Rube_Goldfish

I would suggest that if you put the new Stingray on an existing tank, don't change anything else (stocking, feeding or fertilizer schedule, etc.) for two weeks or so; that way if anything goes wrong or right you'll have more confidence to know it was the Stingray and not some confounding variable. But generally I'd want the brighter light on the taller tank, because light intensity falls dramatically with water depth.

As far as I've heard/read, yes, either a substrate has active nutrients but breaksdown over time (could still be root tabbed, though) or is inert from the start but is essentially unchanging.

Oh yeah, I forgot that carbon would do it, too. I kind of remember that Purigen is reusable or rechargeable, where carbon gets "used up"? Like I said, I've never used Purigen.

If you don't have slate, you could still use any other kind of stone. Either one big enough to weigh it down, super glued to the wood, or multiple smaller ones. If you don't like the looks of the stone(s), maybe you can bury them under the substrate. Or you can do what I did, which was to balance a stone on top for a couple weeks. It looked goofy, but it worked.

Though I have no first hand experience with them, I've heard good things about API Accu-clear for fine particulates and Seachem Purigen for tannins (mainly through MD Fishtanks, I think). If water changes alone aren't doing it, or aren't doing it fast enough, they might be worth looking into.

I just spent about two hours netting seven Amano shrimp out of one tank to move to another and definitely said out loud "how was Forrest Gump able to do this when he couldn't even see them!?"

Did either the angel or the gouramis recently reach maturity? They might now be territorial in a way that they weren't before? I don't know angels that well but that one gourami photo is full-on breeding coloration.

That's interesting, because (I think) I remember having heard that the indigestability (that's a word, right?) of chitin makes it act like insoluble fiber would in our human digestive system and help, uh, push things out. You keep trout?!

You know, this a good point, too, and I love that there are "many paths up the mountain" so that folks who want no-filter no-heater no-tech tanks and folks who want the latest whizbang high tech gizmos can all have what they want. In terms of a relaxing, enjoyable hobby, there's definitely something to be said for technology like timers and auto-feeders and whatnot.

Considering that bloodworms are also insect larvae, and that earthworms are also a favored treat of some fish, I imagine any omnivorous or carnivorous fish big enough to swallow one would likely love mealworms. I assume the mealworms would drown pretty quickly if they weren't eaten right away, so I'd start my experimenting very small at first and be prepared to scoop dead, unbeaten mealworms out if it doesn't work. If you try it, do please report back here, I'd love to know your results!

There's probably more room for efficiencies and bringing costs down (to buy and operate technology) but I'm probably just thinking as the customer rather than as the aquarium tech company.

The thing I've always wondered about the MD style substrate-in-bags approach is with root tabs. I know plant roots can penetrate the bags but I can't get root tabs in there, and while aquasoils don't need nutrients for a while, they will eventually. Or are the bags just set up knowing that the whole tank won't run beyond, say, two years anyway? I know MD seems to think anything past a year or so is ready for a teardown, but I also know he has a YouTube content beast that he has to keep fed.

Okay, fair enough. I'm hoping to set up a Neocaridina tank myself in the new year, a first for me, so I'm trying to learn from everyone's experiences. @smm333 Good luck!

Do you know what went wrong, or rather why it went wrong?

@jwcarlson You beat me to it! @Irene 's video is a great primer.

Yeah, if it's 6.0 or less in the tank, and higher than that immediately out of the tap, it's not really the cause of the problem, but we might as well get the most accurate picture we can. The other option, if you can dedicate the time and feel comfortable trying, is to do a fish-in cycle with these goldfish. Lightly feed, test every day (maybe twice a day, as goldfish are famously messy) and be prepared to do lots of water changes according to what those tests show, but they'd eventually get that tank cycled for you.

Leave your tap water out for 24 hours or so and then test it. Because of CO2 off-gassing, most tap water has a tendency to rise in pH over time. (Ideally you'd aerate the tap water during those 24 hours but even just waiting is better than nothing.) Also, what substrate do you have? Many aquasoils and some other substrates will pull down pH and/or KH (which in turn would allow the pH to fall). Do you happen to have a KH test kit? Unfortunately, it's not included in the API master test kit. Edited to add: oh, and some aquasoils give off ammonia in the beginning, in some cases a considerable amount.

Should I still do drip acclimation if I'm moving shrimp from one tank to the other (Amano shrimp in my case)? I put test strips in both tanks and the results look identical, and both tanks are heated to the same temperature.

It's funny that you mention B. caroliniana as smelling minty, because while I don't smell mint, according to Wikipedia it's commonly known, among other names, as "lemon bacopa" because "the leaves... smell of lemon if crushed" and I don't smell that, either. Then again, I don't really have a great sense of smell, so maybe you're both right! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacopa_caroliniana

Ant-Man and the Wasp: the X-Con office has a tank in it. Some kind of barb, maybe? Or maybe just a whole mess of young comet goldfish?

Malaysian trumpet snails and corydoras, among other animals, will stir up sand and bury poop. Cories and other digging fish might not work in a cherry shrimp tank, though. You can also just sort of stir it up yourself with chopsticks, aquascaping tools, or just your fingers. Lastly, you can give gently "puffs" of water with a turkey baster to kick up mulm (but hopefully not sand) into the water column to give the filter a chance to grab it.

Haha, when I've bought shrimp from my LFS, they've put a sprig of rotala or a bit of dwarf sagittaria in the big for the shrimp to hold on to, and after getting the shrimp in the tank, my frugality and distaste for waste compelled me to plant those pieces, and they've done really well for me! So it turned into a buy-shrimp-get-plant-free kind of deal!

Maybe put an airstone and a bit of plant trimming in the bin and hope for the best, at least overnight. It sounds like that water agrees with them more anyway, and there's really nothing else you can do tonight. Then talk to the store you got them from tomorrow. I'm sorry you're dealing with this; good luck.

I've used Seachem Stability. I had success but also put seeded sponges and bio-rings in the tank with a bunch of plants, so I can't really say if it helped or not. But my LFS recommended it, at any rate.

My understanding is that water softeners remove magnesium and calcium and replace it with either sodium or potassium, depending on whether you add sodium chloride or potassium chloride to your softener (NaCl is much cheaper). I don't use my softener's bypass valve, instead opting to remineralize with Seachem Equilibrium. The bypass would be free but I'm not using that much Equilibrium and it easier to use (I never know how much water I have to run with the bypass open before I'm not getting softened water anymore). My experience is that snails like alkaline water anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about the nerite.