nabokovfan87

There is usually air holes along the top of the decor to try to let air escape. They would be small but often aren't extremely small. Ultimately, given the snail issue I would remove the decor piece. If that was your only snail it might be ok. Any bottom dwelling fish could get stuck in there. I've had rasboras and stuff get stuck in there too. Can you please show the inside of the filter? I think there's a lot of confusion here because you might be using cartridges as opposed to other media types. I believe this is similar to what your filter looks like.

If possible, please post a photo of the tank so we can get an idea of what the decor looks like. What was the size of the pleco? If you have any artificial decor it would be a very good idea to try to find the fish and ensure it isn't stuck. They will put out their little dentrils to hold in place when you move the decor. Lift the decor in and out of the water as a method to encourage the fish to release. Use a flashlight, check all the small "tunnels" and try to find the fish.

They have bigger ones rated for a few hundred lbs that I saw. Some of them were listed as fireplace brackets, stone mounting, or floating shelving. I wouldn't do this lightly though, so referencing that video is a great place to start.

When I had to pull eggs the second time it wasn't great. I hatched them out in the tumbler and went to move them to the specimen container. The result of all of that was that right as I added the next spawn that was a day or so old the older corydoras just ate them. In terms of handling eggs, it would just be methylene blue dips. You move the eggs from the tank to a specimen container or something similar and use that as you vessel for the dip. Add 1-3 drops and wait a certain amount of time. I can't recall off the top of my head but it's something like 15-30 minutes. Then you would change out the water / move those eggs to the container to hatch. Ultimately the issue you're running into is why breeders have 2-3 tanks lined up and ready to go for eggs. Don't feel like you need to pull eggs if you already have too many. If you're struggling and trying to get them to hatch, but fighting fungus then there is a few tips we can look at. 1. Not too much flow, but enough to keep water movement. In a tumbler it's a gentle movement of the egg (like an anemone tendril or something) 2. Spread the eggs and separate the eggs as much as possible. Check constantly for fungus and remove eggs as soon as fungus appears. You can either dip those in the methylene blue again or discard them. 3. Neocaridina shrimp have been reported to clean eggs from fungus. 4. Catappa leaves will also help to aid in antifungal and antibacterial properties.

There are some hobbyists that don't recommend less than a 3 month QT! Ultimately there is a lot of information out there and the general guideline is from a few week, but more likely right around the one month mark. In my case, given the ability to QT fish, I would do so as long as possible just to be able to treat with any preventative medications and ensure fish health and acclimation. Given the setup here and your fish list, I would bring in everything except the kuhli loaches. Get 2-3 extra of each type of nano fish, your single SAE, and just go through QT with those fish. After a week of observation, dose in aquarium salt and monitor for another week. Then you'd treat for internal parasites at a minimum. This is going to be ~3 treatments minimum and they will occur over several weeks. (Now that 6 week window makes sense!) The meds for this is typically paracleanse and expel-p. Note that one of them is light sensitive as well. You can start with meds on the first week of arrival, it's entirely up to you, but the general layout of everything would be the above method. Treating for bacterial infection is a generally good idea as well, the typical medication being Erythromycin/Maracyn.

It's difficult to specify what is going on. I would recommend daily 50% water changes to dilute the ammonia out and help the fish. Adding an airstone may also be beneficial at this time. The goal is to get the water quality up to par first and foremost. The fish looks a little beat up. I don't know if it was attacked or what is causing stress. I would isolate the fish in a QT setup or in a breeder box if possible for now. Check for wounds or places where the fish could injure itself as well. Right now I would simply focus on water changes and monitor the situation. The only explanation or guess I have is that filtration or that the other fish caused some damage to this angel.

