nabokovfan87

When I had the stratum it was very light. I am using contrasoil now, this is similar to the tropica one you mentioned, and it is ever so slightly more dense (more user friendly in my view. I would recommend either tropica or the contrasoil based on my own experience. That being said, they all are very similar and it is often recommended to go with the one where the price makes sense for you. The neo soil is a bit different than all of the other soils and I do not know if it works well. I haven't heard about how well it works. I do know @Lennie is trying it out in his tank and can report his experiences!

Basically, its very similar to a 29G tank or a 55G tank, 18.75" and 21" tall respectively. That might help for research simply because it is more common. I would opt for 2 strategies. The first is entirely dependent on your hardscape choices. Option a: Use plants that can tolerate higher light and can be placed closer to the top half of the tank via hardscape. this would be things like moss, hygrophilia Pinnatifida, Hygrophila corymbosa, and other species which you would grow fast enough. I am unaware if there are certain types of buce or other epiphytes that fit the bill. This allows you to then have stems which need that higher power light intensity to be able to have enough light to grow. Something like Pogostemon Erectus would be very good because it would grow fast, but it also is much more compact compared to something like the octopus variety. Bacopa species I also like, but just be careful for the slower growing varieties. Valisnaria is a great option as well for this setup, though you may need to work to keep it contained. Option b: Use floaters as well as very low demand plants. This is something I am doing on my 29G which i will attach below. Moss also fits the bill here because it does not need intense lighting (but can do well with it!). Some plants can grow with as little as ambient lighting in a room. This is a great option for taller tanks as it helps to reduce algae from pushing the lights too high just to attempt to reach the substrate. A lot of your slower growing plants can be beautiful, but it just takes longer for those plants to develop. This is mine. It isn't anything fancy as it's meant to be more utilitarian right now, but the plants are doing great and filling in. Eventually I will have more, including floaters, and a bit nicer setup.

I have the contrasoil extra fine. For clarity I would've gotten the "fine" size if that was available. I believe that fine covers just about everything and is universally a good size for all plants, even those with very shallow root systems. I would then recommend using the Extra fine or something similar as a cap on the top to help hold the plants in. For my setup, I have the soil on the base with the cap being flourite black (it's just a bit heavier) and that works really well to plant into. The tropica soil powder looks to be equivalent to the EF size. While the normal soil is the 2-3mm pellet size. (I would go with the normal soil) Here is an example of planting in the soil powder: Here is the example in the base soil version:

I think there's some general guideline about having one per every X gallon. Honestly, they don't reproduce and they have almost no bioload or negative impact. They can be a bit more feisty when it comes towards food. If you have a lot of plants, err on the side of 8-14 (basically as much as you feel like). If you are having algae flare ups, I'd recommend 12+ If you just want to have some for the sake of enjoyment, caring for the surfaces in the aquarium, minimum that I would do is about 4-6. That way if you do lose one or two, there are still some there to get some work done. Doesn't matter where you get them. Aquahuna has them as well as flip aquatics for generally reasonable prices and there are coupon codes available. If they aren't available locally I would explore those options. Drip acclimate them like you would the neos and let them have lots of air and they'll do well for you.

My clown pleco could not be bothered to come out during the day, extremely reclusive and basically feeds only off of the hardscape and aufwuchs all over the tank. I have seen one of my clowns eat once in years. My suggestion would be to try the hikari mini wafers (just get a trial size pack to see what they do with it) and to try repashy soilent/super green. There are others you can try as well in the repashy line, but I would start there. My second choice for plecos would be the spawn and grow or community blend. Some fish, especially plecos, can be very stubborn when it comes to the wafers. There are ones that they do not like and have a difficult time eating off. Because of that I find that bigger flat sheets of repashy are much easier for them to graze on and to get food from. I pour mine into a plastic bag and flatten it up to about 1/8" thick or slightly higher. This allows the pieces to be longer and have more surface area. You can also play with making it a bit looser and easier for them to graze on if you notice any issues. Barring that, garlic guard can be another option to try. If they don't eat in a few days I would start feeding only at night and check on the tank (under blue light) after about 30 minutes. White clouds or something like that. Small barbs / rasbora (cooler) or tetras (warmer) would do well.

They are related to the raptors.... They definitely have that mindset! Yikes.

