nabokovfan87

Yeah, no issue at all with that. ACO will have their light as well soon!

If you can, take a video of them trying to eat. Some people use a pepper grinder for fish good to get it fine enough. You can also try repashy powder, just the powder itself.

Right, you'll still lose "a bit" but I can't say how much that is. Depends on which sponge filter, how much flow, the air pump, airstone, etc. The best thing I can do is to recommend trying it, see what the drop checker says, watch the CO2 microbubbles from the diffuser and see how things run. If you can't get it into the green, then you'll likely need to turn one off while running CO2 and then turn it on about an hour after CO2 finishes running for the day.

Correct. it's totally possible. Even my tank with CO2 has surface agitation. If you're running excess filtration (2+ sponges, and an airstone, and a HoB, etc.) It might make sense to dial those back or to turn them off while dosing in CO2.

Super awesome. I am very jealous! I cannot wait to get some Corydoras fry again.

Is it mostly protein or which foods specifically? Right now, when he does return to food, I would only feed him brine shrimp for a little while. That will help him to retain as little as possible and clean out his system. (ruffage, spirulina, pea protein, etc.) Not wanting to eat is usually one of the first signs that the fish is stressed in some way. I don't think he has fin rot, but pineconing is the biggest symptom right now. All the other things you mentioned point towards specifically dropsy. It is difficult to see his eyes. If you have something like a breeder basket, it would keep him higher to the surface of the water and allow him to reach the surface easier. It will also remove some slight pressure if he is having any swim bladder issues.

Correct. You can add one airstone on one end of the tank, sponge on the other. Sounds good. Follow the directions on the box itself for maracyn, but when you change water it mentions on Ich-X you need to change a specific water volume. That's how I manage it. As far as "why" this happened. Can you discuss your feeding regime for the betta?

I have never gotten my fish to eat veggies. I might have to try again soon. Very cool stuff. That ram was about to go fill his cave up!

Yeah, it looks like pineconing and there's a variety of reasons for that. I would add an airstone, focus on very very clean water. I would hold back food for 3-5 days and try to let the fish pass what it can and try to fix fluid buildup internally. The epsom salt baths will help with this too. I would treat with Maracyn + Ich-X to cover both primary and secondary issues. It is just how I generally use Maracyn, whenever I use it, I would use it with Ich-X. Typically with salt as well. Because you are using epsom salt currently, don't use normal aquarium salt. It can make symptoms worse. How is filtration on the fishes tank normally? Is it potentially causing stress to the fish and unable to relax?

Sometimes there is thread, other times you're just supposed to grow moss, trim it, then attach it where you want it. I have had fish get cut on the mesh. I prefer the plastic one because of this now. My best advice I can give would be to use something like superglue around the edge of the mesh as a sort of barrier to cover all the sharp edges.

I haven't used mine yet. *Hopefully soon* I appreciate your time posting this and it's always so difficult doing something unknown to me in the hobby. Information is either non-existent or there's 5000 ways to do a simple task. I will take your technique and advice to heart though! Hopefully they spawn again for you soon 🙂

That's tough. Cooler always seems to be "easier" on the fish, and my biggest fear these days is that the outside temp is so hot compared to inside. I honestly wish I could just condition water for tank use. It's not something I can do in the current situation, but I think in the hobby moving forward this might be as critical as having a sump on a bigger tank. If you don't mind, show off the tank and results? I am very sorry for your losses. It's always difficult and I always fear the worst when I see a little behavior change in my fish. I hope things recover for you. The best thing I can offer for advice right now is to run carbon if there is any contamination and try to keep an eye on the things we discussed above.

I literally heard of nutrafin for the first time today looking up test kits for iron. Interesting they pop up again 🙂 . I am not currently looking, but I feel like something like this "vacation block" is just something I never see a ton of. Especially new products. Locally I think we have the blue / white clamshells, but it's not a name brand and it's usually junk. It's probably been there as long as the store is open and has enough dust to fill a desert. I don't even think the local store has any real fluval foods. I'll keep an eye out. One of the reasons I ask is just to see what people think of it. If I am ever in a bind, how well it works! I like to know my options. I have heard good things about bug bites and this seems like a repashy jerky type of food, except for it'll sink. I do like the nano banquet blocks for the shrimp though, to dose in calcium!