I second this method. I will try to explain the quick and easy of how I personally do things and maybe it makes some sense compared to adding liquid ammonia. First, setup the tank, get water moving via air stone or filtration. Then, after it's been at least 1 week start your ghost feeding (drop in a pinch of food once) and add in your bacteria from a bottle, API quick start. Every 2-3 days you will add a little bit more food but you do not need to add a lot! You want to see the filters working and the tank doing it's normal thing. After 7-14 days of bacteria and ghost feeding you should see some nitrite and nitrate in your water testing. You would continue this until there is 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite. Finally, SLOWLY add fish. Don't add a ton of fish right away. If your goal is to have 2-3 fish, then you can add them at once, but if your goal is to have 3-4 schools of fish, add one school and give the tank 2-3 weeks to adjust to the new bioload. Then add the next group of fish. Agreed! Livebeares can be misleading as a beginner fish because it is very easy for them to bread and produce fry. If you go with a single species group of all males it will be a beautiful tank, but no added fish from breeding. I would suggest starting with a plant called anubias. It's very easy and you shouldn't need anything special to have success with this plant. It doesn't get planted, but can be tied or glued to the hardscape. It's a very low demand plant that does really well in a variety of setups. My favorite to start with is called anubias nana.

Perhaps show the design above in the video to someone who can weld some steel square tube for you and make something strong enough. Having support tubing welded on angle would also be helpful to distribute the load and prevent sagging. The hardware they used is similar to what you see in the aquarium coop store build for their aquarium stands. Edit. I cannot verify the statements, but there is quite a few options on Amazon that are available!

Here is some inspiration for you! The weight of a 29G with water is ~330 lbs. In terms of how to do this there's a few things going on. You have a very strong vertical load going down onto the shelf. This can be supported a variety of ways and you need to make sure that it's tied into structure. The hardware strength needs to be able to support the load as well as whatever mounting system you use. I would consider a 20L aquarium as it's the same dimensions as the 29G but less height. The tank is going to be on the wall already and so the maintenance may get tricky given the height of a 29G as well.

There is an assumption that temperature plays a role. What size are the fish? Certain males can present as female for many months longer. I'm not sure why, but it seems to be common. I wouldn't expect 100% of the males in a batch to do so, but just something to note.

One of my "tips and tricks" for people who are new to shrimp is something that I don't see a lot of people doing, if at all. Look at your shrimp under different color spectrums. It could be blue, green, red, yellow, orange, etc., but the idea here is to easily highlight contrast. I have some shrimp that are blue. Under pink light it's very obvious to tell them apart. Hopefully this helps someone. It might be a bit of a beginner item, but it's pretty neat how well this works. Same shrimp under a different color, let's see how well it works. ^^ in person I turned the blue on, red to about 10% and the red was a bright red while the blue was enhanced. It worked well! The camera only picked up blue though. 😕

That is the story about 20 or so years ago, yes. A lot has changed, that's about the easiest way to put it. That's awesome. 🙂 There is basically 3-5 main methods right now in work. 1. Banning certain things via politics. 2. Regulation of how many and methodology to create a "sustainable" system. (Basically it's been states that this is practically impossible and that the vast majority of things like inspectors just disappear constantly) 3. Shame, and the older generation that demand this no longer being around. Ensuring that the new generation understands it for what it is. Example being posters showing that the fins are literally treated like sewage and dried in streets and gutters. There is also much darker (i.e. illegitimate) tones to what this money funds. 4. Changing public mindset around the animal. Jaws did a lot of damage. The "strongman" approach to killing a shark also does a lot of damage, foolishly. 5. Protected areas to ban fishing of any kind in these regions. Considering that you also have a love of sharks I would highly recommend some of these movies. Not for the sake of making you feel negatively about the state of things, but as mentioned there are some that focus on the beauty and love of the species. A. Playing with sharks (Disney+) B. Sharkwater 1 (not sure, I have it on DVD) C. Sharkwater 2: Extinction (Amazon prime) Expanding knowledge into the subjects presented, if you've enjoyed the previous ones: D. Gordon Ramsey's Film E. Seaspiracy F. Fin (The afforementioned book as well is a really great read, very light, for anyone interested in conservation, research, or sharks)

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea they have an AGA competition for jars now 🙂

