AnimalNerd98

Haha, I’m a bit of a cheapskate and I have never bought or used an algae scrubber. The thing that might hinder that is the rounded edges on the front pane of the tank. I’ve never tried though so don’t take my word on it 😊

I kept a pea puffer in the 5 gallon portrait tank. She is living in a 20 gallon community tank now. For me, the thing that got annoying is that I couldn’t have any snails in there, so the algae grew on all of the sides of the tank. Since it is a deep tank, you often have to get up to past your elbows when scrubbing.

I also love the Aqueon frameless cubes. I had a 5 gallon portrait tank and ended up selling it. Disclaimer: all of this is my own opinion, and I feel like it shouldn’t dissuade you from getting a 5 gallon portrait tank if you really want one, especially if you have a scape and stocking ideas for it. Here are my issues with the 5 gallon portrait: 1) The compartments in the back are kind of locked in place, so although you can optimize it like how Cory shows in the video, it is still very limited in how much you can customize. I played around with cutting sponges for so long, and the spacing was just never optimal. Not to mention, I felt like there was just a lot of wasted space behind the weir. 2) Because of the height of the tank, I felt it was difficult to adequately churn up the water. You either had to turn the pump higher to get the water whipping around (but because of the small size, it just put more stress on the fish by constantly moving), or you had to have multiple air stones to prevent dead spots. 3) The kit light was just not ideal for plants. I ended up getting a replacement, and then I wondered why I spent $50 on a tank kit when I had to spend another $20-30 for a decent light. It was hard finding a light that was easy to attach, small enough, and was strong enough to penetrate down to the gravel. 4) I find the drain holes (spiral shaped) near the lower middle right of the back to be particularly ugly. I ended up spending a lot of my time thinking of ways to hide that spot in each of my scapes. There are some pros: 1) The lid is nice and thick (a little hard to open though. 2) It has a small footprint and a decent water volume. Here are some of my old setups. A 6 gallon cube, MarineLand Portrait, and Fluval Spec V (I also didn’t end up keeping my Fluval Spec V).

My wife and I are the equivalent of Anime, Manga, and Manhua Nerms. She is more into the Manhua and Shoujo manga, but we overlapped in Ouran High School Host Club, Fruits Basket, and My Love Story. We also like watching Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken together, and Demon Slayer. We have watched the movie twice and she jokingly asked if I wanted to watch it again with her in the theatre. As for myself, I have watched One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, Death Note, Overlord, Violet Evergarden, Neon Genesis, Code Geass, Pokemon (I know most of the theme song lyrics by heart), and No Game No Life just to name a few. I also enjoy some Chanime like The King’s Avatar and Mo Dao Zu Shi. Is my weebness showing?

When I first came to the States, I saw the sign for a Mo’ Bettahs restaurant and said aloud: “Is that a fish store? Do they sell Bettas?” My lovely girlfriend at the time, now wife, looked over at me and immediately started laughing. When she composed herself she said: “No, it’s a Hawaiian food restaurant.” 🙃🙃🙃

Pretty sure this is Water Hyacinth. I would check with your local and state laws to check if it is legal to have (assuming you live in the US). I have seen people keep it as an outdoor pond plant. If you keep it happy, it will actually bloom!

I think I would approach it from the angle that fish have different food needs than we or other mammals do. The same way that a human baby cannot take down adult sized meals due to differences in size and metabolism rates, exothermic or “cold blooded” animals do not require the same amounts of food that endothermic or “warm blooded” animals do. Overfeeding, although well intentioned sometimes, can lead to serious health issues such as obesity, bloat, and also cause water quality issues. Some fish can and will overeat if given the opportunity. Another thing to consider is that the prepared foods/frozen foods we feed our fish are high in caloric density. In the wild, fish tend to be foraging for things like algae, small crustaceans, smaller fish, and bugs, and they may go for days or even weeks without having a “substantial meal”. In the aquarium, they are basically presented with lots of nutrient rich food without having to go too far to find them.

First, I would like to ask if you are sure it is Ich. If it is something other than Ich, then it will change the treatment plan. Could you include some photos? I would probably not risk it in a 1 gallon container. Using an oversized heater will make it go through more “on and off cycles”, essentially shortening its lifespan. There is a risk of the heater malfunctioning, in one case, it sticks on and voila your fish, or in another case, it just stops working. If there is no other way, I would suggest the same thing as @Colu. But you could always use a storage container like @Irene does from the Co-Op for QT tanks.

