Scapexghost

Definetely check out zenzos channel. 20 might be to small for mudskippers since once you add a land area itll be a lot less than 20. Whatever you end up doing, i would add bumble bee gobies. Supet cool fish. Ill tag @Zenzo sense he'll know a lot more than me.

If your looking for budget options, research tums and baking soda. Do a lot of. Research firdt though

I think if it absord nitrates or potassium that would be the main selling point. So your probably fine

Hornwort has a bit of a christmas tree look. You could do a sand fall with white sand

Tiger barbs are like kids. They need other kids around or theyll bug the adults all day. So yeah get more tiger barbs. The up down movement is pretty typical of a lonely fish.

First Update: babies! Guppy finally dropped her fry. A good amount from the looks of it, but im not gonna bother trying to count them. I'm not sure if she dropped her fry today or yesterday, since I wasnt in my dorm much yesterday. She last dropped fry on 8/5, making it almost a month exactly. This is my first time trying to colony breed guppies, or any fish for that matter, so it'll be interesting to see. On the rest of the tank, most of the plants have grown very little, except the ancharis and water lettuse. The water lettuce covered the entire surface, so I removed some of it to improve gas exchange. I left most of it to give the fry places to hide. I don't think I'll do much more with the plants until the fry are larger. I do want to order some plants, specifically dwarf hair grass, pink flamingo, and more microsword. Also one of the shrimp died :(. Not sure why since none of the others died yet that one died almost immediately. Worst part is it might have been my only female.

Im pretty sure anacharis kill green water or at least hinders it. Green water is a nightmare so hopeful its true. From my experience it is.

I wouldn't change the water params in any way while fish are pregnant. A big change can lead to a failed pregnancy. If the fish is comfortable getting pregnant at these temps she'll be comfortable giving birth at these temps. Guppies give birth year round so i wiuldnt think temp plays any role. In general i would avoid keeping guppies above 86°.

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/led-aquarium-lighting

Do you have a second test kit? Could be a faulty reading. Not sure what else it could be tbh.

Itll probably work if theres ton of cover.

Frogs usually need frozen foods, tetras do good on crushed flake. If none of them are eating, it could be health problems.

They won't get out of control if you don't feed super heavy, especially in a tank with fish. Also, shrimp have a fairly short lifespan so i would consider breeding them.

I've had a lot of success with water lettuce with a lid, high flow and surface agitation are much more detrimental. Glass is much clearer than water. I wouldn't worry about the light being blocked by 3/8" of glass when you have 12"-24" of water blocking light.

Not sure but i will say that they are slightly beneficial to the tank, unless you have rediculously hard water.

If this is your first time getting shrimp, get cherry shrimp. Easy, pretty, prolific. Cant go wrong with them. Will do well with plecos. For fish, celestial pearl danios are a good choice, chili rasboras are another, green neon are great too, so basically any chill, small schooling fish. Neon tetras would be the cheapest and most widely available, rummynose are great schoolers but a little finicky. I would avoid dartier species like zebra danios and silver tipped tetras.