I was finally able to watch "Fin" which is the most recent documentary on the subject and is slightly over 1 year old. This is a documentary which may have had a bigger reach because it was (I believe this is accurate) brought on shark week as a main feature. This was due to the editing, timeframe, and need for content during the pandemic. I look at this as a blessing and a curse because unfortunately "Shark Week" doesn't really feature a lot of documentary style films. I hope this changes in future, but I have my hopes set pretty low based on new information from reading the above mentioned book. Sharks "in the news" and gory, violent titles seem to make a bigger splash when it comes to ratings than something like Fin or Sharkwater and that is very tragic. I even remember the year that the featured a spoof film (starting a trend for fake content) which showed media and created content in a documentary style for Megaladon lives. What I can say about this one is that it hit me pretty hard from moment one. The first couple of scenes were about as shocking as they were to the person behind the camera making the film. It was from the perspective of someone who wanted to learn more, who didn't know a lot, and was pretty much tossed right into the events and got to see firsthand what things are like. There is a ridiculous chicken and egg argument that one of the "finners" makes which is just one of the most bizarre claims I've ever heard as well as transitioning from that moment into a fishing tournament where they claimed it was research and even associated directly with NOAA. Seeing scientists basically waiting at the wings on multiple occasions at different events to take tissue samples for research from people killing hundreds of sharks a day. It's not my place to spew a bunch of statistics and repeat things from the movie, but what I can say is that yet again it was all tied back to a dish which was demonstrated yet again to the general public that is nothing but a status symbol. The entire chicken and egg situation yet again where the shark is killed for this dish and that dish is expensive for the sake of it being a status symbol, keeping the price of the ingredient high, that isn't actually required at all for the dish. Gordon Ramsey's documentary said it best.... it's just broth. Anyways, the crux of the movie, as with all of these is the closing moments and trying to seriously hit home to the viewer. The impact of things like "fish and chips" and not realizing you're eating mercury. The impact of using sunscreen and not realizing what you're putting on your skin. I am glad to hear that there is works in progress to create a "shark free" label. However, given the controversial impact of something like the dolphin labeling on cans of tuna being nothing more than that and cannot fully be verified. Holding people accountable would go a long way as well as changing the public perception of the issues. I think Fin strikes a good balance in showing the issues as plainly as anything I've ever seen as well as showing the impact of those events to everyone watching. I can't imagine anyone would be able to walk away from viewing that movie and not looking at the back labels of products they use every day. I'll end with a few research studies on why this is an issue. Keep in mind that this comes into our aquariums through products like fish oil and fish meal most commonly. 2013: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7008590/ 2017: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6415793/ 2018-19: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7794238/

Unfortunately, I think the damage is permanent from what we can see. I'm very sorry. If you need any help verifying filtration, hardscape, etc. didn't cause harm or anything like that we can help out via photos. It looks like a fluval spec or flex tank which would have the build in filter with overflow box?

We'll see how they are doing. I dumped a bunch of powder last night. Usually they are "around" for 5-10 days.

Yes the fish can go to the other side of the grate. Just be sure the fish can rotate, swim, move as need be. Left <---> Right, Front <---> Back

Gojira molted, right on schedule with the release of her zoes. All is well in the shrimp tank. I considered putting all the stuff back in, but there's still the salt in there. I'll do a normal water change on wednesday and the proceed to rescape everything. I also am on the fence as to what to do with the culls. If I give them the "cull tank" setup then it means I can sell them if anything interesting starts to form, like the red rili ones I've been seeing, but it also means that I have to worry about hardness and all that in another tank. Not quite a major concern, but just a footnote on workload. I cleaned out the big tank, the future cull tank, and I checked the shrimp tank for molts. I'm ready to relax now! As I sat back down with the pups, I had a nature show for them on, there was a scene of this show and it had a wild shrimp. It was telling the story of this shrimp and what it was doing during the night hours to try to survive. It was pretty poetic in the way that the behavior of this seemingly random wild prawn was pretty much spot on to what we see in our own shrimp tanks daily! (for those interested it was the "night on earth" series on netflix and the episode was called Dark Seas) Right after this scene there was a pretty amazing little segment about white sharks in south africa using the light from the city as the city has grown to hunt seals once all of the human traffic has left. It was some pretty unique, wonderful footage they capturered and for me it was fun to see the sharks do their thing. I wanted to find a clip of the shrimp segment, couldn't, so instead here's another! Note.... wild habitat, lots of oxygenation, lots of flow. Just makes me love how amazing shrimp can be. They are such a fun species to learn about.

