jwcarlson

I have an A. hongsloi male in a community tank and yesterday after water change he was displaying and doing his dancing (there's no female in there). Turns out he was showing off for one of the corydoras. 🤣

This is exactly what they're doing. They're trying to get you to take a closer look so they can latch onto your face.

The *used* media wasn't included, but he did have tons of boxes of cartridges that I threw away.

It depends a ton on where you live. I know a guy out in NY and he can just go find sumps seemingly at will for really good prices. There was one sump once on FB near me. There's lots of factors. I had a friend from high school contact me a year and some change ago offering to sell his 125, 90, 55, 46 bowfront, a couple 29s, a bunch of stands and filters and lights for $350. It was a great deal, but all of the filters were trash and I didn't bother trying to deal with them once I realized that. The lids in this case were also bad. But you're right, sometimes you can find a 'package' of equipment, but my experience is that it's just not worth it.

My breeding apistos are in an RO mix. But there's a few that are extra males that are just in my tap water. Same with the rams. The breeding pairs are in RO mix. The extras are just in tap water. Hopefully that makes sense. If I'm trying to breed it, it's in water that should facilitate that. But if it's just a fish I'm keeping in some sort of a community setup, then I do not have them in special water.

I don't breed the discus in this water (or at all), but they will spawn in it. Anything that I'm trying to spawn rams or apistos are in heavily RO water with some of my regular tap water cut in. Sterbai, CPDs, and just recently, furcatta rainbows seem to spawn in my tap water just fine.

You can pay a good price for a new tank at Petco or you can go on Facebook marketplace and pay 50% more for a used tank of unknown quality than you would have at Petco for the new. At least around here, people sell their aquariums for WAY WAY more than they're worth. I think you can get a 40 breeder at Petco for $60 or a used one on FB where I'm at for $100. 😄

I've had male Apistogramma hongsloi in my liquid rock tap water (pH 8.3, kH and gH both in the 18+ degree range) over a year and they seem absolutely fine health/vigor wise. Had a pair in it for awhile and they spawned. The apistos are in with various tetras, corys, bristlenose and are good tank mates (a pair wouldn't necessarily be though). I've got discus going on two years in this water and while it's more challenging to keep them healthy, it isn't impossible. I have three rams in this water currently and they seem to be having the time of their lives. Very interactive and doing their ram stuff, but I've only had them a couple months. The rams have a bunch of juvy sterbai corys and a couple bristlenose with them. They do harass the corys, but it's nothing violent. All that said, it's very rare for me to let nitrates get above 10-15. It's part of why I have issues growing plants, I think, because in a lot of aquariums they are <5 ppm. But the plants are more accessories than anything else. If you've got water that doesn't work well for the fish AND you've got them in high nitrates and other stressors, I think that's where the issues show up. My two cents.

The way my discus tank is setup for water change it's "manual", but it is all hard plumbed so I don't have a lot of screwing around to do. BUT... if I forget to switch the valve in the basement to drain from fill after the last water change... it will siphon the tank down through the refill pump. 65 or so gallons of water on the ground ain't great. But I've only done it once.

Plastic isn't really... permeable, so I'm not sure that you can "stain" it. There's some options for painting it, but if there's connections that are made with the outside diameter... that might be an issue. It will probably eventually build up some gak inside and will look a little like what you want.

I use the static cling stuff from Amazon. Either in a lightish blue or black. It's probably more expensive than paint, but it's so much easier. Plus if you decide you want to change it (which would probably be rarely). You don't have to scrape it all off. Admittedly the black looks "cleaner" because it blends the black rims. But I don't mind. I really like bare bottoms. My wife, however, fairly frequently says "why does it have to look like that". It's about the fish, lady!

You squeeze enough filter gunk into a new tank and it's cycled "immediately" IMO. Unless you're putting in 400 tetras or something crazy. It's the best way to go about it aside from possible pathogen exchange.

