nabokovfan87

This.... Kind of an annoyance and hard to clean it out of the sand once it gets in there. Very fine and it's like this mulm / pulpy wood stuff sticking to the soil. I had a spot under the feeding dish, and I'm not sure why, but it was just 1.5-2" deep with alder cone bits and no amount of siphoning was really making a dent. I'll keep at it.

That filter is dying to be cleaned. 😂 I enjoy that you gave them a wood bridge.

I've had mine with.... -glofish tetra -rasbora -tiger barbs -odessa barb -melon barb -SAE -multiple swordtails --Amano shrimp -otos -many plecos -borneo loaches -white clouds -several corydoras Probably more, but that's just what I can recall. With nano fish, they occupy different parts of the tank, and they mostly get away much easier than bigger fish. If the RTBS sees them it's more of a "stay away" response and the fish learn that. The main thing to keep in mind is that the mouth and the shape of the fish isn't really designed for that. It's got a mouth like a Panda Garra or rubber lip pleco more than a traditional fish that will take chunks on attack. It views something like a nano fish as just a thing in the tank and not food. Dither fish, basically. That's with mine in particular, so it's difficult to say that's the norm.

It really depends on what you think of as aggressive. Every fish is unique and they have needs. One of the biggest failures people do is they don't give them hides and swim-throughs. It's not as simple as having a line of sight break for some fish, barbs can be this way. A lot of cypranidae can be. Some fish just will not tolerate a similar body shape as their own, for others it's a pattern / color thing. In my case, I have black corydoras and Grace the shark will do up-downs with them and she does nudge them out of her spot from time to time. I'm sure she's chased some fish out of the tank accidentally, but that falls on my issue, not hers. I needed to fill the gaps in the lids and so forth. That being said.... "be the fish" and understand what they need. They just want to have a territory and a place where they can escape to. That's been my experience. Grace is a very chill fish. She protects fry from the parents, let's them sleep in her territory and she's raised quite a few panda corydoras. I like this video as far as advice on keeping them.

For clarification, this is an active vs. preventative set of directions. The co-op "QT Trio" method being preventative. What you're dealing with is active, so follow the directions on the package from Fritz! Best of luck, keep us posted.

A. Barbs - Especially Green Tiger Barbs. Fun fish, extremely enjoyable to feed and watch the interaction. B. Corydoras - Take your pick, but I love these guys ^^. It's just a very unique, fun personality of fish. They fill a very dull part of the tank and they seriously are enjoyable to watch. C. Otocinclus - Probably the coolest nano fish in the hobby. I love watching them do their thing, especially when the shoal around. Also right here for the same reason is the borneo loaches (or hillstream loaches) D. The clown pleco (or family) - Just a very underappreciated group of fish. They feed the tank mulm, don't produce as much crud as something like a BNP, but they are also insanely beautiful fish. There's a lot of character to them, but they just don't enjoy light. E. Red-Tailed Black Shark - A bit of a personal one here, but what isn't more adorable than a juvenile RTBS? They Grow up, they have such a fun and interesting personality and are definitely one of the most unique fish I've kept. Give them enough space, cherish them, and it's one of the more rewarding species you can have! YES! Rams.... Such a fun group of fish.

you can drop the plants in to let them start acclimating. They can sit in pots and stuff if need be. You can plant them whenever you're ready to do so.

Yes And no. What we should do is verify things with a secondary test kit. I.e. liquid.

He does a lot of follow ups. The first one is a series on Green Aqua. There's a lot of shots of it! Exactly! See how close or what you can make. As Filipe says, don't plan, see what the pieces want to do.

He's got a ton of content, thankfully. He uses a lot of the fine branches and drapes them over the scape in a lot

If you're planning to do shrimp and fish, depending on setup you might be better off doing the shrimp first and letting the colony establish. Depending on the fish you're selecting there is a change they would attack and overstress the shrimp. It's not a major concern for most nano fish, but something like platys, guppies, swordtails can be very aggressive towards hunting the shrimp.

