nabokovfan87

I use the Tetra, Aqueon, Fluval, ones primarily. Aqueon is extremely nice, but I have had issues (my own fault) with longevity. It has a built in check valve, but it honestly isn't built to last. Tetra I am using now as the primary. I have a Tetra whisper on one tank, and then on the other tank with the filters I run the Tetra AP150. That's about the strongest one you can purchase that is a single outlet. I really liked the Fluval one, but it did not last at all and broke all of a sudden about 45 days after I had it. If I was to get one today, I'd get the ACO one or I would purchase the Tetra AP150 for a larger / deeper tank application. 40B or larger.

Maracyn which is similar to E.M. Erythromycin (from API) is the one i have from ACO as a part of their med trio. Maracyn 2 is a bit broader spectrum, but there is no guarantee it'll work more or less effectively against what you're treating for. If the med you have is showing good signs, continue use. If things worsen, that's when you would change medications. If you can for any fish with swim bladder issues, try to use a breeder box so the fish can be closer to the water surface and have less pressure on their swim bladder. My apologies, missed the quote! Please see above.

Agreed. Especially having Ammonia (if it's not chloramines) in the tap, then you'd want to let that gas off as much as possible before going into the tank. Minimum 24 hours.

For corydoras I think they have a much easier time with 1:3 mix. I have heard people trying 1:4 as well but it's going to break down pretty quickly. Fresh, 1:3 ratio is probably the easiest balance. If you're freezing it, it's less relevant because it takes time for it to thaw. I am going to stick with 1:3 for now and have slightly larger batches as a result.

I can't say it's improved, but I haven't had any issues with mine. It's been in use for just over 1 year.

Video looks great! I think the look you might like is sand with gravel mixed in? Maybe that is a happy medium if you don't want a full sand look. There is a community blend repashy thread that cory started, some fun stuff in there. Here is my corydoras going nuts first time they saw that food. ORD but very cool ideas on how to solve the substrate stuff. Nice work everyone!

Absolutely beautiful corydoras!

Correct, and adding more than you need will not be an issue. Considering you have ammonia from the tap, it takes 2-5 minutes for prime to do it's thing, and you're slowly adding water over time.... it can be reasonably assumed that the fish were exposed to ammonia in this situation. Especially with such a high volume of water and % volume change. That amount of ammonia isn't small. There is more to dig into here, but also keep in mind that when you're using prime to detoxify ammonia it has slightly higher dosing instructions and can be dosed up to 5x the normal dose. Apologies for the weird quote messing up, the text is what I was trying to comment on!

Most Corydoras that like cool water are going to be in the range of 68-74 with recommendations. Pandas, Paleatus being some of the more commonly available ones. Pretty much the way to view it is that the vast majority of corydoras will do ok in that range, but there is planet catfish as a place to search for quality information. If your tank is at 65, corydoras will tolerate it, but this is also equivalent to keeping them warm. They may not be able to do well at that parameter, but once in a while is ok. Because it's a smaller tank size as well, I would stick to 4-6 or try out one of the pygmy species as long as temps make sense. I encourage you to create a journal and post some photos! I would love to see your setup and your tanks and see updates on your adventures with the breeding project and tank setups 🙂 . Adding a lid will help hold in the heat. The room might be at a certain temp, but the bottom of the tank where the corydoras are at will be slightly cooler and the tank itself might be slightly warmer than the room temp (potentially) depending on what equipment is running. When it comes to most of the species that enjoy the cooler temps I would also recommend something like the neo air diffuser or the ziss airstones and add that in addition to any of your other filtration. It will slightly increase oxygenation and most of the cooler water species seem to enjoy that 🙂 As for your question I have a similar situation but with slightly more extremes. Temps go from below freezing in winter and currently in the summer it's not uncommon to have 115+ degrees F days. (~46 degrees Celsius) When it turns to the winder months I add the heater and run it very low. It is there as a safety valve. If the air temp or outside temps are ~10 degrees F cooler than safe, it is very likely that you need a heater for the sake of the fish. For those times when it's very cold, I would recommend running one, setting it to 72 during those times. You can set it lower in the 68-70 range if need be, but I try to keep mine in the 72-74 range. If you don't want any heater at all ricefish or white clouds might be a great option!

I found this. Very similar markings. Super interesting to see them have this only as a smaller size.

ORD but yes! Super easy and you don't need a crazy light. Pretty much anything works.

I'd recommend buying two single outlet pumps instead of a dual outlet. The dual outlets have a tendency for one outlet to break and one being fine, then the other is always on but not working well. It's a bit easier longer term to have a backup pump. The nice thing is that you can have the HOB on very low flow and it would be there to exclusively polish the water column or run chemical meds. You can still do this with sponges but not as effectively. When you're done with treatment you can just turn off and remove the HoB. I have a little 10G nano HoB on my 29G for the time being to help run carbon only. But the actual main filtration is the sponges inside.

I definitely recommend aquahuna. It's my local store now. With the ACO coupon it's about the same price as going to the shop for me. 🙂 Considering the issue is the black neons getting picked on, I would double their numbers first. Then see how things go. Protect the little guy in QT and then it will shift the dynamic.

