nabokovfan87

being on a well, RO is good to have in my view because of risk of pesticides or seasonal things seriously impacting your water. I would have a holding tank and have a full setup. If you can't commit space to that, then RO doesn't make sense. You'd want to get a pipe before the water softener (that stuff used to soften water can mess up your tank) and then add the RO system in at that point.

Your betta acts like most shrimp and corydoras, that's awesome. 😂

Not sure. My other method previously was to dose things a few hours after WC. Do my work, then wait a few hours. Most research I found said that prime is 24 hours effective (sometimes longer) but that should be a decent enough window to wait to add in stuff like iron, magnesium, etc. I don't know enough to know if it matters.... If that makes sense. I'm definitely not concerned about that gap in time. There's going to be stuff in the water, just not 100% capacity so to speak.

The inside bag had a little bit of air seep out. The folds in the bag when they boxed it just crushed them. 😞 Styrofoam lined box, normal stuff, heat pack and all that. The outside bag was fine, inside bag was deflated and it was apparent right away. I opened it up and went, wait, there's black shrimp in here. Some grey. Somehow the mesh that the shrimp are supposed to grab into was stuck to the side of the bag not free floating, and I'm pretty sure when it went in only the corner of the mesh was reachable. So they had nothing to hold onto except the folds of the bag and that was filled with their shrimp buddies. It was a simple accident, but just one of those things. Hopefully things end ok and I'm ok/satisfied with the results. We'll see.

Yeah, I packed corydoras this morning, trust me I know it can be difficult to get the little things right and have random issues. 😞 With tiny, tiny shrimp I could only imagine the stuff needed to get them to arrive safely. The biggest thing being breather bags, which this place is known for, but both orders didn't have em. Hoping since it was a full DoA they just reship it.

Yeah, exactly. Same here. Doing a little bit of research on the topic it's difficult to say whether it'll help or do anything. I changed the method just for the sake of it won't hurt, why not take the extra effort.

Me too. Waiting since December and I think the policy is silly. I believe..... Hopefully not.... They refund cost of the animal and not shipping. So $20 for the animal and then $35 for shipping. Actual cost is $20 to ship but whatever..... It's frustrating. We'll see what they do and how they handle it.

Well now that I can use reactions, yesterday is all tied up. Someone break the tie! Crystal Red shrimp Exactly! Such an underrated puffer.

.....and they arrived DoA. Bag got a leak or something and they got caught in the seams at the top of the bag and crushed. 😞 Dealing with support now. 😞 😞 😞 There is 1-2 alive that didn't get crushed. We'll see what happens after acclimation.

29 30¼ x 12½ x 18¾ 40 Breeder 36 3⁄16 x 18¼ x16 15⁄16 a 40 is essentially a 3 foot long 75G.

Replacing the 29G with a 40B..... yeah. That's a major upgrade and it'll be night and day when it comes to the space you have when working on the tank. 20L/29G ---> 40b ----> 60B/75G Those are the tank sizes I think make sense to keep (for me).

cc @Biotope Biologist @modified lung any idea?

There ya go! Awesome detail here.

This.... There are a lot of "hobbyists" who do dumb things and put fish in danger. There are people that use tanks as battle arenas and there are plenty of actual fishkeepers that seriously struggle to handle their tanks. One of the most difficult lessons is twofold for me. I will try not to be concise telling these tales. First, was recently. Helping someone who was brand new to the hobby and basically won a fish at the fair type of scenario. Not exactly, but the point being is that this fish was theirs now and they had no idea. Plenty of people wanted to offer help, send videos, send lists on what to do, but after 2-3 pages of forum posts it was pretty clear everyone missed something extremely critical. Sometimes you just really, really need to take a step back and look at a basic problem with eyes of someone who doesn't have any idea of what the correct advice is. Sometimes you have to seriously take a breath, slow down, and try to think about what you're doing and how you're doing it as much as why you're doing it. Even my last water change, I was so exhausted and dehydrated that I was worried about tossing the lid or tank on the ground. I was so worried about forgetting something small that led to a catastrophic failure. Trying to be helpful and guide someone is very, very different than telling someone what to do or to use the expression "if it was my tank, this is what I would do". This manta, this mindset of slowing down and reviewing everything is so critical when you run into issues. Second, was not recent. I was very excited to have my own big tank. To have a tank that was setup, beautiful, and working well. I just needed to get the plants to grow and add fish. I bought what was at the time the "best" filter. I had the setup perfect and I had everything dialed in to be successful. I added in 25 tiger barbs and watched the filter kill them one by one over a year. Then numbers dwindled and aggression took over. It was one of the worst feelings as a hobbyist and it's something I have spend YEARS trying to fix. Not only for myself, but trying to find others who solved the problem and how they solved it. Apart from using the corner of an ice chest into the tank to stop the fish from getting into the filter it's been a situation where I spent years learning. From misdiagnosing illness, to not reacting quick enough, to a variety of other issues, the point was that I failed my own standards and the fish in the tank. They weren't high quality fish with special genetics, but they were mine and I failed them. Sometimes you make mistakes and that causes growth. "Good food takes time". "You never step in the same river twice" "The only source of knowledge is experience." -Einstein “Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool." -Edison https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/7-epic-fails-brought-to-you-by-the-genius-mind-of-thomas-edison-180947786/ The only way you fail is that you decide to let yourself give up.

