nabokovfan87

That's too kind! 😂 I've had my fair share of algae issues, it's very awesome that you were able to get ahead of it!

PH might be a bit high for some species. The temp is really high for them. Is there a reason for the 80 degree, is there other stocking that demands that range? If you can lower ph that may reduce a little stress. The temp is likely why you're seeing so many issues though. It's just a lot of stress for them, depending on what the water they were in originally compares to your water. Adding oxygenation also helps out a lot of corydoras species. A piece of wood for cover as well. Planetcatfish is a great resource for care and water parameters. There are some discrepancies due to fish commonly being farm raised and those parameters changing, but in general there is a range that a lot of species fall into or prefer. If you're needing warmer water corydoras, the usual recommended species is sterbai. https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=65 For species in that lineage I'm seeing: PH 6-8 Temp 72-78 (I usually go for 74 range)

What an awesome update. It's good to see the healthier progress.

@anewbie @Mmiller2001 how are you two with stuff like "fancy moss" or sußwassertang? Especially that second one. I'm sure I've asked before about it, but Ijust wanted to ask again. Miller has the nobolis that did wonderful recently. Is there any sort of lighting or setup tricks you recall when it comes to those types of plants? I've recently fixed and discovered a bit of my issues with plants, waiting for some to arrive, but trying to dial in my technique a bit and not repeat past mistakes.

😂 That's half the fun!

Me too! 🙂 I'm very sorry about the loss of your pups. A lot of times corydoras can have a tough time with acclimation. It isn't a hard and fast rule, but the general guide is that corydoras like cool water, they like PH around 7, and they LOVE oxygenation. As water gets warmer it hold less oxygenation leading to stress. Stress, like acclimation, can cause issues as well. Whenever you add meds it's often recommended to add additional air as well via an air stone. Yeah, I don't see anything either. One thing to keep in mind is the "be the fish" mindset. Essentially, trying to understand what they are saying and asking you for. They are huddled in the corner, maybe they just need a certain kind of decor or something. That is where they feel safe, where the light is dimmer, or that's just where they have more flow and water circulation. It's always a bit tough to get corydoras into my tanks for me, but when I do it's been such a rewarding fish. I would love the challenge (not negativelyin any way) to bring in another species to my tank I just setup and to be able to use all the knowledge I have now. I learned a lot over the years about their care and what they prefer. Ultimately whenever I see issues I double check air and temperature. During the summer here my tanks get a bit too warm for comfort for them, but they always have been such a rewarding fish to have. I hope we can get things moving in the right direction for you. As far as any advice to help out.... I will have to get some coffee and dive into guppy care. I don't think the temp is out of the range for anything. I think 78 is fine. 76 might be a better setup long term. As far as species in that tank, I highly recommend the false Julii (or true Julii) Corydoras as they take time to get a full pattern, but when they do it's magnificent! They can usually handle 78 degrees a bit better than something like a panda Cory can. This video might be helpful as well to explain what's going on for the fish. All of your water seems fine. You did add a lot of fish at once and that definitely could lead to a spike. Less is more. But hopefully the next attempt goes a bit better for you. I try to only bring in one species at a time. Maybe that will help to slowly keep the water parameters under control if there is any sort of ammonia issue we aren't seeing. How did you acclimate the fish from the store?

@Odd Duck the photos are back up now. One thing to keep in mind is the location of the wound here. Try to give the corydoras some space if the waterline is right up against the lid. We don't know what caused the wound, but it seems to have scraped or ran into something. Shadows going across the tank and noise can make them dart across the tank. Salt and adding some Indian almond leaves would be very helpful as well for recovery. I wish you and the little fish the best, hopefully we see him all healed up!

Is it possible the fish injured itself on the decor in the tank?

That's wonderful! It brings new meaning to the "community tank" term and it's so rewarding to see others enjoy your efforts. Very sorry for your struggles. If there's anything we can do to help, hopefully we can sort things out or get you in the right direction!

