nabokovfan87

Smaller, yes, but larger, I think the amanos scare the neocaridina. I ended up pulling mine (they are about 3" long) just to make sure that the actual neos could eat and didn't have feeding issues with the smaller shrimp. Amano shrimp are vastly easier. Like keeping a common pleco, just add water a lot of the time. I use glass lids with a hinge.

Basically anything. I vote amano shrimp though! They both come from the same rivers I believe. 😉

CC @Odd Duck I would stick with spirulina or krill based foods. There's the NLS algaemaxx foods as well as stuff like krill pro foods. They sell them in various size pellets and I would think one of them works for the plecos. (I believe they go up to 6mm) When it comes to something like shrimp, there are a few studies I can link and share for red coloration. Maybe those types of boosters can be used. Generally speaking though, as soon as you stop using those boosters coloration would drop off. Also.... If you have a light that can do it, try using light after hours to trigger certain color cells to develop. It's from shrimp, but it just helps them to develop color quicker and more vividly.

A spudger should work. You can also use a stainless steel or metal tool, just be careful on some surfaces, knowing you'll leave some marks. Not sure what you mean about removing them vs. The drain. I would encourage you to toss them in the garbage as opposed to the drain as a general rule for anything coming out of your aquarium.

I tend to QT based on source, not number of fish. You can see any aquarium store with a QT setup do so with 200 neon tetras and a variety of other setups constantly. QT just means these fish are removed from the main tank for X amount of time. It doesn't even mean to use meds or anything like that. It's so you have the opportunity to monitor for issues. In my side tank that is acting as QT right now, there's 8-14 rainbows, 6-8 cherry barbs, 2 plecos. If I had placed an order for fish and gotten in a bunch of fish, they would all go to one tank, preferably one species per tank, but either way, number of fish shouldn't really be a concern. Basically, if your filtration is adequate, you ease the tank by cutting back on food and doing water changes, then it can adjust to the new load. I also tend to run an air stone/extra air in my QT setups.

I use the plastic, molded shims. Higher weight load and you get about 40-80 of them for fairly cheap. Composite Shims Leveling Wedges, 36 Pack 8-Inch Plastic Shims, Extreme Load Support for Furniture and Appliances, Easy to Snap Door Shims, Window Shims, Toilet Shims, Table Levelers and More - TUFFBOY https://a.co/d/fExg1kQ

I really do love this photo. SO..... Filter has been cleaned 3-4x the past 2 weeks because of all the substrate stuff going on. It's been done again. I might toss in more foam in there just for the giggles of it, but yeah... I'm less than convinced of the flow path in that 407 being optimal and working flawlessly. There's literally no reason for it to be designed the way it is and I would love to see a 3d model. If you have a 3d printer and a x07 series, I might have a project for you to fix it. Bad new first? Barb mecca seems to be on a delay because..... barbs won't be in stock for "a while" if ever. The ones I wanted/tried to get had died, the other ones aren't in stock, and the other barbs they do have in stock.... they only have females to add to my current group or they only have 4. I can get some rasboras or something, but right now I'm just waiting. Green aqua did a vid and added these gems to their tank.... Smaller than tigers, green shine... what's not to love. I need to get 1-3 SAEs and some otos, but I just am unsure what else will be in there for visual interest. Melon/panda barbs, plus the guys above would've been awesome. This was another I was looking for: We'll figure it out.... all I can do is wait. GOOD NEWS. The tubing was finally restocked from one of the 3-4 stores I had it tagged on. That's on the way as well as a wonderful surprise for myself for the shrimp tank. I'm excited to see it, excited for the final setup of things to be completed. (removing the plastic intakes and ribbed tubing) The place that I ordered the tubing from is located in SF and would be able to get some decent plants to me as well, so it's good to get a feel for how they handle/pack/ship items.

So... unknowingly you may have an issue. That's a "common pleco" and they can get about 3 foot long. You have a really solid algae eater on your hand, but I would see if you can find someone local with a pond or try to swap it back to the store for something more appropriate long term. This also applies to your nitrite issue. I didn't look in the thread, but just a note. Big fish = lots of gill oxygenation, which would put more ammonia in the tank, more nitrite.

