Rube_Goldfish

If you like the long dangling root look but frogbit doesn't like your tank, might I suggest dwarf water lettuce? It has similarly long roots and propagates itself pretty well in my tanks.

Is there some technique I don't know for netting shrimp? Specially Amano shrimp, in my case? It's a moderately planted ten gallon tank, and I want to transfer them all to the 55 gallon upgrade tank, but they didn't get the memo. Maybe I'm just being too cautious of their long, fine antennae and legs and need to just go for it, but I don't want to hurt them or the plants. I'll drain the tank and take out the plants and hardscape if I have to, but the tank is going really well at the moment, so if I don't have to I'd rally rather not. Pictured: Amano shrimp eating spinach and taunting me

It might not be the easiest or most affordable, but the safest and most effective "chemical" to add might be reverse osmosis water. I use a 1:1 ratio of RO to tap because I've got the same water: high pH, high KH, low GH. Also worth noting that I remineralize with Seachem Equilibirum to bring the GH up to about 6 degrees. Most of the other ways of bringing pH down are going to struggle against a high KH, which would have to be depleted first. Maybe someone else has some insight.

I don't know, truth be told. I just know that they're expensive and seem to grow plants real well (and have a lot of fans on the marine side of the hobby, though those are different). Sorry!

I don't have any first hand experience with expensive lights - I was in full "treat yo self" mode to get the Finnex 24/7 Planted Plus models I got, and they're probably a step down from the Planted 3.0 - but names of high end lights for you to investigate include Chihiros, Twin Star, and Kessil. Edit: this video is a little Euro-centric but might still be useful:

What substrate do you have? A lot of aquasoils can be acidifying, and Safe-t-sorb, in particular, can really soak up your KH. The fact that these tanks have been running for a while makes me doubt that it's the substrate's fault, but it can't hurt to know.

I use polycarbonate sheeting intended for greenhouses, cut to size with a box cutter. Probably doesn't look as nice as glass, but supposedly transmits more light than glass does. Here's Cory demonstrating:

That's what my LFS does. They've got plants in pots and all, but they've recently started selling epiphytes already glued to driftwood. Sounds like a good plan.

Bacopa caroliniana has been my most successful stem plant in low tech set-ups. I would definitely heed the warnings above about duckweed. I second @Patrick_Gs suggestion about water lettuce and would also suggest Salvinia minima, if it's available where you live, if you prefer smaller leaves and shorter roots. Either way, floating plants are great for new tanks because they can really soak up excess nutrients, having unlimited access to atmospheric CO2, and can also shade a tank, if that's what you want. And if it's not, just grab a bunch and toss or compost them. I will caution that floaters can tolerate surface flow to varying degrees, but there are ways around that, too. If your dwarf sagittaria ends up anything like mine, it'll sit there, seemingly doing nothing at all for months, then one day just decide to take off like a shot and send out runner after runner, so don't get discouraged if it seems like it's stagnant for a while. Lastly, the greater the plant biomass you can get, the better off you'll be in terms of water quality and algae. Other than your wallet, you basically can't have too many plants.

I've had good luck so far with Oase, Eheim, and most recently the ACO heater, but I've been in the hobby only about a year and a half so I have no first-hand idea about longevity. But while they've all work pretty accurately, the ACO heater has been the easiest to use because of the outside-of-the-tank temperature control.

Short version: how much does it stress fish to be netted and moved from one tank to another? Long version: I have a planted 55 gallon community tank, a planted 10 gallon tank with only Amano shrimp, and a 10 gallon quarantine tank with an Apistogramma cacatuoides trio just coming out of quarantine. Ultimately, I want the Amanos and apistos to all end up in the 55 gallon tank, but I want to give the shrimp a week's head start to learn the hiding places, get comfortable, and get any initial molting out of the way before the apistos join them. So that will leave the apistos in a somewhat empty quarantine tank (with no plants) and a nicely planted tank with no fish.* Would the apistos be better off staying where they are, or being netted out to a "better" tank, only to be netted out again a week or two later? Full disclosure: the two 10 gallon tanks are arranged vertically, and the qaurantine tank, on the bottom, is a lot harder to work in. Also, the planted one is much more nicely lit. So I might just want the apistos in the planted tank for my benefit and not theirs, and therefore I'm rationalizing to myself... *This tank will ultimately house a Neocaridina davidii colony, but they might have to wait until after the holidays.

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!