Emrie G

I've been so thoroughly absent on the forum for almost a month now, but I'm finally moved into my apartment, which is very exciting! 😊 I don't have all my tanks set up yet, and the ones I do have are in rough shape, but I figured I might as well record the process anyway. Here's my poor attempt at a picture of the aquarium rack! Honestly my favorite thing about having these racks is now I can lay in bed and watch fish TV. I'm less enthused about the air pump noises, but it's better than it was when I was in university housing and the pump was six inches from my pillow. My live plants have not handled two moves in three months with grace, so the majority of them are in the process of melting. The plants definitely suffered from the comedy of errors when I was setting up initially. I was so frazzled by moving that I forgot to add water conditioner, murdering the ramshorns I was trying to use as a cycle jumpstart (sorry snails! 😣), and then had to leave town for five days for a wedding. Hopefully with some love, care, and root tabs they'll forgive me. I'm most excited about getting my 20 long finally set up, even though it's a mess. My five adult platies are definitely enjoying having more space, along with a few fry I left in with them and my neocaridinia culls (wilds and some low grade reds). The Petco in town stocks green lantern platies regularly, so I'll be picking up a few of them to continue my experiment in "how green can I make the platies, exactly?" The early stages of that experiment ended up with some cute gold and green mutts courtesy of my blue mickey mouse lady and a (I think?) tuxedo male. My current male refused to pose for pictures (he's behind the bumblebee female), but his sister is hanging out by the shrimp cave in this picture. She's much less vivid than he is, but you can still see the green on her okay. Along with the green lanterns, I plan to add panda corydoras and maybe a trio of hillstream loaches to the 20 long eventually, but that's for a future me to worry about. I also have a red cherry shrimp tank set up in the 10 gallon on the shelf below, with a few platy fry hanging out to hopefully prevent the scuds that invaded over the summer from getting out of control. I'll eventually set up a second 10 next to it, and I think I have room for three 10s on the rack below. Most of those will probably be platy fry growout tanks, though I may also isolate some of the fry into separate breeding groups as they grow up. I have some bumblebee fry more on the orange side that I'm interested in messing around with. The rack on the left is my betta rack. Before my first move in May I had ten bettas. Three of them (one elderly, one with an aggressive tumor, one a rescue I didn't have an attachment to) stayed with my younger sibling to avoid the stress of moving twice, and all but the last passed over the summer. The other seven (four males, three females, all housed individually) came with me since they were all young and healthy, but I unexpectedly lost two of the females over the summer, so I'm down to four boys and Chloé. I've rambled on for a while, though, so I'll talk more about the bettas in a subsequent post, and try to get some better pictures when I do!

I have a comparable collection, and mysteriously even when I give some to my sibling who's also in the hobby...more reappear. 😂 I think plastic and especially silk plants are fun. Sometimes you want a realistic live planted tank, sometimes you want a neon pink and orange tank.

