nabokovfan87

Do the Dean method. First one is free as a gift saying "here, let's build a relationship and this is how things would arrive for you and here is the quality of my fish." That opens up the conversation and all you really have to do is verify they are ok for you to bring in fish for them. I don't use Facebook. It's not secure and I get about 5 warnings a day that they promise that it wasn't me trying to use my account.

One can dream..... 😂

Just a heads up, kasa has the wifi outdoor adapters. If you ever need a switch on it to avoid emergency climbing through the window. You could even use that to run a schedule and do water changes! That's awesome! Looks great.

All neos will color up more intensely based on having a darker substrate. It encourages the parts of their body that produce the coloration to produce a more vibrant color. This also applies to the background itself on the walls of the tank. There are research studies on this as well that have been performed. That being said, black shrimp on the black/brown soil will do fine. Green (usually is more of a muted color) will tend to hide out in the plants and be camouflaged pretty well. Either one would do fine with the setup given the right place to hide.

Dragonstone is the best. I can only imagine..... Very beautiful pieces of rock and you did really well with the sand adding the fine details. Wonderful work! I am excited to see it grow in. I dig em. I was looking at barbs yesterday. I like the fins on them.

In my tanks I do. Even spots with plants I try to get the detritus off the ground, especially waste. Some of this can be difficult, but there are techniques to clean off heavily planted tanks using a siphon + baster or other methods used to clean carpeting plants. This is sort of when things get "bad" and you can see the affect it has on the tank and the substrate pretty clearly. It takes a second for things to make sense and you see the darkened substrate. Ultimately, in my tanks I try to clean as often as I can. Even if it's one bucket and one small section, taking the time to do a good clean really does help to get stuff like phosphates under check and improve clarity. As a result, your nitrates can come from the dosing you're doing and you have a better idea of what your test strips are showing. A tank that shows 40-60 ppm nitrates with a heavy bioload might all be based around fish waste. A 10-20ppm tank might have a small bioload and the nitrates showing are all from dosing in fertilizers. That ratio, that balance of adding ferts and seeing the rise week to week gives you the scale of how much "nutrients" are in the water. This is important for balancing your nutrients for your water column feeders. Those two tanks above might both have the same amount of nutrients, whatever that 10-20 ppm of fertilizer indicates on the back of the label, but the overall health of the tank is very different given the same available nutrients. https://aquariumbreeder.com/phosphates-in-freshwater-tanks/

I'm trying to confirm what the JBL stuff is made of. My assumption initially is that it's equivalent to either ecocomplete (lava rock) or to something made out of volcanic soil. Yeah, so it's basically the same thing as ecocomplete. It's rock, the rock has minerals. It will trap detritus and nutrients in the pores, but the nutrients in the rocks themselves may not be readily available to the plants. This video explains the use case. As for alternatives to the Neo soil, what other soils are available in your area? You can mix it with a variety of things. The JBL I would only use as a base layer, not as a cap, and I would use it as a means to fill volume and provide gaps for roots to latch onto. Here's just a visual so you can get an idea of how much it is. From Fluval: 40x40x5 = 8000 / 1000 = 8 kg needed

Out of curiosity, have you watched through Rachel O'Leary's content with her loaches? She did quite a bit. It might be a useful resource for you or just enjoyable given your admiration for them.

Beautiful! Congratulations on the accidental success.

Nothing special. The tank is/was foggy. I added some clarity to do some work and she was having fun feeling hidden. I turned up the pink and blue and it had that type of look. Difficult to see with the camera I have with just the pinks or just the blues. Still difficult but.... Her tail in the pink channel always pops. Yeah, they really do. Ironically I think they love to hide just as much. They are very much a Cyprinidae in the sense of a barb that likes to go through objects and around them and dart. It's a unique swim pattern. Having those spots to sit/stop and view then continue patrolling is what she likes. It quells a lot of what others view as "aggressive" but really she's a softie. Fish know she's big and to move. They sleep right next to her. Especially the fry to get away from the parents. This one is a good view as well for care.

Very beautiful fish. Unique pattern!

Whatever is cheap. I've gotten some from aquahuna. From flip. And from the big box store. I just get them wherever makes sense. Aqua Huna has the ACO discount, I'd start there. Get the biggest you can but whatever works is fine (smaller size you get a few more)

Hey everyone. For a variety of reasons I don't need to bore you, my RTBS has had a small tank. I got her back into the big one and I wanted to share the difference in behavior between the two. This is the same decor. Same fish, just a different tank. 29G 75G (longer): Sometimes the recommendation for a certain size tank is for behavior or size, but genuinely I can appreciate that this fish just wanted some more room to dart around and have some space. Such a wonderful, delightful species. ....and a great story in terms of conserving a species from the wild. I would love to see a visit to a breeder of cypranidae that included these guys.

