meadeam

I have that same 36 bow front. I too am not super fond of the depth when doing maintenance, but for the space and viewing angles it works well, and it does look good. I am running it without a lid, and a pair of 600mm Fluval Aquasky lights with a black background. Still setting it up, but it is looking good so far. I should be starting a journal instead of highjacking this thread!

Nice tank. I like the 20 gallon long footprint. I recently took down a 29. The added height I felt didn't accomplish much other than a bit more water volume. Someday I may build a rack of themed species tanks with 20g longs. I like the 33 long as well, but they seem to be hard to find.

The snails came from a very heavily planted tank with tons of emergent growth, but this will be trimmed back and more fish will be introduced. I don't think I can continue putting the amount of algae wafers and blanched veggies in to feed this many snails. Plus it occasionally makes the water small awful for a few hours. Thanks for the shipping instructions. Hopefully somebody needs some snails. I've got mine in a rimless tank now, so they can't hide their eggs behind the frame anymore.

I might take it one step further and use individually labeled vials. I buy plastic test tubes with caps on Amazon. That way the roommate won't accidentally open more than one compartment and inadvertently dump multiple feedings at once. Remove as much room for error as possible.

I have probably 50+ mystery snails across three tanks. They are all part of a clutch that hatched before I could remove the eggs. I am consolidating down to a single 36g tank. Right now the 36 has about 20 snails in it, which isn't overwhelming, but I don't think I want to add the rest. I could probably due with less than 20, really. Other inhabitants include red cherry shrimp, black neons, harlequin rasbora, cories, a pleco, and some black mollies. I'd like to add some more tetras and/or rasbora, and a few more cories. If you want any golden mystery snails I will send them to you free of charge. I'll need to learn how to ship them properly, but I assume it is even easier than shipping fish.

I may slowly change my parameters and see how it goes. I have such low buffer out of the tap, and fairly low pH. I think I will add some buffer with the crushed coral, and thus a bit of pH (currently at 6.4 so I have a bit of room). I need to keep gH from climbing much higher though, it is already on the 'very hard' end of the scale. For some reason mollies have not done great in my tanks. I've lost quite a few to unknown causes. I have tetras, rasbora, cories, and a bn pleco who are all a couple years old and doing well.

Interesting. I may experiment with crushed coral a bit.

well, seems like black water might be a no-go for the black mollies. Let me know if you've found otherwise.

I really like the look of blackwater, and understand that it does have some benefits. I've been considering adding catapa leaves to my 36g bowfront which is home to black mollies, harlequin rasbora, black neon tetras, cories, and a bn pleco. I also have (too many) mystery snails, and a breeding colony of neocaridinia. Substrate is sand, with bagged aquasoil underneath. I have several pieces of driftwood, and the tank is moderate to heavily planted. pH is 6.4. Water is very hard according to the Coop test strips, with very low buffer. I'll do some research of my own, but I'm wondering what adding the leaves will do to my parameters, and if everyone will be happy.

I had around 15 black mollies in a a 36g. They were all from the same generation, and fully grown. A few of them reproduced again, and 4 of those offspring survived past the eaten-by-parents stage. Then the first generation started dying off one at a time. I'd notice a fish looking lethargic, or sitting on the bottom, then in a day or two it would be gone. Naturally I checked water parameters; no ammonia or nitrite, small amount of nitrate within acceptable range, no chlorine. 75-77f. My water is hard with low buffer (I will look at the exact numbers). When fish kept dying, I did a water change regardless and two rounds of API General cure followed by the requisite water changes. Fish kept dying until there was only on left. I thought he made it, but 10 days after the second-last of his generation he also died. They were around 1 year old. The 4 offspring of that ill-fated generation are still in the tank, and have never shown any signs of illness through it all. They are less than half-grown at this point. Flourite substrate, moderately planted, Oase filtosmart thermo 100. Other inhabitants include a few stray shrimp, and about a dozen mystery snails that were quite small when the fish were still alive and are reaching full size now. I moved the snails in because the tank is rimless and I wanted them in a place I could easily find the eggs before they hatched. Any idea what may have happened? I have a different 29g tank with tetra, rasbora, and corydora with some approaching 4 years old. Maybe mollies just don't like my water?