It's a bug of sorts with the forum. Here is the images turned the right way around. It looks typical to me. Well, I don't see any major issues out of the ordinary on first glance. The spraybar orientation seems good. A note is that CPDs and shrimp will like highly oxygenated water. The pencilfish...... let me try to research..... alright. Generally speaking, and none of what I am saying is meant as a "it must be done this way" type of clarification. CPDs, most cypranidae, rasboras, barbs, etc. are cooler water species and tend to like 72-74 as their "preferred" range. The crux of this is that the water itself holds a lot of oxygen and they enjoy that highly oxygenated waters. I find that ~74 is pretty optimal for their care as well as the neocaridina shrimp. The pencilfish and the gourami will do better in the current setup and the range you have them, ~76 degrees. As water gets warmer then it just means that the water holds slightly less oxygen than when it's cooler. the plants doing well also helps with adding oxygen to the water! Ultimately, I think your setup is pretty good for the fish and the behavior you're seeing could be as simple as feeling exposed or needing more places to hide. As the plants grow in you might see that change. As @Mmiller2001 mentioned, maybe the filter is too powerful and that's causing the fish to avoid certain parts of the tank. You can lower the spraybar slightly and point it at a steeper angle towards the top, potentially that alleviates some of the flow issue, but it's difficult to really know for certain. It's slightly difficult to tell what the PH is. If possible, can you retest the PH and take a photo with the vial on the card next to the color scale? You're showing 0-0-0 for the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, which means your plants don't have any nitrates to access. This could be fine, but it also could mean you're not using enough fertilizers or you have no bacteria. I find the second part hard to believe, but it's just something to note as the numbers are 0 across the board.

@Ahughes1805 for the sake of sanity checking what is going on let's run a trial test. Take your 5G bucket and do everything you normally do, but don't add remineralize. Once the bucket has sat for 24 hours with an airstone, test everything. Add in your remineralize and test again. Wait another 24 hours and repeat that testing. Those 3 sets of data will give you a good idea as to what the buffers are really doing. If you're adding buffers, over time it's very likely you will see things build up and increase over time.

I would get a temp tote, 20G or so and go from there. Find a sterilite container as they are usually considered food safe plastic.

Try to see if you can find a "nano community" type of food. Something like xtreme's mix of flake would be an awesome addition to your feeding for the tank. It's called: Xtreme community crave flake. Another one to consider is the xtreme nano pellets. Yeah, from the photo it looks like a fluke accident and the fish either got sucked into the filtration or it tried to jump and hit something. It could've happened during maintenance too. I'm very sorry. I think the fish may have a broken back.

rinse it and soak it. keep it wet. you shouldn't have to keep replacing the media and you can off-gas anything that you need to with rinses and soaks. A photo of what is going on would be really helpful. I don't know if it's clear what or why things are having issues for you. Decor shouldn't cause issues like this. If the issue is circulation, that's a separate issue that you would need to address. Photos really would help, Even with fine sand and pretty beefy decor I haven't had issues. Let's review your filtration setup!

If you suspect ich, then it's a good idea normally to dose in Ich-X and salt. The "and salt" is pretty beneficial to the situation for a variety of reasons, but the main thing is that it can help fight external issues. I don't encourage you to treat the fish without having a good concept for what you're dealing with though. If you want to send photos to confirm or explain a bit better in terms of the location and size/shape of the white spots it would be helpful. It could be a variety of things and photos really help!

First, I would like to say I sympathize and I'm very sorry for what you're going through. It's not easy when this type of thing happens and not having an answer for why isn't a great help either. Usually spine issues result from a few things: -Self-damage (like hitting the glass lid) -attack from another fish -genetics -nutrition deficiency -mineral deficiency (low GH) -too much flow/filtration issue I would start by double checking that your GH is high enough for the guppies. From an online source (seriouslyfish) the recommendation is Hardness: 143 – 536 ppm. In terms of your feeding for the fish, what foods are you using? It's best to rotate 2-3 different foods if possible. A photo may help indicate a certain disease, but I can understand not posting one given the situation.