meadeam

I have a 29 gallon not in use that I have considered putting some North Americans in. If I spend more time down there, it would be nice to have. My bicycle shop is directly behind the POV of this photo, and the laundry is down there as well. I may actually do laundry more if I have some company!

Here is the space in question. Excuse the mess, hopefully the fish won't be offended. As mentioned, it is a drive-in basement. This is the short leg of an "L" shape, where you'd come in and take a left at the end of the room. I don't park my car down there, but you can see I do bring my motorcycle in. It doesn't come and go in the winter, so the door stays closed. It is insulated (the garage door, not the basement) and actually isn't terribly drafty. The furnace is to the left, and exposed ductwork runs around, providing some ambient heat. There is one vent I can open, but most of the heat down there promptly travels upward via the stair way, which isn't so bad since that is generally where I need it. The refrigerator and freezer work, but are not currently in use. Tank wise, I'd put a row of 10g, or perhaps similarly sized totes as in the photo currently housing mystery snails. The tanks would be for quarantine, a tbd breeding project (cories? plecos?) and gender specific live bearer overflow. My concern, and I guess I won't know until I try it, is that I'll have to be running tons of heaters 24/7 just to keep decent temps. I'll have to try insulating a tank and seeing how efficient it is.

My unfinished basement gets down in the low 60s in the Northern Kentucky winter (I'm guessing. I keep the upstairs around 72.) I've never had a tank down there until this summer, and I plan on adding another quarantine tank shortly. I'm wondering if I keep lids on the tanks as well as insulate the back and sides if that will be enough to keep a decent amount of heat in the tanks. I'm not going to add any walls or insulation in the near future. In this house the basement and the garage are one, and there is no good way to separate the two because of how it is laid out. If you've kept tropical tanks in cold-ish rooms, let me know.

Did the cories who perished join the tank together, or did they come in at different Intervals? Did they all come from the same store or breeder? A common link that only they share might provide a clue if not an explanation.

without testing the shelf myself I can't be sure, but from your description I would say it should be fine. In this case you shouldn't need to worry about the shelf being able to support the weight vertically. My concern would be if the shelf will twist, or deform in any way. That is what will make it fail under load. If it doesn't flex in any direction at the vertices, then it is solid. Again though, it is hard to describe how much twist is too much without seeing the shelf. I shoot for near absolute rigidity. You especially don't want movement if the weight is held high on the top shelf.

I can't get them to not breed! I may do this. I don't have a fish to feed shrimp to at the moment. I plan to keep angels in at least a 75 at some point, but that won't be for awhile. A crazy shrimp tank would be cool though. Are the hard to catch without tearing up the tank? I just caught all of my shrimp (twice!) when I moved them, but I had removed all plants and hardscape first.

I didn't even know it's a thing until recently. I got my first ever shrimp, red cherries, from Aqua Huna about a year ago. I started with ten and have we'll into triple digits now. I think most are still coming out red. I don't have a tank setup for culls or anyone to feed them to right now. I'm not sure it's that important to me, but an interesting idea.

Bio-load should be good with adequate filtration, just keep up with the water changes. It sounds like you've kept barbs before? I never have, but they are on my list. I plan to put them in a 33 long or even a a 55. I have a vacant 29 currently, but I don't think it is ideal for them.

I've since started enjoying the mollies. When this was (briefly) mostly a tetra and rasbora tank, it was very peaceful. The mollies add some chaos, but it actually works since they tend to be in the plant canopy, while the schooling fish are in the open water. I do need to keep reproduction down, so that will be an issue at some point. I'll be adding another tank in the not too distant future, but I may indeed end up rehoming some mollies.

I count 10 molly fry. Several of them will be gold dust. It's weird how that trait skipped a generation. Their parents are all black, but the prior generation the female was a gold dust.

My oldest fish, going on 4 years this winter.

So I have a different sort of theory now after thinking about it for awhile. I think this Cory is probably immuno compromised and is expressing an illness that is present in the tank, but the rest of the fish have been able to fight off with their healthy immune systems. I'm leaning toward treating the tank for finrot for fear of more fish getting sick later. Thanks in advance for your thoughts, opinions and advice.

Those shrimplets are pretty tiny. I don't recall transferring any that small, but perhaps I wouldn't have been able to see them. They'd be a week old if they hatched in this tank. The mollies were definitely born in the tank post-move. There's at least one more. All of the current batch of adults are from the same gold dust female and black male. Those were the only two I had at the time. All of their offspring have been black, but one of this newest litter is very light colored so far. I'm not going to get a fry controller after all, but I am going to add a few more females. I'll rely on them to keep their own numbers under control as I know for sure I'll eventually start another tank. My biggest concern with the mollies now is that I don't want them to out compete the cories for food. The mollies eat from all levels. I have to get a lid on this. It is so hard to find a glass or acrylic bowfront lid, so I will have to make one. I hate solid lids, and I don't want to spoil the rimless effect. Especially with the addition of the airstone, I'm going have a lot of water loss and mineral build up from the bubbles and evaporation.

Well that didn't take long...

I wish I had a maco lense that could focus beyond a few inches. I think I am going to build some more hides and keep the shrimp in this tank in spite of the mollies who may try to eat them. They add a cool dimension to the tank. The ones I have more than quadrupled their numbers while dodging cories and a few mollies. The adults free swim and don't get bothered, so it is just the eggs and shrimplets who need to hide. Please don't knock the moss off of the driftwood... it was a pain to attach.

