Scrum Fish

I have a group of them and really enjoy them! They are always, always, ALWAYS moving and eating. They graze nonstop on the glass, rocks, leaves, etc. I have seen them eat just about every type of food I've ever put in the tank, as well, from Repashy (Soilent Green and Grub Pie), to algae wafers, to green beans, to catfish pellets, bloodworms, etc. They especially seem to love when I stick a cube of tubifex worms to the glass! Although they can be rambunctious I've never seen them be aggressive with anyone other than themselves. I've seen them chase each other briefly and occasionally change color as a sign of aggression, but it never lasts long and none of them have injured each other or anyone else in the year or so I've had them. They get along fine with the corydoras and bristlenose that live on the bottom of that tank. It may help that the BN is red and doesn't look remotely like them.

Same as most of the replies here: if it's a few days I do nothing at all. If I'll be gone for a week or so and someone is coming by to check on the mail, etc, then I'll set out a few little packets of food and instructions to feed once every couple of days or so.

One of my biggest obstacles is trying to fix things that aren't broken. Both of my fish tanks* are fairly heavily planted and have gotten to a point that they don't require water changes as often as they used to. It's difficult to quit fiddling with things and it takes an effort to remind myself that if plants are growing, fish are active and colorful and healthy, and the filter media isn't too clogged to run then I need to keep my hands out of there! *My axolotl tank is younger and doesn't have nearly as many plants, so I still have to do more frequent changes in it. I guess that's keeping me somewhat sane.

Is your YT stream public? If so, mind linking it? That looks awesome!

Took a picture to give an overview of the whole tank. The plants in this one are taking off pretty well! I’ll post pics of individual critters later, as well.

So, I have a Wyze camera I point at one of my tanks when I leave for work in the mornings. It's cool to be able to check on the tank whenever I want, and sometimes I catch some of the more bashful fish out that way. However, I've wondered for a while if anyone is making a decent underwater camera for similar purposes. I remember seeing something like what I'm thinking of manufactured by a German company but there didn't seem to be a way to get one to where I live in the US. I know people have used GoPros, but I'm imagining something that is a fixture in the tank. I want to say the German one I remember seeing was housed inside an artificial rock and was intended to be left in the tank constantly. Anyone have any leads on something like that?

I'll have to post some more recent pics in here, since it looks a bit different now! I have a bad habit of being too restless and changing things too often, but I'm trying to be better about it. I removed the big castle decoration and replaced it with some driftwood and more plants. I'm really trying to keep it more natural now and have very little in the way of artificial decorations. I got a little curious about trying to change to a sand substrate or adding sand on top of the gravel. Ended up doing some reading and realizing either one is not a good idea for me at all. IT AIN'T BROKE, SO DON'T TRY TO FIX IT! In the meantime, here's a pic of my bristlenose doing a very good job of hiding. Nobody can see him. He's invisible, you guys. (the pic is a bit grainy, it's a screengrab from a webcam I have set up so I can look at the tank while I'm at work)

Looking good in there! Love albino corys. I have a little gang of them, myself, and they are hardy and busy little dudes. Wanted to add my voice to the chorus of people who are adding/messing with plants long after the tank is stocked, haha. I just recently moved a huge amazon sword to a different spot in one of my tanks and I'm sure everyone in there was mad at me for a minute. I like to think I'm enriching their environment by changing it every so often. I have some octopus plant in one of mine, as well. That stuff took a while to get settled in and then EXPLODED. I routinely trim it back. Good problem to have, though! Someone mentioned Amano shrimps further upthread, too, and I second that. I have them in both of my fish tanks and they're great. Won't overrun the tank, low bioload, very effective cleaners, and super interesting to watch! I'd have them in all of my tanks, but the third one is an axolotl tank and Amanos are too pricy for me to throw in there if they might get eaten, so there are ghost shrimp in that one.

Been a long time since I updated this thread! Some stuff has been moved around. Sadly, the dwarf gourami that lived in this tank succumbed to dwarf gourami disease. Ended up moving the apisto from my other tank into this one. He was a little shy after the move, but here are some of the neons doing their dither fish duty and showing Max that it's safe. Also, you can spot my blue eyed lemon bristlenose pleco very briefly scooting by in the background. That's Oceiros (after Consumed King Oceiros, in case anyone's a Dark Souls nerd like me).

