nabokovfan87

There's a few really small nano fish that might do alright for you. Things like white clouds, emerald green rasbora (sundanio axelrodi), or chili rasbora might be small enough to work in that size of a tank. You'd be looking for fish with a max size of under 1", preferably something that is 0.5-0.75 in max size. The cool thing with minnows, rasboras, and other cypranidae fish is that they like room temperature. If the dorm is kept in the low 70's year around, you won't even need a heater in the tank. (68-75 is a good temp range) white cloud mountain minnow Sundanio Axelrodi (Emerald green rasbora): chili rasbora: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/5-gallon-fish From the list above, scarlet badis might be a really awesome choice. They would be the only fish in the tank, just one fish, but it's got a really fun personality. A pea puffer is really difficult, can be even for experienced fishkeepers, so I wouldn't recommend that one. I also love the idea of the green neon tetra or the emerald green rasbora. Welcome to the forums! Happy to have you here @KaydinPanda. Please feel free to ask a bunch of questions if you have any. Everyone here is really happy to help out!

It's tough to find the right size food package! I have a little food jar from one of my old foods I bought and I just use the container. When I get a few foods I like I might just make a mix and keep it in there. It's a nice way to blend foods that you like and just have this smaller container to open daily instead of opening the bigger bags of food or something. Keeping it in the fridge also helps! That being said, yeah... 3-6 months is about the time when I notice fish just start to ignore a food because it's not appealing to them. I go by that more than anything. If it's a food I know they should really enjoy and usually do when it's first opened, maybe that's indicative of freshness. That sucks. I'm sorry! Fish don't need to eat every day and the poor guy is probably having a bit of discomfort. Keep us posted and hopefully after 4-5 days of no feeding, you notice the swelling go down.

I've never even heard of them! They do look pretty cool though and I like that they are a larger danio compared to others. For whatever reason a lot of cypranidae fish seem to be just a little bit harder to find. Maybe it's the coloration and things not really selling, but my gut tells me that it might be due to availability in nature or space on fish farms. If they are lower in demand, then they aren't bred as often, which would then mean it's harder to get them. Maybe aquabid or getgills has some?

I love the stocking! Zebra loaches are so cool and look amazing to me. Be sure to post some photos whenever you can. 🙂 Welcome to the forums, happy to see you here!

Sounds good. Based on what you said above, try to get your hands on something like seachem equilibrium too if you need to raise up the GH. Just raise it slowly as I've come to find the directions on the back are a bit off. I added a small amount, got a big spike, so just add less than you think you need and run some tests, that's all.

Hey all, It's one of those things that I'm sure it's not just me, but I can't decide. The added option is always "neither", but I wanted to ask what you would choose for your own situation and setup. Option A - Brine shrimp + Ziss hatchery Option B - Plants of equivalent value Option C - Hardscape materials (wood or rock) Please feel free to post your own indecisions when you're trying to decide exactly what to ad to your cart!

@tolstoy21 or @jwcarlson have you ever seen something like this in your fish?

The temp at 80 might be contributing to stress. It's a small thing, but I would turn it towards 78 if you can. I think the fish has a sunken belly, so I would start with some paracleanse for internal parasites. @Colu can give more contest once the details above are provided as to what the best method will be for the fish. I just wanted to mention what I saw when looking at the photos and parameters.

Look at that blue!!!! wow. At this point I would add a small amount of salt. 1 tbsp per 5G (API dose) should be safe to use with a lot of plants and will gently help the fish to recover. If you continue to see redness, treat for bacterial (in about 7 days), but if you see any sort of cotton or wool forming on the wounds that would point towards fungal. Often one can lead to the other so it's just something to look out for. The redness could've been from just getting bumped into the glass or struggling with the food like you mentioned. Bettas have deceptively small mouths so I would try to stick towards betta pellets. There's a ton of them out there. I would recommend checking out the aqueon nutrinsect betta pellets which does a really good job of replicating what they'd eat in the wild and being really affordable. Xtreme krill flakes are also pretty good too!

