KittenFishMom

@Seattle_Aquarist I'm looking for Safe-t-sorb in our Central NY Tractor Supply stores. Do you have an item number or does Tractor Supply spell the name differently? How much would I need for a 10 gallon tank? How about a 55 gallon tank? How deep do you usually have the SAFE-T-SORB? Do you cover it with pebbles, or is it on the surface in the wonderful photo? Thanks so much ! I am going to be planting my first tank soon.

I want to start a daphnia colony, and have all the standard question: Any advice on where to get clean live daphnia or good daphnia eggs? I think there are 2 sizes. should I try growing both? If yes, should I grow them together or separately? If no, which is better? Any recommendations on containers/tanks/environment? Any recommendations on feeding them? I have several scud colonies, and my brine shrimp colony is well underway. Any recommendations/tips/tricks for those are also welcome. I have also started a bunch of mangrove seedlings. I put one in each colony, and several in the fish tanks. I am hoping to look forward to lots of interesting replies.

@1moretank Thanks for explaining how it works. All summer I had a large number of lake crayfish in my tank to clean up the tank. They loved digging out every plant because food settles where the plants slowed the water flow. I tried pots with stones on top, but nothing worked. These crayfish were big when I caught them and got much bigger and stronger over the summer. Now I am down to the one smallest one, and he has not dug anything out of the Easy Planters, just loves hiding under them when they bridge 2 big rocks. I think I will start planting at one end and work my way across. I kept hearing about hospital tanks and salt bath and had the feeling that people often had to net fish. It makes sense that if things are started out right, then fish don't need to be removed all that often. Thanks again

I have been feeding my betta a frozen bloodworm or 2 when I thaw them out for my native tank. He really likes them. Today I was readying up about corys and how much they like bloodworms, so I put some on the bottom of the tank for the cory, who came out and ate some. It was great fun to see him come out of hiding. Now my betta fish has plumped up, and I think he has eaten ever scrap of bloodworm that the cory did not eat. I thought the betta only ate at the surface. I have my fingers crossed that it all comes out in the end. These are not dried worms. I hope he does not get constipated. I guess I should order a batch of live daphnia from Amazon and get a colony of them going to keep on hand. Never a dull moment.

No, I do have fun. I kept getting Local Fish Store LFS mixed up with Long Shelf-life Food LSF. That made many sentences very confusing.

I'm very new. I have a lot of fun trying to figure out the acronyms and vocabulary that the people who know the answers to my questions use. I am getting there, but when a bunch are used in the same paragraph, I can get rather lost.

I want to work on planting the tank, Right now, almost all my plants are floating free. There are some plans in HOB filters including a very happy turnip that is growing like crazy. roots spilling down the waterfall into the tank. I am confused about how you vacuum the substrate in a planted tank, It seems like you would disturb the roots. I am also confused about how you net fish in a well planted tank.

My plan was 6 or 8 endlers, 6 neon tetras and 3 or 4 corys and 1 male betta in a 10 gallon tank. I got the guppies because they only had 3 endlers. Now the guppies have all died. so I have 3 endlers, 1 cory and 1 male betta. If the corys get big, I probably should not get the tetras. I was hoping for a colorful tank. I also wanted the corys as a clean up crew, with the scuds.

My guess is that she was grouping plecos and corydoras. I do want the same variety of Corydoras, but I really don't want to go back to that store. I said I thought I should get several corys when i was buying, and the clerk said "no it is best to start with one". I put out an algae pellet tonight and got a good look at him/her. A Corydoras for sure. many spots. not panda. I think it is a Corydoras paleatus

@AndEEssI called the CountryMax store where I bought the Corydoras and they said it was pacospomous Corydoras but were not sure they were spelling it correctly.

@AndEEss How many Corydoras do you recommend to I goT to keep in a ten gallon tank with 6-8 male endlers and 1 male betta? I have been trying to get a photo of the one I have, but he darts from hiding place to hiding place very quickly. Thanks

You also admitted that there was a problem and came to the forum with lots of clear details to ask for help. It is reasonable to feel bad about the loss, but remember you handled the situation very responsibly. Don't beat yourself up about this, be proud of your ability to keep your head and look for help and ways to improve the situation. No one gets everything right every time.

