nabokovfan87

I know... bit of a shocker... I feel like I want to get some nerites now.

Such a beauty of a pleco! I miss my plecos so much..... I really, really do.

Fingers crossed! Live view of the feeding tomorrow 😂: I always do a 2x dose when it's that situation just in case it's chloramines or something at play too.

😂 You right. Great album. Hit up Alabama Christmas too, the one with Thistlehair the Christmas Bear (for the kids) and Santa Clause I still believe in you (for the adults wrapping the gifts). For me, I need some clothes, yep but it's just how it goes. I would like 3 big ol bags of substrate. I really want my plants to ship out and arrive healthy and happy. Desperate need.... I really want to get a reliable heater for a 20Long that I feel comfortable with or get the heater controller going.

What is your filtration setup like? Poor water parameters could be the root cause of the issues you're seeing. If you have some stability issues with ammonia, nitrite, then I would highly recommend a good water change... 80% or so (one time) and follow that with 30-50% water changes for a few days. Getting water quality where it needs to be would be priority over adding in more meds right now. Marina has a nano filter that's adjustable that can be used with bettas. (S10 is the model number) and it can be modified to remove the cartridges and add in something like ceramic media to boost your tank water parameters stability. Adding something like lava rock to the tank can also help with that. Awesome! Let's also just triple check filtration is good and adequate. Having a 3G setup can be very prone to swings and spikes.

Bacteria is typically a back to back treatment (2 weeks with 1 day off in-between). Please see the note at the end! If you can, please try to get a tight shot on the head from the front and side view. I am trying to see the scales on the head and body region. There is some bloating, so lets also hold food for a minimum of 5, preferably 7 days. I would also love to see the rear fins in case there is any signs of fin rot. Also, there may or may not be some white cysts which could point towards a few things as well. If it's just added slime coat it could look like this as well. Let's try to see some detail and go from there! I would start by turning the temp to 79 and let the tank slowly raise up. 77 might be on the cold side.

It's a bit difficult to tell what is going.on with that plant. The glare or just lack of light is tripping out my eyes and I can't see what's going on. You can easily move the plant and dip it in a bucket or something if you need to try to save it. If the fungus is on the wood itself (or rock if that's a rock) then same thing. The leaves look super healthy, but potentially that chunk of the rhizome is rotten. Either way, no.... None of that points towards a water issue. Things grow stuff sometimes. You don't need to switch tanks. It could do more harm than food if there is a filter cycle issue. Adding fish to the other tank jumps the bioload and then you have an issue with an ammonia spike and the fish get sick from that process.

I'm guessing you're talking a 55 or 75G tank. The main thing I use to determine the light settings is going to be about what plants are in the tank. We also have this thread for the fluval 3.0 lights that is an awesome repository of a bunch of settings: I've messed around with the light a lot and I've gone in and tweaked things based on # of LEDs per channel as well as my own tank needs. I'll drop two screenshots here for you. One of them is a "high tech" co2 tank with faster growing plants while the other is a low demand setup with anubias and what I would recommend for a fish only setup as well. Essentially.... 1.5 hours sunrise and sunset and then a 6 hour span of the light intensity that you're shooting for. Low demand tank: My algae fest BBA growout / high tech planted tank: Keep the blue under 5% the white you'd follow the "low demand" settings above. Red = pink channel above. Green = warm white channel above.

A lot of times you'll get some practicing. It is what it is! The female might be just getting rid of eggs and she was in the mood or it's a sign there isn't enough breeder males in the tank. Don't change anything, give her another chance, and you're likely perfect. From elsewhere on the internet, here is some known fertile ones, notice the grey inside: Someone can correct me here if I misspeak please! cloudy / opaque = unfertile clear = fertile

I have a LFS saltwater shop (because none freshwater) and they have 2-4 tanks for fish, usually empty, and mostly just sell corals and a few items. I was working on breeding amano shrimp and paid 3x the price for a refractometer I later saw from amazon.... the exact same one they just sold me..... for much cheaper. It happens. As long as you do your research and know what things are worth, you'll protect yourself as a consumer.

some corydoras can be immensely temperamental to things like light, vibration, or an audience. They can come off as very picky or extremely piggish eaters. I would try something like feeding right when the lights ding on or right after the lights go off and make sure they have an open section to eat on while they have a covered section to hide if need be. When I feed I almost never see them eat these days. I drop food in and leave it, sit back 5+ feet from the tank and observe them and sometimes they will eat right away. At other times, they are just extremely picky or shy towards me. Having a lot of cover really, really helps the behavior because they just go and do their thing. Keep in mind that you're talking about 2 corydoras. Getting the number up to ~25 is about where I see them just ignore the world and go full blown herd mode on me. They just act like tank bosses and graze all over. If you can get 8-15 in the tank it would help a lot with their comfort and behavior, but I understand you do have some low numbers at times.... I have as well. Lastly, if you want to or are able to get a feeding dish! It helps them to find the food, but it also helps you to know they're eating the food you drop. 🙂 Welcome to the forums! ^^ This was the first time the pandas ever were introduced to the food or the first couple of feedings for the food I was trying out in the case of the black corydoras.

you'd basically want to run something like bleach through it via a small pump or something..... It's really tough to say. You're best case would be bleach at a sterilization dose and something like a pipette/pipe cleaner. I don't think it's worth it, honestly. Airline is pretty cheap out there depending how much you need. Someone might donate you some for a plant trimming or something.

Yeah, it seems to be a common thing. @modified lung how do you manage yours?

Drain the water to the height of your net, then be persistent and if need be remove hardscape. Meds for a lot of the fin stuff would be aquarium salt, botanicals, and kanaplex.