A bit of a before And after. Modified the hardscape a little bit, removed the stump style piece on the right and relocated those plants. That stump was Luigi's cave, but she also has one in the mopani that she loves as well. Here is the tank this morning. The tank does look a bit more open, by design in some aspects. There are three pretty big rocks and there is a good amount of moss added now. The plants are ever so slowly growing in and we have a ton of air on this tank. My smallest air pump didn't work so the pump that was on this tank is now on the small tank. (Was 20-30G airpump is now a 150G "pond" airpump) This tank had lava rock in it initially. While I do think that is wonderful for a shrimp tank, I do like the use of Ohko stone a lot more given how neos use cover and their environment. The way these stones are it's 2 chunks that likely could fit stacked on one another but I do like the way these two work. In person, I'm sure it would look a lot more appealing. My goal is that the back glass has a sußwassertang or moss wall (working on getting some). It will happen eventually, maybe not as quickly as I would like. That being said, the shrimplets spend most of their time on the heater, sponge, and on the back glass. They don't move to other areas until they start to get their color. Once they are a few mm in size they do use the stones and start to travel around a bit more. Especially recently, I have noticed that the shrimp are very nocturnal. Yes there are shrimp out during the day, but feeding in the late hours I cannot argue might be a good way to ensure that the more timid shrimp can get food. Using the feeding dish is definitely a new experience but I do like having them. I like having multiple more than just one because I can give the shrimp food in different locations. I would like to get another one eventually. The botanicals are useful, but I do see the shrimp interacting with the mopani much more than they ever do with the alder cones. I would encourage use of mopani or Malaysian/Pacific driftwood in a shrimp tank. Those pieces of wood have large flat surfaces and the shrimp do enjoy eating off of larger plants or surfaces where they can support themselves. It's not as easy for them to clean and prune the fine surfaces once they get to an adolescent size. Despite any struggles it has been very interesting and fun to learn about the difference in behavior from the amano shrimp to these Neocaridina shrimp. Having new shrimp every few weeks, being able to recover from losing some is an advantage. These are definitely more sensitive than the amanos and it's not really close at all. In all, keeping this species has and will make me a better caretaker for my tanks. There are parameters and other factors I am focusing on a bit more, learning more, and that is encouraging.

You may be able to find it here. https://www.finnex.net/replacement_parts

So.... the most important issue with that tank is going to be the hardscape. The reason why I say that is because you need tall and long hardscape to fill the space. It's very, very difficult to clean with the amount of hardscape you want to clean that tank. Designing it in such a way so you can siphon the substrate is not easy. Because of that, I recommend a few things...... A. Soil substrate makes sense because you won't be siphoning that as much. B. Long branches of something like manzanita would work well. A wood like mopani is too short / stumpy. Ghostwood works but might be too large in diameter to reach. Most other woods would be too compact to fill the space and give the plants a place to feel comfortable. C. Epiphytes are critical here to fill the space at height.... and having a strong light to reach the substrate is a major concern. What this means is that you may end up using something that can handle high light, or tall plants in lieu of the traditional carpeting plants. Something like S.Repens can be very hard to carpet with that height, while something like pearlweed might grow slightly tall enough to handle it. I think pygmy corydoras wold do well in a tank of that size / scape. They would interact with the hardscape in such a way that they would fill the space. Same with some of your tetras, barbs, or other shoaling species. Silvertip tetras, odessa barbs, cherry barbs, kabutai rasbora, green neons, those types of fish would add some like to multiple layers of the aquarium. You will likely want and need to have a bottom, mid, and top dwelling fish. Not having those three filled will likely make the tank feel empty or crowded in certain positions. As far as some examples.... I would scape it something like this if possible. Stem plants, epiphytes, etc. Getting the wood to fill that space isn't easy... If you can. I would highly recommend a 40B or 60B or 75G in lieu of a 37G Tall.

What are the dimensions! I could only imagine a 10+ foot aquarium and how epic that would be to aquascape. @EastTN37922 Welcome to the forums!

If you ever feel the need to donate some plants! One day I'll have that issue of plants to trim again.... that isn't just moss!

Nice work!

If the BBA has been there for a long time the amanos will likely ignore it unless you do a spot treatment to weaken it (loosen it) from the surface. Based on that, you might have better success with the flagfish in this case.

Oh yes. And they love their sponge filters condos. 😂 The siphon I have just works too well. I can gravel vac sand... it takes like 5 seconds to do the whole tank. I can see the shrimp and kink it, nbd. I think with the hose direct like that, it's smaller, but it's just so easy to suck up the sand.

