nabokovfan87

They get about a foot long. I would try to return it if you don't have a 75G tank or larger. If you've familiar with the cookie cutter shark, I have seen CAEs make similar wounds. Unfortunately it happens. Marketing a fish as an "algae eater" has to be the oldest trick in the book and I would love for these guys to get renamed!

This video might be helpful. Pecktec has a few of them on the topic and specifically what you're using. In this one he discusses a bit about results. Run carbon for about 3-5 days and it'll disappear. Then after that you can go ahead and maintain it through water changes. While the wood is new you're going to have a lot more tannins in the water.

I'd take a 75-90G or larger and make a sump. I don't think you'll have what you really want without doing that.

be careful with this one. It very quickly will not eat algae and will bully other fish, potentially trying to bite them.

That always seems to happen to me too. 😞 Cool stuff though. And I always enjoy those moments sitting in front of the tank, seeing things only I get to. Sometimes we get to share.... Sometimes the photo isn't blurry. LOL

I have had some "finicky" fish like this too. The first method is usually to try other things, other foods, and to see if something entices them. I have had this work, but still had the 1-2 fish out of the group that just couldn't be bothered. Second method is usually to try to shift when you feed. So try feeding dusk, dawn, noon, after lights out, etc. and see if one of those changes helps. Hopefully something works out. Very typical. They also probably want some vertical things to hide around or hide behind to feel safe.

sponge? No idea.... That's terrifying to see.

Even directions are all different. Some say replace monthly, some "as needed", and some say every 3 months. 😞 I tend to always forget, but once you start to see deficiencies it's when I add more. Am I awesome at plants... NOPE. Thank goodness Anubias doesn't need any.

I see it now. 8-10 it looks like

Correct. On the first batch, plants only, everything was correct. This is what I have been doing. It's easy for me to do this and let the plants sit for however long after the RR treatment. Does anyone have a bottle of this and can check PH, KH, GH, etc?

I did not. I wanted to have the "typical experience and to try to understand what the good / bad of this substrate is. I plant to switch it whenever I can. The fish don't seem to enjoy it or do ok with it. They like having substrate, but I can tell this one isn't the one they want to have.... if that makes sense.

Have you ever fed just ipago? Which fish like it? ----------------- It was a slightly hectic day for me. Naturally. I cleaned the filter yesterday on the main tank. I spent today cleaning the glass and checking on everything. I tuned the lighting and I think that might fix things. I woke up at 5 AM and noticed the lights coming on a bit early. When I had actually woken up enough to get out of bed I wanted to have my focus for the day be about checking CO2 and pushing out the lighting to start 1 hour later in the morning. Daylight savings or whatever the reason was, it needed to be tweaked. Not a big deal. Well, it turns out I had some very strange choices for sunrise (3 hours?) and it just turned into this adjustment. Overall I think it'll result in a better tank and a slightly easier time for the fish. 1. Air stone turns off for 30 minutes. 2. CO2 stone turns on for 1 hour 15 minutes 3. Lights turn on, normal plant hours run for 7+ hours 4. CO2 turns off, lights turn off 1 hour later 5. Lights and CO2 turn off, wait 30 minutes, then airstone turns on. The logic being, I don't want to push the fish and shrimp into wild oxygenation and PH swings as a result of the added CO2. I want them to have "acclimation windows" so that for 30-60 minutes things can slowly adjust. Tomorrow I will keep an eye out on things and make sure there isn't stress signs. I was able to find the S-curved scissors, spade aquascaping tools to finish my set (black, not a common item locally at all without paying $50+ just to buy half the stuff I already have). I found a CO2 diffuser I would like to try, a replacement impeller, and things I desperately need to have on hand for the sake of day to day use. I got all of those things, tried to find a coupon code and what not, but no success. We'll see how long things take to get here and hopefully none of the glass arrives broken. I had a bizarre day for the sake of a few reasons, but I spent a lot of time just scattered and all over the place trying to problem solve. I spent about an hour watching the fish and watching the tank parameters. I kept an eye on CO2. I had to test nitrates twice because I dipped one strip and then completely spaced out doing other work while waiting. The tank didn't have any nitrates, which just means things are "ok". The moss is doing really well. I know the shrimp are enjoying it and it looks absolutely awesome how it has been placed on the hardscape. I took a piece of wood out, anubias broke off, soaked it in algaecide and I'll check on it tomorrow to see if it dented the algae in any capacity. I fed the corys worms, heavy protein foods, changed the tank with cold water, and I feel like the barometric pressure is good enough that I might have a spawn tonight. I didn't do the massive water change, but i dropped the tank in temp by a good amount and it's been far too warm for too long. I'll check on things shortly, but I didn't see much of anything in terms of breeding behavior under the blue lights. I went to the living room and of course the pandas are holding eggs, going nuts, trying to find a place to deposit them. One tank is so easy, the other is such a waiting game. We will see...... it'll be so much more enjoyable when both tanks are covered in the new moss!