Unfortunately.... I've had the same experience when getting back into the hubby. One way to approach the issue is to insist that only X fish go in each bag. If you're buying say, 20 fish, you have the right to ask for 5-8 per bag as opposed to 20 in one small bag. In my case, what happened was extremely tragic. We lived about 1.5 miles from the store at the time. Purchased a few neons, a few other community fish, and it was basically each person got to pick 3-4 fish. Well, the person doing the bagging was not the fish person. About 15-20 fish all went into one small bag. I got home, temp acclimated, and everything was ok at that point. There was definitely stress signs and the goal was to get the fish into the tank as quickly and as safely as possible. I cut the bag open and within seconds half the bag went belly up. Not struggling, gone. The amount of ammonia produced in the bag was immense and there was no way that the already stressed fish were going to handle even more stress from improper conditions for moving them from the store to the house. It was "my first time" buying a big group of fish to stock the new tank and this was when I was first getting back into the hobby. We called the store and explained what happened and the bag was stuffed with fish. They didn't make a big deal, said to bring the bodies and we'd get refund or replacement. ....and that's the crux of the issue. The staff doing the bagging wasn't trained. The wrong size bag was used. The fish we picked out, I assume, weren't even compatible in the long run (temp differences). If the person at this particular store spent a bit longer to bag fish, multiple bags, then it meant that task would've taken 3-4x longer. Unfortunately what isn't calculated in that choice is the loss of life, the customer time, and the store time doing all of the replacements. I assume exactly what happened to me is what you experienced. I'm sorry for that and please feel free to speak up and ask for bigger bags, less fish per bag.

Watch that Filipe video, you have exactly what you need to make that. It might not be as tall, but there's plenty there based on the sketch.

@Lennie I totally agree, the scape-it site unfortunately makes it hard to create what I was really imagining in my head. I want the left side to be higher then the right by at least a few inches. Additionally, the rock placement is going to vary in the depth from the glass: If you could imagine the below image is from the top looking down with sand in front and the bio-stratum for the plants in back: It's just me.... But using rock in any form to make a wall is really unnatural for me. Check this out, specifically just how Filipe handles the stone and how natural the formations look with each change he does. Especially adding in the details and the accent stones on his 3-4 attempt. https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/33378-a-newfound-appreciation-of-seiryu-stone/ Initially I thought it would be more of a "Brazilian style"

hello Jeff, welcome! I believe the correct method would be... 1. Turn off / close the canister of CO2. 2. Off-gas / release the pressure from the co2 diffuser by letting the CO2 release from the bubble counter or something. Be sure to ventilate the area and such as you need to. 3. Remove the old regulator showing 0 pressure. 4. Install the new one. You can swap it out after the CO2 runs for the day, but given the equipment issue, you may have had a failure for a very long time and your dials, bubble counter, etc. may have been inaccurate. Swap it over to the new one and just basically start over trying to dial things in. Your plants will need to adapt, but you also will be in a much better situation given the accuracy issues.

Piper looks like an awesome pup! @Sora! ORD, @xXInkedPhoenixX Give my best to Punk (and friends)!

@AllFishNoBrakes I watched 2 documentaries this week, entirely unrelated, but one of them was very much a "follow-up" to the first. The main concept about how generations of kids are growing up with different technologies than what I grew up with and how it's changing things for culture, what that leads to.... People use tik tok more than a library or a book, as one example. The first one was from the perspective of a programmer (and many of them) that worked to design the internet as we know it. Their opinions after seeing the results of their work. The second was basically a "worst case scenario" and how that played out, not a guess, not an assumption, but showing exactly what happened. While I can't say anyone is perfect. Anubias isn't rocket science. I'm pretty sure no one can screw it up "that badly" so to speak to warrant any sort of public tirade. Hopefully the ACO can do what they need to do, the store can do what they need to do. It's all up to us to push for a better hobby. That one sentiment means much more than I think a lot of people realize. I wish I could do more to fix things or help. Again, I'm sorry that store was such a bad experience. I totally understand what that feels like.