Fish in, up to the full final stocking. Sometimes more in a temporary situation. Water changes up to daily, sometimes twice a day in extreme circumstances. Doing a 125 right now doing about 75% water change every 3 days. It has a three rams and like 25 half grown sterbai corys. None of them seem to be having an issue with the nitrite level. I'm also putting in Stability occasionally. The hobby is becoming water change phobic. They (water changes) just solve so many obvious issues and an unbelievable number of issues we can't see (if I had to guess). You can also bring filter media from other aquariums. I'd do that with my 125, but I'm trying to keep bladder snails out of the tank and I don't trust any of my other tanks not to have eggs in the sponges/media.

I popped one of these open the other day just to see if there was any build up. There was a little bit of gunk down there, but nothing too crazy. Just wiped it off with my finger. I do tend to clean my sponge filters relatively frequently (but don't do anything with the air stones/collars usually), so maybe just that disruption is enough to keep things from getting too bad? At this point I haven't noticed any degraded flow in any of the air collars. But I've also not had a lot of issues with the ones that have/had air stones. The biggest thing I hated about air stones is that they always want to fall off.

Yes, bladder snails.

The snails take them out overtime. They get sucked up and the shells grind away/jam the impeller in the pumps. It's the biggest drawback of snails IMO. And HOBs (in my experience) just become snail hotels where it's impossible to get them all out of.

I have a sponge filter in every tank, even have them bubbling away in my 125's sump. Always nice to have a filter ready to go. I haven't had snails mess up a sponge filter, but eventually they always take out the HOBs. Especially the all in one included HOBs. I would have a sponge in there, but that's just me. It's not required and as stated above, the best filter is the one you already have. What fish do you have in it?

This has happened with my discus and it's been hexamita once and worms a couple of times. It's usually whack a mole, maybe lowest 1 or 2 in the pecking order are stressed enough that the worms get to them. Treatment usually brings them around and they start growing even. Different species, obviously, but one of them looks like white pooping? But that could be a fin.

Finally caught a pair spawning. All three pairs spawned in the last 24 hours. Thwarting my water change plans for the day.

I own a ton of non-wifi Inkbird heat controlling devices (a ton might be over the top, but I own probably 20 and have been using them for close to 10 years). The standard ones most people use in their aquariums. Some two zone models for reptiles. Some hard wired ones that I wire to outlets to control my aging/preheating barrels and chicken egg incubators. A sous vide. Maybe others. The one Inkbird device that absolutely STUNK was their 4-probe BBQ thermometer with WiFi. The hardware is the standard, bulletproof Inkbird quality that I'm used to. And the WiFi... works, I guess. But the alarming and temperature settings are impossible to deal with and, frankly, does not work. Admittedly, this might be more of an app issue, but to my knowledge there's no way around using the app. For example, I'd set the alarm for 160 and it might finally let me know that it hit temp when it gets to 190. I don't know if it's a problem with my device or what... but I gave up on it. I'm not saying that the WiFi aquarium temp controllers are the same, but I just don't see how they could be any better than the non-WiFi version. Even if you can dial in the temperature more precisely (do you need more tight control than the non-WiFi version offers...?), I would be shocked if the regulation and control is any different, so it's unlikely to actually regulate any more tightly. To do that you need some sort of PID controller with a heater capable of variable output. $$$

Nerites are great for eating algae. But my vote for best clean-up crew is responsible feeding and/or your siphon. 🙂 What else is in the tank already? Or if it's not already setup, what's the theoretical future stocking?

If you want something to eat algae, I think you'll be disappointed with hillstreams for this purpose. Both can be a bit of a spectacle to watch, though. A mature male bristlenose is quite wild looking.

My sterbai have been saving up for me.

The fish looks fine now and it's been maybe 3-4 weeks since I took them out. I'm not sure how long you need to have salt in for ich, but if you're trying to keep a certain level of salt make sure that you add back what you take out with water changes.

I did 1 tbs/gallon on my discus tank which had two bristlenose plecos in it. The super red was fine, but the regular female started getting what looked like fin damage on the ends of her fins after about a week, so I pulled them. I did the discus for about 12 days. I've always heard that corys are very salt sensitive as in "any salt might kill them". But maybe that's not true? I've always been too scared to try.