Bobbie

In my experience, it’s probably gonna be fine to just put some fish food in on the day you leave and ask the sitter to add a wee bit of food (maybe a small spoonful) every 3 or 4 days while you’re gone - it worked for me.

Mine do the same. I don’t think they’re completely blind, but they likely don’t have particularly good eyesight and will rely on other senses to find food - it’s probably the same for all corydoras, but the albino gene just makes it worse.

If you want a very large corycat you could do a brochis, they’re not true corydoras but look like them - they’re expensive and need a large tank, though. If you want a true corydora then I’ve heard that the banded cory is one of the largest - also somewhat expensive, though. The albino/bronze corydora also gets on the larger side, and is pretty cheap & hardy.

I’m not sure if this’ll be any help, but my zebra danios always become very sluggish when I medicate them with a mixture of melafix and API white spot cure - the white spot cure is the one that they react to, I believe, since I never see a behaviour change when I only put melafix in the tank. Maybe there’s an ingredient that they’re reacting badly to? Idk though, I’ve never seen anyone else discuss it.

Hi, so I was looking at a local aquatics shop earlier and noticed they sold kuhli loaches - but the species name was Pangio Semicincta, rather than the Pangio Kuhlii that I usually see mentioned. I was curious and did some googling, and I read that most of the p. kuhlii commonly found in aquariums are actually mislabelled p. semicincta. Is this true? Or is the species that my local shop sells something completely different? Just wanna know in case I decide to buy some in the future, because I’d hate to end up with some random species that I’ve no idea how to care for.

What does he normally eat? He could be constipated - I’ve heard that daphnia is good to clear the stomach, if you’ve got access to some. When you say the water and temperature are good, what specifically are the numbers? Do you know if they’ve changed at all, or have they stayed the same? The photo in your signature looks like he has finrot, or maybe too strong a flow is tearing his fins - is that what he looks like now? Or has he changed appearance since that photo was taken? Does he share a tank with other animals? Live plants or artificial ones?

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/hydra

Nice! I love hitchhiking snails - super useful wee pals and if they populate too much you can always toss a few assassin snails in to keep the numbers low

Hygrophila polysperma, perhaps?

It depends. How big is the community tank? Is it heavily planted? How hard is the water, and what temperature is it at?

If you wanna put a betta in a community setting it’s strongly recommended that you make the tank heavily planted and put the community fish in at least a few months before the betta, if the betta goes in first or before the community is settled then he’s more likely to get territorial. I’ve got my male betta in with zebra danios but I think I got lucky, because a lot of people say that danios are some of the worst fish to go with bettas. Corydoras are excellent companions for bettas, since they stay down low and don’t look anything like a betta and are super chill. You could also look at small loaches, so long as they can handle the temperature. Maybe a large group of small fish, like green neon tetras? If there’s loads of fish swimming tightly together, the betta can’t really pick on any specific individual. A 29g would be a mansion for a betta and your boy would love it, so long as it’s set up correctly. Decide if you want this to be a community tank that just happens to have a betta, or if it’s a betta tank with some extra fish. Just make sure to have a backup plan in case things go wrong and you need to separate the group. Another option would be to put the pea puffers in the 29g. Still plant it heavily, but you could add more puffers and make it a beautiful species-only planted tank. Might also be less stressful on the betta, because I know they sometimes don’t adapt well to larger tanks and community settings if they’ve always been alone in a small tank. Oh! If the 29g is currently empty, and you wanted a second betta, you could put a solid divider in the middle of the tank and make it into two 14 gallon spaces. There’s obviously disease-related risks involved with using the same water for multiple tanks, but some people do it with no problems.

I know Maidenhead Aquatics sells a variety of tanks, but they’re very spendy considering how small a lot of them are. Does anyone know good places to get good quality 80-200 litre (20-50 gallon) tanks in the UK, and where to buy stands for them? From what I’ve seen online, it almost seems as if the US has a much larger selection of tanks that are easily available for pretty cheap - is that true, or am I missing something? If I wanted to get a 50 long, for example (how I wish I had the space for one), would I have to get it custom made? Just asking because I’ve been trying to decide how big I wanna go for my largest tank, but I was doing the math and a 40 gallon & basic equipment would cost me at least £700 just to set up. That sounds ridiculously expensive to me.

No problem! You could possibly look at black tiger darios? I’ve been thinking of getting them in the future, they’re small but look rather interesting

I found this article when I googled their name, 150 litres is roughly 40 gallons I believe

I think you’ll be fine numbers-wise, 16 fish in a heavily planted 26 gallon doesn’t seem like all that much to me. I’d suggest letting the plants go in first (give them a wee while to settle in), add some snails to keep the algae down, and add the fish in small numbers - maybe the corydoras first and then add the rainbow shiners. If you want a lidless tank I’d strongly suggest using floating plants. I’ve got 13 fish in a planted 15 gallon and everything is going well, I only do a water change every 10 days or so and never have issues with the parameters - but it took over a year of work to get it to this point.