Hello from South Jersey

[R Budds]

Here are few pictures of my 29 gallon tank. It has 4 Neons (one died but I never found it, these are the only fish from a big box store, all the others are from a local pet shop), 5 Black Neon Tetras, 4 Corys (either green, emerald, or bronze I'm not sure), and a male Betta. It's almost 20 years old and had been sitting empty for about 10 years. 

It's setup with all natural plants and hardscape, most of which is locally collected. I tried to find out what this plant is but I'm still not sure. I collected it from a semi shaded cold clear steam running into a mill pond near Alloway NJ. It's been in the tank for a few days and has grown, or stretched towards the light, at least an inch. It curled up in the pickle jar I quarantined it in.

Here is what it looks like from the top.

Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the stream. This plant was covering about half of it with more growing at the bottom throughout the rocks.

I've had the tank setup for 5 and a half weeks and all the fish are doing well, except for 2 Neon Tetras. One disappeared after a few days and the other wouldn't eat. The other Tetras ate his tail and he looked bad and wouldn't come out from the plants.

He's doing much better now. His tail is growing back nicely. 

He's still a bit timid but is out feeding with the others now. His belly is fuller and his color looks good. The red was almost gone when they bit his tail off.

I started feeding the Corys their pellets in the back of the tank where he hid and the dust from their frenzy would float around and he started eating with them for a few days.

Here are the 4 Neons together. I think I'll get 1 or 2 more from the local pet shop.

This is a couple of the Corys feeding with the Betta joining them.

He flared his gills at one of them once but the Cory didn't seem to care, he has been friendly to them since.

Grinch can't believe I would put such a tasty stick in there.

He found the driftwood before I scrubbed it off and grabbed it out of the bucket. 

I also added some mosses and leaf litter.

The ammonia has been gone for over a week now, but the nitrites never came up, so everything seems good so far.

I'm not sure if this is normal behavior but the Corys love swimming against the waterfall. I was enjoying the show too much to film it, but last night all 4 of them were doing it.

Here is one jumping out. Too bad there's no sound, the flop is clearly audible over the loud filter.

Edited April 1, 2022 by R Budds

[Flumpweesel]

Poor Grinch he wants his stick back. Hope it's not a to much for him to resist.

Tiny fish are often dealt with by the tank if they aren't spotted straight away just the system doing it's thing.

Corys are nuts probably just playing, and they are pretty oblivious to bullies in my experience to 

[lefty o]

welcome to the forum.

[Atitagain]

Welcome to the forum, glad your neon is doing better. You tank set up looks good.

[R Budds]

All of the fish are doing great. I added 2 Neons, they are tiny but strong. They came from the local pet shop and have a slightly greener tint to their blue. I also got the last 3 green Corys they had, so 7 now. Here they are having some frozen shrimp. They couldn't quite finish it so I sucked half of it back out.

I ended up pulling most of the plants because they started looking bad. Then throughly vacuumed the gravel and sand.

I knew our water was hard, but it's off the chart. When I used the drop solution I added over 30 drops and it was so red I couldn't see if it had turned green. I got some 5 in 1 test strips and they confined it. I put a water softening pillow from API in 26 hours ago and the GH is down to between 120 and 160 ppm. The KH is near zero as always.

[GameCzar]

Welcome!  Great stuff 🙂

[DaveO]

Excellent intro. Welcome.

[Guppysnail]

Very lively bunch. Welcome to the forum. My Pygmy and panda Cory love playing in the water flow and bubbles. Corys are clowns. 

[Colu]

Welcome to the forum nice tank