PedroPete

Here are some tips I found for you 👍 https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/white-cloud-mountain-minnow-care "How to Breed White Cloud Mountain Minnows These minnows are very easy to breed as long as you have at least one male and one female. Sexing white clouds can be a bit tricky, but generally, males are more colorful and females are slightly bigger. All you have to do is provide clean water and good food, and they will continually spawn all throughout the spring to fall breeding season. The adults do not tend to predate on their own babies, but you can increase their survival rate by providing plenty of cover and dense plants, like water sprite and water wisteria. You can also make a DIY spawning mop out of yarn for them to lay their eggs on and then remove the eggs to put in a separate grow-out tank. Raise the newborn fry with tiny foods like infusoria and powdered food, and then graduate them to baby brine shrimp when they are big enough. To get your own school of white cloud mountain minnows, check out our list of recommended fish retailers."

I wasn't sure whether it made more sense to put in Experiments or Journals, but here we go... Did anyone else become mesmerized by the new Neocaridina color form showcased a couple months ago in a post Cory made on YouTube with a video linked to Chris Lukhaup's video about the "Koi Sunburst" Neocaridina davidi shrimp? Well, I, for one, was hooked. Since I live in Europe, and these shrimp had already been imported to Germany, buying them and shipping them into Spain was super easy. I just had to free up some tank space, decide on my budget, and find a time they were in stock. Finally, about 10 days ago, I made the leap and ordered a group of 15. All 15 arrived today in perfect condition, and, let me tell you, these shrimp are top-notch and the company was terrific to work with. I'm beyond excited to have these little gems in one of my tanks. They are highly variable, but all very attractive and photos & video from Chris L are representative of the strain. My photos will be added below. Currently they are in a nano tank with some Heterandria formosa juveniles and a juvenile teacup platy (the last of my group that all died in late winter😢). My plan is to move back the killifish & platy back to my 10 gallon Hf colony and split the shrimp into two groups between two tanks. At least one of the female shrimp even arrived berried, so I am already excited for the possibility of shrimplets in the near future. I am thrilled to see the vibrant colors & patterns these Koi Sunburst shrimp produce. I’ll try to keep y’all posted.

I think endler or guppy.

Sending you the vibes you need to face reworking the betta tank, @asondhi 🙂Thank you for sharing your journey with us! Also, there is some REALLY great advice in this thread. Thank you, all, for the manageable steps and solutions. I'm sure they'll help out more folks than you'll ever know! My 2 cents were.... - time limits for maintenance and breaking up bigger tasks into smaller ones, which you can choose to "chunk" together or not...depending on how you feel. - water changes as described above - use the co-op's algae scrubbers or razor blade or similar product to clean hardwater stains near top (those always pull my eye on my own tank and decrease my enjoyment) - limit light as described above - manually pull out hair algae using chopstick(s) [and determine how much algae you're willing to live with in the short term and long term] - add at least 1 amano & 1 nerite snail if you have the time and money - find time to spend interacting and watching the betta and rasboras live their little lives in a such a neat ecosystem.

Lovely tank and project! Congrats 🙂 Keep us posted! Oh, and my best guess for the fry is endler/guppy.

Lots of good ideas in this thread ! You could do multi shell dwellers ( I just started my first colony of them this week) or the dwarf red Platys (those seem to be more rare / in higher demand). I am loving my least killifish a lot, and they are very easy to breed.

I agree with @lewk - photos please 😄 I have ricefish, too (black, wild type /gray, orange head, platinum, and mixed/"mutt" from LFS). Love them. I don't personally keep shrimp with my medakas, but I do keep them with guppies and least killifish. I would imagine that the ricefish and shrimp could coexist, but some baby shrimp would become fish food and some medaka eggs would become shrimp food. I do think it could work, especially if you use floating breeding mops for the rice fish and add some bricks/rock piles for the shrimp to hide in.

Is the opening's diameter 3cm or the circumference? With a decent substrate bed (fertilized substrate, gravel, sand mix - or gravel/fertilized substrate/sand layers), you could definitely get a neat jungle going. If you get the right tool, you could potentially weight the roots down of vallisneria, drop them in, and then use the tool to plant a few in the middle. They would eventually spread, of course. Otherwise, you could do just gravel/sand, then a mass of java moss, with the middle being a pile of darker lava rocks, some with java ferns glued on them. A long poker-type tool could help re-orient all of those components, making it less complicated to set up. Potentially, you could float hornwort or limnophila sessiliflora (like cabomba), if needed, but their needle-like leaves get shed somewhat easily, which would make a mess. Guppy grass could be a nice alternative for floated bunch of plants. Keep us posted 🙂

Your tank looks great!! What about Vallisneria Nana, Hygrophila Siamensis 53b, intermixed with the Rotala. Perhaps some Potamogeton gayi mixed in, too. So, decrease the amount of rotata and mix in the other two/three for variation? Yes, some of these are stems that would need trimming, but maybe (?) not as quickly? Maybe add some java fern in the mid grown between the wood? You could also decrease the background plants to just be around the wood - basically more of an island look. On the hand, you could add skinnier manzanita style branches on their side between and use buce, java fern, and moss to create a background of sorts - more open but interesting visually.