Yeah, I had 4 total. Checking today, it looked like both the females got through their molts and released eggs. Again, I could just be mixing up who is left in the tank from the adults, but if memory serves and all the time staring at the tank... there should be two that freshly molted in the past couple of days and were berried. Here is one of them... I was just checking on things today. Some random photos while I watched the tank during maintenance. I will have to take a full shot of the tank just so we can compare and contrast the start of the tank to where I have things now. It's a bit of a journey as intended, but hopefully some valuable information to reveal as well. Here's some of the first hatch and their current size. These are all from the female that came in berried. The new shrimplets are starting to get their colors in. About a week old or so. I tried to siphon the sand using the airline hose and that was a big fail for me. It worked at first, but it basically ended up with me siphoning sand and then sand getting stuck in the line. It didn't get the debris off the sand and I just struggled with the technique. I'll have to try it again eventually. For now.... I ended up just using the normal giant siphon because it was easier to clean the sand off. I scraped some algae off the glass, which just pushes it into the water column for the baby shrimp to eat. It's so nice to not have to worry about the filter when the tank is on air and I can take my time doing maintenance.

I had ran a test for several months with my aquasky, granted it's a bit older, growing in some anubias and low demand plants in a 29G tank. Granted that it's tall I spent a lot of time trying to dial in the light and get it adjusted in. Ultimately, ambient light in the room did slightly better for me compared to the aquasky. I ended up swapping it for the better quality/spectrum LEDs on the planted 3.0 and the tank is doing a lot better now. My main issue previously was just not having enough light for the plants, but having plenty of light for the algae to utilize. The aquasky is fun, Bentley's video on the light is great, but I just wasn't able to replicate good results in my situation with that light on a very low demand setup. I would look into the ACO light given that a light that fits a 10G tank can be a pretty awkward size as well as some of the other options mentioned above.

It's a little difficult to see the scope of the algae but you can see some pretty good coverage on the leaves there. Those would be "old growth" and hopefully if/once I pull those leaves that this algae tends to love to pester. It attaches and just grows until I decide to remove it. CO2 is pretty much set, I'm stabilizing the nutrients by adjusting the GH, KH, and fertilizer as need be. Here's just my day to day admiration of the amanos. Moss looks great, the female looks happy, and it's just wonderful to see them do their thing. In other spots of the tank you can see the rocks, anubias, and S. Repens getting caked in the algae. The amanos are doing what they can! It's a balance between starving the amanos to encourage them to eat algae and feeding the corydoras correctly so they can fully grow and develop. And she's always there saying hey.... Just the morning check in and she's always looking like she's got something to tell me about how she's doing. Once the swordtails are out of the breeder boxes (fry with shrimp) then I can take all that moss and try to add it somewhere. It's not a pain, but it's the type of thing where I need to get more plants in the tank to fight back this algae. Hopefully things are going well for everyone. Have a good day!

a 5G tank is pretty affordable. Especially on sale. For me, in everything I've seen with species that aren't aggressive and end up being aggressive.... you end up with 1 of two situations happening. A. Fish jumps onto the floor because they constantly get bullied. B. Fish is so stressed out that they don't thrive and die. If you're really struggling to home them, have a divider ready to go on hand. I don't like the solution of "add more to diffuse aggression" because I've seen 25+ barbs go down to a handful and I've seen the exact same behavior in both groups, which lead to a single fish being picked on. YES, that is natural behavior for the fish. Have a plan. If you don't have the ability to have multiple groups of fish to diffuse aggression, the tank size to diffuse aggression, or dividers to diffuse aggression, then I hope there is a backup plan of some kind. I am not saying it will/won't work. I am simply saying to cover yourself in the instance you need to. Be cautionary when running this type of experiment. For bettas specifically, I have seen things in favor and against success.

That's awesome! Congratulations on the big tank. Welcome to the fun. 🙂

Do you know of Brad Leone?

Yep. Someone donate me some supplies and I'll give it another shot. LOL. I just need the space / funds. Right now... not a priority. One day!

@Fish Folk Here's the adjustment. I'll have to whip these bad boys out next time I can plant something and see how I do. Original: After:

Haha... once I breed them successfully, heck yeah.

What is your substrate comprised of? How is your filtration setup? Airstones? The only guess I have is that the panda may have crashed into the lid trying to gulp air. They also can get spooked and injure themselves on hardscape. What you're describing sounds like an internal issue. Especially if you're seeing the fish unable to sit straight.