Theresa W

Great, thank you! I do have some plant weights lying around. One of my corys has been shamelessly using the pot intended for the lotus as a chair. It made me laugh.

Having just divested myself of two accidental assassin snail farms, I do not advise getting any. As previously mentioned, they do reproduce prolifically, as though they're putting in overtime to get a promotion. I also can back up the observations about bladder/pond snails eating only dying or dead plant matter. They clean a lot of film off of healthy plant leaves without eating the leaf itself, in addition to cleaning the glass. As long as you're not overfeeding your tank, you shouldn't end up with a population problem. There's a huge difference between a snail here and there and snails covering every surface; I think that because they're so commonly seen and do breed prolifically when given the opportunity, we aquarists tend to believe that they're a bigger problem than they actually are. That's how I ended up with the assassin snail farms. It's much easier to control the situation by adding less food to the tank than more critters. If you need more members in your clean-up crew, additional Amanos and/or nerites do a good job without increasing the bioload very much. Good luck! 🐸

Hi Everyone, Does anyone have any suggestions for how to prevent my fish and snails from digging up my bulb plants? Earlier this week, I even tried putting each bulb into a tiny terra cotta pot filled with gravel (with a hole in the bottom, of course) so that it could develop a root system, but the pots are evidently new and interesting toys to explore, and in two of the three aquariums where I placed them, the bulbs are on the gravel next to the pots. 🤦‍♀️ In anticipation of questions, I'll say that I use Eco Complete gravel and Easy Green liquid fertilizer and root tabs, and my other plants--an assortment of stems, floaters, and epiphytes--are doing well. The bulbs even have leaves and a few tiny roots, but they're not developing well because they keep getting pushed around. Barring other suggestions, I might put all of them in the one tank where the bulb wasn't dislodged until they develop sufficiently substantial roots to stay put in their tiny pots, and then move them back where I want them. Thank you collectively for any advice you might have. 🐸

Welcome to you and all your pets! We're happy you're here, both drys and wets! 🐕🐈🐟🐸🐌 I think I was channeling Theodore Giesel for a minute there...

You have a gorgeous girl! Also, I had no idea that lavender was rare; I have a lavender male in a 5.5-gallon tank with 2 ghost shrimp. Play date? 😉

I just fed bloodworms to my aquids this evening, and my otos continued their grazing. I was curious to see whether they'd eat the worms because all of my other fish, as well as the frogs, shrimp, and assassin snails, consume them with great gusto, but the otos did not. 🤷‍♀️

I didn't know about the daily cycle of plants' CO2 use and will modify my lighting schedule accordingly. Thanks for the info! Also, I have a tall aquarium, albeit only 15 gallons, and plants that are doing well in there are pogostemon, rotala, a flamingo crypt, a couple of marimo moss balls, and a giant anubias. I added a dwarf aquarium lily last week, and it's doing well thus far. Since it's a betta habitat, I also have water spangles, a floating clump of water sprite, and duck weed. Try some duck weed. Your kid will be born covered with it. 🤣 Anyone here who's stuck with it knows what I mean. Good luck with your plants and your family. I recently started babysitting a friend's son, who is a year and a half old, and he spends a large portion of his day standing on the couch watching the fish and "talking" to them. He's also crazy about the cats. Pets are good for kids, and fish teach them different lessons than cats do. Don't give up! 🌿

Welcome! Kudos on the DIY approach!

No, you're not alone, although I am not a native, having defected from the other side of the Cheddar Curtain. 🐸

@DebSillsFrogs of all kinds are very delicate, and transitioning from one environment to another, even if the new one is healthier, is stressful for them. Sometimes they don't make it no matter how careful you are. And sometimes they're sick with something that's not outwardly visible. You didn't do anything wrong. My deepest condolences.

I know little about guppies and endlers except for general tropical fish care, but I've been a frog enthusiast since childhood, and I can share some of my knowledge and observations. Regarding ADFs, you can't have too many plants. And they should be in all levels of the aquarium because frogs like to hide, but, as seen in one of the photos above, they like to float near the top too. I have 3 ADFs in a 10-gallon tank with 3 corys, an indeterminate number of neocaridina shrimp, and an accidental assassin snail farm. I feed the tank 1/4 of a frozen food cube twice daily, and the snails, shrimp, and corys eat the leftovers. They get a rotating selection of blood worms, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, plankton, krill, and daphnia, as well as the occasional live black worm. I tried pellets, but only the snails ate them. I used to finger-feed my frogs, but I trained them away from this so that they would eat if other people had to feed them. They don't have any trouble getting food because their main competitors are the snails, which the frogs treat like substrate. 😂 You can determine the sex of your frog by examining its sides. If if has a whitish spot or bump just below the armpit, it's a boy, and if no spot or bump is present, it's a girl. They are social animals and do better in groups, so you should indeed acquire a few friends for your froggie. If you get some boys, once they're settled in, you'll know that they're happy when they start singing at night. Mine start chirping almost every night when I come into the bedroom to go to sleep, and it makes me smile every time. Good luck, thank you for being a decent human, and happy frogging! 🐸

I've been contemplating what to put in my 5.5 gallon planted tank, which I recently restarted after Shrimptopia was crashed by scuds. (As an aside, scuds are cute until they're not.) It's currently cycling along with a well-marinated sponge filter and some nerites. I read somewhere on the interwebs that sometimes a betta and a dwarf crayfish will work, if the betta is a mellow fellow and the crayfish is a cambarellus. Has anyone else had this combination of tankmates? Any advice about what else one could put in a 5.5 gallon, besides neocaridinas? A colony of babaultis is on my wishlist, but the initial investment is pretty large. No idea is too weird to consider. 😊

Wow, those are nifty! Now I want some too!