Congrats! Well done.

It's not a hard and fast rule, but most broad leaved plants can handle low-medium light. I would start with something like a riser, 6-8" above the tank if you can. or mount the light up off the lid. I see you do have something on there currently, but I'm not sure the height. Beyond that, review the light settings, work on actively treating for BBA and things like that to get it to back off. There's a list of about 8-12 things to check for BBA to try to narrow down what is going on. With swords, it's a bit more straightforward.... placement, light intensity, and removing dying leaves. For a lot of those things on the list I would point you towards the algae thread in my signature as a start. It's focused on BBA specifically for me and has video resources that can help. I see some yellowing on the leaves. So there's some dying / nutrient issues going on. For each sword, depending which type of root tab you're using.... 3-5 is about the right number every 2-3 months per plant. With an inert substrate that might be the place to start. Once the plant starts to recover you can do something like a monthly tab or two... or three. These all would be pretty low demand plants. I would turn the light down in intensity. Highest would be 30% for me. There's a lot going on weekly and tabbing that often, I don't think it's really going to result in the affect you're hoping for. Tabbing is usually monthly, more often it's around every ~3 months in a normal tank. I would imagine George Farmer has a video on the tropica channel for swords care that is useful as well as Green Aqua and Filipe Oliveira has one for general fertilization techniques. There's a lot of different methods to get things thriving and everyone's tank is different. Hopefully that helps, please feel free to ask specific questions if you need more detail.

Before I add ferts my nitrates are very low. Then I add nitrates and it's anywhere from 10-30

It's a recommendation for planted stuff, maybe it matters for some fish. GH = 2x KH. Might be indicating some of that store credit towards having just a little bit of GH booster on hand if you need it occasionally!

I would recommend looking into a few of the flip aquatics videos (and his talk) on shrimp meds. Basically yes. There are some sensitive species of shrimp. In my tanks, I haven't successfully had the shrimp above 1 tbsp per 5 Gallons for salt dose. I don't recommend going any higher if you aren't doing a dip. Amanos are safe with basically everything. Neo/Caridina for bacterial meds it's going to be recommended to start with a half dose (per flip aquatics) and that should be more than sufficient for shrimp bacterial infections. Beyond that, ich-x is generally considered safe. For the dewormers and stuff like that it's often used for things like planaria, SJ parasites, or detritus worms, usually to no avail.... so a lot of people stick to salt dose or "no planaria" for shrimp tanks for that use case (parasites).

How is it going everyone! Welcome to 2024.

They are on that Sera supply sheet and it can be pretty daunting. Min buys per item and then you have to have a minimum total cost. There's not a lot of the Sera stuff I like these days. 😞 Maybe they can bring in some hikari discus food for you. This one: One of their better recipes, might work with a lot of your fish. I am yet to find it local for whatever reason. Discus Bio-Gold Krill meal, whole crushed silkworm pupae, fish meal, cuttlefish meal, dried seaweed meal, brewers dried yeast, potato starch, spirulina, carotene, lecithin, DL-methionine, astaxanthin, garlic, choline chloride, vitamin E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized vitamin C), inositol, d-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, vitamin A supplement, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacin, folic acid, vitamin D3 supplement, biotin, silicon dioxide, ferrous sulfate, magnesium sulfate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, red 3 (artificial color).* 07-49K let us know. This is one of those that a lot of people mention (good and bad). I am really intrigued by the algaemaxx stuff.