Baby production is pretty slow, and baby LKs are akin to shrimplets in size, so overpopulating the 5 gallons would take some time, in my opinion. Rehoming babies will be important down the road, but they will also replace the adults that pass on. My gripe from my foray into Thai micro crabs (10 years ago now) is that they are so difficult to view and enjoy in aquaria. Very cool invert, but hard to enjoy like other inverts. Perhaps a single CPO dwarf crayfish would do well in a well covered 5 gallon on the Aqueon stand. They are very entertaining, but true escape artists (I loved mine for the 4-5 days it took for him to figure out how to escape my 8 gallon tank).

I've not kept pea puffers, but if you want to keep a pea puffer with another small fish - maybe consider the least killifish. They are tiny, not super active, entertaining in their mannerisms, and breed slowly enough that they won't overpopulate from one month to the next. I keep my group in 8 gallons with lots of java moss and red cherry shrimp. Due to hiding spaces in moss, baby shrimp and fish seem to be able to survive just fine to keep both populations going and growing.

I agree - Pearlweed and S.repens.

cool vinegaroon!

Gorgeous plants! An idea - I have an 8 gallon full of java moss, so I ended up pushing it back behind an interesting piece of driftwood, using nice Wio gravel to make a foreground, and letting loose red cherry neos and least killifish. Both are breeding like crazy and it's a very entertaining tank to watch - like a tiny jungle.

This is so funny to me when I see it! They are so small but have such big personalities haha

Happy parents sounds great! My experience suggests the ricefish prefer low current, so a baffle of some sort might be a good idea (although the water lettuce and hyacinth sounds ideal - including for breeding).

Have you seen any medaka fry yet? I use java moss for spawning and find that if I don't remove the moss, the fry that are born don't last due to parental predation. On the flip side, most a bunch of java moss after a week into a spare tub, jar, critter keeper, whatever, results in a bunch of fry hatching, which I then move to a grow out tub 🙂 Hope you get some babies yet this summer!

I have LK, too! Aren't they fun!? I got a group in January, then found a good deal on Aquabid in July and got a second group. I think the first babies I noticed weren't until march-ish. I remember expecting babies earlier...but after that I feel like I am constantly finding new tiny ones. I have most in an 8 gallon tank almost completely filled with java moss, which they love stalking through. the tank also holds a bunch of cherry shrimp. I had heard that the LK would eat the neo babies, but i haven't noticed a decrease in shrimp production.. The front of the tank is open, and they come out to say hi when I sit in front and feed. Very personable and engaging fish! I started an experiment adding one fry to an outdoor tub of medaka fry (about 5 gal) to see how it grew. Boy, it just about three weeks, it went from tiny to recognizably female and nearing adult size. I swear...so fast! I added a small male to the mix a few days ago to see if I can get her to have at least one fry in the next month and a half or so. I am a biology teacher, and I had a couple kids in my ecoclub set up a a gallon mason jar ("ecosphere") with two cherry shrimp during the winter, and later this spring, i added a small LK fry just for fun, and it did fine with regular (tiny) water changes. he went back in with the family before summer vacation started, though. Keep us posted :D This tiny US native is so underrated and so fun to keep!

Very nice color! Looks a little like scarlet / chili endlers to me (not exactly)... https://www.google.com/search?q=scarlet+chili+endler&rlz=1C5GCEM_en___US962&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnxe3R2sT5AhUE04UKHfsnCU0Q_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1183&bih=678&dpr=2&safe=active&ssui=on

That's so exciting! My vote is to net out the fry or even use a cup to collect them (I use small deli cups or bottle caps to move my medaka ricefish fry) and keep them in a smaller, more manageable specimen container or jar or whatever to feed and clean easier. Sure your big tank has more edible microlife, but you could also monitor the fry more easily. Just my two cents 🙂

I also think you could add the amanos now. I like to add them at the quite early on of any new tank to help with cycling, melting plants, getting ahead of algae, etc. I set up an 11 gallon tank with guppies, shrimp, and pygmy corys last fall. I found my guppies often outcompeted my pygmy cories, even though i had sinking pellets and blood worms for them as opposed to a variety of floating foods for guppies. Just FYI to keep an eye on. I'm not sure of your lighting situation, but pearlweed, dwarf sag, and maybe a vallisneria nana would probably look good in your tank. Drip acclimation videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=drip+acclimation+shrimp oh, and friendly reminder that quarantining new fish is a very good idea 🙂

Hi folks, Thank you so much for your input! I really appreciate you sharing your perspective and experience. I hadn't realized the sparkling gourami were such voracious micropredators. I had thought the water parameters might be an issue. I have hard water here, which is lovely for my livebearers...but sounds like less than ideal for the gourami. @Patrick_G I love pygmy corys, and I have them in another tank (11 gallon cube with vienna guppies)! Makes me wonder if I might be able to breed both pygmy corys and H.f. in the same tank at some point down the road. Kuhli loaches would be interesting, but I think I prefer to go with Neo shrimp. Anyway, have a great rest of your day!

Hello, quick question - I have 8 Heterandria formosa in an 8 gallon tank. I wanted to add shrimp, but then I remembered sparkling gourami as a beautiful nano fish I haven't kept yet. Do you think these 2 fish species are compatible in a seasoned / cycled planted nano tank? Any tips welcome!

I love the scape! Is that Hakkai stone? I love it!

Agreed with all the other advice above - and I recommend changing water , at least 10% but up to 60% every few days… for the first two weeks. That can help prevent algae, too. Nerites and amano shrimp can help stay on top of algae, too.