nabokovfan87

Do you have any repashy community blend on hand?

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Bolivian rams are a bit more community friendly and very different than german blue rams. Bolivian rams do just nice in the same temps as apistos. 🙂 Apisto can go down to that 74 range which would change stocking a little bit. Bolivian ram 78deg --> tetra, some rasboras, etc. Apisto 74-78 --> rasbora, barb, white clouds, etc. Some of those mentioned with apisto do just fine in the 68-74 range which might not be great for apisto.

Nope! Usually we use the words "cooler temp" in place of a few things. Some species of fish like "flow" which kind of can go hand in hand with cooler water setups (72-74 vs. 78 degrees). A lot of it in my experience goes down to species that prefer the cooler temps tend to like to have higher oxygenation. As temps go down, capacity for the water to hold more oxygen goes up. It's slight, but it's just something to note. Panda corys and some other corys might prefer "cooler temps" (just meaning more oxygenation) compared to something like a false Julii cory or some of the pygmy cories that do really well in that 76-78 range. Something like german blue rams like 80+ degrees and I really think that's too hard on a lot of corydoras. People have kept pandas and other corys at all kinds of temperatures. I am just speaking from my own tanks and experiences. There's always two sides to the story. A fish from florida might be acclimated to a different temp than one that came from a different location. It's always a good idea to ask the store what they keep their tanks at or the seller what they keep the fish at because of this type of a situation where tank bred, physical locations, etc. can alter things ever so slightly. I would say check out some silvertip tetras, green neons, black emperor tetras, chili rasbora would be ones to look at. In terms of size, those will all do pretty well in a 29G tank 🙂 Let me answer your question with a question.... what are some of the colors you enjoy seeing or would look nice to you?

Rasboras, speaking generally, might want to be cooler than the ram. Tetras tend to like warmer water. Look up emperor tetras or kabutai rasbora. Personally, I think something like the green neons are really cool. Silvertip tetras have been discussed a bit on the forums recently too! (especially in a good size school)

Welcome to the forum! I will gently nudge you in the direction of the bolivian ram. They are just a cool fish. I will have to ask @Chick-In-Of-TheSeato post a video or something of hers. 🙂 It's one of the fish I've kept that is so personable and uniquely bonds with you in a way that a lot of other fish don't. With corydoras, just be careful on temps. False Julii would do pretty well in that tank. I think Zenzo was just saying it's not the type of fish to add for "filler". They are usually added as more of a focal or centerpiece of the tank. AqAdvisor is a great place where you can play with the numbers and stuff and try to get a good feel for stocking. I'd try to have a tank that is ~75-85% "stocked" via that tool.

Pondguru just put out a video for this topic. Essentially, nano pumps, or battery backup airpumps that can hook up via USB. There is also some solar panels that work via USB. Fountain pumps that work via USB as well. There's a lot of options, but that seems to be a great way to handle it. Ultimately, I plan to have a USB battery backup which can be charged via solar panel as well as output to some sort of pump / airstone. As an "emergency kit" it seems to be pretty useful for the power outages and stuff we have here. Thanks again to everyone for all the help on this project. It's been fun!

I'm guessing this isn't from the one in the OP..... Found this today. And yes, I've looked for them and keep an eye out, haven't found any since. It very well could've come in on an old rock that's been out of a tank for a few years but it's more likely it came in off a plant or something. "Fun"

They apparently stock it at petco now.

That's awesome, always good to have more people from Cali on here. 🙂 Welcome to the forum!

Hey hey everyone, I am going through a bit of an exercise on my tank and getting back into CO2 with my plants. I wanted to ask for some tips and tricks that would be helpful for beginner, intermediate, or experienced hobbyists. We have a ton of smart people on this forum and it would be extremely helpful to have a place to look through for some cool ideas. First, I'll share one of mine! One of my biggest concerns with CO2 and how I tend to run my tanks is that I focus on very high oxygenation and cooler temps. It isn't easy, but it's something I focus on more than others. I always would position airstones away from CO2 or move plants that need more CO2 a bit closer to where it is added to the tank. With a bit of time and consideration, more research, I've come to the setup I have now. An hour before the lights go on, I have the Air pump hooked up to a kasa timer and it turns off. The CO2 turns on at that point. An hour before the lights go off, CO2 turns off. After lights go off, the air pump comes back on. Another one, liquid carbon, I just want to mention that some species (shrimp also) can be sensitive if you're dosing this a lot. It's typically safe with my amanos every once in a while when I have a slight issue, but daily or bi-weekly dosing, they did show some signs of stress after a few weeks. Just something to keep in mind whenever you use those products. It can be one of those things that builds up over time in your tank and causes some irritation for some types of fish and invertebrates. I have also tried to run a planted tank by taking the available air and just adding a ton of airstones, but for high demand plants it's wasn't a great method in my experience. Even in a room where there is a lot of CO2 in the air compared to "fresh air" it wasn't enough for high demand plants. It would be cool to see some oxygenation tests with a few methods! (Cory was doing some, but I don't remember the results 😞 ) What tips and tricks do you have? What are some things you've done over the years to make using CO2 easier?

That's just what they do. If you're trying to "not trigger them" or if that is what is concerning you, try to limit WC to 15-30% volume of the tank. If that's already what you're doing then you're fine. As far as care and so forth, you're seeing fry. That just means there's food available for the fry to eat and you're doing everything fine. It's a "colony breeding" setup so to speak. I started with 4-5 and I have ~30 now. Depending how many you have, the tank should be fine and you wont be overrun with fry. It's a slow progression for sure.

They (amanos) won't eat live shrimp. In my tanks I had a PH/KH swing that caused some deaths. Double check equipment and verify everything is good with water. It could be some issue where they aren't able to molt and die or just something else they would be sensitive too. Usually when one dies, they don't even eat them at that point. It will happen eventually, but not immediately. Yeah.... that PH can be fickle. 😞 Do you notice any of them with redness on the shells?

