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What would you do with a 29g cube?


Kirsten
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41 minutes ago, OceanTruth said:

That is a cool looking tank. The stand that came with it looks really nice too. I like its color.

I think you should do the responsible adult route. Lol. Only because I like taking things step by step. Get as many plants in there as you like and let it settle. THEN go mad with fish. 😛

LOL too late! Ah well. At least 6 croaking gourami, 6 tetra, 1 bristlenose is pretty tame by nerm standards. And they'll have at least 2 weeks in quarantine while the tank establishes itself. At least the fish themselves were pretty inexpensive. The Next Day Air shipping from the midwest actually cost more than they did! And I have been thinking about sparkling or croaking gourami ever since I got into the hobby (...only 6 months ago!), so this might be the perfect place for them.

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44 minutes ago, OceanTruth said:

Woops I was late with my response. Lol. Croaking gouramis are cute looking.

Yeah! I love how they have a weird little Joker smile lol. Hoping I can get them colored up a bit like sparkling gourami. But, even if not, I have those fancy diamondhead neons to jazz things up, and who knows, maybe I'll finally learn to love plecos.

Now to figure out a way to cut this flow all the way down...Maybe a mopani wood waterfall?

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42 minutes ago, Levi_Aquatics said:

How about some neolamprologus multifaciatus? That continue the theme of oddball/personality fish that you have. 

Hahah, yeah, I just saw Cory's video about multis. They are definitely high up on my list, but I think they're going to need their own tank with a sand substrate, a lot more water hardness, few or no plants (and even then only epiphytes) and of course lots of shells. I might try them out in a large tank with guppies if I can convince them to stay up at the top!

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I like my tank of multies, I keep them in a small species only tank. Had a larger colony in a 20 long, kept a breeding pair and a few junveniles, traded the others into the LFS for store credit, and downgraded to a 10g. Dwarf cichlids have a lot of personality. My multies do fine in our hard (120+ ppm alk) 7.4 ph well water up here in Vermont. You'd definitely need to use aragonite to increase your ph/hardness. Wish we had softer water though! I have a south american planted community tank with cardinals, 4 species of cory, RCS, and two apisto pairs. The apistos are spunky, they are the only fish I have that instead of hiding when I walk right up to the glass, they come check me out face to face! Pretty fish too, looking forward to them breeding. I use RO water to lower the ph and alk on this tank.

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36 minutes ago, ererer said:

The apistos are spunky, they are the only fish I have that instead of hiding when I walk right up to the glass, they come check me out face to face!

Nice! Yeah, that's what I love about my livebearers. Every time I come near the tank, they swarm at the glass and "beg" for food like rambunctious puppies. Very hard to not over feed them! My pea puffer Ziggy gets excited when I sit at my desk next to his tank, wants to see what I'm up to. Even my betta gets some good facetime in! So I guess this means apistos are at the top of my list! Lol

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Heavily planted-ness, starting to take shape! Not sure if that crypt from the original owner's going to make it. Quite a few leaves have melted or are starting to. We shall see.

Also no idea what the stem plants on the right are (behind the gold coin anubias) but there were about a dozen fragments with rootlets that came with the tank, so I planted them. We'll have to see how tall they get!

I should have resisted that second, smaller piece of mopani with the anubias wedged in it, but I couldn't help myself. Might get moved over to the right once my driftwood with more anubias comes in.

Foreground is mostly baby tears, some water sprite, anubias, moving on to java ferns, mystery stem plants, and hornwort, a banana plant and that iffy crypt in the back.

Tank came with duckweed, which I'm actually quite excited for, also getting some frogbit to float and help provide bubble nest shelter and shade for my gouramis. You might spot two new aqueon heaters in the back: one 150w, one 50w. This is in addition to the unknown brand 100w it came with which I have in the back chamber. Still can't get this little 29g above 76 degrees even though they're all 78 degree presets lol. Guess my house is pretty cold!

Also couldn't help myself and got 4 neo shrimp for like a buck each at my local pet store. Wanted all red, but one blue wanted to come along, so, sure. Not sure how well they'll do with gourami, but worth a try since I have a lot of detritus to clean up and they're so much fun to watch. Came along with 2 free guppy fry hitchhikers, which I'm perversely excited to watch grow up, again, if the gouramis allow.

Now just to pray for warm enough temps for my gouramis, tetras, and pleco to come over!

PXL_20210207_201543173.jpg

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On 1/30/2021 at 8:25 PM, Brandy said:

I have an angel in a standard 29. he is happy enough, lording over everyone.

With soft water I would totally go with SA type fish, and because I am drooling over them, I would put in silvertip tetras. Then a contrasting angel, and some corys or khulis, and otos. But if the angel seemed too big, the Opaline would also look great.

Otos only after 6 months after the tank has been set up. If not they might starve because they don't have enough to eat. Mine eat algae wafers, but I got lucky. I killed 4 of them before I was successful. 

