jwcarlson

You can't really reliably sex discus without them being fully mature and truthfully, you have to see their breeding apparatus. As far as one discus being alone... it's certainly not ideal. If money is an issue, I'd steer very clear of discus. A single fully grown discus from a reputable source might "work" in this situation, at least temporarily. But the odds are slim. And that fish is going to run you something in the $250 neighborhood. You could conceivably do 5-6 in the 55, but speaking as someone who has 7 in a 75. It takes a boatload of water changes to keep them in good shape. I average 5x90% water changes per week and for the first 18 months or so it was every day.

How often are you changing water? 25 nitrates is pretty high for fry raising (at least in my opinion).

As stated above, there's no reason to keep using Stability or anything like that routinely once you're cycled. I would suggest that you're never really cycled until there's fish in the tank, but that's a different discussion. You should have a great head start at this point. Regarding water changes and prime. I change 90% of water in my discus tank, dump the prime into the little bit of water left over, and then pump the water into the tank and they're completely fine. There's no need to dechlorinate and wait for it to act. Chlorine at tap water levels isn't something that just instantly kills anything. When I have forgotten to dechlorinate the fish usually seem a bit off over 20-30 minute timeframe and then will be gasping at the surface within the hour.

If you can isolate him that can help diagnose and see if he's pooping. Is he passing any poop at all? If so, is it white or stringy?

If you have another tank you could move the corys there to grow up some. I've put pretty small cories in with my full grown rams and they haven't bothered them. I've not had EBA ever, but I will say that fish that "grow up" together seem to be pretty tolerant of each other in my experience. If you get a small EBA and it's not big enough to bother the corys initiallly, it might just accept them. Of course with cichlids, every day is a roll of the dice for some behaviors, so take that with the grain of salt.

I'd just monitor it and see. What's important to understand is that the sponge filter you moved in doesn't know how big of a tank it's in. It just "knows" how much fish waste it normally processed and will be able to process that much now. The good news is that an established filter can increase in size pretty quickly. I've only added Stability when using some existing media if I'm trying to seed new filters and know that what I moved over is not sufficient enough to quickly bring everything up to "cycled". If I'm squeezing a cycled sponge or two into a new tank, I wouldn't bother with the Stability as it seems like the sponge squeezings really do a good job of cycling things. You can easily avoid cycling issues (high ammonia/nitrites) with water changes in the interim. In a big enough tank with reasonable stocking you can probably get away with a change every 2-3 days. You'd want to dose the Stability after a water change. I also avoid wiping down sides while cycling as I think a decent amount of bacteria covers those surfaces at least initially.

Employee seems a bit misinformed and out of line, really. I tend to be fairly understocked in my tanks unless they're growout tanks with lots of fry in them getting lots of water changes, but 12 pygmy corys shouldn't be an issue I wouldn't think, though I have not kept them. It's not all bad staggering the loading, but water changes solve any concerns of ammonia or nitrite spikes.

It's a good word. I like nincompoopery. As in, "I apologize in advance for my nincompoopery."

What percentage of the time are they colored up like that? They're absolutely beautiful!

Personally, I'd focus on keeping fish successfully for awhile before I started thinking about setting up a couple dozen 40 gallon tanks and hoping to make a business out of it. You could be the best fishkeeper ever and still fail miserably at running a fish business. A lot of hobbies have this euphoric initial period when you can't get enough of it and you feel like you know everything. Then a year or two down the road you get beaten to oblivion and give away all your stuff swearing it off for the rest of your life. I don't know how to necessarily estimate how much it would cost to start a store as there are a near infinite amount of variables. The number is certainly in the 10s of thousands of dollars at least. And then monthly you're going to have to deal with all of the basic bills/costs associated with the business and fish. Electricity, rent, water, gas, renovations for the space, paying for new stock, filters, air system... The "selling out of your garage" route has a lot less overhead. Most cities are littered with failed fish stores, I live in a city of about 25k people and there's AT LEAST 4-5 LFSs that used to be around at various points over the years, but are now lost to time.

Unfortunately, I'm on the complete other side of Iowa. However, floaters seem to grow pretty quick. The problem I've had is that they need to constantly be managed or they'll choke out all the light for your other plants. They do not ship very well, but as long as you can get some to survive, they'll usually grow and make it worth buying in short order. They seem to slurp up nitrates like crazy as well. I've bought from a few different shops on Etsy.