Thanks! Yeah, respiration seems to be normal again. I just ordered another sponge filter and USB air pump to get going for a quarantine tank as well.

Last night while the lights were out I saw most the mollies hovering at the surface. They normally stay in the plant canopy, or at the bottom. This morning they were back down in the plants but they and the cories were all breathing quickly. I normally run an air stone and small sponge filter along with the main filter, but I hadn't put back it in this tank yet. I dropped it in this morning. Hopefully that helps. Water is all good; 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 5-10 Nitrate, pH 7.0, 78.5F. I'd been using more Prime than usual as the cycle got a little out of whack during the moves, but it has been stable for 24hrs now since the last water change.

It's a tough decision. I think for now the plan is to maintain the tank as dutifully as possible and see how it goes. What other parameters can I test for that might uncover a problem? Phosphates? Copper?

Here is a shot of the one in question, and three others. Man he looks rough. Still no sign of him being picked on though. Now that I am scrutinizing them I feel like they should all be fatter. I feed heavily enough that food makes it to the bottom, and I drop pellets and wafers down to them. I actually feel like I feed pretty heavily as I often see the other fish stop eating when there is still food in the water.

yeah, I'm trying. He was out front this morning and I should have grabbed a pic, but now he has retreated into the plants. I generally see him several time per day though.

One of my cories I have just noticed is missing part of his tail fin. I am fairly certain he hasn't been nipped, and none of the other cories have a problem. Since I noticed is fin I've been looking for nipping behavior and haven't seen any. The particular cory may have got the short end of the stick genetically. The poor guy doesn't appear to have eyes. It has never kept him from finding food, and he has done well up to now. He can still swim, just looks rough. I hate to treat the tank for one fish. I'll stay really on top of the water parameters and keep an eye on him. I suppose it is possible I let the nitrates get too high in the past. They were 20-40ppm today and I did a 50% change this morning. Any suggestions are welcome. edit: to be clear, he has eyes, but they are tiny specs and I am pretty sure he is blind. He's been that way since bringing him home, long before the tail fin issue. I know missing eyes could be a sign of attack, but want to be clear that he has never been picked on.

I recently took down three tanks, and consolidated on just one. I'm sure I will branch out into multiple tanks again, but I want to do so thoughtfully instead of in a reactionary fashion. This tank is home to neon tetras, harlequin rasboras, corydoras, mystery snails, red cherry shrimp, and black mollies. The latter I have complained about in a different thread, but I think they'll be ok. Part of the shrimp colony (at least 100, maybe twice that) grew in the presence of black mollies, so I think they would be ok. But I still think I am going to trap the shrimp and move them. I plan to get a single fish to predate the molly fry to keep from getting out of control, and I don't want that fish feeding on shrimp. I still have plants to add. I want as much density as possible down low, while keeping swimming space for the tetras and rasbora in the upper half of the tank. The CO2 is not currently on; I had that running on a different tank. I didn't manage the explosive growth very well, and a few plants took over the tank. I think I will eventually turn it back on, but not until I am sure. When I run the C02, I alternate with an airstone/sponge filter via wifi outlets. It worked well in the past (too well, perhaps). My goal would be to get dense growth, which I know also requires high light. I'll see how things go. I am happy to say I didn't lose a single fish or invertebrate during the tear down, transfer, and rebuild. The cycle stayed up for the most part. I've been seeing some Nitrites in the .25ppm range which I've been treating with Prime and/or water changes. I raised my pH from 6.4 to 7 with crush coral, adding some buffer in the process. I have 0 buffer out of the tap. Hopefully the mollies like that better, I had lost quite a few of them and would have run out if they didn't reproduce. If you look closely in the photo, it appears as though the temp is 79.8. I don't typically run it that warm. I keep my AC at 78 but I had the windows open.

I do need to remind myself that I liked these fish to begin with. What I am realizing is that I had a vision for this particular tank, and the mollies weren't conforming to it. They are already much more adjusted though. I do think I need to catch out a couple males, or add 2-3 females though to lower the stress level and add some more color. I guess this tank is a molly tank even though I planned on something else. The good news is that so far, they only seem to be bothering each other. They aren't chasing the other fish. This morning when the lights came on the pleco was up on the glass, which I've never seen her do in the 2 years I've had her. She has a favorite piece of hollow driftwood she stays in almost all of the time, only occasionally coming down to the substrate for an algae wafer. Hopefully her being up on the glass is a good sign.

Yeah, I'll give everyone some time to settle in. I think they are already doing a bit better. I really like the tank otherwise.

I am very annoyed with my black mollies and kind of wish I hadn't put them in a community tank. They aren't attacking anyone that I am aware of, but they just have such odd behavior. My tetras and rasboras school nicely mid-water, the cories do their thing on the bottom, the pleco hides in her log. But the mollies... they're always darting and diving into the plants, crashing into things and each other. Whenever someone gets near the tank it's sheer panic. This batch were born in my tanks, so although they've been moved lately, they have always been in the same house. I'm hoping they settle down eventually. I have 10 total, and I think I have too many males; they appear to be roughly equal to females in numbers. I don't want them to reproduce, but I loathe trying to move them again as they will be nearly impossible to catch in my heavily planted tank. I just regret putting them in there. Mollies haven't done well in my water, and I wouldn't have them anymore if they weren't so prolific. I think my pH is too low. I've raised it to around neutral with crushed coral. They annoy me, but I'm trying to care for them properly. I might need a reliable fry eater though so I don't have them in perpetuity.