Right. Wouldnt want to drive my roommate nuts with a loud filter

This has been a pretty eventful week as I just moved into my dorm after transfering universities. This has been a great and terrible time. College is fun, exciting and terrifying. Being 300 miles away from my family outways being 300 miles away from my fish tanks. But, while I can't bring a tiny version of my parents, i can bring a tiny version of my fish tanks. The dorm allows tanks up to 5 gallons, but i don't play by the rules so i got a 5.5. Now a 5 gallon tank is gonna have to be pretty awesome to make up for the 5 tanks I'm leaving behind. So, for starters, I decided to do a dirted tank. Mainly because I have never done one before. My understanding is one of the main downsides of a dirted tank is that you have to tear it down after 12 months or so, but i have to tear this tank down anyway in 8 months. Since i have to tear down this tank in 8 months, i have to do something to jumpstart the plants, since I don't want to tear down the tank once it starts looking good. Hopefully the dirt does this. Deciding on the fish was difficult. I thought about a pea puffer, but i didn't want to have to make frequent trips to get frozen foods since i don't have a car and my fridge is barely big enough to fit my food. I thought about a betta of course, specifically a black and white crowntail, but i didn't think a single betta would be interesting enough. I settled on a pregnant purple dumbo mosiac guppy, which is either from twin city guppies or a decendant of a guppy from twin citys. I had her for a couple months now as she was just sitting in my qt tank. I didnt want to put her with my other guppies as to not contaminate the line, and my other tanks had fish that would be to aggressive to keep a guppy in. So, taking her with me was actually convenient. I know keeping a guppy in a 5.5 is somewhat controversial, but she doesn't look cramped and as it is my only tank, I can pretty easily stay on top of water quality. Obviously, the guppies will overpopulated the tank, but I can always pop the extras in my home tank or sell them to my local store. I also brought a nerite snail for algae control. Every tank needs a nerite. Unfortunately, my local store didn't have a great selection of plants the week i left, so i had to make do with whatever my home tank can spare. This ended up being some anacharis stems, a handful of water lettuce, a little bit of micro sword, and a single dwarf sag. I'll probably order some dwarf hair grass once the coop gets it back in stock, but this is what i have to work with for now. The rocks i actually picked up on the way in santa rosa nm, the hole town is covered in these rocks, and i got these from a local lake, and you cant get much more realistic than that. It's a pretty place btw, definetely worth looking around if you are driving through. The hardware is a nicrew classic led, not the strongest light in the world but such a small tank doesnt need the strongest light in the world. The filter is some weird pseudo internal filter designed for 3 gallons, hopefully not strong enough to suck in any babies. I have a tiny 50 watt heater and the tank itself is one of those generic aqueon tanks. The lid is a diy disaster. I forgot the silicone at home and the glass cutter a got was terrible, so its basically three pieces of broken glass glued together. If you want a 5 gallon dorm tank, just get the fluval flex kit. Setting it up was kind of hectic since by the time i finished moving in i was up for over 24 hours and i hadn't even painted the background yet and the poor guppy was in a little bag for like 12 hours. But, somehow, i managed. Somehow i didnt contaminate the tank with my paint covered hands either. After a few days i biked over to my new local fish store to get some dwarf hair grass. Unfortunately, they didnt have any. I didnt want to leave empty handed so i got 4 cherry shrimp and a little susswassertang that came with them. In retrospect this tank is no where near seasoned enough to support shrimp. My best idea is to feed a little heavy in hopes of making up for it. Tl;dr this is the tank: Inch of organic miracle gro (although more like half an inch after being smushed by the gravel) Inch of gravel (originally planning two, but tjis tank is small enough as it is) Rocks One pregnant female purple dumbo mosiac guppy One nerite snail 4 cherry shrimp (i think i female and 3 males) Anacharis Water lettuce Microsword Dwarf sag Nicrew classicled Filter(?) Heater (dont know the temp, forgot to get a thermometer) Water parameters: ? Probably should check, especially in a new tank, but the shrimp look fine even after a couple days so they cant be too bad, right? I know this forum has a bit of a no unsolicited advice policy, so while im not specifically lookibg for any advice, i am open to it, so feal free to post any questions, suggestions, comments, or critiques.

This is one of those things i know i should do, but don't. I don't clean out new aquariums before using them. I've never had an issue before.

Out of curiosity, what's the reason behind feeding scuds over a more widely available live food?

I can barely grow aquarium plants and you guys are out here growing pineapples in your tank😅

My uneducated guess is that you'll get all regular mollies

Low iron glass is clearer than regular glass, but both are much clearer than water. When you look at your fish, you are looking through way more water than glass, so putting so much attention into the class is misput imo.

Co2s are mostly glorified algaecides, they don't directly effect plant growth at least not noticably

$200 for a used 65 is not worth it imo. Buying a used tank is a huge risk and your not even saving that much money. Considering the state of the stand i wouldn't be confident in the integrety of the tank. You can get a new one for less if you wait for a sale.