There is a little fuzz on the dorsal. I think a lot of the time with corydoras your going to run into bacterial issues. I would recommend using maracyn 2 or kanaplex (either one) with a little bit of aquarium salt. Given what's going on and the state of the fish, it might be best to take it slow and steady. A little bit of salt (1 tbsp per 3 gallons) and just use a lot of good oxygenation for the fish. Given the swimming issues it could have been physically damaged and not able to balance itself upright. That just means that using a breeder box or something that gets the fish closer to the surface is best. Even moving the fish from a big tank to a smaller tank like a 5-10G would be a good idea as well if you have the filtration for it! It might be an injury that isn't recoverable. I wish you the absolute best. There are people on the forums that do have panda corydoras and will ship them to you! Just keep that in mind. when you reach 50 posts the buy/sell/trade section opens up. Lower the temp if you can to 74 degrees. It's a small shift, but it does help with stress (pandas like it a little cooler, 72-74) and that lets the water hold more oxygen.

The plant on the right, the crypt, it's shading out the middle of the tank. There isn't a lot of plants there, but this might be a really awesome place for some anubias on that wood! The anubias, you need to remove the black leaves and you can do this because you have a lot of healthy leaves on the left section there. The rhizome itself is growing upward towards the surface, trying to get light. This just means the anubias is growing upward as oppose to along the tank. You take a cutting off that rhizome, remove the dead/dying growth, tie that or attach it to the wood in the middle, and you have a really nice way to allow that anubias to grow across the tank and get a lot of low light. You can thin out the crypt to allow some more light to the substrate for the sword and anubias, but not too much because of course you don't want to blast those big broad leaf plants with light. Especially in the second photo, you can see the majority of the leaves are missing or showing nutrient deficiency issues. Something like crypts, swords, epiphytes can handle no having as much fertilization or having just root tabs, but the real impact you can see in the stems. The holes in the leaves and the leaves wilting away into nothing is the plant basically trying to sacrifice part of itself to stay alive.

Oh man, I'm gonna have to pull out the old photos to explain what happened to mine! Here is the anubias today. Anubias nangi in the middle there. Let's go back in time, we have the oldest photo before all the plants moved which was with the white sand: After the move: Once this tank was setup there was just a balance issue and too much light, the BBA took off like crazy. All of the anubias looked very beat up and no matter what plants I had used nothing would grow or take hold. 5-6 months later, looking at the dates on the photo: There's still a ton of algae, the plant is barely hanging on and it's not a good situation. The leaves would fall off every few weeks and a new one would grow, quickly looking like the photo you see above. This went on for a very long time and it took me a while to really dive into what was going on. A few things that I would recommend every planted tank aquarist work on is: 1. Plant placement 2. Planting technique 3. Fertilization (and testing of that fertilization) 4. Understanding lighting Plant Placement referring to simply having and idea of where plants need to go in order to be successful. This ties into understanding how the lighting in the tank is setup as well as what the plants need, or in my case... needed to avoid. You can see that anubias on a suction cup and the reason for that was because I was trying to give the plant off-center light and keep it in the shaded sections of the tank. Instead of being on the wood, which was also growing BBA, it was moved to a place where the wood could be contained to remove the bba as well as the plant. In the original setup, everything was low demand and I could simply turn the entire tank light down. Planting technique is something that takes a lot of practice. I highly recommend watching videos with or by Filipe Oliveira because he is really good at explaining this. Something as simple as planting each stem by itself when planting a bunch of stems so that there is enough room for the roots to have their own little area. Learning how or when to trim plants is also a key skill. Trimming encourages the plants to grow the way that you want them to and to help shape the look of a tank over time. There's a lot to dive into here, but the point is that it's really critical to be able to have a feel for getting rid of issues before they get worse or helping a plant succeed and increasing the plant mass through trimming. Fertilization is something where a lot of people want to have this ecosystem of no water changes, no filter, no cleaning, and no effort, but that simply isn't the case. Some plants like to have root tabs. Some plants need that water column fertilization. Some plants don't need much, like anubias, but they will do a lot better when it comes to their overall health and growth if you give them a little love. Understanding your water, the GH and KH, is also pretty critical and it was one of the things where I struggles with the most. I can dump all the ferts need be in the water, but if I don't have the water minerals balanced, then the plants don't have what they need. From green aqua, the easy way to view it is that you want your GH to be about double the value of your KH. Importantly, you want GH > KH. Use an all in one fert once a week. You should see the plants do better for you in the end. This also helps them recover from things like trimmings or propagate out more efficiently. Understanding lighting is really all about understanding what the plant you have wants and where to put it in the tank. There is also an entire different mindset of having the right light for the job. Roll that all up into a big pile and the moral of the story is that it's not as simple as having a tank, plants, and a light that says it can grow plants. There is some skill in how you place the light on the tank, where it sits on the glass, how you scape the tank, and where you put everything inside the tank. The other key point not mentioned is simply fighting algae. That is it's own topic! There is a lot to dive into in your photos and your questions, but hopefully those few basics above really get you researching into the right areas.