Well, I'm really skating close to the deadline, but I'll go ahead and post mine anyway. This is just a part of the house I dream about building one day (although it's not likely to happen 😅). I haven't researched if all this stuff would actually work at all since it's a far off dream, but here's what I'm thinking. The house would have a courtyard in the middle and you would be able to access some rooms both from inside the house and from the courtyard. In the courtyard we'd have my husband's vegetable garden, a big koi and/or goldfish pond, and some big tubs that I'd probably use for summer livebearer breeding. I didn't really design it, but I'd like to have a little viewing area with a nice bench to watch the koi pond. In the living room I'd have a 125 gallon tank. The one fish my husband has ever said he needs is a pleco of some kind. So the deal is once we have a living room with space for a 125 gallon, he gets to pick his pleco and I'll design and stock the rest of the tank around that fish's needs. What can I say, I love my husband and if there's going to be a massive tank in our living room I want him to be able to enjoy it too! Finally, there's the actual fish room. Right now I have the access just through the courtyard; in reality there would probably be access through the other pet room as well. Coming in from the courtyard the first thing you'd see would be the lowboy corydoras tank. I've wanted a lowboy tank ever since I saw a video (I think from Prime Time Aquatics?) on a 50gallon lowboy he had in the middle of his fish room. (To be fair, he also said he hated having it in the middle of his fish room, but hey, as long as I have a nice walkway around it, I think it's a great idea.) I'd stock this tank with just corydoras, maybe a giant shoal of one variety, maybe a few smaller schools of different varieties. To the left of the door is the betta rescue rack, probably on one of those big gladiator racks. I have a bad habit of coming across bettas in bad shape and convincing people to give them to me, so I've obviously got to keep a space for that. It would be most five gallon tanks, with a couple ten gallons and several smaller tanks/containers for bettas that need a smaller space than a five gallon while they recover. Next to the rescue rack is the supply cabinet for medication, food, extra decor, etc. I'd also have a freezer on that wall for frozen food. The back wall is a ton of breeding racks. Since this exists in a world where I have way too much time to devote to my fish, I'd be focusing a lot on breeding. I'll keep breeding platies and neocaridina shrimp, probably try corydoras and guppies as well. I really want to try betta breeding as well, so most of this rack would be dedicated to that endeavor. I want to see if it's possible to breed healthier bettas that still look beautiful, kind of like what Kasia of Creative Pet Keeping does. The next wall is kind of the oddball rack for whatever I end up not having a good spot for elsewhere. Plants I'm trying to get to grow, weird experiments I'm doing, and other stuff like that will go there. I'll also probably have quarantine tubs on the bottom of this rack for new stock. If I ever get brave enough to try live food, which I'll need to with a fish room this size, I'll have everything for that over here too. Finally, we have the rack for my pet fish, which is basically a spot for bettas that I rescue and then get way too attached too. I'll probably also have cull tanks on this rack, since the culls I can't sell usually end up becoming my pets. I don't like killing them if they have a good quality of life, so they'll hang out with me. I also have a nice chair in this corner so I can watch the fish. That's about it! Thanks for reading my absolute essay if you made it this far! 😊

I'd love to try this, but I don't think I have the space to right now. I may see if I can fit in one or two of these tests when I set up my new fish room. I do love a good experiment! I wonder if five or ten gallon tanks would be best to try these on for me... But I also wonder if different HOBs or sponge filters wouldn't have different results when compared HOB to HOB or sponge to sponge.

@kahjtheundedicated I literally started thinking about this about an hour before you commented. I definitely think I'm going to go with panda cories for this tank, since it looks like then I won't need a heater with my apartment in the mid-70s all year. Thanks for the advice! @Solstice_LacerI'll definitely get a journal thread going once I've got the tank set up! I'm excited to see how hillstream loaches work for me; I've never kept any loaches before though I've wanted to for ages.

I asked my husband (who has a geology degree) and he essentially said yes, it will oxidize, turn green, and release copper oxides into the tank. So I would say definitely skip that. As cool as it would look it's not worth the risk and it would bar you from adding shrimp/snails/other inverts to the tank.

@Patrick_G that's what I'm thinking! I'll go with that and see how it goes! Thanks for the input. @Guppysnail it absolutely is some sort of Aponogeton 😂 I am forever forgetting how to spell it. And I will definitely share pictures once I get everything set up!

Hi! So at the end of this month I'll FINALLY be moving into an apartment, which means I get to set up my first 20 gallon tank ever! I picked out a 20 gallon long since I knew that was what I wanted. It'll be a fight to get the thing cycled since I'll have to add fish within a week of setting it up (yay, moving), but I have seasoned filter media to add and plenty of time to monitor the tank, so I'm hopeful things will go well. Starting out, I'll have five platies (two adult females, an adult male, and two near-adult juveniles who I hope are female). I also have a lone bronze cory catfish who will be added in once I get her some friends; right now she's living in a mixed group of cories that were all acquired through weird circumstances. My goal is to eventually have eight bronze cories and around 7-10 platies who will probably get switched in and out every once in a while as I'll be using them for a breeding project. I'm going to try running a 60 gallon sponge filter on this tank just because I have the thing and may as well use it, and I plan to have plenty of live plants. I have an Amazon sword and a strange bulb plant I keep forgetting the identity of that are quickly outgrowing their current homes, and I'll have anubias barteri and java moss as well as other things. I'm wondering if down the line, after adding cories and some more platies, it MIGHT be feasible to add a trio of hillstream loaches since I love the way they look and act. From the reading I've done there seems to be a small temperature range where platies, cories, and hillstreams can live together, and I would add a HOB filter at one end of the tank to give the hillstreams a space with a stronger flow. What do y'all think? Too many fish? Completely incompatible fish? Or is there a good chance it will work out okay?