Always try to dose the tank PRIOR to adding new water. I'm not saying this is the cause, still reading, but this is just something to note. When you're doing the WC is there an airstone or anything running? Is the tank static and you're removing 75% of the water? I have had a tank in a similar situation and I honestly think the result of this is likely to be temp, PH, or aeration. Gasping at the top usually leads to some sort of a swing in parameters. KH and GH really don't cause issues like this. Tapwater is clean so it's not Ammonia, Nitrite, or Nitrate. This just leaves PH, Temp as your main causes. Fish gasping could be either one..... Aeration, same thing. I think Temp caused some swim bladder issues and that caused some deaths. If I had to assume a reason, that would be where I start. Especially with that big of a change. 1. potentially. 2. Very, very unlikely 3. Potentially, but unlikely 4. Potentially, but hard to determine. 5. Highly doubtful, but always a risk. As someone who used to do the same thing on the big tank..... it would drain, I'd focus on the plants, etc..... I would try to force yourself to 30-40% water changes for the sake of stability. At worse, 50%. Depending how thick the substrate looks, you might be doing 55-60% changes when you think you're doing 40% changes. It's hard on the fish when everything isn't "perfect", but the number one thing for me was always to focus on temperature. I'd literally spend 2-3 minutes tapping the faucet to get the mix right and adjusting it hairs at a time. One or two degrees in either direction feels like lava or ice sometimes!

I would ALWAYS recommend for anyone starting out, just to get some anubias that you enjoy. It's the easiest thing to grow and it's the best way to get started with growing plants. Second, I would suggest moss. THEN I would suggest getting into stem plants 🙂 The cool thing is that a lot of plants do not need the beams of the sun itself to grow. They need "some light". Anubias does really well and prefers lower light. This also means you shouldn't place it directly under the beam of light at the top of your tank!!!! That is where the moss comes in and will do well. Why I recommend these two plants, is because they take nutrients from the water column and something like easy green makes it so easy to care for these plants specifically. Stem plants is where you'd be doing the exact same thing, but also adding root tabs. There's a lot to dive into, but I highly recommend starting with those two mentioned above and then research stems. Moss and Anubias you can both use super glue in this fashion. For moss, cut it into 1/4-1/2" sections and just glue it on. Yes. You can switch lights whenever. There will be some adjustment, new light might have different features or power, and that is where it might take some time to dial in settings. You can always change things out and figure out a method for making it work. However, if your lights right now are underneath a lid that is solid plastic (not translucent) then you'd likely need to find a new lid, remove the lid, or need to cut the lid in order to replace it. If your lid is something like this: You'd have to remove part of the middle section to allow the new light to show through. Something like this where the middle section is clear and you can shine light through it. or you could replace it with a standard aqueon versatop lid.

I would recommend doing what is called an off-gassing test. Essentially water comes out of the faucet and it "stabilizes" in a certain fashion based on some things being released and some things remaining in the water. There is a variety of parameters at play and to fully understand what is going on here, the best method is this test: 1. Take a sample of water from your faucet, test it for everything you can. 2. Aerate the sample of water for 24 hours with an airstone, restest everything that you can. 3. Compare the results from #2 to your tank parameters. When you do a water change, the ultimate changes you're making are going to be based on parameters from test #2, not really from test #1. Also of note, this post is very good at explaining what's going on and why you're seeing PH change (potentially) https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh Not at all! Happy to help 🙂

Totally feels worth the price of gas. 😂

Amanos you can keep on anything from gravel to specialty planted substrate. Neither one is best. Depending what your water parameters are you can use a soil substrate to lower PH if you need to. Typically this isn't an issue. I would not mix amanos with neos. I would keep one or the other. One tank, have the amanos, in the other have the neos. If your focus is on a shrimp tank, have a shrimp tank! But you'd have one species do not as well if they were mixed together. They don't really, and shouldn't compete or eat eachother. It's more about the difference in care.

His name is Bentley 🙂 So you're saying 5-11P. Let's say you're replicating a full day of lights. Even if I assume something like 3-5 hour sunrise and sunsets, it's a massive amount of light. I wouldn't suggest it for anything other than the most highly developed tank. I would START with 8 hours as your window. As an example I will show you mine, but I do not have siestas integrated. This gives you an idea for how to view "active hours". There is some confusion and differences in how people calculate this out. This is my method and it's straightforward given that I don't have siestas. My "main lighting window" is going to be when the light is actually on, not when it's turning on or increasing to something the plants can utilize. I do have low light plants, but that isn't what I am basing the math on for the calculation for how long I run my light. Let's say you want to run for an "active window" of ~8.5 hours. this just means you want to check the above and see what your overall high and lows are for that window. If you have algae issues with the big span, maybe you need to turn things down from 8 hours down to 6 hours, etc. The goal is to find a balance, find something close, and then check to see what the plants do when you're doing everything right. This means dosing ferts, lights, and CO2 are all working effectively. I would start at 55-65% for power with that depth of tank. If you have questions after this please tag or DM me and I'll walk you through how to use the app 🙂

One day.... I want to make a forest green version of the green lazer corydoras! I think my other favorite right now is the peppered corydoras. Especially being the subtle green. Such a unique color and not as gigantic as the emerald corydoras.

Sounds like we're both fixing some issues with the tanks we have! Good stuff!!!!! I just want us all to have happy happy fish.

Yes. But the rate of surface tension might obscure (make useless) the adding of CO2 in the tank itself. I use a drop checker and I prefer to track things that way. I have ran tanks with CO2 with a ton of oxygenation. Air does have CO2! So that helps a lot as well. It's all just relative and you have to decide what is working, what isn't.

