AnimalNerd98

In addition to banana plants, I have heard that they will eat Java ferns. I have never seen this myself since I always kept Java ferns in a different tank. All my other plants (Val, crypts, dwarf sag, PSO, Ludwigia repens, Anubias, Buce, and Subwassertang) have all held up with 3+ adult rabbits in my 20 gallon. I do kept them well-fed though with green beans, algae tablets, and Repashy foods. I highly recommend them. I just love watching them nom and when you find little babies, your heart instantly melts. There are also quite a few color varieties so you can try to catch ‘em all 🙂

Now I know who to come to for tarantula questions 😂 I recently went on vacation for a long stretch and had a friend watch over my slings. I had a Caribena versicolor sling die and I was heartbroken 💔 I also purchased a group of Psytalla horrida juveniles several months ago, but only one made it. All the others had molting issues and died off. Luckily though, my fish have been breeding so I have been distracting myself with raising the fry rather than obsessing over my poor arthropods.

Do you mean changing the brand or type of lights you have? If so, then, it might actually cause another period of acclimation. Depending on the light intensity and the amount of different light wavelengths (e.g. blue and white LEDs vs blue, white, and red LEDs), you might have to treat the plants like they are new again and set the light cycle back to six hours. If you ever consider changing lights in the future, make another post and hopefully there will be people who can guide you through what changes you may need to make. 🙂

No worries! I also got freaked out the first time I saw them. I have only seen hydra in tanks where I was heavily feeding baby brine shrimp. I actually found them fascinating. Whoo! I just have a solitary pea puffer but I hope to have a big tank with several pea puffers in the future! Heck yeah! I have a T. vagans, T. albopilosus, N. chromatus, B. hamorii, B. auratum, H. sp. colombia, and a P. metallica. I also have some tailless whip scorpions 🙂

I think I have seen this in my own tanks before. Do they dart around the tank if disturbed? They are probably copepods, little crustaceans that are a great source of food for fish. Once fish are added in, they should become rarer to find.

I hear that, it can get quite expensive! Hopefully some people with discus can chime in with tips or insights. You could also do festivums or uarus. Uarus have a similar size and parenting behavior to discus (and a fraction of their price). Keep us posted on what you decide!

Here’s what I would try: 1) Use the biggest net you can find. Plunge it into the tank but hold onto the handle. Wait a couple minutes (clip it on the tank or something) and wait for the fish to settle down. If you have a feeding ring great, if not, just make a temporary one out of airline tubing. Place it in the most open space of the tank. Feed floating pellets and when the fish come up (swish). Repeat as needed. A group of rainbows would be good but they may be difficult to catch out later (depending on the type you have). I currently have Neon dwarf rainbows and thread fins, the Neon dwarfs can really move. You could also consider a group of discus or angels, big showy fishies that are easier to net out than numerous smaller fish. You could also do a group of larger gouramis like pearls or three spots.

I am so sorry that this happened to your fish. I have lost three bettas to velvet. From the photo, it almost looks like velvet to me (I have seen it more as a gold or rusty color). I hope some disease gurus can chime in soon. Could you also include some more symptoms for incoming people to read? I remember asking Cory on a livestream about treating velvet and he talked about how it really is a hard disease to treat. In addition to what you already have, I might suggest blacking out the tank (the parasites are dinoflagellates) and consider using a copper-based medication. I do not have any experience with any copper medications (including brand, dosing, etc.) so try at your own risk.

Thanks for correcting some of the vagueness of my answer. I hid it so that I can prevent myself from spreading misinformation. You are absolutely correct that it depends on the source water, but water changes can stress out fish depending on the temperature change, speed at which water is blasted in, etc. But I cannot find any sources on it shortening the life of fish, that was an incorrect extrapolation. Second, according to the Co-Op article on nitrates, 20-40 ppm is within a safe range. "We personally recommend keeping less than 80–100 ppm nitrate in your fish tanks." "Therefore, we aim to keep approximately 50 ppm nitrate in planted tanks." Source included: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/nitrate

I forgot to mention that it usually takes a week or two for the plants to acclimate to your tank. Good luck!

1) Although they may prefer dimmer conditions, they do just fine in clear water. 2) I did have Neon tetras in the past that nipped at my betta's fins, so I would recommend short-finned bettas (females or male plakats). I agree that the betta is probably better if added last to the aquarium (so it doesn't have its territory established yet). 3) In a 20 gallon, you can go all the way up to 20. 6 is a good minimum, but I really think they look best in schools of 10-15. Yes, you can add more later and they'll get along, but I would suggest getting them all at once because you won't need to risk bringing in multiple rounds of disease (even if you quarantine each new group). You might also get batches that are smaller or skinnier at the store at different times, so that it is also something to be aware of.

When first getting plants, you need to give them some time to adjust to your water parameters (GH, KH, nutrient availability, pH, etc.) and lighting. I remember Justin from Ocean's Aquarium talking about how most people only need to have a six hour light cycle for new plants. I think you can step it up to 7 or 8 hours when you have a decent amount of plants and they're all settled in, but beware of algae! If you notice that you are growing a lot of algae, take a step back and readjust your nutrient and light levels.