I would completely ignore for the most part what GPH you need based on whatever the air pump manufacturers have on the box. Your tank in question is a 40B and you're likely going to have 2 sponges or 2-3 air driven devices at once. What really matters is the height of the tank, what you're driving, and just generally how will things hold up over time. Let's say you have a pump rated for 20G. Will it push air? Yep. Will it last? Hard to say. Let's say you get the pump rated for 50+ gallons. Is it the same as duck taping two 20G pumps together and having two outputs with similar power and design? Very likely. What I would suggest is finding something that is strong, is a single output, and works well enough that you feel like you're going to have something that lasts a while. I've used tetra, aqueon, top fin, ACO nano, fluval, and probably a few others but what I have found that works best for my tanks is a good strong pump with a single outlet and a metal gang valve. I go from the pump to a check valve into the gang valve and then into the devices. I've had one pump rated for 150G that runs my 29G with 3-4 devices. I've since "scaled back" : 😂 and gone ahead and purchased a basic 20-40G airpump and I'm just using an air stone on that tank. I added pressurized CO2 and so I didn't want to have that many bubbles in this tank specifically. Right now, that same AP150 filter is running my 29G flawlessly with 2 filters and it had enough to run 3 without issues. Part of the equation here is what you're running. So if you're running a ziss adjustable airstone that's tightened really hard for fine bubbles or something like the cheaper stone air stones, etc. Whatever the force/pressure/load you're needing to supply is going to determine just what kind of pump you need. In my case, I had issues over many years with pumps failing after 3-6 months and I just use airstones and sponges. It happened for a variety of reasons and I'd go and get those valve replacement kits and never got them to work well or at all. I use the ACO sponges and the ziss airstones with 3 felt washers in them. It's not ridiculously tight, but I do enjoy a good amount of flow on my sponges and airsrtones. Hopefully that helps! Please feel free to ask for anything specific, but that should get you towards where you're needing. Keep in mind ACO has their air pump, one per sponge would be awesome for that tank!

Those yellow bands on the fins are pretty awesome. Nice fish and it's totally awesome you were able to breed and share these with the local shops 🙂

This is the way my RTBS acts with my pandas. 😂 Very cool to see pandas bring this out in other species as well! What a fun tank though.

Awesome stuff. Coloration on this guy is so intense! What a nice fish.

What an awesome photo. These too! Awesome photography work 🙂 Hm.... Maybe a Gourami or some nano species. Silvertip tetras seem to be in people's minds because they look so cool in a video ACO posted. I think your tank would do really well with some green neons and something like that which will contrast really well with the wood and substrate colors. How is the tank doing, how are the fish and plants doing?

What would you tell someone if you walked up to them in a big box store and they were eyeing plants and trying to decide which to get? Awesome work. Your tank looks better than mine by a few hundred miles!

How is the tank doing?

Great photo!

really beautiful tanks and photography work!

I wasn't going to say anything negative, but simply that it would be interesting to see these guys in video form and how they do over time with that substrate. You might get away with something like seachem flourite and then sand as a cap in different regions. It just depends on what type of a scape / look / tank you want to have. The sand I like now is the one I just tried. Slightly larger grain so I have less filtration issues, caribsea crystal river. It looks gigantic online, but I promise, it's normal going to the beach looking beach sand. Great stuff. As for gravel / smaller gravel. It might not be available, but check out this stuff! Aesthetically pretty cool. Would go well with these ones and their camouflage. I feed a lot of soilent green. Now that I've used it I can say that one of their absolute favorites is bottom scratcher for invertivores. Community blend is also a great one for so many different types of fish. You can also mix them as you see fit!

Tetra AP150!

Attacking the other fish I would think is "protect the herd" mentality and one fish having a bit more of a temper than the other. Think of it like a dominant male protecting the pack. Something like line of sight breaks would lessen this. My first question is just going to be, what does the tank look like and how much of the vertical space do the fish have for the sake of getting away from others. Is there a "bush" where the neons can go hide in away from the others. If this is the case, then the interaction I would expect to see is one of the fish swimming in open water, the other hiding in the plants kind of like finding nemo and hiding in the anemone from predators/nuisances. In pretty much everything I've kept.... the mindset I have for my tanks i that trying to maximize the amount of fish of one type to "have enough" of them is pretty critical. When I had my barbs they are often semi-aggressive, but none of them would touch the solo white cloud I had in the tank. He was on his own, wouldn't leave the top of the water surface, and everything in the tank was 2-3x his size. The store didn't have more, so it wasn't a situation where I could get more. Odessa barbs, when they went from ~10 down to 4-6 the aggression and issues increased. Tiger barbs, same thing. Rasboras, same thing. Skirt tetras and the "wider body" tetras I have seen do this as well. I think something in the 8-10 range usually does a bit better than something in the 4-6 range. Scape has a ton to do with how the fish interact though. Minimizing how often they come into conflict with one another is what I would start with to try to alleviate the issues in your tank. Sidenote story somewhat related.... When I was working on my big display tank I had to get GTB (green tiger barbs) in several batches at a time. I would have to wait a few weeks for the stores to get more in, then go and search for more. I told them several times I needed a lot of them and every time I'd go into the big box store they would have 3-5 in stock. I am sure they had heavy losses, that just the quality of the store around me. Things have improved and more options are available, but the key point here is that I had a need for 20+ of one fish and I would go from 6 fish, to 10 fish, to 12 fish, etc. One of the behaviors I noticed and enjoyed most was feeding and watching the fish after they would feed. I would drop some food in and the bossiest fist would get their taste. I would always see the others who weren't as dominant, who were picked on, or just suffering with some ailment and I would feed those to make sure they would get some food as well. It was our little secret, but the big barb would take his bites of food, go run and hide, eat, then come back for more. Having that little hide or places for the fish to escape to meant that they could get away from the barrage and darting. From feeding to about 30 minutes or so after feeding those fish would just torment one another until I had enough in the tank to distract them. That being plants growing in or just other fish.