This is a really good reference tank. @jwcarlson help us out!

I assume male-female ratio changed? The tank in question is generally square, not a lot of floor space. I would opt for giving more room with sight breaks. This is similar to what Irene had to do as well recently to help alleviate some issues with hers. Flex 15. 16 L X 15 W X 15 H IN 20 Long 30¼ x 12½ x 12¾ 40 Breeder 36 3⁄16 x 18¼ x 16 15⁄16

That is such a great feeling. Very nice job and congratulations. Now tell us all of your care methods! 🙂

Welcome to the forums! 🙂 It's really nice that you were able to help out. I know starting out you're scouring youtube for answers, especially on disease questions. Having someone you can get a hold of, talk things over, it's a relief sometimes. Best of luck in the future conversations!

Day early, maintenance done of the shrimp side of things. Getting ready to ship fish out tomorrow morning, sanity checks and mental prep work done! I can either fit 3 or try to fix 6 bags in the box, we'll see what I end up with. I decided that I'm going to do a pretty major overhaul on the tank in question and swap out the hardscape for a piece that would do extremely well with the stocking that is planned. I am missing a piece of lava rock, hoping that I can find it and pop in some epiphytes to grow out without concern at all that the flow would dislodge them. Aaand just to make sure I'm qualified for a rubber room, now the other one is back, too. So, disappeared from Tuesday morning until Thursday night. Now alive and well. I give up, but grateful that these two apparently healthy happy fish did not just die and get eaten between one feeding and the next! And saw my first guppy fry from the "guppy love island" breeding group I set up 4 weeks ago. Cute little yellow/white babies so I assume the ginga sulphureus female was the mom. What does the tank look like? I'm glad you found them all. Fish know how to hide, that's for sure!

I started waiting 24 hours to avoid any weird interactions with dechlorinators. I'm dosing 2x dose on dechlor (prime) and don't want it to do anything wonky with the minerals being dosed in, iron and so forth.

@Mmiller2001 @gjcarew and you would make an awesome dutch tank. I feel it. I'd love to see the dutch style scapers on this forum make one together one day. SUCH great stuff that each of you all do individually.

late to the party. Thanks forum search. CONGRATS GJCarew. Awesome work.

Lightroom has a bit better contrast and saturation. Bit better balanced. The way the light is gives it that haze affect, the Lightroom fixes that stuff a little bit.

Placement is good to be key. Val in the back and the light can also skew towards the back of the tank if you want. Most lids naturally cause this with hinge placement. When it comes to most everything else the hydro will do fine as well as the anubias with just about anything, place it to the front/sides and let those plants do their thing. The sword you'd want to be centered under the strongest part of the light as your main grower. I'd point you towards corvus oscens video. Towards his method and reasoning. I use seachem flourite as my substrate and it compacts well for corydoras. If you're not running a sand cap, id genuinely argue it's the closest to it in terms of compaction and keeping the food at the top of the substrate where they can get it. Some sort of active substrate below, cap it with fluorite of whichever color would be my method. You could further cap that with the fluorite sand if you wish. Makes sense for sure. Hopefully the above details get you on the right path.

Very awesome guide. Nice find.