Rube_Goldfish

It sounds like this is more of a "project tank" than a display tank, so if appearances aren't important, you can cut pieces of Styrofoam to fit three (or even all four!) sides and tape them up to the glass as insulation.

I used a suction cup soap dish. I've seen people do that with marbles and/or moss, but I didn't have any moss; I just used bio rings and small lava rocks. It helps diffuse the flow a little and probably adds a bit of surface area to the biofilter, but I'm speculating on that last part. It might not look as nice as some of those other options, though.

This is how I do it, too. If you want to see this in action, Cory demonstrates here (the whole thing is worth a watch but the technique @JettsPapa is describing is at about the 2:00 mark):

I spent way more time than I really needed to cycling my first tank because if this. "Why don't I have any nitrates? My ammonia and nitrite spikes came and went..." I know better now!

While I've never had pearlweed myself, it seems that, if you're willing to trim-and-replant often, you can make an easy carpet out of it. And if you're just willing to trim often, without the replanting, you could probably get a nice bushy effect.

I mean, maybe you don't have to choose...

If it's a good LFS otherwise but just has a small selection, it's worth asking if they can special order whatever species you're looking for. My LFS does that, and they're better equipped to deal with shipped fish than I am.

I have a 55 gallon community tank, a 10 gallon planted tank that used to be the community tank before the upgrade and will eventually become a shrimp tank, and a 10 gallon quarantine tank that will eventually become some sort of live food project

I know this is an old thread, but I have a group of seven Amano shrimp and a trio (1M:2F) of Apistogramma cacatuoides all waiting to go into a 55 gallon community tank. (The shrimp are waiting for the biofilm/algae to build up a bit and are currently on their own in a fairly densely planted ten gallon; the apistos are about halfway through quarantine.) Most of the Amanos are about as long as the apistos. While I know that every fish can be different, especially cichlids, should I rethink my plan to house them all together? I pulled this quote because I inferred it to mean that A. cacatuoides is more likely to be Amano shrimp-friendly than other Apistogramma species, but maybe I'm only seeing what I want to see.

I've got two rimmed tanks where I took off the kit hood to use lights specifically for plants (Finnex Planted+ 24/7 in both cases) and DIY'd kids using polycarbonate sheeting from Lowe's. Cheaper than glass, easily cut-to-fit, and customizable for plugs and hoses, and supposedly transmits more light than glass. Probably doesn't look as nice, truth be told, but low profile enough on my rimmed tanks that they still work nicely. Oh, almost forgot: my Hydrocotyle tripartita looks like that, too, but in my case, I think my cories uprooted it (I should have let the roots more thoroughly establish but was too excited to get the cories in...). I'm going to try to salvage the last okay-looking stem to a shrimp-only tank and see if that helps. Do you have anything in the tank who might have dislodged it?

I understand that you can't experiment with animals already in the tank, but in such a small quantity of water, would something like a reptile heating pad underneath the tank work?

Short version: can I stack two apisto caves on top of each other or will there be territorial conflict if they're so close? Long version: I bought a pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides but lost the male during quarantine. I wanted to try again, but my LFS had only one M/F pair left and didn't want to split them up; they said A. cacatuoides would be better off in a Three's Company situation than in a pair anyway, since the male has to choose his mate, and this would improve the odds. So now I have a trio. So where I had a Co-op apisto cave in my cart, I doubled that, figuring that each female would need her own. Now my question is: do I have to space the caves out in the tank, or can I stack them one on the other? If I can, should I face the openings to opposite sides?

Planetcatfish gives their temperature range as "75.2-82.4°F" and says that they are one "species of Corydoras that does not seem to mind higher temperatures." Since I was keeping the cardinals at the higher temperature, it was one (of many!) reasons I choose the sterbai over some other species. And they actually spawned at 80; I lowered the temperature afterward. But in any case, yes, I think they'll probably be a little more comfortable at 78. Edit: In general, though, yes, that's pretty warm for cories. I didn't know about searching for fry at nighttime, but that makes sense. I'll report back with any sightings!

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I did read everything everyone wrote here; thank you. Per the advice here and, frankly, a lack of a real better option, I decided to take a laissez-faire approach and just observe. Over the weekend, I could have sworn I saw most of the eggs darken somewhat to a sort of "milky tea" color, and I thought I even saw some small dark dots inside (embryos?), but truth be told, I may have just been seeing what I wanted to. Either way, I wasn't able to get a decent picture - I guss I'll have to invest in a macro lens attachment for my phone. As of this morning (Tuesday) all, all the eggs are gone: hatched, eaten, who's to say? I looked for a long time but did not see any fry, though the eggs were fairly close to a Java moss mat and a big clump of dangling water lettuce roots, so maybe some fry escaped to cover, but I'm not really optimistic. I guess time will tell! No, actually, just dumb luck! The tank was set to 80°F (for the benefit of the cardinal tetras; since turned down to 78°F), and I haven't done a water change since before the cories went in, over a week before the day of spawning. Maybe it rained that day? I don't remember now and I'm not sure where to look it up. The other thing is that four of the eight cories are a couple months older and came to me already mature. The other fish are cardinal tetras and honey gouramis. I got into the hobby right after the marimo moss ball ban, so I don't have any of those, but in addition to the Java moss mat and water lettuce (among other plants) I do have driftwood intertwined with what my LFS called seiryu stone but what I think is actually ryouh stone. Either way, lots of not-so-grand canyons, as you say. Thanks! I decided to take it as a thumbs-up from the cories on the tank! Edit: oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my LFS said they'd buy healthy 3-month old sterbai cories, so it might be worth my while to try a little harder with a future spawn!