The best way I can explain it is this method for an active substrate. You should be cleaning it if you have flow issues. If you see algae issues it's definitely causing some strife there. This particular algae loves any sort of rotting organics. Again, it goes back to how much opinion is out there and not hands on testing. I call it parroting. Someone trustworthy to someone says something and that goes from one to the next to the next. It's like that phone game when you're a kid and we all know how miscommunication can happen in that case. With a newer tank, with active substrate they often say to not rinse it or to never siphon it because they want to treat it as if it's a dirted tank. They want the waste to charge up the nutrient level in the substrate. But, substrate is often shipped and at some point You're getting mud, not little substrate balls and removing that mud is useful. Just rinse vs no rinse is a controversial topic, so we can imagine how much the difference is once those things are in the tank. I siphon it to try to remove the mud. Being new, even myself, I am still working on my technique for siphoning the substrate and it's a process. I love Cory's advice and videos on this. I am right there with Miller where you have to really dial in the water column fertilization and treat the substrate as secondary. It is there to not hurt you and your substrate is often what works and how well does it work for planting or feeding. Let's just focus on getting the algae receding, which does include making sure the substrate is more clean than it is right now. For comparison sake, I feed heavy, this is wat mine looks like. Not some prepared photo, just one I have on the phone. This is the spot in the tank where the debris settles. The surface is "clean" and there are bits of waste in the depths of the soil. (These are new plants that went through a de-snail treatment and are transitioning.) That's the thing that a lot of people don't do, thos major back to back deep cleans or just huge water changes to remove junk. I watch George Farmer do his maintenance videos and he's doing 2-3 big water changes. He will do his work and all the trims, then do a big water change once the work is done.

That's corydoras gold right there.... Awesome!

My condolences about the fish that went through the pump issue. That's very tragic. 😞 You should take some photos or something if you feel like it, when you go to the LFS. Give us an idea of the foods they have in stock! I would at least expect you can walk out of there with some frozen foods. The BNPs, it's unfortunate that they are so tough to sell. Maybe post some on the forums and go that route?

There's a bit going on here and I have been dealing with BBA for about 3 years or so and it's been a constant fight. Let's take a look at a few things and break down what is going on. Generally speaking, the center-middle of your tank is going to be the spot where the light is the most intense. You want to have plants that can handle that bright intense light or things like a void of hardscape in that place so that you can sort of restrict algae. (Sidenote, I have had BBA grow on the back of a HOB in the dark.... so light is part of the story here) Once the BBA finds a place to take hold, then it grows. When it's really, really happy you have teal, blue, grey, and reddish hues. It's sort of like coral in that way. In your photo we do see that, so this BBA is really loving that bright area of the tank. BBA spreads via spores. They find a surface they like and will go from one spot to the next. This is where water changes can dramatically help you with removing those spores. You can't do it with UV, you can't do it any other way apart from water changes. We also see an active substrate. That's great because it helps you give the plants what they need and demand. It gives you a good chance, especially as a newer hobbyist (don't worry, I am right there with you compared to a lot of the others on the forums. MMiller's tank is a dream! ) to get into some medium level plants and faster growing plants. Active substrate needs to be charged. It releases negative ions, absorbs in nutrients for the plants to use. Mainly this is form of your KH, potentially GH as well. Which just means, if you notice the tank dropping into 0 KH and your tap is at something like 4 degrees KH, then you'd want to do water changes to get KH back to norm. You're using a mix of RO+Tap, which just means be aware of what the plants need, what the tank needs, and go from there. Normally, water changes with tap is fine (depending what it is) and then you would do top-offs with RO. Of note, if you haven't, consider tabbing the tank with root tabs to feed the plants as well. Ironically, you can get BBA from having no phosphate and from having too much phosphate. The whole logic here is that whatever is going on, one of two things is happening. Either, the plants don't have one of the building blocks they need to grow (NPK) or that nutrient is in excess and feeding the algae. You have the test kit and you're reading 0, so that makes it pretty clear which side of the coin you're on. Lower phosphate does help. I think my tank runs in the 0.75-1.5 range, but it definitely varies based on load in the tank for me. Lastly, based on your stats, you are using test strips for the KH/GH. I ran into an issue with my tank where my strips went a bit wonky on me and I ended up getting the liquid test kit. I highly recommend that route for GH and KH so you have accurate data and can verify your test results. So.... -Adjust hardscape if the BBA is centered under high light. -Adjust plants so they have the light they need, propagate out, and growing successfully. -Verify equipment, flow, nitrate, and all of the common bba things. (more on this below) BBA tends to develop in tanks where flow/circulation might be focused in one spot and stagnant in others, which can result in stuff like debris building up in spots. Essentially, BBA loves to grow where organics are rotting. This could be in forms of the excess waste in the substrate/filtration, dying plant leaves, or wood in the tank. Moss acts similarly, where it can filter out particles in the water. If the flow isn't high enough, that starts to rot and then you have algae that forms. In the photo above we see dying plant leaves which are harboring the BBA, it sends out spores, then that propagates out. The plant grows new leaves with the little energy it has, then the BBA goes to those new leaves. The only way to get through this is to get ahead of that cycle. You can dip the plants to attack the bba and start killing it, but you also need to balance out whatever is causing the BBA in the tank. That's the long term goal.... balance the system so you don't have issues with bba, but you will always have to take those steps to fight it back when you see it growing in full force. That's sort of the issue here. You have BBA, it's taken hold, and you have to fight it constantly to keep it from getting to that point. If you don't, it's just a bit difficult to get it to back down. There is a link to an algae thread in my signature that has a bit of the details I've picked up and my approach right now. The last thing I will say is that we should review your filtration setup, maintenance routine with that filter, and focus right now on siphoning the substrate to remove the excess waste. For being a newer tank, there is a lot of detritus/mulm and you'd want to remove that to help reduce what the algae can feed off of. With BBA it's a lot of little things done consistently in order to get it under control. I would pull the plants to treat them using the Jurijs method (3-day soak) followed by the Bentley method of doing a blackout for a week. When you pull the plants, also pull the hardscape so you can treat that as well. You would basically brush it with hydrogen peroxide every other day, let it sit in air for 10-15 minutes, and then place it back in the tank. As mentioned in the Jurijs video, you have to do multiple treatments in order to get BBA killed. the first treatment will just weaken it. If you don't have anything to eat the algae, manually remove it, remove heavily infected leaves asap, Bentley method for blackout with BBA: -Black out the tank from ambient light and turn off the light to the tank. -Daily water changes, I would recommend that you iphon if you need to when doing those water changes. -Do this for 7-10 days. While that blackout is happening, this is how you would treat the plants... with hydrogen peroxide, easy carbon, or flourish excel.

