jwcarlson

No, it's just not full yet. Ran out of water!

My sterbai surprised me with about 25 eggs today. No complaints here. 🙂 Got my 55 cleaned out and ready for the next inhabitants which should be here tomorrow if this massive snow storm doesn't delay them!

I bought six cherry shrimp when I first re-setup an aquarium a couple of years ago and at varying times I thought they had all died. When I tore the tank down to relocate the fish and plants and everything all six adults were still alive AND there were like 40 shrimplets. Turns out the ACO course sponge filters are basically shrimplet hotels. While all of your shrimp might not still be alive, it's possible there's still some. I don't know if it's worth going crazy trying to tear the tank apart. I'll also say that I have seen my kerri and cardinal tetras eat adult shrimp. So there's that to consider.

Yay! In two months they'll be 30% bigger and you'll only be able to tell if you go look at old pictures. 😄 I'm only semi-exaggerating. They're pretty fun to watch. My adults are really secretive, but the fry seem to be almost personable, at least for awhile. Best of luck growing them out! 🙂

Yeah, you'll know. Consider wearing gloves or using tweezers.

Take them out and sniff them. They're probably just "clamming up" because they're a bit stressed.

Sounds like a dechlorination issue. Lots of factors as to why just the corys would show evidence of it, but that's the best bet. I'm sure we've all done it. I've done it on my discus and almost killed them. It's pretty easy to forget. I will say that fish might seem "off" for quite awhile after that happens.

Welcome! I set up my CPDs last night so I should have a batch of eggs this afternoon. Like @Guppysnail says... they grow SOOOOO slow! It's easy to get impatient and overfeed (from personal experience). Good luck!

First batch of fry moved to an upgrade last night. Feeding this morning:

My MTS have kind of leveled off as I've fed more live and higher quality foods, but they can really reproduce quickly. I use very little flake. Most tanks don't have many MTS, but it's a result of management. I, personally, would be way more concerned about the endlers. I've not kept them, but every live bearer I have ever kept does nothing but stress me out because they overrun EVERYTHING if you're keeping them well. The only way I would consider doing them again is if I was doing it for a specific purpose (like breeding to just check something off the list and just for one round). Or if I had a tank of larger fish that I could feed fry to. Agree, also, with the above about a kuhli loach. I've had them and moved them along. Never saw them much so didn't seem to make much sense.

Isn't that what the lids are for?!?

It's shorter, but more wide. 55 is 48 long x 13 wide (624 square inches). 40 breeder is 36 long x 18 wide (648 square inches). From memory there so it might be wrong. 75 is a good sized tank. Really depends on your space. I just set up my first 125 and I can understand the intimidating feeling! It's not even twice as big but if seems like it's 4x bigger than my 75!

I've had bad luck with RR, personally. But with anubais I've never had RR cause a single problem at all. They're pretty robust plants.

This is just me, but I'd get him on a trusted, parasite free food (prepared or freeze dried) to eliminate that as a possible source of contamination. There's discus folks that won't even feed Hikari frozen food because they're worried about parasites and consider any other frozen food to basically be asking for problems with a fairly heavy dislike for SF Bay stuff in particular. I personally feed Hikari frozen blood worms (sparingly), but I also have occasional bouts with worms... so perhaps there's merit to the concerns. Snails can also vector worms... though I have plenty of bladder snails in my discus tank and they do eat them when I crush them. Or at least a couple of them do. Does Pod eat from the surface at all? If he does that could make changing over to something else easier. Mine really like freeze dried blackworms, but they're expensive and usually not easy to find. And they float (but you can push the cube onto the glass, though it still breaks apart and goes all over). I just put the black worm cubes in and they peck at them at the surface and it works well. Initially they only wanted to eat them off the glass. I don't know what all foods you have, but you can probably find something he'll want, though it might be a pain. What is your water change routine like? If I were you I'd be doing a DEEP, 100% gravel vac daily. If you don't usually gravel vac, then I would ease into it over a few days. But the substrate is likely one of the major causes of the reinfestation. It's tough getting a good clean in my discus tank and there's nothing on the bottom. I wish you and Pod luck, he's got some fight left in him!

@TrashPanda_XD my male apistos have been pretty good in community tanks, but I don't have a ton of experience with them, so take that for what it's worth. A female might actually be worse from an aggression standpoint as she's more likely to stake a claim and want to breed. I don't know if I would try apistos with gouramis, but someone else might have experience there.

20 minutes of peroxide probably did it. If the rhizome is OK, it might recover. I destroyed my biggest anubias about a year ago with peroxide. It survived, but took a year to get anywhere near what it was.

It's the biggest aquarium I've ever had, I know you've got a bunch of massive ones, but this feels almost insane to me. 😄 Thankfully there's a floor drain, though a lot of stuff is going to be wet if she goes.

Yes, @PluckyD, he is EXTREMELY thin which tends to point to internal parasites. Also notice the pinched forehead. Not a perfect shot, but here are some semi-head-on pictures of mine. They should be pretty beefy narrowing a bit towards the tail. But in general the main body should be even with the gills. It's a long road to recovery for a fish that thin. What's his main diet these days? What kind of blood worms are you feeding? Hikari?

I've got space for it, but I need one that my wife can't see. Maybe I can paint it camoflauge.

You had me moderately concerned because I couldn't tell if it had the steel mesh under it and it looked like you might have had 400 pounds suspended on OSB 😄 I think those are a good option for an out of the box stand. And honestly, they don't look bad. I'm trying to slow-walk putting in a rack like this with some growout tanks. Do you think I'd be able to hide one in my basement right in the middle of the walkway to our oldest's bedroom and the laundry room?

What do the bottom of those shelves look like, @Mattlikesfish36?

If you're doing mostly/all bottom dwellers, a 55 likely "wastes" a lot because the footprint is so narrow. It's really kind of a strange footprint, honestly. A 75 would be a better option and the same length as a 55 (48"). That said, you can accomplish a lot of those fish in smaller footprints. 40 breeder is a good, shallower tank size and actually has more square inches of bottom than a 55.

So, thinking a bit more and have a few thoughts. Just spitballing here. Slime coat shedding is common for pH mismatches or some irritant in the water. I think it's also possible that water with "microbubbles" can cause it as well. Are you noticing it after water changes? The other piece of the puzzle here (and I know I touched on this earlier) is this is a schooling fish being kept alone, so there is some baseline level of stress that you cannot relieve. It's possible that he felt more safe in quarantine (lower lighting? Totally blacked out sides? Less foot traffic? Less shadows?) But once placed back in the main tank, he goes back to being exceedingly nervous. I think I relayed the story about a discus I put in isolation and he went on a hunger strike. Literally the minute I put another discus in with him, he started eating.

Wish me luck! This is the 125 I re-resealed 10 days ago. I actually do not think I had a leak after the first reseal. There's some discoloration from the spray paint on the bottom. Oh well, it's better sealed this time, I think.

Pimples are typically a result of low water quality and tend to go away when water improves. Slime coat shedding is interesting.