drewzero1

Look before you sit! I really appreciate that nest could be a noun or a verb in this sentence, and both make sense. (There is a bees' nest in the area, or bees are nesting in the area.)

Newcomers in the community this week! Spotted at least six molly fry out and about. I'd been worried about the banjo cats picking them off, but they don't seem interested. (So far at least.) I've really missed having babies in the tank. The male molly has calmed down and doesn't seem to be harassing anyone more than anyone else at this point. I'm sure with three females the place will be crawling with fry soon enough. My hide-and-seek nerite took a ride on the pagoda snail for a few days, and has stayed where he fell off for a week, either dormant or dead. 😆😢 The last male endler has also disappeared. The circle of life is complete in the glass box in my basement. I've been holding back on adding things to the tank, but when the molly fry get a bit bigger I really want a gourami again. We'll see how that goes.

For me the main question with used tanks is why they are getting rid of it. If the reason is apparent (moving house, upgrading, switching hobbies) I get a lot less suspicious of tank condition. I once picked up a "perfectly good" free 55 that I soon found out had damaged braces... should've seen that one filled before I took it. Other than that I've had great experiences with used and cheap-as-free tanks.

I made a canopy for my 20 long when I first set it up, and ended up taking it off pretty quickly. It made the tank look like a little viewing slit on a large slab. However, with the light hanging over my 40B I've been getting fed up with the glare. I plan to build some kind of lampshade to reduce glare without going full canopy. I really like your stand btw, it doesn't look heavy but when you open the doors it's got the beef!

I can only hope. I also have an overdue molly in that tank, so I'm checking for fry every day, but the only babies are the bladder snails.

Banjo catfish! I have two... or at least, I think I do.

They're really subtle, and don't look like much at the store, but in the right light they're so brilliant! I never would have bought them before but I was given some and now I'm hooked. Plus they rival corys in their playfulness and activity level.

(Looking at a growout tank full of fry) "When are you gonna put some fish in here?" (As a coworker's dog is chewing on beef pizzle) "What's that smell? Is it the fish tank?" "Is that as big as they're gonna get?" "You should put a goldfish in there!"

Water hardness? I've heard molting can be affected if there's too much or too little calcium in the water.

To me they look more like Brotia herculea (Hercules snails). I had one that my LFS labeled as a pagoda snail, and spent months fruitlessly searching for another. (Pics in my 40B thread in my sig.)

D'oh! I thought that, but I wasn't sure.

I don't know enough about snakeskins to say for sure, but some other gouramis change colors when they're ready to mate. Male honey gouramis get a black throat, and I wonder if snakeskins might as well. Hopefully someone with more gourami experience can chime in!

I've learned that nothing ever stays the same. Fish come and go, plants grow and die back. We can try to maintain consistency, but time marches on and nature takes its course. When I started my community tank I thought there would be some perfect plateau where the tank would be 'done' and could stay like that for years... but the reality has been that it's always changing, and my goals change as well. And usually I've been worrying too much about the wrong things: What will I do if I get too many endler fry? Didn't matter, I never saw one. Will my gourami get too aggressive? Didn't matter, it got injured and died before it got much bigger. Will racoons eat my pond minnows? Not yet.

I really like guppy grass for fry hides. It can be a bit fragile to begin with, but once it gets going it really grows fast.

My Aponogeton ulvaceous both flowered this spring and died back to the bulb shortly after. They've been slowly putting out new leaves since then. I didn't try removing the flowers, but one broke off accidentally and another stalk soon replaced it.

The new nerite snail has been on vacation! I was looking for shrimp in the WCMM tank and found snail tracks, but I haven't had a snail in there since last summer. Found the newbie hanging out in the top corner of the 40 looking guilty as sin. There's a pretty big gap for the filter hoses and an air manifold with a line running over to the other tank, so I've got a pretty good idea how he got there and back. I'm not even mad!

That's an interesting point... I've always heard that in general fish prefer length to height, but I've also had some fish that wouldn't touch food once it reached the bottom. I'll have to keep that in mind when my jar is ready.

I've used it in my tanks for 4-5 years now and haven't had any issues I could pin on the sand. There was a bit of oil initially, and it was impossible to get it rinsed enough to avoid a week of murky water after setup. I have banjo cats and cories so there is a lot of digging and shuffling in the substrate. The linked thread mentions shrimp, which I hadn't considered: I haven't had shrimp with this substrate aside from one amano I've had a little over a year, and a few RCS I added last week in another tank; I'll keep an eye on them and see how they do in there.

Reminds me of a conversation between two bath toys, recently imagined by my 2-year-old: "Water?" "Yeah." "Bye!" "Bye." "Bye." 🤣

I finally bought a gallon of pickles a few weeks ago. At my current rate of consumption I should be ready to try this around Christmas. 😂

I finally got the test kit and I'm going back to the strips next time. I'm finding that I test way less often when I have to break out the science lab kit every time. With the strips it's just so much quicker and easier... one second dip, thirty seconds to read and you're done. (And in case you haven't heard it here or elsewhere, you can cut the strips in half with a clean, dry scissors to get twice as many tests out of a package!)

I've done some more observation and comparison and the slightly fuzzy plants on the left and right appear to be dwarf water lettuce, and the one in the center might be giant duckweed. Any corrections/suggestions welcome. Mollies have calmed down a little, still some hiding and chasing going on but less than yesterday. The newbies still look stressed but are eating well.

It sounds to me like Florida could have really used Maine-style pet restrictions, as much as I hate to say it. Florida has historically been a hub of the aquatic pet trade in the US because it's a great place to farm fish, but with all of those exotic animals in open ponds outdoors it's impossible to keep them from getting into the wild during floods/hurricanes. My uncle used to live in Cape Coral and we had a lot of fun watching the canal for wildlife... and never ever EVER going in the water!

A few of mine have always looked like that, at least since maturity. Everything I've read suggests those are females carying eggs. I started with 6 in 2020 and they had a bunch of fry last summer. Lost a few adults and a few fry made it to adulthood, so now I have 7. If they spawn again this summer I'm hoping to increase the survival rate, but I'm not too concerned about being overrun.

Today I was at the LFS and spotted a nerite snail clinging to the outside of one of their tanks, near the bottom. I gently released its suction intending to report it as a runaway, but by the time I got to the counter I decided I needed another nerite in my life. So I bought it, and also brought home two female mollies to try to even out the gender ratio (previously 1:1). Since I added them the male molly has just been a heat-seeking missile! He's been chasing and nipping the new mollies and driving them into hiding. I've turned off the light so they can get some rest. This was what I was trying to *avoid* by adding more females.😠 Hopefully after the novelty wears off he'll settle down, but they're already looking pretty stressed. Not a whole lot else to report. I lost one of the pagoda snails a month or two ago, and definitely still have three paleatus cories. The male molly has been in here a few months and hasn't been overly aggressive with the female who was added first. Picked up some assorted floating plants last week when out of town. They were sold as salvinia, but I not at all certain that any of them are actually salvinia. I've been scooping out duckweed to try and give the new plants a chance. Duckweed for scale: The larger plants on the far left and right have fuzzy leaves and longer branching roots. The one in the middle has shiny, thicker leaves. I'll probably go deeper on those in a "name this plant" thread once I've observed them longer.