I am new to corydoras. I added eight sterbai cories to my community tank out of quarantine on Sunday (five days ago). They spent most of the first four days hiding but starting yesterday started to seem a lot more confident. This morning I found what I think are eggs on the glass. If they are eggs, I guess my easiest option is just let nature take it course? The other inhabitants are cardinal tetras and honey gouramis (and bladder snails). There's some java moss and water lettuce that seems like it might be dense enough to hide fry, but most of the rest of the plants are too new and still establishing (I started the tank four weeks ago and only planted it about three weeks ago.). The only other thing I can think to do would be to pull the eggs out before they hatch (you can do that, right? If so, how?) and move them to my densely planted ten gallon tank with Otocinclus and Amano shrimp (and bladder snails). Would either if them eat cory eggs and/or fry? What would I even feed the fry? I'm not nearly equipped for this, I think Edit: wow those photos aren't great!

Thanks! I keep my tanks at a pH of 6.4 to 6.6 (ish; I know it fluctuates over the course of the day) and dose Easy Green in accordance with the printed instructions, so maybe they're getting the iron they need anyway. In my established tank I haven't seen the deficiency you describe, and the new tank is too new and many of the plants still adjusting/establishing to really show how they're doing. Really, I was putting together a Co-op order for other things and thought to add Easy Iron to save on shipping, but I might just hold off for now and only try it if I see that the plants are asking for it in their new growth. Thanks again!

Is there any benefit to using Easy Iron in a tank without CO2 injection or is it one of those things that you only use if you actually see visual evidence of iron deficiency?

Are there ppm limits to CO2 injection in a tank with no animals? Would cranking it to, say 300 ppm start to get to a point where you're harming the plants or the microbiome? Is that even possible in an unpressurized tank?

So is it fair to say that, if my pH/GH/KH are all somewhat on the high end or all somewhat on the low end, either way I'd be okay? Even with what are natively soft water fishes?

I have small kids, and I thought they'd jump at the chance to name the our fish, but I think them all being small and basically indistinguishable took a lot of the fun out of it. Weirdly, they were much more enthusiastic about naming the mystery and nerite snails, which were all named after characters from Encanto. So we definitely talked about Bruno (the female mystery snail)

Do you mean by using the bypass valve on the water softener? If so, no, I haven't tried that, and truth be told, I don't know the GH of my tap water before the softener gets to it. My current procedure is to estimate how much water I'll need to add in (based on how much I have siphoned out or will have siphoned out), add about half that amount to my bucket, add the other half from my tap, then stir in my measured amount of Equilibrium to bring the GH up to about 6, then pour the combined bucket into the tank. So in that sense, sort of; I'm increasing the blended RO:tap water's GH from 0-1 to about 6. Mostly I'm using RO to cut the pH. If there was some kind of slow, safe, long-term buffer to make the pH go down, a sort of anti-crushed coral, I'd just use that, but my KH is high enough (about 10 dKH) that no amount of wood or catappa leaves will do the trick. So I'm really just trying to dilute the pH, so to speak.

I hope this isn't thread hijacking; I'd actually started writing a whole new thread but it got really long. If it doesn't go against the etiquette here to ask, I'll try to briefly put my question: I keep cardinal tetras, honey gouramis, and Amano shrimp (and some hitchhiking bladder snails) in a small community tank that will soon be upgraded to a 55 gallon community. Because my local fish store offers free RO water, and because my water softener-treated tap water has (after 24 hour off-gassing) parameters of about 8.1 pH, 10-ish dKH, and about 1 dGH, I have been doing water changes with a 1:1 RO:tap blend, along with enough Seachem Equilibrium to bring the mixture to about 6 dGH, and I've been very successful with it. Before I started cutting my tap with RO, the fish were fine, but I had all kinds of problems with Amano shrimp going on walkabouts and nerite snails just up and dying. So now that I'm planning this new, much bigger tank, I was originally going to keep doing the 1:1 RO:tap blend, because it's been working. My hesitation is that, while the RO is free, it's a 40 minute round trip to get it, and I can only take so much at a time. I could buy and install an RO unit (and I still might) but either way I'd be spending time/money/gasoline. So that brings me to what I stumbled upon at aquariumscience.org, namely the claims there that pH, GH, and KH aren't important, at least to fish (plants and shrimp are also discussed but at much less length). This was exciting, because it would be so much easier if I can just use the water that comes out of the tap. But because it seems too good to be true, and because it seems to fly in the face of everything else I'd heard about pH/GH/KH, I'm hesitant to ditch the blend. With all that said, should I stick with what's been working and suck up the drive or installing an RO filter? Or is that unnecessary step that just makes water changes a hassle? For the record, in addition to the cardinal tetras and honey gouramis, my eventual planned stocking for the 55 will include sterbai corydoras and Apistogramma cacatoides, which are, to my understanding, all fish which would appreciate lower pH, GH, and KH. Additionally, once the new tank seasons some, I'd move the Amano shrimp over, and then turn the current small community tank into a Neocaridina davidii colony, which are also (I think!) lower pH/GH/KH animals.

Yeah, me too. Less money spent on shipping = more money spent on everything else! Also, the minimum order limit ($15, I think?) used to annoy me, because I was so used to Amazon and how frictionless their ordering/delivery process is, but a) there's probably a good point in consolidation of orders to reduce carbon emissions and b) even if that's not a good point, I'd probably be consolidating to get the free shipping anyway, tightwad that I am.

I use 5 gallon buckets and use a meat thermometer, too, but after the first six-ish months of fishkeeping (I'm about a year in to the hobby) I started challenging myself to guess the temperature before checking. I'm now usually within 2 or 3 degrees Fahrenheit, but I still double-check with the thermometer anyway.

In this video, Rachel O'Leary shows how you can use a water bottle as a DIY snail trap (but mostly says they're not so bad in your tank):