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1 hour ago, Paul_Obermiller said:

Otos only after 6 months after the tank has been set up. If not they might starve because they don't have enough to eat. Mine eat algae wafers, but I got lucky. I killed 4 of them before I was successful. 

Yeah, not going with otos for now. I figure the trumpet snails and pleco and new cherry shrimp will take care of any algae for now. Otos look so cute but they sound like a real commitment.

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On 2/7/2021 at 3:37 PM, Kirsten said:

You might spot two new aqueon heaters in the back: one 150w, one 50w. This is in addition to the unknown brand 100w it came with which I have in the back chamber. Still can't get this little 29g above 76 degrees even though they're all 78 degree presets lol. Guess my house is pretty cold!

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That you can't get the tank warm enough with a 150w heater seems odd to me. My room temp hovers around 62 right now, I have a 150w heater that brings my 20g up to 75. According to aqueon that 150w should be enough, though you never know how accurate manufacturer recommendations are. Are you using an external temperature controller? I run inkbirds on my aquariums and find them to he really useful and provide peace of mind. A good setup would be to set both the 150w and the 100w heaters on the inkbirds with the the 100w set lower than the 150w, so that if the 150w fails off the 100 is a backup, and the inkbirds will keep the heaters from overheating the tank if they fail on.

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1 hour ago, ererer said:

 

That you can't get the tank warm enough with a 150w heater seems odd to me. My room temp hovers around 62 right now, I have a 150w heater that brings my 20g up to 75. According to aqueon that 150w should be enough, though you never know how accurate manufacturer recommendations are. Are you using an external temperature controller? I run inkbirds on my aquariums and find them to he really useful and provide peace of mind. A good setup would be to set both the 150w and the 100w heaters on the inkbirds with the the 100w set lower than the 150w, so that if the 150w fails off the 100 is a backup, and the inkbirds will keep the heaters from overheating the tank if they fail on.

 

Yeah, I have my house at 64 in the winter. I'm a knitter so I have lots of sweaters lol. These are all manufacturer preset at 78 (+- 1 deg) with automatic shut-off, using a digital thermometer at a far corner to give a sense for how the whole tank is, which I only saw get above 75.6 when I did a water change and deliberately used warmer water. Got up to about 77. Close, but no cigar!

Maybe the thermometer is just in a cold pocket? Because, yeah, it's not like these heaters are active 24 hours a day. I'll often walk by, see that none are on, swap out their plugs on the extension cord in case one outlet's no good or something. That'll usually pop em on for a couple minutes, then they're off again. Hmm.

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Hodge-podge jungle pond still coming together. Low temps in the shipper's area have delayed the shipment until late next week at the earliest, but in the meantime I've scooped up a banana plant, 4 little neo shrimp (3 red and 1 blue since that's what the poor, busy lady at the pet store could nab) and 1 or 2 baby guppy stowaways (they keep disappearing and reappearing). No idea how well they'll survive against the gouramis, but at least they weren't expensive.

I've also cancelled the pleco. While some say 20 gallons is minimum, others say 30 to 40. And this 29 gallon has a large, inaccessible back area which reduces its useable volume. Plus I'm not getting as much algae as I thought I would, so I'm just going with shrimp for now and we'll see. Plenty of albino pleco out there if I eventually change my mind.

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Depending on what you're using for a thermometer, I've found some of the cheaper digital ones to not be very accurate unfortunately. I think your fish should do fine even with the water at 75-76 degrees though. I'd still suggest checking out the inkbird controllers. For $30 I think they can be pretty useful equipment. Unfortunately, they won't help your heaters run hotter if they are preset though, but it will at least give you a better idea of what the tank temps are, as well as some protection against a heater thermostat failing in the on position and cooking your tank. That's one of the nice things about the aqueon pro heater series is that they are adjustable on the heater itself. I usually put my probe near the filter, where there's the most water turnover and where I should get the most average water temp for the tank. 

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2 hours ago, Ruud said:

awesome looking tank! I am a big fan on Gourami's but never seen the croaking ones here. Curious how your tank will pan out!

 

Thanks! Yeah, the site gave me the option to cancel the order, but screw it, I want my little chirping fish. Been thinking about them too long to let a little delay stand in my way 🙂

But, of course, if things didn't work out, I already have a Plan B which would also look cool: Diamond tetras, baby, maybe with some pepper cory and/or some zebra danios.

But that's for another tank at another time.

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6 minutes ago, ererer said:

Depending on what you're using for a thermometer, I've found some of the cheaper digital ones to not be very accurate unfortunately. I think your fish should do fine even with the water at 75-76 degrees though. I'd still suggest checking out the inkbird controllers. For $30 I think they can be pretty useful equipment. Unfortunately, they won't help your heaters run hotter if they are preset though, but it will at least give you a better idea of what the tank temps are, as well as some protection against a heater thermostat failing in the on position and cooking your tank. That's one of the nice things about the aqueon pro heater series is that they are adjustable on the heater itself. I usually put my probe near the filter, where there's the most water turnover and where I should get the most average water temp for the tank. 