Yeah I would keep letting it go a few more weeks before adding fish. You can add very few fish without issue and that also will help keep the tank going long term without issues or the need to add ammonia. You can add plants whenever you're ready. I would drop in some food once every few days (or the ammonia) just to keep things going. Nice work though, you're doing well.

It's been a bad week. I've done it one too many times. I now have my kasa plug setup to "turn on" randomly through the day just in case I screw up again. It's a safety measure Cory mentioned that I really think is helpful. I've had one where it was left off for ~2.5 days because the house was sick and I wasn't in the room. Power went out, tank was very heavily stocked. It took me about 2 months to get the tank to re-cycle. You'll get this type of a situation when you start seeing the brown bacterial slime all over the filter. Clean it every 2-3 days until things start to be clean. I did this for about a month, and then eventually just ended up slow dosing in some bacteria in a bottle. The media and everything kept getting so clogged with muck and slime that water couldn't flow well enough. The most recent times, a few hours off, no issues. I do recommend to check the HoB in 2-3 days and give it a clean just to make sure things don't develop into some funk on you. It happens, we've all done it, but generally you'll be "fine". I do have an airstone that I always leave running on it's own plug / pump and it's something I try to keep in every single tank I run now. This allows me to not rush through WCs and spend a lot more time with wet hands cleaning plants and stuff, trimming, feeding even, during a WC day without too much worry about the fish having issues.

Yeah, sounds and looks like they went through a heck of a time in shipping. I understand that the two in question passed. I would encourage treatment with the antibiotic medications (any of the 3 mentioned above) if possible as well as salt. It will help the other corys recover from whatever happened and any other internal damage. I feed mine spirulina brine / blood worms alternating days. The love both! Best of luck.

That reminds me, there is also the new anubias pinto or pinto white. It's a variegated version of the white. (I promise I have no idea what that means apart from seeing Jimmy's videos, LOL). It has a very pale yellow color when growing well.

I'm not certain, but based on the plants you're planning I think you're fine with either light.

Agreed. If you're having to run a lot of buffers to adapt your water to the shrimps needs (not just using tap water) then I would recommend trying to condition the water before you perform the water change. I always do 50% WCs on my tank and I have had shrimp in them for a very, very long time. Neocaridina and other varieties are going to be a lot more sensitive than my amanos, but the idea being that they want clean water to do well. If the water going in the tank is vastly different than the water you're taking out, that's old tank syndrome or an issue of having to use a ton of buffers, which just goes to preconditioning the water as if it was a saltwater tank.

There are some cryptocornes that have a yellow / bronze coloration. I think there is some pale green / yellowish variety of swords as well.

Hit up the video on the ACO channel for cataclysm specifically about breeding corys. It's a fun hour and you learn a TON about breeding all kinds of fish. This rock right here..... I would add some moss to it if you can, probably about 1-2" long would work fine. Once they see a place to lay they like, they likely will. If there is a place for the fry to hide, that usually helps encourage the parents as well. In my first tank where I got them to breed I had 6-10 moss balls and rocks where they could get under a ledge and hide, ohko stone is good for that type of a structure too. I had seiryu with these little ledges and moss all over the top surfaces. 10G should be fine, just keep up with WCs and try to keep low nitrates. This might be it.

The salt (normal aquarium salt) will help them with air exchange and the wounds and stuff. It gives them a little bit of minerals in the water as well to help with recovery. from the blog post:

Epsom salt might be beneficial here. I would proceed with bacterial treatment (Maracyn or Erythromycin). Potentially they got jostled in shipping or something? Did the bag they were moved in have a corner where they could get trapped in and crushed accidentally? Essentially they were shipped to the store (stressed) and very likely had some damage in shipping. They may or may not have been added to the store's tank and had to adapt ever so slightly yet again. Then they were taken to your tank and had to acclimate again. It's a lot of movement and stress in a very short time, that is one explanation for a few losses. The redness. sores, and damage you're seeing I think you can view it as shipping issues and your best bet is to try to treat illness that could be caused by that type of damage. If you see a fuzz (like a cottonball) then you're looking more towards fungal as well as bacterial issues. For now, I would suggest clean water, lots of air, good temperature, and bacterial meds. Epsom salt baths would be an added help, but not required. If you do go down that route, I would simply suggest doing a lot of research prior to doing so. Any signs of stress (discomfort or lack of breathing), immediately put them back in the tank with lots of air. Sounds good. The easiest way to tell if it is an issue is prolonged very rabid gill plate movement and redness. I don't see that, so it's a good sign. So weird! I would think they would be ok, as long as the substrate is not leeching any ammonia causing burning as they are mostly spending time on the bottom. As long as the substrate does not feel sharp to your fingers when you pass your hand through it, I would think it's acceptable. I have had mine on the fluval stratum. Trick of the photo I guess, it looked really sharp in some of the photos!

There will be a slight different. Is the airstone you have adjustable? The ziss ones and other plastic designed ones are adjustable, finer bubbles would cause less of that splash. What you're saying makes absolute sense. I think what you're looking for is probably something that has a spraybar on it! The power head might be able to be modded with some sort of a DIY spraybar output or to have some output that will cause the disturbance on the surface you're looking for. What filtration is currently on the tank? You mentioned wanting to use UGFs and that makes sense, again, a good candidate for a spraybar output potentially. The only real difference being that the spraybar vs. the wave maker would mean it's less of a risk of something getting into the blades. They do have some wave makers that have a sort of foam cap or cover that would protect from that as well. Might be enough. please feel free to share a video if you wish.

Corydoras Mom on the background sitting with her little one in the morning.