Karen B.

Greetings I want to buy a 30 gallons aquarium (36’’ x 12 ‘’ x 16’’) I am looking for what to use as a stand (very secure one, as I live in a first floor apartment). I do not have the ability to build one. And I do not wish to buy a 29 gallons high. Any suggestions? I looked around a bit, I know there are some shelves, so if you can share your model, experience, if it fits, if some diy is needed, etc. Thank you!

Greetings! I accidentally fed way too much Newly hatched BBS to my female betta. She spent a good 5 minutes chasing them all down in the tank. Beside not feeding her tomorrow, anything I can do? Can it cause her any harm? Thank you!

Greetings! I have a planted community tank (population is 3 honey gourami, 15 chili Rasboras, 8 false julii corydoras and 3 nerite snails), 20 gallons high. 1 HOB filter, 1 sponge filter. Temp is between 75 and 76, pH is about 6.6 to 6.8 (can’t get it to go up), kh around 40, gh around 300. 0/0/betwwen 25 and 50 (can never tell for sure). I do 1 WC per week (about 25 to 30%), dose thrive S Shrimp from NilocG (sorry, I live in Canada…) once a week, I use Seachem Flourish root tabs every couple of weeks and dose excel but not in a regular basis (I lack discipline/forget). I also have seachem iron and seachem potassium but I never know when to use it. My light is a Nicrew Freshwater Led light, on for 8 hours with the basic settings (Pairs super-bright 6500K white LEDs with 460nm blue, and 660nm red LEDs, high output LED chips with 120° angle). Here is a picture of my tank I deal on a somewhat regular (ish) basis with an explosion of BBA, in which case I get fed up, and throw all the plants in a bucket with a double dose of excel (Tropica gave that trick) for a day, then rince and let rest in normal water for a day, then another bath in double dose. It kills the algae effectively but my plants become all wavy and it takes them some times to straighten back up in the aquarium. But I think I could tackle that problem if I can stay on top of dosing my excel. I know the solution would be figuring out what the source is but I am the worst person on the planet to notice/figure things out. If you have test/drop or anything to advive, I will take it. I need a recipe to follow. Am really not good st plants or gauging things. But lately, my staurogyne repens have been losing all their bottom leaves and I can’t figure out why. New growth are appearing now. Plus, my (I forgot the name of the plants) grow well, they lack a bit of red at their top but I can deal with that. The problem is always the bottom of the plants. The leaves become a bit brown and develop a lot of holes in them. Finally, and this is new, my anubia has 2-3 leaves that are turning yellow in some spot. I have never seen this before. So if you have any advice, tips, solution, products to suggest, test to buy, I am all ears! Thank you in advance

Thank you so much for your kind words! I am looking forward to see how the plants do. I am the opposite to you - my stem plants I use from aquarium to aquarium but I am totally new to bulb plant and the E. Ocelot is my first one. I hope it fares well. I am terribly at plants in the first place, but really good at algae, hehe. But seeing the difference real plants make in a fish behavior, I could not keep using plastic one. So I am just waiting a little bit for my tank to establish itself. I will use a bag of dirty bioballs from one of my aquarium, a pre-filter sponge from another and a sponge from another as to not unbalance them too much and speed the process of the cycling. I already have a seeded sponge filter running and it had snails so now I can see plenty of baby snails crawling around. Sadly I can’t find black worms or scufs where I live (Québec) so hopefully I can get my pea to eat frozen daphnia and maybe Hikari vibra bites to bary their diet. Do they like BBS?

Greetings Nerms! so I have been annoying this channels for quite a while about this tank… and it’s finally done! Well obviously it still need to finish cycling, I have to top the water, clean the glass, vacuum the bottom, some plants were in a bucket so they need to straighten up and others to grow but here is the result for now. Is there enough hides:line of sight breakage? Any advices? Thank you in advance! @Odd Duck Tagging you because you seem to be the puffers specialist ☺️

@Zenzo Would you happen to know what these are? Are they briozoan Or something else? Thank you!

