nabokovfan87

I would try like heck to get into a 20L aquarium, but let's stick with 10G. I think having a very heavily planted tank for something like oto breeding and white cloud mountain minnows is just interesting.

I'm sorry for the clumsy handwriting, I am just in general not the best when it comes to my printing clearly. If you need me to translate the hieroglyphics will do! 😂 If you know one thing about me, know that I love sharks. In general, it is one of the most amazing creatures to me and I am genuinely in awe with my fascination for them. My "ultimate" tank would simply meet a few key requirements: 1. Holds 1 shark. There are some species of shark that are anti-social. The research would be on me to figure out what that is and to provide and care for that animal correctly. I am perfectly fine with it being a small species, I just want to have one, captive bred, and be able to care for this one animal as best I can. 2. I literally don't have dimensions for this because they would need to be massive for me to feel comfortable to keep an actual shark. If I had to guess, it'd probably be 16 feet long end to end and something like 6-8 feet wide. I would not feel comfortable without having a massive water volume for this little guy. 3. I would of course need to actually learn a lot more in the hobby and trust myself enough to keep saltwater and I would want all of the things to make that easy. The design here would be to highlight a few of my favorite regions, but also pay homage to a few of my favorite sharks. Kelp Forest: On the west coast this is one of the homes of the great white shark. You can see the little image below, a dark bottom, seals as their food, and this amazing little habitat that feels extremely unique to me. It is one of the places I literally could spend a day staring at it and just feel calm, relaxed, content, and waiting for that big great white to hop up from the bottom. The way sharks are, the top is dark so that when you look down they are hidden, and then their bellies are white so that when you're below you can't see them in the sun or surface light. They dive at full force upward and literally can fly out of the water to catch prey. \ Open Ocean: This is the home of the oceanic whitetip shark. They have a unique fin in terms of shape and are just a beautiful animal to me. They tend to be solitary and travel thousands of miles a day to check out a noise they heard or continue searching for food. They are given a bad rap because when there is some incident that randomly happens in the middle of the ocean, they tend to be one of the first ones on the scene. They are very adapted to patrol and investigate. Reef Life: This is the home of many sharks, but one of my favorites is the nurse shark. The name alone is great, but this is one of the first sharks I really got to see, appreciate, and admire. I think I remember Steve Irwin at the bottom of some aquarium and he was talking about them. A few years later I was able to see one for the first time in Colorado. They are such cool animals and wouldn't hurt a fly. Second to this, I would actually like to have a rack with tanks one day (freshwater). I plan to breed amano shrimp, have a ton of them, and just enjoy that process. I also would like to have 2-3 corydoras species to keep in lowboy style tanks and one "fun tank" that can be filled with plants (dutch style is very beautiful to me). I would want to keep barbs and a few other cool species that fit with them. The one thing I don't want to do is have a billion tanks or to have say... more than 3-4. I can appreciate having tanks ready to go, but active tanks with fish, I just don't feel like it'd be responsible on my part to have tanks like that and not have some way to ensure the species would be cared for if I wasn't there to do it. For my shark, I'd absolutely have some number somewhere and a deal with an aquarium who could come in and take the tank as well as the animals themselves.

Can you adjust the light at all or potentially raise it higher above the tank?

Can you verify aeration and filtration is working? It also could be a pressure thing. Are you seeing any of them with swim bladder issues or anything like that? I would start by adding an additional Airstone if need be.

I would suggest having a feeding ring and then having an air stone or two on a gang valve. The filters you have might have the ability to add air, but I think you'll get a much better result with the ziss airstones and a metal gang valve.

They got spooked when I tried to take their picture, but the entire herd was in the corner munching on spirulina brine shrimp. They do love it. I will promise better photos one day, I just wanted to let the little guys eat!

I have used sponge (pond foams), the seachem sponge 2-3 at a time, filter floss when I need it, matrix, and then I have also used the fluval biomax from aquaclears. Day to day right now, I run 2 sponges and then the bag of media that comes with it. Once you fill it above a certain point it's just bypasses easily because of the water level on the HoB cavity. If you want to see my setup, there is a bunch of videos and stuff in the other seachem tidal thread, here: https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/23685-testing-time-fixing-the-seachem-tidals-bypass/

The nano or the betta pellets for the betta specifically (nutritionally I don't know what the difference is and would have to check). I would only use xtreme pellets if you have something to eat food at the top of the surface. If not, you're going to end up skimming out a lot of food daily. Something like vibra bites is good because it will all sink in a decent amount of time and some does float. Hikari also sells pellet foods, but I don't know which is "best" for this use. I wouldn't buy any new food until you do have that schooling fish en route or in your tanks. I don't know if they are still there, but the nano blocks would be a good treat too. It looks like the only real thing you're missing is spirula or something specific for that type of a pet. (you do have some sinking wafers) I would lean towards something like repashy community blend + Soilent green as a good option to feed when you do need to add a bit more fiber to the diet. How is the shrimpee food for you?

