nabokovfan87

I don't think that's the option. I was helping someone with a similar issue. Maybe you just need to get one of those baffles to help with flow on the output of the HoB for the betta? They even have some that point backwards to push the flow against the back glass.

Previous versions didn't. Pondguru has a video on them that's cool. He admits too, not much you can really do with that one. It comes pretty solid.

A brief tidbit for those who may find it interesting.... I was on discord looking for what would be just general servers listed under the aquarium hobby. Honestly, I've had some good and some bad experiences trying to find different things in social platforms and discord is no different. I think we're all used to that in this day an age. I woke up on day 2 of being on this new discord server and one of the leaders of that community is being verbally abusive towards a member asking for help. They tagged the "shrimp help" users asking for support in their commentary. The hobbyist's question was simply, "I have been losing shrimp for a few days now, please help." The response in the thread was fine, it was good information, but the way it was presented was along the lines of "I've said what you need to hear and I don't understand why you don't just do what I say." Unfortunately, while this person has intended to be helpful, the people then jumped on and turned it into a group of many that were just laughing at and berating this poor person asking for help. I sent them a DM offering any help I could and I replied in the thread with what seemed to be some pretty solid advice for this person and their situation. 1. Stability 2. Good genetics 3. Good care That turned into the mob of people attacking me and 20+ quotes breaking down every single word I uttered just to tell me I'm wrong, I'm "new here," and that I shouldn't be giving bad advice. So what was the bad advice and what was the main point of all the conversation? The conversation at hand was about the "correct" GH value for the shrimp. As we all know, if GH is too hard you have shrimp that can have a very difficult time cracking through their molts. As such, if it's too soft, same issue because it's not easy for them to break through the molt. This led to a wall of links to parameters and screenshots from random social media posts and it was just a serious mess of a "conversation" that was not focused on being helpful for this hobbyist. I think we all know by now it's not difficult to use search engines to find something that agrees with your point of view and it is often used as a justification for every argument on the internet as opposed to the attempt at having a real conversation about whatever topic at hand. It's very, very unfortunate. The moment I decided to leave this discord and stop engaging with the server was when I was told that if you didn't have your shrimp at 6 GH you were unfit to own them. That it was abusive care and so on. Needless to say, I focused on being encouraging, helpful, polite, and trying to offer guidance in lieu of extremes. The words of Cory were in the back of my mind about how we need to be good stewards for the hobby and encourage people to succeed as opposed to simply condemn them for failing. We've all failed. We've all been there. I pulled up all the research articles I had looking for information to provide details for my own education and just to verify, for myself, exactly what made sense for care. I know what my tanks are, I know what my tap water is at, and I've seen tanks in all sorts of parameters. I asked myself, well... What does nature look like for Neocaridina Davidi shrimp? https://aquariumbreeder.com/water-parameters-everything-about-gh-in-shrimp-tank/ I found a study of some rivers in Taiwan that gives the conductivity and that can tie into how much calcium is in the water, but it's a bit confusing to determine the correlation there. It seemed to be "hard water," but I wanted to find a better answer. I found a water quality report and that's about the single best thing I can seemingly find. 227 ppm (just under 13 degrees). So, in their natural habitat, GH is about 13 degrees and just under 400 TDS. This information might never be useful for anyone, but it's just going to be a note for me to keep when I think about where the animal I am keeping comes from. It's so easy for us to think that the wall of nature behind the pet store is so far out of reach and out of sight. I really do enjoy learning about where things come from and seeing that habitat. For shrimp, this means having amazing opportunities to learn from someone like Chris Lukhaup. My morning is watching a video by Tai about fish habitats in the dry season and reading water quality reports from Taiwan. We have access to so much information at our fingertips and it's a great resource. Be welcoming to a new hobbyist today. Be encouraging. Be a good steward and share something that makes you happy about the hobby today.

Awesome idea. I'm sure they loooooove it. The shrimpies still have no heater here yet. It happens. I'm afraid to check mine now because I have been feeding and there's not a ton of plants. You might be getting the reading from ferts?

Step 1 for me would almost always be to add better foams, dimpled foams.