The one in red... It kind of gets lost a bit. My eye wants it to be more contained and controlled. (it's your setup and scape, so please ignore me if you feel like you have greater plans in mind!) The tall lengthy sections in the back do look nice, but I kind of would want to see the red stems against the glass to be expanded a little and have a place to be. Maybe it's behind the green one highlighted in red or somewhere else. Not sure. The one in purple... It kind of blocks out the plant behind it. The leaves on it are very dense / thick and the one behind it is more delicate and fine texture.

You don't need anything. They will act like any other freshwater species. You take the female with eggs, put her into some other container, she spawns out the zoeys (releases them) and then you go ahead and add salt and greenwater (food for them) over the first couple of weeks. In time, they end up growing into fully developed shrimp with tails and exoskeletons and then you can move them back to freshwater. Definitely not. Edit: It's actually fun to sit there at night, with a flashlight and watch the little zoeys go and swim around the tank. They swim towards the light and you can collect them in a pipette/baster.

they can go with anything. The fry (zoeys) from the shrimp need brackish water to grow. dragon stone is VERY good for neos because the shrimplets can go inside and hide. It's like a little cave system for them to molt and feel protected. The loaches also will not have any issues with the rock, but I understand because they will go in there.

Maintenance done on the tank for the week. I ran a test to check on nitrates and it looks like for the time being I am going to be doing a full dose every 3-4 days with the fertilizers. This could be due to the soil in the tank absorbing or it could simply be due to the plants using the nutrients. the tank has a "generally small" bioload but it is fully stocked. The plants can take their time to grow and the CO2 is doing it's thing. The amanos are cleaning the BBA and I just need to keep an eye on plants to push it back, spot treat when need be and gain that skill to do so. I modified the placement of the spraybar this week. I positioned it into the glass at an angle above the diffuser as opposed to across the tank. This keeps the bubbles low and I have been seeing better spread across the length of the tank. Previously the Hygro was getting direct flow from the co2 and the spraybar, but this time it's much less intense for the plant itself. I hope this helps to combat the BBA. As such I have monitored the fish and they seen to have adapted to the flow. It gives them a bit of a dead spot to help swim, which I know is another benefit. The corydoras sit in the flow opposite the rock and rest, very much like a river species doing their thing. Both tanks definitely could use some GH. Any tips on how fast to increase this would be helpful. That could be a means for the algae to take hold and some of the deficiencies I have seen. I am thankful to have that stuff on hand when it arrives. (Thanks Aquarium Co-Op for carrying it!):

Do you have wood in the tank, did you have wood in the tank before? Was there any more/less hardscape before compared to now? Shrimp will do just fine being in a clean tank with regular water changes. Depending what the tap is, you may risk more stress by not doing water changes. I know.... I know.... Everyone things you can tank shrimp and toss them into anything with water and not have a filter or do water changes, but that isn't what would be "best". And that setup requires a very specific scenario. The main thing to have success is to keep them happy. Water in = water out in terms of parameters and keep things stable. If you're not doing water changes and then have differing parameters, you'd want to ensure to slowly drip in water to encourage stability with the tank during that "acclimation" to the new parameters following the water changes.

Wood pulp from clown plecos.... wonderful stuff. Built up poop from not cleaning, no. Debris, other organics breaking down can be, but the main thing is to not encourage nitrates or phosphates to build up so you reduce the risk of algae.

flip aquatics has some. They also have salvinia and some other plants.

Santa Ana or Covina. 2-3 hour drive one way. https://www.facebook.com/groups/scape/

YES!!!!! That's awesome. Beautiful little tuft of moss.

Most of the time greenwater will handle itself.... meaning, even in @modified lung's testing it's very difficult to keep it stable from what I have seen. It might just be best to wait it out and let things run their course. it's a great food source for fry. My best advice for you.... go buy some amano shrimp and try to hatch them out. You feed them greenwater and add salt, move it to a smaller tank and top off with green water. BOOM. Sell them for a little profit or you have a good amount of the single best algae eater! It's not an easy feat, but it's a fun challenge that greenwater helps with!

My corydoras! You guys are very lucky just in the sense of I wish I could have a day there. Getting access to plants from a community of hobbyists would be special and really help me out! I would totally sell some fish and shrimp too!

I cannot speak to it, but I do believe I have read about PH causing bent spines. I would have to deep dive into research on that, but potentially someone else can chime in that has more experience on the topic of bent spines. Other reasons are commonly missing certain nutrients in their diet. The water test generally looks ok. In terms of fighting algae, lowering the nitrates would be beneficial. You don't have a ton of plant load in the tank, so keeping them below 10 should be very sufficient. When you do your water changes you can test immediately after for nitrates and that would give you a baseline. After a few weeks of testing you'll have a trend for how much your tank is producing in nitrates between maintenance. If you see them climb too high, then you'd want to increase volume or/and rate of your changes. The algae you're seeing looks to be diatoms. This could be brown, green, or black (really is a red type) of algae that has started forming. Each one has it's own reasons. Good maintenance takes care of the first 2 and increasing the plant load/growth rate helps with BBA type of algae. We will have to wait and see, unfortunately, how things develop. Keep monitoring things and in the meantime we can look into the spine issues.