Order online, or try to save one from a big-box store? I kind of don't want to support the sale of betta at those places if they can't care for them properly while in the store. The LFS doesn't sell them, so it's big blue, or order online.

Yo yo loaches apparently like them, and Corydoras are supposed to eat the eggs but I have a school of Cories and yet dozens of bladder snails. My cories are fat, maybe they ate all they could. Bettas will eat them as well if they are on the smaller side. I have a tank waiting for a betta. Hopefully he likes to eat snails.

It took months for the bladder snails I have to appear. They came in with a batch of plants from Aquarium Co-op. None of my other tanks have Co-op plants, and none have bladder snails. they are so tiny it takes awhile before you can see them, but then when you notice them suddenly you've got dozens! I've chosen to leave them alone for the time being. If the population doesn't go too crazy they are a welcome addition. My mystery snails have laid thousands of eggs but to my knowledge none have hatched. They either dry out, or become submerged. I haven't deliberately attempted to hatch any yet. When the tiny bladder snails first appeared I thought that a few Mystery snails hatched and survived, but that is not the case.

I'm thinking to start with cories and white clouds (not in the same tank). I'll try to scape each tank in a way to maximize fry survival while still being a display tank. I think my shrimp are trying to breed in the heavily planted 29 they are in, but there is a small school of cories in there hoovering up everything they can find. There are some places the shrimp can reach that that cories can't, but if any survive it won't be a large number.

If you mean 85 degrees F, that might be a bit on the warm side unless I am mistaken. I've had bad luck with dwarf gourami as well. I've had 2 since rejoining the hobby a couple years ago, and neither of them lasted a full year. I still have other fish from that period. I am sure I made a mistake, but whatever it was I don't feel it was an obvious, egregious error. Gourami are cousins of the betta, and some betta (I've heard... never kept one myself) lay down on their side when resting. Perhaps your Gourami does as well? Otherwise I would suspect a swim bladder issue. If it were a bladder issue, he probably wouldn't be able to right himself though. If he swims normally and responds to food, he may just be an odd fish.

I commuted to and from downtown Seattle from Bainbridge for several years, always as a walk-on, or on a bicycle. It was a great way to commute, and though I got tired of it sometimes I made sure to appreciate the uniqueness of the mode of travel. Now that I don't live there anymore I'm glad I did. Photo 1: Leaving Eagle Harbor on either the MV Tacoma or the MV Wenatchee. Photo 2: Halfway across, looking toward Alki and that big mountain.

I lived in Seattle (and on Bainbridge Island) from the late 90s to late 00s, but wasn't aware of Aquariumcoop at the time as it was during a non-fish keeping part of life.

That's cool. I have some White Clouds I accidentally got in a bag with black neon tetras from Pet Smart a little over a year ago. I didn't know what they were until recently (assumed they were a type of tetra) but I really like them. Mine have never bred that I know of, but I keep them with tropicals at ~77F so that may be why. I am thinking about getting some more for an outdoor tub this summer. I may start the tub indoors this winter and just not heat it.

Good to know. I have been thinking about lots of leaf litter and botanicals, maybe some flat rocks that I have in addition to some compact growth plants. It would be cool to get some baby cories going down there.

Thanks for the suggestions! Some of these I haven't kept before, so would be good to try anyway. I'll reasearch a few and see what resonates.

Other than live bearing species, can you recommend a fish to breed in a 10g? Ideally I'd like to be able to leave the fry with the parents until they are big enough to need their own tank, but I know the chances of that working out are pretty low. I'd like to try fish rather than invertebrates, though I do want to eventually breed shrimp as well.

I have a bottle I received last month, and while no pads have fallen off of strips I was using at the time, a loose pad shook out of the bottle once in about 10 tests so far.

I've now read a bunch of things that lead me to agree. Apparently they are not always red, and sometimes turn red after a few molts. oh well, no big deal.

Grabbed some poor quality photos, but it gets the job done. When these came in they were all about half the size of the one on the left, and I could not tell a difference between any of them. They were all basically brown. As they grew and colored up, I started to see the red emerging. The Reds must be close to, or fully grown now. They are twice the size (scale in the photos is not accurate) as the translucent bodied ones. It's hard to say how many I have of each out of the original 10; I only ever see 3-4 of either of them at a time. Yeah, so definitely not ghost shrimp, but not red either.