If the tank has a good plant load, lots of hides, the shrimp should do perfectly fine with the betta. Betta will hunt and eat shrimp, but the adults and the majority of the colony can establish itself before you add the betta fish. That being said, I personally don't recommend a betta with shrimp because of the temp required to keep a betta. It's a bit harsh on the N. Davidi shrimp. I prefer to keep the shrimp a bit cooler. (~72-74) and give them a slightly longer lifespan, slower growth curve, and a bit easier time handling development. I can share some research studies on the topic, but the just of it is that there is some research on this topic which shows benefits of the colonies at various temps. Some of them fall in line with betta temps (80-82) while others will encourage a slightly cooler temp. I saw the other thread with the tank though. In either situation, get the colony of shrimp going, then introduce fish. You can also leave the shrimp by themselves and add them slowly to the tank with the betta over time. This gives you some margin for error, you can introduce more of them when you do so, and it gives you that safe haven for the colony outside of issues. For other fish / inverts. -horned nerites, nerite snails -amano shrimp (again, temp stuff) -otocinclus (again, temp stuff) -dwarf corydoras will do ok (again, temp stuff) -nano tetra (should be fine warmer) I'll be intrigued to see what others have had success with and recommend.

I looks like what we call pacific driftwood or malaysian driftwood. I would assume it is ok. You can soak it, will likely take a little while because that wood is perfectly dense for aquarium use. I would recommend soaking it in a large tote or trashcan with an airstone. Change the water once a week and then see what grows on it. You can always boil it if you need to eventually, but see if you get any sort of fungus or weird mold growing on the wood. As long as things look ok, I think you're fine. If you do plan to boil it. I recommend getting something fish-only for cheap and using that. I've had some mopani ruin a pot for me and I have the same thing happen with botanicals. I have a fishroom only pan now for that reason.

When is the shrimpy wood bridge installed!? It looks great. Nice work. Looking forward to seeing the plants go bananas in there. What kind of heater is it? Did you get it working? I might have a way to help out.

@xXInkedPhoenixX do you think that the otos would lay on the the underside of the swords potentially? I have 2 big females, 1 male.

@Supermassive My apologies. A bit of some dyslexia on this one. The issue could be surface movement. I was talking with someone who has low KH (2 degrees) and they have near 8.0 PH. The tank is heavily planted but there's almost no off-gassing or water movement in their setup. Floating plants and having the filter on such low flow means they have good oxygenation, but not off-gassing. Essentially, if they didn't have the plants in there they would be having some serious issues. In the quote above I had mentioned that a low KH and high PH was indicative of high CO2, but it's indicative of LOW co2. My confusion. I would recommend verifying your surface movement (in your testing as well as your tank is adequate) and then proceed with those tests mentioned above.

Just use a measuring cup or bowl or something. Then aerate it with an air stone for 24 hours.

I added more detail above, but yes. Per the chart, the higher the PH (based on lower KH) the more co2 is in the water (stagnant water) and when you add that to the aquarium, the co2 off-gasses and then you have the ph shift based on oxygenation. Oxygenation coming from water movement, surface movement and not purely just use of an airstone.

For the sake of clarity, ignore PH for a moment. KH is what you want to look at. Here's a chart that explains things a bit more clearly. Left column is your KH value. Top right row is your PH value. The other variable here is going to be how oxygenated is your water. Based on aeration and KH, then your PH will shift. I don't manage PH, I manage my KH to get my PH stable from crashing. 60-80 ppm being my minimum range for stability in my tank, PH is 6.8-7.0. I understand your frustration. When something like this happens I think the best route is to slow down, pause, and reboot the situation. Let's start by running an off-gas test. 1. Take a sample of your tap water and test KH, GH, and PH immediately. 2. Take that same sample of tap water and aerate it for 24 hours to off-gas and stabilize the values. Re-test after 24 hours. (this is what your tank should be matching) 3. Compare results in #2 to the results in your tank. If #2 and #3 don't match, then you can look at water changes to match parameters a bit more closely. If you're using RO, use RO for top-offs right now. The main goal here is to try to get data on the situation, take a moment to analyze it, and then go ahead and reset the method that makes sense for the data you're using. Unfortunately seachem didn't clarify for you the products to be using. Seachem Alkalinity buffer - KH goes up ( which means PH goes up) Seachem Acid buffer - KH goes down (which means PH goes down) These are the two products designed to replace use of the neutral regulator in your planted tanks setups. So for clarity, no... you shouldn't just add the neutral regulator until things do something. Not in this situation. Let's do nothing, gather data, and get some stability going on.

You can orient the heater in this way.