Greetings! I am cycling my 10 gallons. I moved a sponge filter from another tank to this one. The root/branch was boiled. I placed it in the aquarium and it had the fuzzy white stuff all over it (normal thing to happen after a weekish) but it disappeared yesterday when I moved it around. The sand was washed but floats a bit and has air bubbles. The dragon stone were washed and boiled. I quarantined my plants for 2 weeks. There is currently a bazillion of baby snails around (that’s fine, it’s a future pea puffers tank) but these weird grey/white fuzzy things appeared also. They sometimes spasm or contract. Anyone has any idea what they might be? I have never seen these in any of my other aquariums. Thank you!

Greetings! I plan to house 3 pea puffers (1m, 2f or 3f) in my 10 gallons. (I will buy 6 juvenile and quarantine them in the 10 gallons and sort them as soon as it’s possible) I know it’s the bare minimum for 3 and my hardscape seems a but massive…? at the same time, I think it’s providing a lot of hides/break of line of sight/interesting place to explore. But is it taking too much space out of the tank for my pea puffers? Please ignore the water quality, I moved the sand. And there will be a lot of plants added. @Odd Duck I know you said it would not use dragonstones but I made sure the edge were not sharp and I am filling the gaps with sand so the puffers don’t go between or under.

Greetings! I am slowly building up a 10 gallons to house 3-4 pea puffers. However, to be sure I have the right ratio (1m, 2-3f), I will be buying 6 juveniles at the same times (to quarantine together, etc). For the past month, I have been gathering snails (bladder snails and ramhorns) in my 2 community tanks and would put them in a 5g bucket. At first it was heater and had a sponge filter but I had to use them for an unexpected fry tank. Then I got sick and while I would feed them pellets every 2-3 days, and give them plenty of floating plants/catappa leaves, I neglected the WC. Today I did a 100% WC because the smell was absolutely disgusting. And I was surprised at what I found - while in my aquarium I have a lot more ramhorns snails, they are pretty much all dead in my bucket. The bladder snails are huge and thriving. Do bladder snails eat ramhorns or it’s most likely the neglect of the WC that killed them? Should I leave the dead snails in so others can feed on their shells to get calcium? (I do add calcium blocks too) What are the favorite snails for pea puffers? I would think ramhorns as they are smaller? Do you count or limit the number of snails you feed them (if so, how many per fish) or you just throw a bunch in? Thank you!

Female nerite snails lay eggs all the times, they di not need brackish water. They won’t hatch tho. So my tank is littered with tiny ugly sesame seeds like eggs!

Greetings I am slowly building up my futur pea puffers tank. My driftwood is at the white fuzzy disgusting stuff stage. I know it’s normal, so I don’t worry. But I was wondering if my spixi snails could speed up the process as I don’t think the pea puffers will snack on it. I do have nerite snails but their eggs drive me insane!!!! My otocinclus would love it too I am sure, but I haven’t seen them in weeks.

Greetings! Am kinda new to bettas, have had them only for 4 months. I have 2 males (1 plakat, 1 halfmoon) and both are really slender. No tummy, just slim from head to tails. I also have one female (halfmoon) but her body shape is different. She is much rounder around the stomach/on the sides then it slim down for the tail. The pictures don’t show it as well as I was hoping. She is really active, a real hunter, she jumps, eats, etc. I feed all my bettas twice a day, about 3-4 pellets each. (Sorry she was having a poop)

@Guppysnail @PineSong @Jawjagrrl Thank you so much for your kind word. I feel so bad. They didn’t deserve this and I sure did not mean it to happen - I dedicate so much time for them. I hope it doesn’t appear as neglect on my part.

Greetings! can a female honey gourami have a black ventral fin? we had established she was a female but lately some black appeared on her ventral fin.