@eddie462 I hope things are looking better in the morning. Many people have replied saying they have used peroxide in they tanks in one way or another. You were acting in good faith and noticed and reacted to the problem immediately. It doesn't get much better than that. Hang in there !

@Minanora Where can I find the instruction for your peroxide dip treatment for plants? Also being a newbie, What is "fishless fuel", "a 20G dose", and "sponge blocks"? Is the first 20G dose and the 3 week later 20G feed the same thing? After the 3 weeks, do you keep feeding the 20G feed daily? Then Do you keep using it as a quarantine tank. If you do, Once a set of fish are quarantined and removed, do you do anything to the tank before you start a new set of fish to quarantine? I think this means it will be about month or more before I can add any new Corydoras to the one that is hiding by himself in the current QT tank? Am I right?

@PineSong Thanks. I guess if the Maracyn is likely to kill the cycle, then there isn't a lot of benefit it trying to get the tank cycled before I start the quarantine. I have a huge punch bowl full of hornwort I have been quarantining for over a week by the siding glass doors. I can put a bunch of that in the QT to make it a better place. I can put gravel on the bottom too. (I have never bought fish before, always caught/captured native fish in front of the cottage, before the group I bought when I got the betta. Quarantining is very new to me)

A very random thought that might help is to take some tank water out and fill a blender half way and run the blender to get air into the water and put it back in the tank. This might help get some chlorine out too. I don't know if it will help, but it should not make things worse. Please let me know how things are going.

If you kept the water you took out for the change, you might try putting the fish in that. (I keep mine to water plants.) If you did not keep the old water, you might try charging out some of the water with distilled or purified drinking water. If you want to cool the water, you can put ice (or anything frozen in your freezer) into a zip lock bag and put it in the water for short periods of time, while monitoring the temp closely. Cool water hold more oxygen than warm. but changing the temp quickly is hard on the fish. Peroxide acts like bleach at full strength. It oxidizes and kills germs. If you were spaying it on the glass to kill algae, maybe too much got into the water. I have diluted peroxide and used it to raise oxygen in a water that had low oxygen due to heat. In small dilute amounts it is a life saver for fish that are suffocating. It breaks down into O2 and water. I've never used it full strength in a fish tank.

Hello to all you Nerms and all the fish at sea (you need to be old to understand that reference) I wonder what your timing is for setting up a quarantine tank when you are planning to buy new fish? Should I set it up the early in the day I plan to go buy the fish? Or is it better to set it up a week or 2 in advance, to get it cycling? Maybe a QT doesn't need to cycle if you start with fresh water the first day, in a clean tank and don't feed the fish until the 5th day? The video I watched about setting up a QT tank showed that she had a bare bottom in the tank. I see lots of tanks with bare bottoms in videos, but I'm not sure how that works because when I tried it, the ammonia kept spiking with no nitrates or nitrites in the water, even with a used sponge filter. When I put substate at each end of the tank, things settled down quickly. (Can a bare bottom tank be cycled and seasoned?) I want to get more Endlers and Corydoras to put with the 3 Endlers and 1 Corydora I have with the 1 male betta. They have been though 2 of the 3 meds of the quarantine trio, so I think I need to add the ParaCleanse to the current fish and start a new QT for the new fish. Or can I add the additional fish to the current QT tank and start the trio over? Would treating the fish that are in the QT with the antibiotic and Ick-X a second time be hard on them? The betta is much stronger and the Endlers are doing well. I almost never see the Corydora. I think he is hiding because he is alone. I got the banned killifish out after the second guppy died. The third guppy died. I don't know if the betta went after him because he was the only one or if the whole group had something going on when I brought them home, and would have died anyway. I want to get the additional Endlers and Corydoras added to the tank as soon as I can, while doing the correct thing quarantine wise. Right now my only active sponge filter is in my quarantine tank with the fish I bought a week ago. I have 2 new sponge filters, and some used filter material I took out of an active filter. I could put the used material in a tank with the new sponges to get them going. But I don't know if it will work to cycle the tank if I keep the tank bottom bare.