Welcome from a native Cheesehead who defected to Chicago! I, too, was older when I went to college, for financial reasons. I found that my prior work experience served me well in navigating the bureaucratic side of academia, and although most undergrads were younger than I, a significant portion were not. When I was in graduate school teaching labs, one of my students was quite a bit older than I was, having been an engineer for some years before deciding to pursue physics in greater depth. I was briefly concerned that it might be an awkward situation, but he was there to learn and I was there to teach, and he turned out to be one of my best students. (Medical students were the worst because they thought they already knew everything. Remember that the next time you go to the doctor. 🙄) DM me if you don't already know the joke about how a physicist, a mathematician, and an engineer are seeking to prove that all odd numbers are prime. 🤣 Languages are pattern-based, so apply the same thought process as you do in math. I've studied, in order of acquisition, German, Arabic, Spanish, French, Russian, and Japanese, as well as general linguistics, so trust me about the pattern analysis, and all will be well. It will help you a lot to watch TV shows in whatever language you are studying, first with subtitles and later without. Kudos on your aquatic pursuits. It's knowledge that we will definitely need in order to help clean up the mess we've made of our planet. You might consider teaching at some point. I always swore I'd never teach kids, but I ended up with a master's degree instead of a Piled Higher and Deeper, so I taught junior high and high school kids because I prefer to live indoors and eat regularly. However, I had more success than I would have imagined, and I know from my experience as a student that I affected a lot more people than I will ever know about. In the end, I was laid off but am also disabled from cancer treatment, so I'm currently figuring out a way to teach people who need or want to know things about math or science and can't fit into the system of academic bureaucracy for whatever reason. I never really fit there either, and teaching people whom Society believes cannot (or should not) learn is an incredibly gratifying way of giving the finger to The Man. To keep this fish-topical, I'll tell you that I'm currently running 6 freshwater tanks: 2.5, 5.5, 10, 15 tall, 20, and 30 gallons, with live plants and an assortment of nanofish, shrimp, snails, and African dwarf frogs. I really only meant to have the 2.5 gallon tank, but Things Happened, such as one of my neighbors leaving a perfectly good fully equipped 20-gallon tank in the alley. I aspire to a 55- or 75-gallon tank in a larger apartment as a room divider, as well as a container pond on the porch, and at such time as I might get a larger tank, I'd like to convert one of the others to saltwater. My current project, having recently restarted the 5.5-gallon tank after scuds crashed what used to be Shrimptopia, is to get another betta (there's one in the 15-gallon tall tank) and house it with a dwarf crayfish. Good luck with both your academic pursuits and self-employment! 🐟🐌🐸

Welcome from a fellow betta owner in Chicago! My guy lives in a 15-gallon tall tank, and although he occupies the entire space at different times during the day, he spends most of his time at the top, hanging around in the plants. Some are tall and overgrown, and some are floaters. This might be what Buddy is missing; I noticed that your plants are all around the same height, and none of them reaches the top. Some bettas also enjoy a floating log toy, but if you use one, remove it when you clean the tank to avoid injuring your fish. (I speak from an unfortunate clumsy experience.) Regarding silk plants, they are pretty and fun, but over time, they shed threads like crazy, and I eventually got sick and tired of having that stuff all over the place, so I switched to live plants only. As other members have noted, you'll just have to try out different plants until you find things that are happy in your particular tank's environment. Fortunately, this is not at all difficult, and once your plants have established themselves, you'll be surprised at how fast some of them grow. If you don't have a LFS that sells live food, frozen food is a great alternative, and even the chain stores sell it. Just shave off a little on a saucer with a paring knife, and you've got a seafood sno-cone for your finny friend. Yum! If you're worried about leftovers, you can get some shrimp and/or snails. I recommend nerites because they can't reproduce in fresh water, so you won't have an overpopulation problem, and they're good algae eaters. I have Amano shrimp too, and they make peaceful and entertaining neighbors. One last piece of advice: I've seen a lot of newbies crash their tanks over and over again, obsessing about water parameters and changing water several times a day. The best advice I've received, and the best that I can give you based on my own observations and experience, is to be patient. When I started out as a teenager (in the 80s), I made the mistake of keeping my tank TOO clean, and I lost a lot of fish that way. Nature knows how to take care of itself, and sometimes the best thing you can do, in your aquarium and in life, is nothing at all. Take care, good luck, and all my best to Buddy! 🐟