Hi @Bettaboiii, welcome to the forum! I know exactly what you mean about trying to satiate your MTS! I currently have 5 tanks set up, the largest being a 20. It’s also nice seeing another Canadian on here. I am originally from Toronto but I moved to the states a couple years ago for school. Hopefully you can find some other enthusiasts local to you, but until then, you are always welcome to nerd out about fish here on the forum!

You can definitely just plant the plant in the container it came with. Keep it flush with the gravel and as long as you are using a plant that sends out runners like Vallisneria or Chain Sword, it should work. Albeit, it may take some more time since you are only “seeding” one part of the aquarium, so it will take longer to fully blanket out than say diapering some of the plants evenly across the tank. So if you can be patient, go for it!

@Cory has had goldfish in the past with swim bladder issues. I have a betta right now that has swim bladder issues. They can continue to live and lead healthy lives for months/years on end. I would look at its quality of life before determining whether to euthanize it or not. Does it still swim around the best it can and not sulking in a corner? Is it still actively looking for and pursuing food? Are its fins still intact? Does it seem to be struggling to breathe, like always gasping at the top? Making the decision to euthanize a fish is never an easy one. I’ve had to do it in the past for a wet pet and it can be killer. Until you have made a decision, I would give your Goldie the best care I could provide: adding 1 tbsp of salt per 2-3 gallons, more frequent water changes, and feeding lots of healthy foods like frozen brine shrimp and even duckweed. Good luck 👍🏻

I have not bred bettas myself personally but I have done quite a bit of research on them. Your setup sounds a lot like what @Dean’s Fishroomdoes which he explains in this livestream: He keeps the water level about an inch or two below the lid to prevent them from jumping out. He also has a pro tip where you can use a large spoon to scoop out the bubble nest and transfer the eggs to a rearing tank (if you’re scared of the male eating the eggs/fry). In terms of parameters, I would say you are golden. My other piece of advice is to keep an eye on the pair as fins will get nipped and the female could very well lose her life if she is not removed promptly after the eggs have been transferred to the bubble nest. You’ll want to give both the parents some R&R and possibly add some salt (1 tbsp/gallon) if there are any ripped fins. Good luck! It sounds like a fun project.

I keep live brine shrimp outside in a 5 gallon bucket with lots of brackish algae growing on the sides. I don’t use a bubbler. I got my pea puffer eating by offering live snails, and transitioning to frozen bloodworms and frozen adult brine shrimp. How long have you had it? Mine took 2-3 days to settle in before she started eating.

I know Serpa Design did a video on his black water tank for his betta. He put in some Crypt. wendtii “bronze” and same flame moss. I would also be tempted to add an aquarium Lily to the list. I have never kept Caridinia shrimp. But I do remember something from an interview with the owner of AquaHuna. He said that Caridinia need that ADA soil to buffer that pH and get it down to where it needs to be. In the long run though, I would expect most of the shrimp to get sniped off if they haven’t had a chance to colonize prior to the introduction of the discus AND if the visibility of the water isn’t enough to conceal them from the discus. Something SimplyBetta did on her channel is buy “evil driftwood”. You should definitely check it out. I think making it like a dystopian scene from something would look pretty awesome. Maybe a graveyard/Halloween aquascape.

I have only ever tried Wabi Kusa for emersed plants in a shallow dish, it ended up failing because I wasn’t able to regulate the humidity well enough (totally my fault). When I did it, I got some sphagnum moss, soaked it, and packed it into a tight ball. I tied it in place with some green sewing thread. In the very center of it, I put some Co-Op tabs. I then planted creeping fig and emersed moneywort in the center of it. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do it in the aquarium. You would probably not use sphagnum moss, but maybe you could use a planter pot that has been wrapped in Java moss or something.

I think some emersed plants like a peace lily or Horsetail reeds could look really nice. You could also play with the idea of having some driftwood that comes out of the vase with some air plants on the branches out of the water. This reminds me of when I kept moss balls in a bubbling tower and just watched them roll around in the water column.

From my initial Googling, Alien bettas are basically the Flowerhorn equivalents of Anabantoids. I see some sources saying that the Alien betta is a Betta splendens complex with some traits from B. mahachaiensis and B. smaragdina. However, it is totally plausible that it could have some B. imbellis genes as well. Biologically speaking, I think they should be able to reproduce and produce viable offspring. Personally speaking, it may be more trouble than it’s worth to carry out the breeding. If you just want to try it out and see what comes out, go ahead, it could be a fun project. If you were planning on selling the fry, it would be difficult for you to sell them since they would be essentially hybrids of a hybrid. You would have to list them as something like Alien Betta F x Imbellis M fry.