A big beach towel and then just move it around every day. Takes about 4-6 days to dry sometimes. Mark's Shrimp tanks is also in that situation and he has a few tricks he does to help himself. Hopefully there are little bits of advice we can do to make things as easy as possible for you, make it easier to move water around and stuff. Very cool that you're going into the Hobby and happy to have you on the forums with us!

It happens.... 😞

At some point we're just going to have to make a " this is Lennie's stuff" repository.

Yeah! That's awesome. I'm glad they are doing well. Some surfaces, just based on the amano stuff it's good to see that information is applicable to the neos. Adding the amano into the neo tank, she went right for the sponge and cover at first, but eventually they were on the rocks doing the same thing. Seeing the giant amano trying to clean a single bit of moss was quite funny as it slowly just kept falling over. (I'll toss some photos with the reds in the journal here shortly) Woooooot. Nice work little duders. 🙂 😂 They will claim new lands!

@Henry the fish keepert There's a bit of a wonky forum right now but thankfully I was able to reply! I think you only want the fish to flare for a few minutes a day. Simply Betta is a great resource on YouTube for Betta advice. She's very passionate and caring towards her fish.

@Streetwise No worries at all, it happens. I just mention it for the sake of trying to have a mechanism for communicating to users who may not be aware that there is an update, that's all! :) It also gives a means to mention new features or fixes if there is anything worth doing so. We all appreciate all the hard work behind the scenes to keep this forum up to date!

So far what I can see is some loading issues (still happening on my end) intermittently depending on how the page loads. -Menu (notification or DM) do not load the itemized list. It only loads the button to go to inbox to view. Sometimes this works to allow access, but not always. -Posts with photos do not load the photo -Reply box will not expand to allow user to post (again, depends on the page and how it loads) -broken links / pages not loading when clicked via URL -cannot quote a post (the box to quote doesn't load and the standard quote post button does not work) Hopefully this helps out with determining what is going on. I apologize if this isn't useful information. @Zenzo @Streetwise

I can't even post. The box won't open. (randomly it's working for this thread only) GO ENJOY YOUR TANKS. Let's meet up back here in a few hours. :)

Can we get a pinned thread here to report forum issues and/or clarify if the board is being updated? Meaning.... If there's a major update, post there so we know some issues may be expected? Right now the board is having a lot of issues. I don't know if it's server side or if there's an update in process and that explains the loading discrepancies.

Yeah. It's broken for me today, can't quote or do anything.

That's a wonderful selection for wood! Nice eye. Just be careful. PSO will seriously outgrow that tank. I think watersprite might too but you can keep it tamed short. Something like bacopa Caroliniana is great too. Similar to moneywort with a slightly different shape. Microsword is also really nice too!

I think it was guppysnail that posted a thread. yep! Don't be! It's not too complicated, shrimp ship really well usually. It's just small things, details a lot of places won't take the time to do but they should. I have some Styrofoam lined boxes, I think they are 8"x8" cubes... But it's perfect size for one shrimp bag or one small fish bag. The biggest thing is just temp and timing. Shrimp also do very well in breather bags. MST has a video on it, there's tons of them, but I tend to follow a mix of the Dean method with the Rachel O'Leary corydoras method. The biggest issue I had with shrimp is that when mine arrived they were crushed in the corners..... So tape up the corners like Dean does. The other big issue is they added a piece of mesh, but it stuck to the side of the bag. Right when the bag went in the box the mesh was right on the top of the bag out of water. (Bag on its side, not upright). This is where the breather bags are handy because there's no void of water. Little details, especially with small shrimp, it's easy when you know what not to do! Edit: it's amazing how many videos there are of people showing their methods that are 5-10 years old and definitely could lead to issues. I stand by the two mentioned above. If you need anything I can walk you through it.