I love your tanks! Here are some suggestions of what I might do if I were in your shoes. 1) 20 Gallon High: Since you already have yellow, I think a nice school of 10-15 Neon tetras would look good (adding blue and red). A school of Chili rasboras could also give you that wow factor. I would also consider having some corydoras on the bottom like Sterbai corydoras or albino corydoras if that's your style. 2) 10 Gallon w/ Embers: I think the single male honey gourami would love it in here! Especially with an established school, they should get along fine. If you were going the shrimp route, I would definitely suggest blue dream or blue velvet shrimp (already have reddish orange with the embers). 3) Amano shrimp sound good. You can also look into borneo sucker loaches that stay quite a bit smaller than the reticulated hill stream loaches. If you added a river stone pile in a corner, you could even breed them! You could also consider rosy loaches in there, I think that would liven up the bottom. 4) I think this would be a really cute shrimp tank if you ever wanted to go down that route (with caution in such a small volume of water), but it can definitely be done. Good luck!

As long as they are unopened, I think you should be fine. I’ve seen green in my bags before, it’s just algae.

Hi Maximus, welcome to the CARE Forum and the Co-op Community! I have a 20 gallon long myself! Unless you are local to the physical store (located in Edmonds, Washington), you will not be able to buy fish or snails. They do not sell live fish or snails online, only plants and other dry goods. You can however buy heaters, air pumps, air supplies, foods, medications, breeding supplies, fertilizers, and plants online via https://www.aquariumcoop.com/ Aquarium Co-Op is affiliated with AquaHuna. The folks at AquaHuna do sell live fish and snails and will ship them to you (in the continental United States). https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/live-fish

I've actually thought about doing white clouds and ricefish together in my ponds. My idea was to just put them together and switch out the floating plants every couple days. But now, I am playing with different spawning mops like the ones described here: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/spawning-mop For the hillstream loaches and bristlenoses, I'm not quite sure. They may want different water temps so it's hard to keep them both happy (but I know Cory has kept hillstream loaches warm before and they bred). I think you could definitely segregate them based on space since the plecos use caves. For the hillstream loaches, I remember that wild fish tanks keeps a pile of river stones in his hillstream loach tank and he's raised several generations of their fry. I do think that the tank should be 20G or larger. I can't comment on 10 gallon B since I've never kept either of those species. Let me know what you ended up doing! This thread gave me some food for thought and I am thinking up other viable species combinations for breeding.

I've only ever bred White clouds outside in tubs during the summer. If you put them in a breeding setup over the warmer months outside, you will barely need to feed (if at all). I have heard good things about Hikari first bites, I haven't tried it myself yet. Every time I have raised fry indoors, as soon as they are big enough, I feed them frozen baby brine shrimp. Good luck with the breeding!

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party, but hopefully this information helps. Most of the stuff I learned about Amano shrimp comes from the Shrimp King (specifically, his members only talk on the channel). I watched part of the video you linked too, so I'll just add some extra insights I learned from Chris. 1) Salinity: Chris suggested about 0.8 ounces of salt for a 6 gallon tank (do your conversions as you like for your tank size). 2) Zoe number: Chris mentioned that if they aren't fed enough protein, the adults (including mama) will snack on the little ones. This may be part of the reason why you see so few zoe, but to be honest, there are a lot of other considerations so take this with a grain of salt (pun unintended). In the past, I tried raising the zoe in a separate tank. I just netted out the berried females and put them in a 1-2 gallon container. Every day, I would check if they dropped or not and if they did, I would just net mom out. The babies could be sucked up with a turkey baster before I acclimated them to brackish (just dumping a cup or two of the brackish water every 5 mins or so before just dumping the whole container in). Hopefully this helps, I am going to give breeding amanos another go this summer. Good luck!

Haha, hey, there is no shame! I feel like if you’re not actively learning and speaking the language every day, it is really hard to keep up! My relatives still say I have a “zuk sing” accent. Even my sister who has lived and worked in HK now for a couple years still has people that call her “gwai mui.” Hopefully everything goes well with your lessons, ga yau 👍🏻

Je n’ai jamais su que les personnes de l’état Vermont étudier le français. Je viens de l’Ontario, donc j’ai étudié le français dans l’école élémentaire jusqu’au lycée.

I had a vicious female red Betta I called Rosa. She used to jump out of the water while I was feeding and when I had my hands in the tank, she would go after my fingers non-stop. Funny thing is, I never saw her show any aggression to her tank mates, just me 😭 She never drew blood, but I had to warn people when they wanted to feed the fish tank

I remember @Cory talking about how he used Malaysian Trumpet Snails with his Multies in the past. They churn up the substrate and hide in the substrate till lights out. He also had guppies in with them. They tended to stay near the top and when they dropped fry, they made a nice snack for the Multies below. If you’re not into that, you don’t have to do it, but I thought I would just suggest it.

Cory has a video on the Aquarium Co-Op YouTube channel for how to make Repashy. Just a warning: it stinks to high heaven, I gagged the first time I made it (but then again I’ve always had a sensitive nose). Cory also suggests Repashy food for conditioning corydoras to breed since it gives them something to constantly munch on. Let me know if it works out!

What are some other languages (besides English) that you nerms speak/are learning/would like to learn? I speak French, Hmong, Mandarin, and Cantonese. I am currently learning ASL, Japanese, and Korean. I would really love to learn Spanish, Swahili, and Russian in the future.

Something that my Pygmy corys go nuts for is Repashy Bottom Feeder. It may be a bit much to get a whole bottle for just the 5 of them, but if the other options don’t work, you might want to give it a try. Sometimes, they are also just clumsy eaters and take a while to hone in on the actual food, I definitely have seen this when my pygmies are trying to find the adult frozen brine shrimp on the bottom. Like you said, they might still be acclimating, I wouldn’t worry too much unless it’s been past a week or they look noticeably thinner. Good luck!