What is the temp, what about other things you can test for. PH specifically. KH, GH, etc. If you lose one due to a molt issue, more likely to follow so it's critical to figure if that's the issue or not.

Very exciting! If you see the fry, they usually make it. They in the main tank still?

For comparison, here's mine 🙂 you win! You can see the high amount of colored flakes in this batch I had. Oh whale.

You are likely smelling nitrates in the water. Please test all the parameters that you can for the tank so we can get a grasp on what is going on. If possible, please share photos as well of your setup, filtration, etc.

ok see.... that's just the ram trying to problem solve. She's a genius. NO FOOD until you move!

It might have been trying to molt and having issues. How is the little shrimp doing now? Everything you're listing sounds awesome. Just keep constant temps. If you wish, add some moss or something for them to mow. They love that texture.

whatever your volumetric measurement of powder is, put 3 of those of the hot water in the container. MIX WELL, VERY WELL, and be sure to scrape the bottom.

oh apparently I've got snails in the tank too. LOL. Some sort of pest snail, bladder type, that I have found 3 of so far. I approve of nerites, but I will have to test to verify it's not going to lay nerite eggs on the wood! I'd literally have 30+ amanos in there if need be to get rid of this stuff. I'll get some seltzer and fill a tub and dunk everything. It'll get there. For something like hardscape I might even have to go longer than 12 hours, but based on what I'm seeing right now I am screwing up the technique somehow.

If they get something like an arduino and a stepper motor, might be able to automate that! Pretty easily to find readily available code too. That's awesome. I'd love to see something like a ziss sized sand filter or imagine.... a HoB sand filter.

Sweet! 🙂

I checked nitrates, 0 again. so with the CO2 the plants are destroying the waste in the tank. The lighting started at 55% on the 24" light. Then over time I got it up to 75% on that same light while reducing algae issues. I tried to up this to 85-95% for the sake of getting the PAR to the substrate level and this backfired. Everything bloomed algae while the plants on the substrate didn't get any or enough par. Then I moved to the 36" light because I was having those issues. The light started at 85% and I just dropped it from 50% down to 40% power with the CO2 added. My hope is to let things progress, let the moss, stems, anubias take off, and then the algae backs off. I reached a point where the algae backed off and grew tufts on the wood. Annoying, but tolerable. those tufts are difficult for the shrimp to eat and now are about 50% covering the wood itself. Second to this, while lowering the light more and more and more, tightening the lighting window, the algae is taking off again. I "pulled back" some settings to reduce the lighting window (10 hours down to 8 ) and then I reduced the intensity down as mentioned above. We'll see how things progress, but this algae sucks.

It'll have an intake sponge now. Mandatory for normal operation. Yes they have a slightly reddish or red orange coloration. They are a variant of gold flash corydoras from what I've found. Information is really unclear on what specific ones were used to make these guys. They were marketed incorrectly too, so that helps. More info on this elsewhere I can find that thread again if you're intrigued 🙂 (Edit: Found it) I think they both are! And yeah, absolutely intriguing species for me. Especially the fancy varieties that look like they have bold intense colorations. (Edit: Random clown searches. LOVE EM) She does!! Well. She had more help a few weeks ago, but has definitely has a lot of help. Last week I was checking on the tank and 6 amanos we're having a meeting in the moss all facing each other trying to get this hair algae. They literally didn't make a dent and spent all day there. And thank you, sometimes we need a reminder to take our head above the muck and enjoy the view. 😉 When it comes to the ceramic stuff, I'll do a deep dive. The biomax stuff was floated and pushed to the side, as shown here: Which sucks because then the water just randomly bypassed through the opening. The other stuff I am trying doesn't have the correct geometry, but I am proving things out through all the testing right now. One running, one completed, and a surprise contender might be the final recommendation. We'll see how it all shapes out.

Have you done the off-gassing test before? The water company just changed all of my GH for some random reason. I order a phosphate test kit to check that as well. Something very strange going on with my water. With that KH I would think you're at about 7.4-7.6 or so. It looks to be right on with your testing from what I can see. This is what I found: Otos and corydoras I don't think do very well with PH that high. 7.5 or so is about the max I've seen with corydoras. Otos prefer to be around wood so I would assume it's a similar setup with a lower PH. The hardwater is fine for everyone as far as I know. Difficult to know what is specifically causing issues, but if you haven't done it in a while I would start with the off-gassing test.