Yeah, he's a CHONK at dinner time. He's actually large enough now that it's probably time to start cutting back on feedings. I was originally feeding him morning and evening, same time as the fish tanks. Lately been just one feeding a day. But now he's starting to turn down food if he's eaten the day before. He's still full and is growing steadily, but is about 7-8" now. Running a chiller on it the tank and keeping it out of the sun, so his water is staying fairly cold, which is probably also keeping his metabolism in check. He's much better than some of my other pets at telling me he's full, haha. Not a greedy eater, but a quick one.

It's been a pretty good while since I posted here, but I'm still enjoying the hobby! I have posted before about my 29 gallon and 45 gallon planted community tanks. They're both going strong and healthy and I'll update those sometime soon. However, I needed to make a thread about my newest adventure: keeping an axolotl! My wife became enamored with them after seeing them in our LFS and one day asked what I thought about keeping them. Suffering from multi-tank syndrome, I obviously jumped at the chance haha. So, we've set this fella up in a 20 gallon long. My wife named him Taylor Hawkins, after the late Foo Fighters drummer. My son and I gave him the nickname "Tater" because we're idiots. His only tank mates are some ghost shrimp to control the algae (and for him to hunt if he decides to). The first two pics below are from the day we brought him home on April 29th, then one from a little later, and the last pic and video are from last week.

I have nine of them in my 45 gallon tank and at least some of them are always visible. They seem to operate in shifts, with different little squads roaming at different times. They show up for dinner, though, of course! Here they are, a month or so apart, chowing down on shrimp pellets and then a block of Repashy Grub Pie. They hold their own and aren't shy when other fish or creatures are around. They like to hang out inside that skull in the background and it's always cool to see them slither out of the eyes, nose, or mouth. I also have a couple in the 29 gallon but had gone months without seeing them. I then moved the corys out of it into another tank, replaced them with zebra loaches. For some reason now I get glimpses of the kuhlis in that tank again!

Haven't updated anything about this tank in a while, after getting the 45 g set up. Flame dwarf gourami is the centerpiece. 4 dannios, 5 tiger endlers, and 8 emerald eye rasboras are the dithers. Got a gang of amano shrimp helping keep the place clean. I had some albino aeneus corydoras, but moved them to the 45 to make room for some striata loaches! Added 5 of those dudes and then really didn't see them much for a few days. They mostly were hiding inside the castle decoration and only darting out in the dark. Never saw them eating any of the food I put in, but I am pretty sure they have been sniping the ramshorn snails that live in there. Added a cholla log to give them some extra cover in a place I could see them and decided to see if they'd come out for some frozen bloodworms, as I'd read they tend to like those. That was a winner! Here are a few of them out and about. They were visible and swimming around all evening after that! Very entertaining fish. I was a little worried as some of the worms got jammed between the log and the glass, but the loaches used their narrow snouts to snaffle them all up eventually.

They would, I'm certain, but the guppies are all dudes. Haven't gotten into breeding them yet! From what I've heard the ADF's would snipe at least some of the fry, though, for sure. The ADFs are pretty cool! I had read that they can be largely nocturnal and hide most of the day, but these two are out and visible and active any time I come by the tank. Even when they go into their "zen pose" they do it out in the open. My son had a tadpole that we raised into a bullfrog and kept in what is now the living room fish tank. Son named him Felix Jim. Ol' FJ sadly passed away earlier this year, which is what led us to fishkeeping, instead. We converted that tank back into an aquarium and eventually got this one for his room. Bullfrogs are native here and are all over my neighborhood, so we're just going to dig them a pond rather than try to keep another inside. We never really intended on raising a frog in the first place but my mother surprised us with a tadpole (she swears we talked about it, haha) for what was supposed to be a leopard frog. Nope, bullfrog! My son and I were both pretty bummed out about losing FJ, so I said when we started the fish tank we'd have a frog. Months and months went by and we just concentrated on the fish, snails, and shrimps and I figured he had just kinda forgotten about having frogs. Then, one day we're in our LFS picking up an order and just milling around looking at the tanks and he saw the ADFs and that was that! He named one Felix and the other Jim.

Thanks! My LFS is pretty good about having lots of different corydoras and having them labelled correctly. I had never seen emeralds before and my son fell in love with them. In the store lighting they looked pitch black! It wasn’t until I got them home that I could really see the green pop im the right angles.