What about using terra tape and something that isn't an epiphyte?

It can if it has access to air, but it's more useful, and beautiful, in a paludarium. I would worry about how it dries out in lower humidity environment, but I can't speak to if that's an issue. In terms of growth rate it really does well with a decent amount of light. I wouldn't say it's immensely fast growing, medium I would think. It does however grow tall. You can tame it, but it does grow tall if you don't.

Brush it with hydrogen peroxide.

Little Riddick and her buddy.

I don't know what the disease would be, but maybe he's got something in his mouth that is irritating him. 😞 I would think if that's the case bacterial is the way to treat it, but getting the worms stuff done first is important too! Feel better little spike.

That light should be plenty strong then. Yeah.

Coop has two types. Visually I really like Caroliniana, but the moneywort is also a bacopa species that tends to be slightly easier. Sounds like it's time to coop order!!! 🙂 Their PSO has always done well for a ton of people. I'll just mention it and say it grows like a weed. If you can get any other pogostemon species it'll be a little easier. Erectus or dassen are really cool.

I found this video recently, I had to share! I would actually start with something like floating plants to get the plant load up. That helps with things like being able to adjust the light a little bit higher in certain spots. There's a few things I see going on and I think it might just be due to your light that you're running into some issues. That many floating plants will make anything underneath a low light situation. You'd want to keep it at ~40% of the water surface being covered maximum if you plan to have some plants in the tank itself that need medium or high light. You can also use a floating plant ring to corral them into a space (or keep an opening) to allow light to get to the other plants. In terms of stems, I would probably stick to low light plants with that light. Given all we're seeing, it's just not a very high par light. Bacopa should be pretty easy and is one of my go-to stems. PSO is pretty easy and can be grown floating. Same thing with hornwort. I think trying something like anacharis might be a good place to go if you try another one.

If/when you have the new kit for the sponge filter:

I actually did some research on this for my own use. I had a freshwater tank and wanted it to be salty one day. Buy the substrate once. Essentially there's 2 ways to view things. You have bacteria for nitrification that likes salt and some that doesn't. Meaning that salt should kill any freshwater bacteria and vice versa. Drying out the sand also would have a similar affect. That being said, most reef sand has coral embedded in the sand itself, meaning it will buffer the water on you and may cause issues. If you keep african cichlids, maybe that isn't an issue, but that's your struggle so to speak. Being that it's live sand (or was) you should open it, rinse it well, let it dry out as best you can before you use it.

I would follow shrimp acclimation methods if it's a concern. 1. Open the bag and add 1-2 drops of dechlorinator 2. Get that water dumped into a container with the fish, specimen container works well, and add an air stone. 3. Drip in water and remove any debris from the bag. Then inspect the fish. 4. Fill the container, then remove as much water as possible, drip it until it's full one more time. 5. use a net, move them to the tank.

Take one cube and thaw it in a little bit of water, it'll sink right away. Then for the surface use a worm feeder? You can also cut cubes and go that route if one cube is too big. Yeah, it just really depends how persistent the fish are. Some top dwellers will always go to the bottom to get food, while other may never leave the surface. I just use a piece of tubing I cut off, you can get a piece of sprinkler riser and do the same thing. Just stick it in, feed, then pull it out and hang it on the wall. A lot of fish are omnivore. They take a bite and go, "oh, this is delightful" and that's all it takes. Opportunity based, food is there, so they feed. Agreed... it's definitely a skill you learn to balance over time. It's always a situation where you can feed less, feed more if you see it disappear. I tend to go the route of feeding, wait ~5-10 minutes, if a ton of it is still there, then i fed way too much. I always tend to feed a bit too much it seems! But, the nice thing is... come back in an hour and if the food is all gone, you're good. If it looks like someone dumped an entire tin of fish flake, then you have to really cut back.

@Seattle_Aquarist Can you help us here with what you see going on, if anything?