I have used Guppy Grass in my livebearer tanks in the past. It tends to grow really fast and really thick. You could also start some Pothos cuttings in water and use them as an emersed plant. They suck up excess nutrients like a sponge.

I buy my Eco Complete from my local Petco but I have found it on Amazon. I am in the process of trying to get all my tanks to Eco Complete. I used to buy gravel from my LFS. I also tried some gravel from Lowe’s but found it too large and sharp, so I capped it with some Pool Filter Sand I found at Ace Hardware. They have all worked decently for me, but I just prefer the look and feel of Eco Complete.

I have a rack system next to my desk in the living room. In addition to my 5 aquariums, I also have some terrariums for my Asian Painted Frogs and Leopard Geckos. On the far right is my tarantula shelf. I tend to watch my tanks while sitting or lying down on the carpet at around 9-10 PM after I give the nightly feeding. My wife has photos of me crouched down on the ground, with my butt in the air as I zero in on new babies.

Disclaimer: I have not tried CO2 in any of my tanks yet, so most of what I am about to say is secondhand knowledge. Hopefully someone else can affirm or disprove what I say with their own experience. 1) Yes, CO2 will affect pH, making it drop (more acidic). This is actually something happening at a large scale in the world’s oceans right now known as ocean acidification. 2) The reason why there is so much fearmongering is because injecting CO2 can make you susceptible to pH crashes. Because you are driving the pH down, the buffering components in your water (things that make up KH and GH) get used up. When you run out of those buffering components, the pH will plummet, making the water extremely acidic and deadly to anything living from fish to bacteria. What people usually do is buy a pH controller. It basically monitors your pH and shuts off when there is a pH crash, just like how a heater is supposed to shut off when the water around it gets too warm. I remember from a livestream that Cory also suggests running an air stone in tanks with CO2. The reason is that the water can get so saturated with dissolved CO2 that oxygen becomes more scarce, and the fish will essentially start dying due to a lack of oxygen. 3) I think it depends on the plants you keep in the tank. If you have plants with high nutrient, light, and CO2 needs, a couple days may be all it takes to disrupt the balance and either cause a melt OR an algae outbreak. If you have low tech plants, they should fare better. Assuming you dial back the light and fertilizers when the power goes out, I think it should be fine. That being said, changes happen a lot faster with CO2, so finding the right balance between CO2, nutrients, and light is key. For the fish, just toss an air stone in there and make sure oxygen levels don’t drop. Hopefully that gave you some idea of how to proceed and maybe next steps/other questions.

My advice is to raise them away from anything that would make a short meal of them. I would also suggest to keep the water clean and not stagnant. The thing with algae wafers is that if they don’t consume all of it, it will start to turn to mush, spoil, and foul the water. Especially since there isn’t a lot of water flow going into the breeder box. So I would just keep an eye on the wafer and suck it out if there is too much leftover. You can also offer slices of Zucchini or green bean since they tend to stay together and don’t fall apart like algae wafers do. As a rule, you tend to just watch their shells and see if they are looking too thin or if they develop holes in them. Unless the water out of your tap is quite acidic (say below 7), I would focus more on providing dietary calcium rather than remineralizing the water (which you can do with WonderShell or crushed coral). For dietary calcium, I provide ZooMed Nano Banquet Blocks or straight up Tums for humans, any flavor will work. If you want to be more precise, you can use test strips or liquid test kits to measure the GH or general hardness of the aquarium (measures calcium and magnesium). Since I’ve always been in a hard water state, I don’t know exactly what levels of GH you should be aiming for. Maybe someone else can chime in for that part. Good luck!

Hey there, I cannot speak to the effectiveness about the African Cichlid sand since I’ve never used it, so I hope someone else can weigh in on that. For raising GH specifically, I know that a lot of people use WonderShell or Seachem Equilibrium. @Irene talks about it near the end of this video: If you want to make your own DIY Cichlid Buffer, @Zenzo uses three ingredients: Baking soda, Epsom salts, and Marine salt. Video link below: Hopefully this helped and maybe someone else can chime in. Good luck!

Otos mostly eat diatom algae, so that’s just something to keep in mind. I remember Cory saying that a single Otocinclus can keep the diatom algae in check for a 30 gallon. If you put in more than 2, I think you would have to supplement the Otos with some algae wafers, zucchini, green beans, and Repashy. As long as you feed them all, I think it should be fine.

I just found a baby last week. They pop up as long as you have a pregnant female or a decent group of adults. The babies are adorable. As long as they arent being predated on, get enough to eat, and have access to dietary calcium, they should thrive.