Fingers crossed that "bolbitis wall" on the back right fills in. Seriously amazing photo. The movement of the tank, despite it being still is entrancing. It reminds me of this:

SAE and Amano have in my experience gone through a lot of the tough algaes. Shrimp will handle green string / hair algae. That being said I absolutely love the recommendation of the horned nerite snails (clithon species). It's one of the few I am interested to try and they have that size to do some work! You also don't have overpopulation issues, but the one drawback is little white snail eggs on the decor.

It is something I have seen a lot more groups working on. It takes decades sometimes just to have the data to get one put in place. Even then, it's sort of weird how people can go to the Galapagos and just go long-lining and get whatever they want. It's tragic. I cannot wait for the day when were have the "pacific ocean white shark preserve" and other major areas where fishing of any kind is not tolerated. Look at that shark! Absolutely awesome. I would be laying there on the floor just in awe forever. It's that sort of awe that you gain as a child and never let go of. I remember seeing them as a kid with my grandma and just being stuck in that spot watching them do absolutely nothing but rest on the bottom. I couldn't get close enough...

@Minanora check em out!

I would lean towards the micron food. 3-4x a day.

@Fish Folk any luck watching the one for August!?!? @AquaHobbyist123swhenever you're ready!

Maybe the tank needs another air stone? Glad to hear she's doing better now though.

It almost looked like a tiger or fishbone a bit in some of them. Interesting stuff. I tossed them in the 75 with the rili and the ones that threw blue. I just wasn't confident in what they would produce! I do want to setup a second colony, just need to be sure the intent there. So... They were just culles, doing really well in their new tank.

I tend to use the QT method for plants as opposed to dipping them. What I mean is, let's say the lifecycle of the parasite is ~4 weeks. Any plant can generally handle a 7 day blackout without much issue. A lot of your hardier plants can handle 14 days (anubias, ferns, etc.), but other plants won't be so forgiving. If you keep those plants in a tank without fish for X amount of time, it should resolve anything living on those plants that is parasitic. The other method I use is just a lot of rinsing multiple times and trying to always clean the containers I'm using to hold them in. When I get plants in I will thoroughly examine them and rinse them anywhere from 3-10+ times just to remove snails and duckweed and other issues. If you're having a concern with snails, RR seems to be the best option. Girl Talks Fish, Irene, has a ton of videos on plant dips and I think that's a great place to start. I'll link the 2 more relevant ones on them here below for you.

For the sake of helping someone who stumbles on this in future. You did the absolute right thing. 1. Turn off the broken filter 2. Move the media (ceramic) into the bottom of the tank 3. Install 1-2 airstones with at least one of those being near your ceramic media 4. Clean the broken filter out in case you are re-using any parts. Do a thorough job and be sure to verify/lubricate the pump is ready to go, clean the sponges really well, and just try to dry things out in case you need to return parts via warranty. 5. Test the tank every day for ammonia / nitrite and perform 30-50% water changes if you see any issues starting to crop up.

Hey, welcome to the forums! One big note here to start. Everything in your tank right now excluding the betta is considered a river type of species. This usually means 2 things, they like higher oxygenation on the water than most fish and it means that they generally prefer slightly cooler temps than something like a betta would. Most recommendations for a betta is ~80 degrees, while the other fish I would suggest a temperature closer to the 72-74 range. Having them warmer will simply shorten their lifespan and can cause diseases through stress. The awesome news here is that both oto and the hillstream also fit that river species category and will want that similar water setup. Hillstreams and otos do very different things. Amanos tend to be focused on hardscape, one things that other creatures can really access: cracks in wood, rock, plant roots, etc. Otos will be focused on things like plant leaves or areas where their smaller size is easier to get into. Mine spend a lot of time on glass during the day, but at night they will be all over the tank and grazing on those surfaces that need it. For instance, an oto has a very hard time cleaning hairgrass just because it's bodyweight can't be supported by the plant. Not if you get a bit larger you have borneo loaches, and even larger hillstream loaches or plecos. Plecos will mostly stick to the glass or to very large flat surfaces. Same thing with your hillstream species and that goes back to how their mouths are designed, how they eat, and what they want to feed on. They can more easily focus on a large flat surface instead of trying to find enough food off all of these small surfaces. Considering all of those details, each fish has their own area they like to occupy. I really enjoy having amano and otos in every tank. I enjoy watching them and they just help out keep things clean for me better than I can. Are they perfect and adding them means you don't need to do maintenance.... absolutely not. In a 29G, ~3 borneo loaches. Maybe 1 hillstream loach.