nabokovfan87

Oh they are feisty little buggers. They never want to stay in place! Probably don't look too much different, honestly, but they are still growing and doing their thing.

WELP. I'm officially annoyed at my water today. First one is the shrimp tank, second is the 75G). GH: 13 degrees (232 ppm) KH: 4 degrees (71.4 ppm) (Total = 303.4) TDS: 393 ppm ........ GH: 16 degrees (286 ppm) KH: 5 degrees (89.3) (Total = 375.3) TDS: 353 ppm (added ferts more recently in this tank)

Eesh! That's unfortunate. I highly recommend using other brand of tabs if you can, but that's really unexpected. I prefer the seachem tabs. The initial cloudiness in the water might be due to bacterial blooming from the contents of the tab causing a spike. The tank has a pretty small bioload and maybe it upset the balance. Turn off the filtration for about 20-30 minutes so as many particles as possible can settle to the bottom, then do a good siphon of the substrate. Change 50-80% of the water and then try to keep the water changes to smaller volumes. Clean out the filter, and keep an eye on it the next week or two, to make sure that whatever gunk ends up in the pump and the media chamber doesn't cause it to clog and stop flowing as well. If it does, just turn it off and clean it. The light brown algae should just easily be removed with a paper towel or with a toothbrush and then doing a water rinse. After the cleaning, during your normal process of filling the tank you would add in your dechlorinator. You can do a double dose for instances like this where you want to be sure that ammonia and nitrite are binded and harmless to the tank inhabitants. After the WC is complete, then add in the bacteria (quick start) again, you can do a double dose and get things going quickly followed by normal doses every 24 hours for 7-14 days. Finally, let's just verify filtration. How is it setup, are you using cartridges or do you have foam and ceramic media?

Can you take a photo of the rhizome itself? Essentially, if it is rot, you'd remove the dead section to save the rest of the rhizome. If you see one this color, it would indicate rot. You'd want to find a section looking normal and remove the dead spots. As a sidenote, look for this too.

@Odd Duck I know you'd love to see it! Check out the Comments by the judges on @Mmiller2001 tank! 🙂 🙂 🙂 https://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2023/show580.html

I had intended to follow up and show the size discrepancy I'm seeing in my own tank. I have 4 adults, the rest were all born on the same spawn. The rightmost fish here is an adult. I apologize for the angle of the photo and the fuzziness through the glass. Here I am trying to show the full scope and size differentiation. Yes, some of this is simply male vs. female fish, but there's also slower growing "runts" in the group.

Pearling is a good sign, but a lot of people won't ever see it. 6 hours is plenty of light for a lot of plants and I think the majority of plants would be ok, but if you have certain species they may need the lights adjusted higher over time. It doesn't have to be sudden, it can be done over several weeks-months. What plants are you keeping? If you would like to please feel free to share photos of what you're seeing.

Essentially it points to not doing water changes often enough or doing too small of a volume of water change.

I would test your tap water to compare that to the tank itself. PH is pretty high, given that KH. It all ties into the Oxygenation in the water as well as KH to give you that PH value. If you can get your KH slightly up (min 3) would be good for stability. The KH drops, then the PH drops. So your KH might be one now, but then it'll be 0, then your PH would drop. From an article online: From the co-op: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh

Check out Taiwan moss... it goes by a few names. There's so many mosses out there! I enjoyed christmas moss too when it grew out on the wood. Given the tank size, wood sticking out, they do have things you wrap the wood with to wick water up and keep the moss doing well outside of the aquarium (terra tape). Hygrophila Pinnatifida will do well growing out of the tank too (and looks beautiful).

I definitely am a fan of a big tank with a few schools of smaller species. It works really well and you can add in a centerpiece if you want!

Might just be mating dances.

they did not.

It looks like a longfin. (cc @Cinnebuns) If you can just try to get some more photos one day. I don't see any real issues other the fish growing and doing it's corydoras things.

I would opt for a 20L in most situations. 10's are really difficult to work in. I would say 20H vs. 20Long. The difference being floor space.

Yeah, I was thinking about this. The nice thing about the ziss ones is that the eggs can be set so they barely wiggle in place. It isn't easy to spread out sticky eggs, but it's one of those things that might really help with the hatch rates. Part of me wonders if you used floating mops as opposed to pulling eggs off the fish, if that would help dramatically or not. Tough to say. If you're wanting to really hatch hundreds of fry, maybe there's a balance between removing the eggs or a dedicated egg setup, making fry bins like Dean or some other methodology that makes sense (specimen containers and rigid airline or something). Have a setup of 3-4 "hatching bins" and rotate batches in? I'm terms of temp, finding a way to float the tubs in the water would help with temp. Here's a setup I liked for barbs, very low budget, but it works well. Looking forward to seeing how you develop your process in the future!

I did this.... And then my tank stopped growing! It was a mix of things I imagine and not the massive "please be kind to me" trim of the PSO. Question, knowing what you know/see now, would you still have selected the PSO as one of your background plants?

That's a good one. Especially with all of those fish in the tank already.

Ah. I understand! So if you want to have a highly technical scape, visually which layout do you tend to think fits for the space? (i.e. triangle, island, etc.)

You'd want to remove the fry from the methylene blue as soon as they hatch. There is a lot of research papers out there regarding the use of methylene blue and it would explain that situation/logic in detail. The ziss tumblers are pretty good. I've also heard of people using neocaridina tanks to keep the eggs cared for. Both of those seem like good options for this setup. In terms of increasing the yield, thats where I would start. In terms of the fry developing, if you run into issues I would start with how you're feeding them (if there is any concern there).

You should be ok to move them as long as the bigger tank isn't overstocked. You mentioned the ich outbreak, is everything ok in the bigger tank now? You can opt for a slower approach, move the pleco first, then the rest of the other fish a few days later after everything appears to be ok.

Yeah, off the charts is more of a magenta color (pinkish-shade of purple) as opposed to what you have. That pad looks like when I ran into some issues and couldn't tell if it was ~100 or ~200. I now use the liquid kits and it's made a difference in knowing what on earth is going on (and very cheap, especially when you're only using a few drops). That all being said.... This isn't necessarily true. I'll go ahead and pull some tests tomorrow for the sake of conversation and check TDS to see what it is. Adding anything that dissolves in the water would up the TDS. I have this set of data from a previous water test setup. TDS: 159 PH: 6.7-7.0 KH: 4 dH (71.4 ppm) GH: 9 degrees (160.7 ppm)

Please feel free to share photos of what you're seeing as well as your changes if you wish! If you're adding the HoB, add that in and then give it something like 2-4 weeks before pulling the old filtration. That would be my technique. You can pull one and the other should be able to handle the load and keep the tank cycled. Whenever you pull it though, add in the new filter or your HoB and it should help get things going. Question though, how fully stocked is the tank in question?

What is the GH you're seeing? For the sake of comparison... I don't think a lot of people realize how low down you want that PH to be. https://aquariumshrimpkeeping.com/caridina-cantonensis-crystal-red-shrimp/

I get it.... There's a lot of really, really unique caridina out there. I can send you a source here that has some really unique ones, someone recommended to me, and I've watched them add more and more strains (of their own creation) as time moved on. Really fun to see. Just sayin....