Flip aquatics has videos. I would think matala mat is the best use or some of the foam options. Here's the one's cory did and a little bit with his testing / use. There was a hobbyist who was making some, but they weren't shrimp proof. They were awesome, just not shrimp proof.

I will just leave this here. I sent an email to Xtreme asking them if they have looked into anything regarding their own fish meal they use. I haven't heard back. I'd highly recommend checking the movie out if you have amazon prime, it's short, amazing, and it's so well done.

Exactly right. If you have a "bare section" you'd trim that off and put the cut section with the new roots and new growth at the substrate level.

The rubberlips are pretty quick little guys! Here is how I generally try to move fish and I do use a net for everything, including otos. This method makes it "easier" for the fish to safely go into the net and not get stuck. You'll want to ensure for most catfish that you try to let them go in and out of the net easily without too much struggling. Something like using your hand on the underside of the net to support them can be very helpful, especially for otos and corys. The other thing I do is I make sure the "fringe" or whatever it's called. The seam on the net that has all of the exposed thread, I make sure that is on the outside of the net and not on the inside where the fish might easily get caught on it.

I don't think this is a bacterial thing. Blasting sand is commonly a recycled media and comes in with all kinds of contaminants. It could be from that. It's difficult to say exactly what it is but my recommendation is going to be manually removing it and then gravel vac and clean the substrate itself as best you can. Something, not sure what, is causing it to appear and I think you have the filtration to handle it pretty easily. The usual white slime stuff is often due to low flow and certain types of decorations contaminating the water.

Yep, exactly! I dose one pump of Easy Green once a week right after my water change. What is your lighting like. Maybe the lighting is too bright for java ferns?

Not at all!!!! Mine were super calm and super chill. If they have room I can't even imagine them being territorial let alone feisty. One would hang out on a pleco cave, the others were on the back glass and they looked awesome. Never even saw an ounce of aggression.

Ok. Definitely the nana petite variety. The way those leaves are structured and being one of top of the other that way is very nana petite like. Aubias standard and anubias nana seems to grow a bit more in the one direction like you'd normally expect where the petite will be very busy like that. Here's one of mine.

What is your dosing schedule? You can also use plant weights! Floating: Salvinia mini "Plants that do well in gravel": I would suggest stem plants. There's a few to choose from on the ACO website, I would recommend Bacopa Caroliniana or something like Scarlet Temple (depends on your lighting)

Looks awesome. There is two varieties that I know of, I can't really tell the scale. Anubias nana petite "white" Anubias Pinto (has veins on the leaves) The one you have looks like an anubias nana size (non-petite) version of the white. The name I am seeing is Anubias nana white "marble" Same as mentioned above 🙂 Do you see a rhizome or does it look like a stem plant?

That loach is awesome! What a fun fish.

Those 3 shrimp in the back of the tank just staring at you take their picture, too adorable.

I think we all can agree, how nice it would be if someone took up the task of making a kit, upgrading this thing from the old design, improving the input and outputs a bit. I did see a video a bit ago on a knockoff brand that did have some tweaks and fixed some of the issues. I think it's a good tool to have in your fish tubs for longer term use when you need it. Especially for QT/Observation when you just need to give a fish a break, but not necessarily meds. The main use for mine is likely going to be attempting to grow moss / susswassertang without risk of it getting tossed into the HoB filter.

If you have multiple fish I would say follow the severe. What is the change in the fish so far?

Welcome to the forums! I will be honest and say that I don't know and I don't have a good idea of what it could be. It looks like maybe the betta hurt himself somehow? Is there anything sharp where he could've wounded himself in the body section? I would suggest starting by improving aeration with an extra airstone while waiting for other people to chime in.

but then they will just order more.... 😞 It shows up as a high turnover item. I got mine from Aquahuna!

What is the stocking on the tank, would the fish mind higher flow? There might be a lot of mulm / detritus and some slow spots causing the worms. I think mine came in on a plant, but not sure. It happened the same time I had a pump slow down to a crawl and I had just removed a filter so oxygenation was lowered.