Merry Fishmas Everyone !!!! I have fallen for the hardCory Nerm forum hook line and sinker !! All of you are wonderfully supportive and also a wealth of time tested info. I'm so glad I am part of the school. Fish joke: Why are fish so smart? They swim in schools !

Update: the QT with out carbon filters has the same hardness, but a higher pH than the filtered tank, but those are both stream/lake water, not the soft well water with the high pH. (We are testing cold tap water from the well) Original: hmmm I tested the water in the tank with carbon filters.... This post talks about that. I'll go test the tank with just a sponge filter (the quarantine tank) https://www.fishlore.com/aquariumfishforum/threads/high-ph-soft-water.306738/

We do not drink the water here. My husband says it tastes terrible. It does not smell of sulfur which is common in the area. The porcelain fixtures are not rust stained. The water comes out of the tap cloudy with some gas that clears right away. It is a deep well, over 100 feet. But I am glad you do not think it is necessary to use stream water for the water changes. The stream is running right around 34f. and there is snow on the ground. Bringing stream water from 2 doors down and warming it one bucket at a time with an aquarium heater is a hassle. We have just had too much going on to find out if the well water was OK for water changes. Also, people have said that with our pH, we needed to get fish that do well in hard water. But our water isn't hard. Or at least it isn't hard with CaCO3. I am not sure if we should get fish that like soft water, or if we should get fish that like high pH.

@GatorOur well water is strange. We had 2 companies look at it because The first company said it was very soft, but it acted like the water at home when the softener ran out of salt. Lots of floating soap scum and such. The second company also said it was very soft. I tested the water with JNW test strip that had been open for a while so I opened a new bottle from aquarium coop. They both said the water was soft, but had a high pH. It doesn't make sense. but it is very consistent.

I want to switch from using stream/lake water to using well water in my tanks. The well has a UV filter and a mechanical paper filter for the grit, nothing else is done to the well water. The tank water is from the stream and the lake. I finally got a quiet moment to test the tank water and the well water to compare them, using Aquarium Coop strips: Tank: Hardness (GH)ppm=300 Buffer (KH)ppm= 80 pH=7.2 Well: Hardness (GH)ppm= 25 Buffer (KH)ppm=180 pH=8.4 Can I just start doing 25% water changes with the well water, or do I need to go more slowly than that? Like a 25% change with half stream half well water? I am aiming at weekly water changes. I know this is a very busy time for many of you, so I won't start using well water until I get a number of replies. Thanks in advance.

I decided to do a quarantine trio treatment on my 55 gallon tank. It was my native tank. I never treated it because I was thinking about releasing the fish at some point. I have added non-native plants, so it is a non native tank, so I think I should treat it, in case I want to add any fish in the future. I also decided to toss the killer killifish from my QT into the 55 gallon tank to keep simplify life. My question: For 55 gallons, should I use 5 or 6 packets of Maracyn and ParaCleanse?

Update: I decided to put the killer killifish in with the rest in the 55 gallon tank and treat the 55 gallon tank with the quarantine trio. Anyone know if I should use 5 or 6 packets for a 55 gallon tank? Update: I watched Cory's video and caught the killifish. He is now in the net which is across the top of the tank, hanging well into the water. He isn't happy, but he isn't able to bit anyone. Now to figure out a cage that will hold him while letting the water through for the next week of QT. Original post: The guppy with the damaged tail lost the rest of it's tail today and died. I am trying to catch the killifish, but he is very fast and lived most of his life in the lake with fish trying to eat him. He has great avoidance skills. I might try baiting a net with bloodworms to see if he will swim into a still net. I am not sure where to put him once I catch him. I need to see if I can sew up a breeding box with netting and drinking straws. All ideas on catching the barred killifish or building a holding cage for him are welcome.