You can go down some DEEP rabbit holes regarding silicone and silicone curing. Especially on the reef forums which is where I ended up when I was doing some research. I don't think it's rocket science, but I am not exaggerating much when I say that some reefers think it is. 😄

Hornwort. It seems to have won the Hunger Games that are my planted aquariums. Runner up is dwarf water lettuce. Third place elodea. Guppy grass did OK for awhile, but randomly died.

I'd wait at least 10 days. Two weeks if you can. It, of course, comes down to how thick the beads are.... but if you're not in some big hurry taking some extra time will never hurt. I've only ever resealed a couple of tanks, but one of them was a 125 and I was surprised how long it took to cure, though I did leave some thick beads. One thing to look out for is expiration dates. I believe it's possible that silicone that's too old might not ever cure fully. I bought some silicone from amazon and it was very near if not already expired when I received it. I ended up just going with GE Silicone 1 (whatever it's called now).

I'm guessing those farms are mostly making fish that breed well in whatever water they have. They're not breeding discus and cardinal tetras outdoors, for instance. Cory went to this big breeder in Israel awhile back. Towards the end (about 21 minutes) he talks about having three big RO systems to make water for 8000 pairs of neon tetras (I think, but maybe cardinals). He also basically makes it into black water with additives.

Breeders absolutely us RO water at any and all levels. 🙂

I've got discus, apistos, and rams in rock hard water here in the midwest. They won't successfully breed. But I think they can live perfectly normal lives. My pH is 8.2 or 8.3, GH and KH are both high. 16-18 degrees each, if I recall correctly. I think that the sweet spots for these species are smaller when you're in harder water, but it's not impossible.

How often are you changing water? How often are you adding salt and how are you doing that? If you've had that much salt on them for two weeks or more, I'd really suggest dialing it back (water change and don't replace it). I can't say that I know what you're dealing with, though. How many fish had symptoms before you started treating and how long did the symptoms occur before treating?

Are there any symptoms that you're trying to treat them for? 2 tablespoons per gallon is a lot of salt and I believe corys are very sensitive to salt. I've gone to half that (1 tablespoon/gallon) with my discus for a week temporarily and discus are very salt tolerant. One of the bristlenose I had in there at that dose started having fins looking really rough/eroding after a few days so I moved them. How long have you been at that high of a salt dose? Besides that, it seems like that's a lot of meds to be hammering them with in a pretty short period of time. Unless there's some underlying symptom, I think I'd change a lot of water and see what happens. How many of the original amount are still alive? Are these adult corys or younger? How did you source them?

I'm just assuming furcata are similar. I've got one male who is probably close to two years old and he's (seemingly) huge, got shipped him on accident from AquaHuna with my CPDs and he's been with them the whole time until after the new ones QT'd and grew out a bit so he didn't body them to death. I probably need to pick out 3-4 females to go with my two males. The fry are so stinking small though, so it's another one of those conundrums. 😄 They do seem to hatch OK in my regular tap water, so that's a plus.

I checked my mop and found about a dozen eggs last night. Also found three new fry that I sucked up into a tray. And today another 3 or 4 eggs. I only have one female. I might see if the LFS guy will let me hand pick a couple females out. He tried and got one M one F last time. I should have checked them. Haha What's a good male to female ratio?

I went to a smaller piston pump from Amazon (alphabet soup supplier) that has worked well and replaced 7 or 8 other pumps by putting in an air loop in my fish room and overall is much more quiet than the sum of the other pumps. And it's just hanging on my wall, I've done nothing to quiet it down.

I have some furcatta and I've yet to see eggs. But little tiny babies show up (and eventually are eaten). But one has survived and is big enough it probably won't be eaten now. There were a few more little one swimming this AM when I fed the tank. Maybe they're laying in the mop. Yours look like they're just laying them on the bottom? Or they're falling that way at least? Or that's the breeder box?

They sure are pretty! I like the more substantial body on these than the Beckford's. Never seen them in person, but seeing your videos looks like similar behavior which is what makes Beckford's fun, IMO. Hope you can get them to breed! I'd heard they're not as hardy as the Beckford's, but who knows how true that is vs someone just having a bad experience.

Mine must be extra dumb.