Sykes

Have you tried asking Petsmart? If they're not legal for you to own, then they're not legal for them to sell locally, so if they recently stopped carrying them they should be able to tell you if that's the reason or if they'll be getting more in stock. Allegedly this website (Arizona game and fish department) has a full list of restricted pets on it somewhere, but I'm having difficulty finding it. From what I could find on other sites, it sounds like the apple snail and chinese mystery snail are a no-go. I didn't see anything about nerite snails though. They also require brackish water to reproduce, so seems less likely they'd be considered an invasive species to make a restricted list, but I don't know for sure.

A week should be good. If I'm not mistaken, I think Cory actually recommended a week on a recent live stream.

I haven't, but don't see why you couldn't. As I understand it, the waste water is basically the same as your tap water except everything is in higher concentrations. Actually tempted to try it now to cut down on my water waste (though simply changing less water is far more effective for that).

I picked up a half dozen about a month ago and have them in a 75 g planted community tank with some featherfins, peacock gudgeons, and kuhli loaches. They've seemed pretty easy so far; I haven't really had to do anything special for them. Care-wise, I pretty much think of them as small bristlenose plecos. I assume they eat some of the scrap foods that fall to the bottom, but a vast majority of the time I just see them munching on algae. Here's a picture of one of mine attached to guppy grass I had floating. I suspect he's just eating the algae off it, I haven't seen any plant damage from them.

Harassment seems like a potential culprit then. If you have space, you might consider separating the males and females, at least temporarily. If not, my only thought would be to offer lots of hiding places. Or get more females... I thought 2:1 female:male tended to be a pretty good ratio (I believe that's the ratio I used for guppies in the past, but it's been a while), but someone more experienced may have more insight there.

What's your male:female ratio? If males are outnumbering females then harassment could be a concern, especially if they didn't have any time to recover after bearing fry. Have you noticed harassment in their behavior?

My go to for white spots on a guppy would be ich, but it's hard to tell from the picture. Almost looks like it could just be an air bubble. Is this a recent addition?

I'm not sure how you've even added that many. I've had it on my wishlist for weeks and it's been out of stock. Still shows out of stock when I check the site now.

Thanks all!! I think I got too caught up in the 'RO removes everything' mindset to differentiate between gases and solids. Seems so blindingly obvious now. I'll add an air stone to my RO storage and redo some tests using aged RO water, then report back in a week or so with results. @Cory I like your suggestion of a no water change tank in order to keep the pH down. I've been trying to move that direction anyway. I have a 100% tap water planted tank that's only been getting a water change every 2-3 months, and the pH in it has stabilized at about 8.4 vs the 8.7 of the tap. I'll try establishing something similar but starting with a tap/RO mix to see if I can get a stable lower pH, ideally with no water changes except for top off. Are there any particular tests you do to make sure mineral levels don't get too low for the plants? Would something like a GH test be sufficient or would I need to test for more specific things like Calcium?

I expect either will be fine, but just watch whichever one is getting the change for any weird behavior during the first couple days and adjust if necessary.

It might not strictly be necessary if you don't have any chlorine or chloramine in your water to deal with, but prime (and most aquarium conditioners) also have other benefits of detoxifying heavy metals, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Heavy metals in particular aren't generally testable by any standard aquarium test strips/kits, so I'd still recommend using a conditioner such as prime to be on the safe side.

I've always kept my dry foods in a cabinet and haven't experienced any fish losing interest in them through the end of a container, which can be a few months. Fridge would probably be better but... I'm lazy. There are other things you can do to extend shelf-life though: Keep it cool. If not using a fridge, I mean room temperature here. Don't set the food on top of a heated aquarium, or worse, on top of the light. Keep it dry. One wet hand into the food jar and it'll go bad in no time. Lower humidity in the room doesn't hurt either. Keep it sealed. This is the one that's hard to control because you need to open it daily to feed, but at least don't break the seal until you're ready to use it regularly and always close the lid after feeding.

I have used salt at low levels in planted tanks without ill effect, but not sure that's a strategy I'd use to try to control snails. Seems like a risky game to play. Another option I'd consider: Assassin snails. They'll seek out pest snails but don't reproduce readily in most freshwater aquariums and in my experience won't harm shrimp.

I've kept both harlequins and CPDs as high as 78 and they've done well. I'd guess they could do 81, but can't say for sure. I'd also suspect that your apistos would be okay to come down a few degrees if needed.

I've generally tried to do as much as I can in tap water to avoid the extra maintenance and difficulties that can come with trying to 'chase pH', and have had relative success despite liquid rock coming out of my tap (pH 8.7 after 24 hrs, GH and KH 20). I'd really like to venture out into some species that require softer, more acidic water though, especially for breeding. I've been experimenting in empty tanks and seem to be able to achieve my target values when first dosing, but can't keep those values stable. My approach so far has been: Create 0 TDS water with an RODI system. Add Alkaline buffer to reach target KH. Add Acid buffer to reach target pH. Add Equilibrium to reach target GH. For my initial test, I targeted pH of 7.0, GH and KH of 5-6. On day 0 (i.e. shortly after mixing), my tests showed that I'd hit each target within the accuracy of the test. I continued testing pH on subsequent days though and saw a steady rise for about a week before finally stabilizing at ~8.2. This is a new tank with literally nothing in it except RODI water with the above additives. Is gas exchange somehow causing that significant of a shift? Is there some latent interaction with the buffers, or some other cause I'm overlooking? In recommendations for how to edit my process so the resultant water has a more stable pH? I'm not as concerned with the exact number as long as it's stable and somewhere in the slightly acidic to neutral range (maybe 6.2-7.2).