Anjum

Were the last 2 pics the offspring? How many babies did you get?

At least they feel involved 🤗 it's good learning experiences.

I've had Anubias rot from too much glue. I removed them from the rock/glue & they look to be recovering. They're not kidding when they say a TINY amount of glue 😅

Pothos loves to be propagated! Won't hurt it at all. @Jimmy I love how much you have growing out of your tank! I just have one stem, started as a 12" cutting that I broke off of my mother plant. It's snaking around the wall, only has about another foot to go until it reaches a window. Then I expect it to explode!

Looking good! Best of luck with the gouramis. I've become enamoured of them as of late. I'll look forward to following along 😊

Very good point! I haven't had mine in the tank all that long, maybe 3 months. And I have a lot of different sized gravel & pebbles. So this will probably happen over time to mine too. Actually it probably already is.. I was thinking recently I should take out some bigger pebbles to make more room for more sand.

I have Caribsea Super Naturals, different color though. I love it, perfect grain size. I did a quick rinse but it wasn't very dirty at all. I don't consider higher cost substrates a rip off, because substrate is forever. But the more you need, the more the cost is a significant factor. This is a good compromise!

I've only fed one kind of Repashy, and went with Bottom Scratcher at the recommendation of others. I'll add a 2nd kind soon.. They also go nuts for thawed frozen bloodworms.

Aww, I'm sorry to hear that. It's unfortunate when a LFS doesn't advocate for beginners. I had a similar experience... I thought I had done sufficient research, but turns out I hadn't & the store sold me what I asked for, no questions asked. For better or worse, experience is usually the best teacher. We all learn tough lessons sometimes, but we do the best with what we have. Best of luck on your future endeavors!

Those are all good ideas, thanks! I make mine in shot glasses 😅 I do 1 part powder to 3 parts water. I like mine on the softer side because I squish some up to float in the water column for those fish that eat there. And also for the babyfish.

Thanks for bringing it up though. It wouldn't have been on the forefront of my mind otherwise. I need to start writing the date I open foods on the container so I can track how long they've been open. One of my biggest goals in fishkeeping is to have enough fish to feed through foods efficiently. Even the smallest packages of prepared foods would last me far longer than a month. I have to cut frozen cubes in half otherwise it's way too much. I make repashy a teaspoon at a time. Etc etc

That's awesome!!! Congrats!

Just pulled 3 more Cory eggs! Tricked my fish by being home on a Monday 😅 Oh shoot! Looked up for a second & totally witnessed the breeding behavior & then the female swimming around with the egg clamped in her fins. She swam around with it for a bit. Then she ducked behind the filter & I couldn't see if it where she laid it. Looks like they laid some there earlier though, there's a distinctive white residue with circular shapes in it. That's how I know they lay eggs pretty regularly but they're always gone by the time I get home from work.

I've considered it, not so much for saving money, but to be in more control of the ingredients. IMO, there's a lot of fillers in commercial foods (dog & cat too) that the animal doesn't necessarily need, it's just there to hold the food together in a flake or pellet or kibble form. And it provides a little nutritional value at a lower cost. I've heard of people turning excess pest snails into food but I can't get over the 🤮 factor. I'll just get fish that eat snails (hopefully, someday).

Yeah that's the challenge. Even if I could raise up as many fry as these Corys want to produce, I'd run out of room quickly. Oh well, it's fun to get the couple I did get!

Mine are paleatus, which I think are sometimes called Peppered Corys. But yes, if I was home to collect the eggs, I'd probably have dozens of babies by now. But mine lay, then eat the eggs all while I'm at work. I'm taking a 3 day weekend, so hopefully I catch some more! Beautiful tank! @Aiden Carter

Dang, yeah that's what it looks like. I've never seen it, didn't even know that was a thing. But I googled "freshwater aquarium leeches" & a bunch of stuff came up. Great, now I have a new thing to have nightmares about 😳

I'm so afraid to kill them! 😭 But yeah, I guess I'm about as ready as I'll ever be. I hope they breed prolifically! I want to farm out extras to my other tanks.

It's time for me to figure this tank out. It's my longest running tank, at about 18 months old. It's a 10g half cylinder. It currently houses a bunch of ramshorn snails & most recently, two baby corydoras. When I tossed the two cory eggs in there, I DID not expect them to hatch. So that kinda complicates my plans to make this into a Neocaridina tank. I guess if I have to wait on shrimp, that's fine. But help me figure out what I need to do to get it ready for shrimp. Currently in the tank: A HOB w/ intake sponge & a small ACO sponge filter 2 pieces of driftwood, one that's been in a tank for a few months, the other is newer & has released a fair amount of tannins into the water (more than when these pics were taken) a couple bigger rocks that have been in tanks a few months A lot of pogostemon & water wisteria, and an ailing java fern, and lots of mixed floating plants. Also a huge pothos growing out the top. chunky, light colored gravel I run crushed coral in the HOB & there's probably some in the gravel too. I'll have to break out the master test kit this weekend, but going off of memory of my last strip test, just a couple days ago: pH - 7ish Nitrite - 0 Nitrate - barely registered, less than 20 GH - 4-5 degrees KH - 3-4 degrees Temp - currently at 75F So my main questions are regarding filtration & substrate, but please let me know if there's anything else that jumps out at you. There's a decent amount of flow in the tank. When I drop food in under the HOB, it floats along the lower part of the front of tank to the opposite side. There seems to be less flow in the back of the tank. Does this seem ok, or too much flow? I want blue neos & I seem to remember they look better on darker substrate. Should I add some darker substrate on top? I don't want to take out all the gravel that's in there if I don't have to. Any other suggestions???

Just ramshorn snails, which are about to have a population explosion since I've been feeding fairly heavy. There's probably a decent population of "water bugs" in this tank (see the 1st posts in this thread) which is what they must've survived off of the 1st couple weeks. Repashy is a sinking food, I feel like it's higher quality than a lot of prepared dry foods. I have the Bottom Scratcher variety which is a good mix of invert proteins & seaweeds. I guess I should research this a bit more though. Shows you how much I really didn't expect to get baby fish from tossing 2 eggs in the tank!

Daphnia is the smallest food I have on hand. But I could pick up BBS this weekend. They're growing fast though, I'd say they're up to 7-8mm now.

Since I found the 1st one, I've been feeding a little smooshed up repashy twice a day & a few frozen daphnia when I'm feeding it to the other tanks (2-3x week).

Hopefully you can see both (1 at the beginning, 1 at the end)

Now that's skills!

@Spoolin you'll have better luck emailing them directly. Brandon doesn't monitor the forum closely, but someone's always gotten back to me quickly when I email. Good luck with the pandas! 🤗