Thanks for the tip! That's a pretty good price. Here's hoping this situation is mostly temporary, as these are the coldest months. I also don't have central air so in a few months I might be begging for advice on how to keep my tanks cooler lol.

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Shoot, folks, Croaking gourami haven't shipped yet but I'm starting to get cold feet. I have 6 of them coming in and 9 diamond neons and at full-grown size of 2.5 to 3 inches, I'm just afraid they'll get too big for the tank.

I didn't look closely enough at aqadvisor when they said I was totally fine (for sparkling gourami! Half the size!) But I was so looking forward to hearing them croak. Should I reduce down to 3 or even 1? Should I just do the tetras and find sparklers somewhere else at a later time?

Glass cage of emotion!

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11 hours ago, Kirsten said:

Shoot, folks, Croaking gourami haven't shipped yet but I'm starting to get cold feet. I have 6 of them coming in and 9 diamond neons and at full-grown size of 2.5 to 3 inches, I'm just afraid they'll get too big for the tank.

I didn't look closely enough at aqadvisor when they said I was totally fine (for sparkling gourami! Half the size!) But I was so looking forward to hearing them croak. Should I reduce down to 3 or even 1? Should I just do the tetras and find sparklers somewhere else at a later time?

Glass cage of emotion!

I haven't kept gourami, so hopefully someone can chime in that has more experience with this specific species. I don't believe they are active swimmers, so I imagine your main issue will be territorial aggression. In this case, your 29g cube is better for stocking than your standard 29g aqueon, because of the footprint.

My suggestion would be rearrange your scape to make several small "territories" (4-5) within the tank using plants and hardscape for the males to claim. Breaking up line of sight is a good way to decrease aggression with territorial fish. If it's densely planted, you'll probably increase your chances of it working out. You'd also probably do well to add a nice cover of floating plants with long roots, like amazon frogbit, red root floaters, floating fern, etc.

It will also depend on whether you end up with 3m/3f, or 2m/4f, or 4m/2f, etc, as well as the personality of the fish. Some fish of the same species will be more or less aggressive than others. Also, FWIW, sometimes having larger groups helps decrease aggression among fish, as there are more fish to spread any aggression out among than having it concentrated on a single smaller fish. And sometimes it helps to have fish all come in as one group, especially juveniles, than adding them at different times; they will all be a similar size as they grow, and they will be more used to their "siblings".

I'd say give it a try, if you're willing to either re-home any aggressive fish to a spare 10 gallon tank, or a LFS, or another fish keeper in your area. If you do need to bring the fish into a LFS, you can also ask them about store credit for the fish. I get 1/3 of what they sell fish for at my store for some of the species I bring in, especially if they are more rare or in high demand.

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23 minutes ago, ererer said:

In this case, your 29g cube is better for stocking than your standard 29g aqueon, because of the footprint.

My suggestion would be rearrange your scape to make several small "territories" (4-5) within the tank using plants and hardscape for the males to claim. Breaking up line of sight is a good way to decrease aggression with territorial fish. If it's densely planted, you'll probably increase your chances of it working out. You'd also probably do well to add a nice cover of floating plants with long roots, like amazon frogbit, red root floaters, floating fern, etc.

Thank you so much! I'm reaching out to the seller as well to see what they think, but I think you're spot-on. I've been busy stuffing my tank full of floating plants, driftwood, taller plants, finding a way to keep the built-in filter to a minimum while still aerating enough for the tetras. I'm going to seriously think now about zones and territories.

It's also a little easy to freak out since the proportions are so different from other tanks. Since it's practically the same length as a 10g, it's easy to think of it AS a 10 gallon before realizing it's at least twice as wide, with another whole section in the back for filtration. In some ways, this really is the perfect tank for smaller gourami since it's shallow and you can see it from so many angles.

I don't know if I'll be able to rehome any, since it's such a rare and kind of plain-looking fish. But you make a good point about larger groups possibly diffusing aggression. And of course I would love an excuse to buy yet another tank lol. Thanks for talking me down. Maybe I'll stay the course and see how it goes (and see if my adorable cherry shrimp survive...eep!)

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Hooray! Fish Day! Still waiting on a few delayed plant orders to fill these in even more, but happy to get my fish acclimated in the meantime.

Moved my guppies from the 29g where I was quarantining them to my new hardened water 36g. Got 3 Hamburg swordtails in quarantine that I'll soon add to this, along with my convalescing mystery snail, some MTS, and some sky blue neo shrimp!

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And for my 29g, I can already tell I'm going to love tetras:

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They're such a lovely flash of iridescent color in a dark and spooky tank 🙂

Speaking of dark and spooky, can you spot the croaking gourami in the back? Look for the spooky glowing eye! 😄 I opted for just 3 to be safe, and they seem to be sticking together, lurking in the shadows, which I'm taking as a good sign that there's not more than one male. Also got a mat of asian liverwort there for my foreground since dwarf baby tears will just not stay planted. Now to wait for more plants!

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