I kind of feel like this should be it's own post, but... here we are. I wanted to really dive in and share a bit of what is going on in the shrimp tanks. I learned something interesting recently and it's been part of an extended conversation where I have multiple concepts in play here. A. Botanicals as a food source for shrimp B. Powdered food as a source of allowing bacteria to grow on surfaces as well and encourage biofilm C. Trying to avoid junk in the substrate and keep a very clean tank as to avoid parasites and health issues long term I'll tag a few that might be interested in the following just for the sake of it as some people have been a part of those conversations. (cc @AllFishNoBrakes @Shadow @Chick-In-Of-TheSea @CiderLovesFish ) The goal for the day was to move a bunch of hardscape around, give the plants more direct light, clean up a big of muck, clean a filter, and then to go ahead and try to "fix" the tank in terms of the anubias being right under the light. I took the big rock and rotated that sideways which means that the anubias is lower in the tank as well as shifting the rocks to the outside/shaded sections of the tank itself. Once things were out of the tank we have this.... The sand itself is a slightly off-white, pretty bright tan sand which normally has a white shine to it. because of the tannins in the tank it is shaded a little darker, but you can see the chunks of debris as well as the discoloration of what I will term "fines." So, let's talk about fines and what they really are in the grand scheme of things. From Tannin Aquatics: Like any dynamic habitat, the "botanical-style substrate" relies on a variety of organisms to do the job of processing nutrients. A healthy and diverse assemblage of organisms dwelling in this layer, ranging from bacteria to fungi too worms and small crustaceans comprise what we call the "infauna." Essentially, the infauna is a collective of organisms which do most of the work in keeping a botanical-style aquarium functional and healthy. https://tanninaquatics.com/blogs/the-tint-1/the-dynamic-substrate-nature-unleashed?_pos=8&_sid=5fe11822b&_ss=r So the goal then would be to leave the tiny leaf debris, but to siphon out the uneaten food, waste, and to try to just have the "good bacteria" going into the shrimp diet. What I have noticed of recent, especially with the bump in population, is that the baby shrimp will often be outside of the feeding dish and just chunking through botanicals and sand debris. They do enjoy having that food there. They really enjoyed eating leaves. I do think that leaves and bee pollen weekly is going to go into my list of "do these things" in your shrimp care manual. After cleaning the sand with a very good siphon, we have this: The hope is that the filter debris in the back is removed and things like "end of life botanicals" are no longer in there so I can replace them with fresh ones as well as remove the debris I don't want in there. You're always going to have random sticks, twigs, bark scrapings, and things that you just really don't want to get in your way. Remember.... excess waste/organics means you can crash your KH and PH. So it is important to remove stuff at some point. You can see that pile of debris and it generally is as good as I can get it for cleanliness. 50% water change once a month or once every few months and I've only done this small portion of the tank. This is where your layout for hardscape and complexity of the hardscape comes into play. I moved all of the botanicals up front and there was just a mess. You have the shrimp breaking those down, which in turn gives you this excess muck. The tank got very cloudy. I will post a picture below. You decide if it's a before or an after cleaning. I'll attach the answer in a spoiler tag. 🙂 So with all that being said.... I think I am coming to grips with some tweaks I need to make long term. I have food for shrimp of all sizes and I do have some foods I need to acquire for the sake of benefiting the tank long term. Which leads me to a bunch of questions that I need to research. There is always something to learn.... Lastly, the 9th of the little corydoras moved into the big tank today. Riddick will get her tank soon and I will really be looking forward to having that space for her. I have decided to break this tank down. Which means that I need to sell some stuff to be able to replace the stand/tank or move everything into that 20Long. There's a few reasons, but the main thing here is to keep the shrimp happy and do what I need to whenever that time comes.