I am raising little Clown killifish fry. 6 of them are about a month (ish), and 20 were 2-3 weeks old. While moving my littlest baby container to do my WC/cleaning, I put them on the table but the container fell on the floor with all the fry… 😭 I am torn between crying and being utterly mad at myself. I managed to rescue 11, I hope the shock won’t kill them. I feel so bad. S.I.P. little one. Herés a picture of two survivors. They were so hard to find on my old wooden plank floor with ridges in between each planks.

Oh no! The slight current from my HOB filter moved the floating plant and destroyed the bubble nest. I will have to think of a solutions… air tubing attached with fishing line in which I place a couple plants? Or is there better solution?

Greetings hi! I was wondering if it’s ok to feed fish when the light is off - say one morning I have to leave early. Should I feed them before I leave and they are still technically « sleeping »? My lights are programmed to turn on at noon and off at 8pm Same at night, if I get back later then usual… do I feed them even if the light is off? Or should I turn on the light, feed them, and turn off the light? I have bettas, Clown killies, honey gourami, Chili Rasbora, otocinclus corydoras and shrimps. Thank you!

Greetings! Lately, I had noticed my male and one of my female were courting. But I couldn’t see any bubble nest or anything and I had to do a WC. But today, my male is agressively chasing everything that moves in the aquarium and by looking closer, I saw this. Are these eggs or just bubbles? Are the eggs fertiles? Is there anything I should do? I didn’t think my Pikachu would become a daddy! @laritheloud

Yikes… my whole hardscape is dragonstone… and I dont have a top. Still need to learn so much about these fish. Thank you for sharing your advices.

Greetings! My title is by no means a way to insult betta or corydoras lovers… but you’ve got to admit these 2 species have a very special skills to find every possible ways to injure themselves. Other species too, I am aware, but I find myself « fish proofing » my aquarium a lot more with bettas! I was wondering if pea puffers are the same? It’s recommended to have lots of hide and line of sight breaks so I want to use dragonstone but I wouldn’t want the fish to injure itself. Like I just made this little decoration and some of its edges are sharp’ish

Best quote ever!!!! 😂😂😂

Thank you, that’s really nice of you to say!! Ah! You read my mind about the stones… I bought a bunch of dragon stone, can’t wait to see how it turns out. And my plants are finally done their 2 weeks quarantine so I can start placing them as well. I was just in a hurry to place the tree as such a big piece is not easy to store, especially when I was too impatient and glued the anubias right away 🤪 (hence why it was upside down in another aquarium for a week, hehe)

Greetings group! Currently in the process of building up my last (sniffsniff) tank that should house 3 ou 4 pea puffers. It’s a 10 gallons. I had that vision to build a tree with anubia barteri and anubia nana petite. The result isn’t exactly what I was hoping for but for my skills, it will do. (The big leaves are also a bit low because I « stored » the tree upside down in another aquarium for a week until I received my stand and they moved to the light) My question is regarding the nana petite. I took them out of the pot, and glued them on the branch without separating the plant in little bunch and I am wondering if it will « stunt » its growth or if leaves will die due to lack of space or being too bunched together? Thank you!

A bit too late! 😅 But yeah, it’s more difficult to keep a wet pet that you name and has a personality vs a generic schooling fish like my Chili Rasboras

Thank you so much for all these informations! I read about Bad Pea Daddy’s storie. Yikes! I hope I can avoid that by buying them all at the same time. But I took some notes. I wish I could give them more space then a 10 gallons tho. I have mixed feelings - I could just get a betta but I feel I would forever have the regrets of never trying the pea puffers. Or I could get my pea puffers, have a bad experience and regret ever getting them. I do have a 5 gallons snails bucket going. It’s been going for over 3 weeks now. 2 kind of pest snails in it. I did want to start a culture of black worms but I have yet to find one in Canada. I do have vinegar eels for my Clown killies fry but don’t think I will try to breed pea puffers.