extremely alkaline and reads off the charts in KH on test strips, usually around 10 - 12 on drop titration tests. I'd try an epsom salt bath if it looks like she's having buoyancy issues. I used this on my gourami when she overate. 1 tablespoon per 2 gallons, about 10 minutes of a bath. Good luck!

So just a quick story. I started out with two honey gouramis in quarantine, very very young. One of them was highly active and greeting me at the glass, the other was lethargic and would not eat. The fish would show some slight interest in food, take in a bite, spit it out, then sit on the bottom. For a full day the fish sat on the bottom, bending sideways, leaning, curling against the substrate. I tried to start treating with an anti-parasite med but the fish did not make it. It was clearly extremely unwell, wasn't eating, and laid on the substrate on its side. I went to pull it out of the tank (too young to sex, wasn't sure what it was) and it passed away. My best guess was some sort of internal parasite. I did end up treating the remaining honey gourami with two rounds of API General Cure (Paracleanse works just as well) because they shared a tank at the store and in quarantine. At the end of the first round she passed a long and distressing-looking poop, and after that, she became even more active ever since. It took about a five weeks to get through the quarantine period before I felt like she was healthy enough to go in my display. She's grown into a beautiful young female gold gourami now. She's still smaller than my male and my sunset female, but she's doing very well! All of this to say I don't think it would hurt to treat your fish with Metroplex (Metronidazole......... or general cure/paracleanse). This is also in comparison to my honey sunset female, who is simply a shy and reserved fish. She will actively scavenge throughout most of the day, but at night she likes to rest on the substrate (for the first part of the night) and nestled in the floating plants (later in the night). She also did this in quarantine, so I think this is just something that helps her feel comfortable. My other two don't nestle themselves into hidey-holes to rest, but my male will rest on the substrate at night occasionally. When they rest, they are upright and usually still moving their pectoral fins and breathing normally. I hope you'll find what happened to your missing honey. What a baffling mystery!

A few questions! What strain of honey gouramis do you have? Are they gold, sunset, wild-type? This makes a difference because I have a 'sunset' honey gourami female that looks a lot like a wild-type and tends to blend in with my plants and tank decor when she settles down for a rest at night. She is very, very good at 'hiding' and can be difficult to find. She is our shyest and most reserved gourami of the three we have. FTR, I also have two golden honeys with her, and they stand out a lot more. Second, did you treat the gouramis with anything in quarantine, or did you just observe? How long were they quarantined for? EDIT: Was the sick gourami lying on her side or was she able to hold herself upright?

With fancy goldfish (or any goldfish), sand is usually recommended because they will probably try to eat gravel and can sift/forage through sand safely. I have eco-complete in my first tank, smooth gravel in my 10 gallon, and I'll be using CaribSea Crystal River for my 55. Pool Filter Sand or Black Diamond Blasting Sand are both economical, awesome choices for sand.

I love to grab a snack or a cup of coffee and watch my fish during feeding time and during the afternoon. I find there's the most activity and frenzied fun during feeding time, but in the mid-afternoon is when I catch my gouramis behaving cutest. They tend to interact with each other very sweetly, doing little tentative 'feelers' touches and following one another around. It's soothing and adorable!

Nope, I think you're right-on. I use CO2 but I intentionally 'under'dose (pretty sure it's well below 30ppm) just to get some of the benefit but still give me a buffer to keep the fish safe. I swore to myself I wouldn't go for the CO2 injection because of my anxious nature, but, well, here I am, the perfectionist in me wanting to do things in some weird idea of 'right' that I made up for myself. 🤣 I'm happy that I tried it out, because now I know that having patience and taking things slowly and giving myself time and space to enjoy and care for my fish and the overall ecosystem makes me happier than plant growth speed.

Love this. I don't want to introduce CO2 to any of my other tanks except my 29 gallon (which will probably turn into the plant testing grounds, lol). I have one high tech and one low tech tank, and I actually find that I prefer the small low tech in terms of ease of care and fewer algae problems. My 55 isn't set up yet, but it will also be low tech, fluval 3.0 dialed in at 30 to 50% intensity max with no plans to switch it over.

As someone with some staghorn algae and a high-tech planted tank... CO2 will not magically eliminate your algae problems. I've kind of learned to live with it and figure it'll work itself out eventually as I gradually fiddle with fert/light balance.