It depends on which model you have. Some of them it's a good idea to submerge them and they have the min water line indicated on the heater itself for just about all of them. You want it to say fully submersible, which means that they've supported and sealed the wire assembly in the heater appropriately. You can see the squiggly "min water line" on the base of the heater where it attaches to the glass as well. Fully submerge = better heat distribution and you can do water changes without triggering hot/cold spots on the heater. The actual, proper directions for the heater are.... 1. turn off the heater and let it cool for 30 minutes. 2. do your water change 3. let the heater equalize in temp for about 30 minutes. 4. then you can safely turn it back on. Many a heater has exploded from being exposed to air or exposed to extreme water shifts. Also...

Rapid breathing I think is the biggest one. Sort of "stressed" looking as opposed to comfortable. I've seen a ram I had too cold basically shut down over 3 days and it hardly moved at all. I had no idea what temp they needed, was fine for months and I moved him to the big tank, colder spot of the house and he just didn't make it. Took me a few years to understand why.

Filtration should be fine.

That's good to know. I'll work on bumping that temp up closer to 78 to keep everything happy in there. The way I've always set things if there is a range I use the middle value. A lot of cypranidae species will want 74 degrees or so and can go slightly cooler. This would include corydoras, but specifically looking at danio, Rasbora, minnows, and barbs. I keep my tanks in the 72-74 range. For corydoras, planet catfish has details on their care habitat as well. Basically it bumps up the metabolism, can increase stress, shorten lifespan, and introduce or allow diseases to take hold. The fishes immune system would be weakened if temp is too high (or too low). There is always a range that is accepted, but that's just the typical sentiment. Tetras like is warmer, 78, the cypranidae like it cooler. But there's always some exceptions there. Just have to research each species.

Correct. So the stem you cut (no roots) will grow new roots when you plant it. Also, the bare stalk should pop new growth as well and grow new stalk sections with leaves. That's basically the norm yeah. Otherwise all of the tanks look like palm trees. You have to grow the plant so you have a healthy section, then trim that off and plant that into the tank. (I.e. propagate new stems) A lot of times when you buy some stem plants it could be just trimmings without any roots.