There's likely a lot of frustration and misinformation behind that. It's unforuntate that you had that experience at the store, RPP or not. It's just one of those situations where some people, certain hobbyists, whatever it is can be very down/negative and dwell on that. It's great they have the opportunity to help people, but I wouldn't want this person to give advice on a day to day basis with customers. Maybe there is some training that needs to be done to ensure a minimum adequate level for handling "appropriate comments" on the job. I would hope any future visit leads to a better experience and maybe this person was having a seriously tough day. Honestly, give it time and give them one more chance. You never know. You never know what may or may not be changed in 3-6 months. I'm not saying go in and support the business if there are issues, but from my own experience.... first impressions are lasting (good or bad) and it can set a tone. The best approach is to go in with blank eyes and to just give yourself that sanity check after time passes.

If possible, isolate the fish. It could point to a few things. Are you seeing any behavior or discoloration on other fish?

Some videos for inspiration for you @Dork Fish I highly encourage you to check out George Farmer's videos as well. They seem to fit your style. He's got an anubias nano tank coming out this weekend.

Nangi / Minima varities of anubias are special too. If you have high ph/kh think twice. Ive given it a chance twice and they all died or performed a reaaly bad growth plants need GH Lennie!!!! 😂 It might require CO2 to "do well" but there is a lot of hygrophila species and they are all very different and unique. Some grow like a weed, others very slow. The main thing is that there's a normal variety and a UK variety (not the country) and the UK one gets a lot more reddish hue. My gut tells me you NEED co2, but I don't think you seriously NEED it to get the plant red, if that makes sense. The anubias in the front. swap it out for pearlweed, microsword, or Staurogyne Repens. Anubias you don't want on the substrate level. You can wedge it in the rocks though.

Well.... as an engineer.... 😂 1. Replace the material so it's not so absolutely brittle. 2. Replace the pump with one that is better quality 3. Improve flow adjustment to work up to current industry standards 4. Replace the tilt adjustment to work similar to seachem tidal (screw design) 5. Improve ease of maintenance and basket design to function a little better for the user (VERY EASY) 6. Improve the output design to better function for tank placement (shape of the waterfall and angle) 7. Improve the uplift tube design so it doesn't have a grate in the middle of it. 8. Fix the impeller shaft failure issue and improve the quality / design of the impeller. 9. Fix the basket lifting so that the filter never has a chance to flow 10. Ensure no bypass (probably the single most difficult thing because it requires testing over time) 11. Fix the lid comments and the user feel when doing maintenance, consider vents, definitely improve the actual fitment of parts so they don't vibrate 12. Fix the pump isolation / dampening so it doesn't vibrate the tank and filtration 13. Make sure it doesn't fail after 1 maintenance session (looking at you AC110) 14. Fix packaging so it doesn't arrive broken 15. Fix bend radius so the pump has a much easier time starting.

Anubias Nana - Probably the single easiest plant to work with Bacopa Caroliniana - Easy stem, works well in most setups and is very beautiful from above. Staurogyne Repens is similar, but can be more difficult. Hygrophila Pinnatifida - There's a few versions, one is more red, but this plant is pretty special. It's unique in the structure, works in the substrate and on wood, it's just a really nice plant if you can get it to work for you.

As deep as you can put them normally. Minimum is probably 3-4 inches. If your water shows anything in terms of ammonia in your tap it's the most common indication. They sell specialized chlorine and free chlorine test strips as well. Essentially what you'd do is take a sample of tap water, test for ammonia, then add your dechlorinator and wait 15 minutes and test again. If both tests are 0, then you don't have chloramines. Nitrates are fine. You can cut back. The issue is ammonia / nitrite. Nitrates from your fertilizer will show up on a test kit, but they don't behave like nitrates from waste in terms of shrimp stress. Minimum dose would be 1 mL. I am unsure what the # of drops would be. Once per 24 hours.

I've had otos for a long time. It's very abnormal from what I've experienced and this is the first time I've heard of that happening to anyone. Poor little dude. I'm sorry for your loss.