thedarkstar

Its amazing how such a little fish has united the world.

The other option, my next step, is to add a kuhli or two to my community to stir up some sand lol

Sil-9 is similar to a fine gravel. I'd say its more of a gravel than sand but it is colored like regular sand.

Put a net over the intake of the vac and you shouldn't have problems with sucking up the shrimp. As for the gravel, maybe before you do the vac, take the handle part of your net and stir up the gravel, then proceed to vacuum it. I've heard the MTS do a great job, but if you're that worried, go ahead and stir up the substrate before you vacuum.

Yeah, Otos and Pygmy cories are both really sensitive to changes in water condition. I picked up a swarm of the Habrosus cories on friday and already have 3/10 kick the bucket but all my Otos survived. Also picked up a test kit and nothing there that would have caused deaths so I suppose its just chance with those little fish.

Deaths are never nice... Granted all catfish kinda die at random sometimes, the dreaded mystery death

I've read of accidental loach breedings before, usually occurring because of changes in temperature... IE: A warm spike, in the summer like the dry seasons, followed by cool water changes. I think I've also read that rainwater/snowwater can also sometimes cause breeding.

yeah, i think i will. i didn't like them at first...pics online... but he has character :thumbs: , are they schoolers? I don't know that they school, but I do believe they like the company of friends quite a bit. You can get some nice variations of the regular Otos too sometimes

I thought as much lol. No wonder plants tend to cost a lot more than the fish I'm after, which is a pain considering the surplus of these plants in Florida lol

I like that background alot.

Sounds like quite the haul. Once you move the algae eaters, go with a few more Otos they tend to do the cleanup job fairly well.

Well, from what I've read its a matter of having them tested. Granted, if they're plants that shouldn't be here because they can survive... How do we have planted aquaria here? Alot of the plants that have been introduced to Florida via aquaria are now taking over the natural landscape and alot of these are being sold to us at fish stores lol. The only thing I could see wrong with this are bacteria, hence the aforementioned tests. But I'm just curious if that's all that's required.

This may not be in the right place but... I have a friend currently visiting family in Florida, and I'm interested in seeing if she can bring back some wild-found aquarium plants. Does anyone know what the regulations are on this, or where I might find more info? I've been searching through import/export laws here and would just like some confirmation.

Since I've never done it, but use BOOM's thread as a starting place, looks to me very well done... here

I wanted to go there for those European NHL games to start the season. Although Sweden is tops on my list of places to visit the Czech Republic and Prague are right behind Beautiful pics

Another good place to start with the plants, after you've decided on lighting is to use the Tropica website to determine the lighting needed for the plants you want.

Not sure about the #1 question. but as for #2, i donno if I read it here or elsewhere but there was a story of someone forgetting anubias in a plastic bag with some water in a closet for an extended period of time and there was no problem. Not sure about the crypts though. Biggest issue would be freezing most likely.

I'd probably start with the types of plants you'd like to keep and work from there. If I'm not mistaken usually CO2 isn't required until you get to mid-high lighting, so depending on your light you might not even need the CO2 (although I don't think it hurts to have). In terms of plants, my low light tank (with some help from AA members) has Anubias, Java fern/moss, Crypts and some other really nice low light plants which seem to be doing well without CO2 or even high light.

What kinda plant is that?

Thats the easiest thing to do. I searched for a few days trying to find fish to go with shrimp lol

I'm not so sure about the barbs persay but I do think that all those will harass and eventually eat the shrimp. If you want the shrimp to propagate your choices of fish are limited since almost every type of fish will be able to fit the shrimplets in their mouth. That being said, your best option is to google "X fish and X shrimp" and hopefully you get answers, that how I came across white clouds and shrimp. Other good fish are any herbivores, Otos and the like. I'd give a call to fish stores and see if they ever have them in stock. I've seen dwarfs at Big Als and other fish stores. From what I've read, same goes for Otos, that they're stressed rather easily.

Another group of fish that work well with my plants and shrimp are the white clouds, come feeding time they look like salmon swimming upstream in the HOB outtake.

My little input here is that most if not all of your listed species will make shrimp their dinner or at least harass them to death. From what I've read in terms of shrimp, there are very few species that won't eat them and even then it may just be the fish's temperament that makes the difference.

You can get decent little air-driven filters from walmart and the like which fit inside smaller tanks.In my 1gal, the betta actually swims between the filter and the glass because of the suction cups lol Heating is the issue I've yet to solve though

I'd assume lowering the water level is to limit the amount of nutrients available to all the plants, so your plants use more and the algae has less?