They are too adorable sometimes. Caught Zoey with her tongue. 😂 The pups did better last night sleeping with the tanks. I brought in buddy's bed (photo above) and he slept right at the feet of the 75G. In the morning they napped and I spent a good few hours enjoying them with me as the lights phased on. I noticed as I looked over that the tannins on the shrimp tank are much more visible now. This is really encouraging and I like that aspect of the tank. I also have another tank to the right now, 29G, that is intended only for my plants. I added a chunk of wood to the tank and I hope to see a bit of that same affect just to give the fish (and plants) inside a bit of that atmosphere. I don't mind the look of it at all, it compliments the water I am using, it gives the sand in these tanks a nice tinge as well. One of my favorite things is the tune I have on the light and how that impacts the shrimp glow. I also appreciate that very vibrant green tone all day long in the plants. I wish I could aesthetically capture the view, but it's very difficult without a proper camera. I am keeping an eye on the tank right now mostly just trying to get a grasp of when I can start to sell some shrimp. I plan to encourage sales of 10+ per order, which just means I really need to have a good base to start with before I remove that many shrimp from the colony. I have 4 boxes right now ready to go, so we're talking easily 40+ shrimp (hopefully), more including the added 2-3 per box based on order size. Given the mailing issues I've had this weekend, some new information with regards to shipping items via USPS, I really am just trying to get everything right. I would like to get some round bottom bags and ultimately feel comfortable shipping these guys out to people who will really enjoy them. That's the goal. I don't want to sell anything sub-par and I fully intent to monitor the tank a lot more closely than I have been to really push the quality and other factors moving forward. I should shortly have a second colony going as well if all things go as planned. It might be more Bloody Marys, but the ultimate goal here is to have shrimp that I enjoy and to remove a bit of the barriers when it comes to making someone feel successful with shrimp. The only way to really accomplish that is to have a few key items. A. The right setup, which I think I have dialed in and tested, but need to verify. There are some sort of minimum recommendations, basically. B. The right nutrition and care, which is the one place where I think a lot of people struggle. C. Actually getting the shrimp to someone else healthy, without damage, and getting them to into their own tanks without issues as well. My own experiences with all of the research up front led me to a few failures on my own part. There is a bit of weird mystery when it comes to Neo and to Caridina species of shrimp. I am not really certain as to why that happens, but I have experienced that first hand. Ultimately, the better I feel about keeping this shrimp (and not just amanos), I feel like there is room to add some value to other's experiences. There is always this intimidation factor. There is also every video and comment that I've seen that says "just add shrimp, they are so easy, you don't have to do anything." I think we all know the importance of not speaking in absolutes or claiming a certainty around something. I have seen examples of that this week as well from other's experiences on this forum. Hopefully I'll get some better photos soon. My apologies for not having a ton of them to really share and elaborate.

I really do enjoy those little cubes. Why they are sold in packs of so few..... beyond me. I took some photos of mine just to randomly look at the colors and see what I'm working with. A check of sorts on how they are doing. I was glad to see them going to town on their "hotel" of sorts and using the dragonstone. (and of course the sponges) It feels like some of the adolescents are already "big enough" to be considered adults, but they have much more pale color. Hopefully they color up a bit deeper over time. More new baby shrimp as well too. Little opaque specks on the glass.

Given that you have a photo to start from, I would highly encourage you to watch this and follow up with questions. This first video, one of a series as mentioned later, is really based around specifically what you want to do and how to create a bit of depth and drama. As you see more videos about this creator talking about his specific views on drama, it adds into his creativity and how he is using that as a method for his inspiration. I am being very honest when I say this.... that photo is monumentally beautiful and looks perfect to design a tank around. I am trying to share this content so you can get the absolute best perspective for how to accomplish that. This first video from Juan goes into specifically starting from a photo in nature and using that, analyzing that into an aquascape: His next video is about a much, much more technical build with very dramatic techniques to replicate another place in nature that drew inspiration for him. Given the photo you are starting with I think you will also appreciate this video: Each person you see above they have their own series of 3-7 videos from their visit. This is just one video, but if you find something they say a bit more on point and helpful for you, then you can just search for that person's name with green aqua or check the playlists they've made on that channel. The full "master series" is about 14 videos in total and each one I've really learned a lot about the technical side of things when it comes to recreating or setting up a certain perspective.

Yes, correct. I was just mentioning the bags of rock thing as an alternate. A lot of people do that as well to fill voids.