I can only imagine.... the wonderful things you made with that. Man I am hungry for some italian food all of a sudden. 😂 I read the thread and had to giggle a little, my mom's side of the family, they are the Baker's. (Literally) It's one of those things where I absolutely have the skill, but not the patience to bake. If I needed to knock out a pie or desert or whatever it was, totally can, but I much prefer the free form style of just cooking some good food. Nothing beats homemade pie, chocolate chip cookies, and some of the winter holiday foods. I am going to have to make some gingerbread soon after seeing @Chick-In-Of-TheSea cookies. Kind of looking forward to it!

Cutting a garlic clove breaks its cells and releases stored enzymes that react with oxygen. That triggers healthy sulfide compounds, such as allicin, to form. Letting the chopped garlic stand for 10 to 15 minutes before cooking allows the compounds to fully develop before heat inactivates the enzymes. It's about how garlic works. It gets "slimey" when you cut the cell wall because of the chemical reaction. Then something like steam as well as washing it can cut down on that slime. My opinion is that there's nothing beneficial in terms of health with that removed and if it's a matter of healthy as opposed to unhealthy, you're heating the garlic and there's not much left there in terms of what garlic is traditionally viewed as. Yes there's going to be some nutrients, but similar to boiling a vegetable too long that goes to mush, there's a lot less than there once was. (hopefully that makes sense) Some foods use rosemary, maybe that's a better route to go than garlic. https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/unlocking-the-benefits-of-garlic/

I cut the shorter branch off and then arch it as mentioned above. You basically can't to much with a big Y shape piece unless you're making a slingshot or something, but having different lengths and branch cuts gives the wood some interest visually. It looks "more natural" as opposed to one cut across two branches in the original piece. I would cut it here if the piece is just a really bizarre shape to use. The small piece can be used in a fry tank or just used elsewhere as a detail piece. The way I use my curved piece of wood is to either wrap it around rocks that fit the shape and it looks like roots growing across the surface of the tank, very common technique, or as a lean-to style setup against a wall or larger hardscape. This gives the fish some cover as well as something to swim through.

We just call them water bugs/water beetles here. (West coast)

There's a few main ways to do this. I cannot speak to vacuuming with the loaches, but with the shrimp I am one of the few I think that thoroughly cleans the sand in my tank. We do have a tripod so I can try to record it for the journal one day. Basically: Option A. Use a net or a pain strainer to strain shrimp that might be siphoned up. Option B. Just ignore the shrimp and go ahead and siphon like its any other tank. Try not to send them for a ride, of course, but also be sure to check the buckets and any filtration (sponges) before you turn the water to brown gunk. Option C. Try to clear a section of the tank as best you can and go very intently, but slowly through a section. Be on alert and be able to pinch the siphon hose for the sake of needing to let a baby shrimp or shrimp swim back into the tank from the siphon tube. Option D. Use a tea strainer+food container (idea from marks shrimp tanks) or pantyhose or something on the end of the siphon to keep shrimp out and proceed as normal. Some tips and tricks.... Move hard scape and feeding dishes before you start the siphon, feed the tank on one side and come back in 10-15 minutes. That should move the shrimp to one side of the tank and let you clean the other half. Next week, you have one side that should be fairly clean and you just clean the other half. It is almost critical to keep the shrimp feeding area clean. The reason for this is because all that detritus, waste, and food ends up in one concentrated section. Not cleaning that up regularly is one of the easiest ways people get hydra, planaria, or detritus worms en masse in their colonies. Mentioned above, but practice and be able to siphon by "pumping" which is to say the technique Cory shows in his video where you pause the flow and the debris goes into the siphon tube. Because of that, then you can inspect for shrimp each time you turn on the pump/flow. What this does is allows you to seriously slow down the rate of water you remove as well. This means lower volume and stress on the shrimp to top off the tank after maintenance as well. Which gives you the flexibility to use as much or as little water as you want. For those that drip water back in, very effective methodology! Shrimp will "learn" to avoid the siphon. They learn the routine and they learn that it's not their friend. At first shrimp will go towards flow and it's pretty common for them to follow that path. Over time they will basically stop that behavior due to understanding what it's for. It's just something I've noticed with both types of shrimp I keep. Flip aquatics talks about this and their method is to keep a very small layer of substrate to help with letting the air remove the debris. I've never had the strongest of air pumps be as effective as a siphon, even on a bare bottom tank. That being said, potentially that helps.

The real interesting thing there is that the majority of anubias sold is based of barteri. Here we just call a lot of it nana or nana petite, but all of the ones we see and think of as "anubias" and the common size versions are all from barteri and names as such on certain plant sites with the details or places like tropica.

🤞 For sure hoping! I am anxiously awaiting to add to the herd. It'll be a new one for me to see how they do with the shrimp. There is a ton of little critters in there and I sat there one night and watched them crawl all over the wood, purely ignored by the shrimp. Always so interesting this tank seems to be. Pretty sure one of my female amanos spent all day checking every sword lead for eggy snacks. 😂

Keep an eye out. If you ever see redness like that start with adding some air. You can add in some salt too just for a week to help them perk up.

I see two or three of my favorite anubias! Congratulations on the awesome haul. 😁

Plants can go ~14 days without light and be pretty fine. 7 days is usually for a blackout. Best case you kill some algae off. No big deal at all, they'll be good.

Eggs moved this morning. It'll be the first time I give the shrimp a go at raising them for me. I added some mulberry leaves to each tank (they smell pretty amazing). I ended up swapping the heater in the shrimp tank before I took off for the day. It was running a bit cool and I'm not sure if it's the heater or if it's the flow. We'll see! I did leave all the eggs on the bottom of the sword plants, thank you again @AllFishNoBrakes, and they will do their thing. I love colony breeding the letting the eggs and parents raise them. They really, usually do a good job. This also might be one of the last times for Grace to raise up more corydoras fry for me.