Rube_Goldfish

I think @Guppysnail had a typo and was trying to say "jeweler's lens". Did you take that photo through a loupe? It looks like it. If not, what were you using?

I think your new light will be key. What make/model did you get? When does it arrive?

The beneficial bacteria live almost exclusively on surfaces inside the tank and filter, not in the water column. As long as those surfaces stay wet, and as long as the parameters of the new water are roughly similar to the old water, water changes can't really affect the beneficial bacteria.* * The exception to this would be if you're still cycling; then a water change might slow the growth of the BB colony by reducing the amount of ammonia and/or nitrite in the water column, but it wouldn't hurt them in the mid- to long-term, and you can get more ammonia back in the tank post-water change pretty easily.

I've never kept rams, but @Lowells Fish Lab has a video on raising German blue ram fry without the parents:

Is the anubias itself a year old, or is it a more recent addition? Is this yellowing a new thing or has it happened since you put it in the tank? And - just to cover my bases- the rhizome isn't buried, is it?

I've been discouraged and haven't run another batch in the last three days. Partly I've been trying to figure which variable to tinker with next, but on paper, none of them should be a problem. I think my next batch will be: 2 liters tap water, 2 Tbsp kosher salt, 0 baking soda, 81°F, gently "simmering" air for about 24 hours. I expect that the CO2 will have gassed off by then, so my pH should settle into the low 8s. (I also expect that all or most of the chlorine will have too, but c'est la vie.) Then I'll add 2/3 tsp brine shrimp eggs, then harvest 24 hours after that, and see how we do. In other words, the variable I'll be modifying this time is to omit the 1/32 tsp baking soda.

I like 1 and 3 the best but would give a slight edge to 1. I think it has just the right contrast of colors and takes better advantage of height. They all look great, though!

This looks like a meme template of some kind. "MFW I found out Vibra Bites actually aren't 'extra crispy' bloodworms"

I've never kept Apistogramma panduro but have had honey gourami and Apistogramma cacatuoides together for a year now. Sometimes the female apisto will run off one of the gouramis when she's protecting fry but it's never really violent because the gouramis are deferential to the apistos, if that makes sense. Otherwise they basically ignore each other.

Thank you. I tried to explicitly highlight my ignorance but still wanted to add what might be a helpful suggestion, but it seems like we're back to: why change what's working?

Does it have to be a flat, "skipping stone" sort of pebble, or will it stick to any wet bit of gravel? What a good idea, thanks!

Here's a YouTube playlist on live food culturing from @Lowells Fish Lab: It includes both moina and vinegar eels.

It's a little off-topic, so apologies, but one thing @Lowells Fish Lab does in that video is squish out all the air in the freeze dried tubifex worm cube so that it sinks for the cories. I have never been able to make that work. Stick to the glass, sure; sink to the substrate? Nope; it always floats. Some day!

The environmentalist in me likes this for the clean energy, but the tightwad in me likes this even more!

I have the same reaction as @Chick-In-Of-TheSea; if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That said, and I've never kept Neocaridina before, so grain of salt here, but what if you caught them all out, do as close to a 100% change as you can, then re-drip acclimate them as if you were getting them home for the first time? Otherwise, I guess just make small changes slowly, testing every time?

I can't help with the automatic feeder, but are moina an option? If it's planted heavily enough, I wonder if you could reach, maybe not a real equilibrium, but a density of moina fed in that it would take the rasboras a few days to hunt them all down. Actually, are moina small enough for chili rasboras?

It's funny how much I become, to the fish, like that family member to newlyweds: "when are you going to have babies already!?"

In my searching on the forum, I saw a thread where @Cory said one problem they run into at the store sometimes with the Ziss hatchery is inadequate cleaning: Maybe that's an issue for me? Like a sort of slow build up of biofilm or whatever? My standard cleaning procedure is, as soon as I'm done feeding out all the BBS, is to disassemble the hatchery and run it all under the hottest water I can comfortably touch. I run the hot water through the openings at the bottom, with the valve rinsed separately, then get my hand in and rub down all the interior surfaces. Sometimes I can feel (and remove) buildup but most of the time I don't feel anything. Then I either let it all air dry or get it set up again right away. Is that adequate cleaning? For folks consistently, successfully hatching BBS in a Ziss, what's your cleaning procedure?

Nope, looks like it's the same result: Back to the drawing board, I guess. I suppose I'll try cutting out the baking soda next.

I would have to think that planting, unless you're exclusively using tissue culture plants, would speed up a new tank's cycle because they'd be seeded with beneficial bacteria. I guess if they took up ammonia/nitrite/nitrate too quickly they might slow down the colonization of those bacteria, but from the standpoint of "when can I put fish in the tank?", plants still ought to speed that up, right? And most plants have an adjustment period when first planted anyway, so I doubt they'd really outcompete the bacteria thay dramatically. You'd still want to do daily testing and be ready for water changes, but plants have to be net help.

Haha, I just bought some corkscrew val for a 20 long from my LFS specifically because "it doesn't get as tall as the regular val"! So far it's still adjusting, but seeing what you said here, I might end up moving it to my 55 gallon... guess we'll see!

Oh yeah, I forgot: also 1/32 tsp baking soda. My tap water is about 0 dGH and something like 7.2 pH straight out of the tap (about 8.2 after 24 hours degassing). So I might not need the baking soda, but as you said, it's a trial-and-error thing, and I'm trying to adjust one variable at a time.

Okay, I'm trying again, with 2/3 tsp eggs in 2 liters of tap water, 2 Tbsp kosher salt, 81°F, and the air pump turned down to just this side of off. I won't know if that works until tomorrow!

What temperature would you run it at? I have a small heater and would like to harvest in about 24 hours. Lately I'm having great hatch rates but they're all dying some time between hatch and harvest: All that orange is hatched, but dead, BBS. I'm using the Ziss, 2 L chlorinated water, 2 Tbsp kosher salt, about 2/3 tsp brine shrimp eggs, and maybe 1/32 tsp baking soda. That recipe was going great for months with the heater set to 82°F until the last couple batches. My first batch or two had a lot of dead BBS, which I solved by lowering the airflow through the Ziss from "rolling boil" to "gentle simmer". I just rearranged my fish room, including the hatchery, so my latest hypothesis is that I must have bumped the airline valve, so I'll try turning it back down. But I'm slowly trying to eliminate all other potential variables.

The company Contact Us page is here: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/contact-us I didn't see a phone number there but I didn't look too hard. Otherwise you could try starting a thread in the General Discussion forum. But your best bet would be directly contacting them, I think.