My favorite is definitely anubias, any variety, but especially the anubias barteri. I have probably six or eight varieties in my tanks and I'm always wanting more. I'm starting to like swords, but my tanks aren't really big enough for them to be impressive.

They're quite a bit bigger than zebra danios when they're fully grown. Mine got to around two inches, I think. But they are very similar in temperament from what I've seen.

Pearl danios are different from celestial pearl danios! CPDs are the spotted ones and pearls are just the, well, pearly looking ones you see at big box stores. I kept a school for a bit and they were really fun fish, but oh man they are jumpers. I thought my lid was air tight and they still kept escaping, so I eventually stopped keeping them, but they do school together and move all around, and are super pretty once they get bigger.

I've not kept puffers or bristlenose, so I can't help with their housing, but I HAVE transported fish across country before, though not quite 1400 miles. @mountaintoppufferkeepers comment on moving fish using a USB air pump and storage tubs is exactly what I did both times, once transporting fish home from a convention and the second time actually moving. You don't actually need to use the air pump in the car from my experience, but it's a good idea to plug it in overnight at the hotel/wherever you're staying if you stop mid-trip. You definitely want to fast them before - I actually began fasting 72 hours before moving and it's worked well both times. It's possible to get a single tub and divide it up so you can use one tub for all your fish, but I don't recommend it. When I tried we had bettas jumping dividers before we made it out of the parking lot. The tubs we used were around 5-10 gallon tubs, but you will not want to fill them more than half way or they will slosh around. You can also, particularly with your betta, look into plastic 32oz food carryout containers. Poke holes in the top, fill about halfway with water, and as long as they've fasted they're good for 3-5 days. (Not thrilled, but I didn't lose any of the 13 I moved doing that.) I would say expect to lose a couple of your shrimp, because I always lose two or three when I move them.They will handle the change in water parameters less happily than the fish. Drip acclimate them carefully and slowly when you add water at the new place. Super long rambling post, but I hope it helps!

I've been away a lot this past month and only really able to interact with my tanks for water changes and necessary maintenance, so today it was time for the fun stuff! First, did water changes (boring) and checked up on everyone. I did lose a betta recently and I'm not really sure why, but the other girl in the divided tank is completely fine a week later. I took the divider out to give her the full five gallons, which is what she has when I'm in my own apartment rather than imposing on the in-laws. My ramshorn snails and cherry shrimp are THRIVING. I'm going to have to heavily separate out my blue dreams, red cherries, and the wild type babies that have snuck in once I get to my own place in August. I'm still getting some good red and blue babies along with the wilds, so I'm not super worried. Plus a lot of the wilds are really dark, so maybe I can do something with them to try to breed them towards a black line. That shrimp tank is something else. The Java Ferns needed some pruning. I ended up with a nice cup full of baby plants that I'm going to try to grow out in a separate tub. I also moved a bunch of ramshorns out of the shrimp tank into my other tanks. I'm going to have to call my LFS and see if they want feeder snails if this keeps up. They're very cute, but the tanks being by the window means a lot of algae, which means more snails than I'm comfortable with. All in all, it was a productive day! I'm itching to be able to set up a new aquarium, but that will have to wait until August.

One of my newer Bettas, Hiryuu. Some of his "white" scales really are that purple to pink gradient. His fins are still recovering (they were heavily ripped when I got him), but he's easily the prettiest betta I've ever owned.

I've had mostly nano tanks with JUST a betta and maybe a snail or two each, and for me as a student with a couple jobs... if it gets above about 10 tanks it starts to be overwhelming. But I also find the smaller tanks are harder to maintain, so it may fluctuate as I get larger tanks. I'll be setting up a 20 long (my first tank above 10 gallons!) in August, so we'll see how that goes. Right now I have 6 tanks set up (three 10s, two 5s, and a bitty 1 gallon for a disabled betta) and that's way too few for me. Also, your rack system is AWESOME! I hope to one day have something as cool as that for my tanks.