.....What a day. I finally was able to get to the pet shop and get some real sand to replace the BDBS I had added days ago to the tank. I want to demonstrate why I am changing it out, but I also wanted to just clarify that I am seeing issues with this sand. My poor Panda Corydoras.... I feel so bad for all of the fish. Before: I found this dude stuck in the tank. No thanks. I don't need this and the puppy hair in the tank! (This is me.... expressing how frustrating it is I can't get a normal lid!!!) I feel like I need to cover this tank in an awning or something, so ridiculous. Alright, so I removed the hardscape, some equipment, filters, etc. and then I proceeded to remove the fish. Yesterday I saw micro-scratches all over their bellies and then I saw this guy today who was completely missing all of his barbels. I knew it was a very good thing to be removing this from the tank and I was just simply dreading the entire process. I tried to siphon it out, that didn't work because of the different weights of all the materials. The fine metal flake (similar to silt in particle size) was very easy to remove and I have a video of this. My issues with BDBS: 1. You have no idea what is in it, it's also a recylced and inconsistent mix of "stuff" 2. It has very heavy and very light items, so it doesn't compact very well 3. It has so much crazy stuff and you have to do so much just to be able to use it, let alone get it clean 4. You should run a magnet through it 5. It's very sharp. Imaging slowly moving your hand through a pile of staples, that's what my arms felt like after removing it from the tank. I feel SO BAD for any fish on this substrate. OK so.... I made a video trying to show the issues. the final straw for me was when I added the BDBS in the first place, I turned on the water to top off the tank and it was shooting shards of media all over the tank and all over the fish. I am absolutely certain this caused major issues with Grace the Shark and she's been upset since that happened. It was like an underwater tornado of shards of metal flying all over and I had the water on as low as possible. Here is a video of this issue, trying to demonstrate this with my hand and then showing the silt (metal flake) on the top that I can remove with the siphon) I took the tank out front, hosed the crap off of everything and tried to make sure any film wasn't left in the tank itself. I cleaned the new sand, took 2.5 buckets of water to completely clean it compared to 30+ minutes cleaning the BDBS and you can see from the above the amount of fines left. I brought the tank back in, checked the level, and started to reverse the process. In terms of texture. This sand just feels like fine gravel. not sharp at all!!!! I think I will use this gravel for any sand tanks in the future. It's a bit larger size than the stuff I've had before (moonlight sand size). I'm impressed. I highly recommend it. I added meds, added the hardscape, plants, fish back. I cleaned the lid. I dropped the light about 3 times and probably need to just stop using it. (very old aquasky light) I will give them a day of rest, then focus on something like repashy that's very soft and easy for them to eat. Here is the tank after it was all done with the change. And of course..... Grace the Shark hiding a bit, recovering. They did good today. I am glad she didn't jump. I am glad she's ok. I hand captured her to place her in the tank and she let me, which is very difficult for this species (they LOVE to jump) and so I think, I hope she knows I was trying my best to make it better for her and her panda gang. ..... In the main tank, I got my order of parts I needed. -The remaining tools for my aquascaping set (black, fluval) with the S-Shaped scissors, the spring scissors for smaller areas, and then the spatula. -Installed the new drop checker, slightly better shape to get the right angle when installed and more reliable data -Installed the new thermometer (trying out the fluval dual temp LCD one) -Installed the new diffuser (Trying out the seachem beetle one) to see if that gives me any better or worse results than the neo. The main difference is that it can be installed about an inch lower into the tank. Finishing up dinner now and checking out the football news. I'll sit back and watch the fish and just see how behavior is tonight. They seem to be doing ok so far. They always swim around, but I think they are laying more, which is a good sign! EDIT: The best way I can describe it. BDBS feels like I ran my hand through fiberglass or like I have splinters in my finger I just can't remove. The actual aquarium sand felt like running my hand through cotton balls. That's the extremity of the difference I had. Day 2: Now that I can see everything a bit more clearly I do see microcuts on their gills, rapid breathing, redness, belly redness, etc. I cannot express it enough, please don't put your fish through this if you want black substrate. I am now treating for bacterial / Fungal and will be feeding very specific foods to try to get these guys to recover.

CO2 has to be *very small* bubbles for it to dissolve into the water before it reaches the surface. Your real issue is that you're going to be diffusing in CO2 and then the surface tension might actually release what you're trying to diffuse into the water. Something I have been doing with the Kasa timers is turning off my airstone a bit before I diffuse my CO2, let the oxygenation drop, then diffuse in CO2. Turn off the CO2, let that CO2 get used a little bit, then turn the Airstone back on. If you're running 2 filters, maybe turn one off when you're diffusing CO2? That might help. Either way, I highly recommend getting a drop checker and using that.

Oh yeah. That little one will be happy as a clam.