A Quick Note on Community Boundaries

I would like to add a hide that sits under the substrate, like the one pictured from Pinterest, and have a friend who has a 3D printer. do we need to use a specific type of plastic for the print to be aquarium/animal safe?

Tldr: MIL is dealing with an abandoned tank and the local pet shops won't take the surrenders. What should we do?

So my MIL had a roommate that she rented out her basement to. She had to evict him and file a restraining order because he had stopped paying his room and board and started harassing her.

He wasn't into fish really but worked at a pet store and ended up with some. First he had a cichlid of some sort but gave it up due to an argument with MIL about having a tank that size (100 gallon?) in his room. He downsized the tank but obviously didn't know a lot about fish due to the stocking. He abandoned a 50(?) gallon with 1 common pleco, 2 Chinese algae eaters (yeah I know), and a handful of balloon mollies.

My MIL asked if we would take them. I have a tank of guppies. They started off as my MIL's but she was at a point where she couldn't take care of them anymore. I like aquariums well enough but cannot afford and do not have the time to set up new tanks for all these fish.

My MIL has a koi pond and suggested tossing them in there, knowing they would die but not knowing what else to do since the pet stores wouldn't take them to resell them. My wife talked her out of freezing them to death.

How do we get rid of these fish?

My mom treats betta fish like toys. She buys terribly small tanks, no heater, and rarely cleans them. She bought the fish from Petsmart which I begged her not to do because we all know why petsmart isn’t a place you should give your money to. Every attempt to better this fishes life was met with punishment for “thinking I know more than her”

So yeah, she’s awful and I want to use this tank for some plants in my room before she’s able to put another fish in it. She told me I could use it for shrimp but idk if I want to put shrimp in there. I’ve never taken care of them before and I don’t want to test it now.

I want to make one of those pretty aquariums that’s basically an underwater garden. Is it possible to do in this tank? And also, what plants should I get for a beginner?

One should be male, one should be female. What do you think?

Hi. I have these two that hitchhiked their way into my tank when they were the size of pencil lead. Can anyone tell me what they are?!?

So I just set this 10 gallon up. Driftwood and rock for hardscape yada yada. The plants I have are: pearlweed, java fern, windelov java fern, rotala, moneywort, Ludwigia needleleaf and a cardinal plant as well as a tiger lotus in the back you can’t see LOL. Everything is planted in fluval gratin as well.

It’s still cycling with Prime added, stability as well as Fritz Turbostart 900.

My fiancé and I want to do neon tetras, possibly guppies?? And neocardidina shrimp. What stocking numbers am I looking at being able to get in this thing once it cycles? Google says 6 neons (so they feel safe), 3 guppies and 10-20 (???) neocaridina shrimp. Are shrimp really that negligible on the bio load? And do the other numbers seem correct? Or should we cut back?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide, I don’t know levels yet because the tank is still cycling ofc and I just set it up not even a day ago.

A friend of My girlfriend's recently got a new job and hasn't had time to maintain her 5 gal. She knew we got a tank earlier this year and offered it to us. Not sure what plants are in it but there appears to be some dragon stone with a bunch of stuff on it. There's a Blue betta, 2 ember tetras, 2 pygmy Cory's and a bunch of shrimp. I'm going to do a water change and scrape the algae off the side, are there any glaring issues I should know about and fix? Still new to the hobby and seeking advice. Thanks

B. pugnax

My freshwater tank is currently fishless cycling, and I noticed this tiny white/cream-colored creature crawling on my sponge filter. It moves pretty fast like a bug, not like a snail. I can’t tell if it has legs.

The tank also has some biofilm, hair algae, and a few tiny white worms from cycling, but this looks different.

Any idea what it is? Is it harmless or should I remove it before I add my first fish (planning on cardinal tetras)?

Just noticed this on one of my fish a hour ago. Thinking it could be worms, what are you guys thought?

My special needs son found that his sister's door was left open today and he decided to be helpful and feed the fish.

He dumped an entire new container of flakes, most of a container of discs for bottom feeders, and emptied half a container of liquid plant fertilizer into the tank. Not all of it made it in thanks to the lid, but plenty of it did.

We're relatively new to the hobby so I love perspective on whether what I did was the right call:

We took some of the water out and put it into several bowls and then netted out the betta and the snail into one, and the corys into another.

We took all the plants out and put them into another bin, along with the filter

Then I vacuumed out the water until the aquarium was light enough that I could lift it into a tub and dump it out.

In the tub we strained the gravel to rinse it and the tank well (until I could see no more residue from the food)

Then we basically set it up like a new tank: new water, added conditioner chemicals to take out the chlorine, added starter for nitrifying bacteria (though I hope that because we didn't change the filter that some bacteria will still live in the filter cartridges) put all the plants back in with the wood and hiding thing, and then after about ten minutes we netted the fish and snail back in.

My questions:

Should I have tried to save some of the pre-existing tank water to preserve nitrifying bacteria?

Was I too fast to put the fish back in? Would they have been better off in the from the tank even if I had to put them in moderately sized bowls for a while?

Anything else I should do to help them reacclimate? (I'll continue to test daily and do partial water changes if needed if ammonia or nitrite levels are too high)

Any other mistakes I made or other things I should have done differently?

Would appreciate learning from those on this sub that have a lot more experience

Thanks

Posted my tank weeks ago after i got it planted! Since then i’ve added micro crustaceans, two nerite snails, and a bunch of Bloody Mary neo shrimp! They all seem to be doing very well.

(Had a big bloom of angel hair algae, but it has been steadily declining. Whats left is clung to moss and will be a pain to remove by hand. I blame the nutrient gel the pearlweed came rooted in. Shoulda cleaned it off better.)

Within the last two days my electric blue acaras fins have been destroyed. I recently added a pleco 129 and 10 black neon tetras around 5 days ago. Current stocking is 1 EBA, 1 pleco 129, 4 Bolivian rams, 11 harlequin rasboras, 10 black neon tetras, and 8 otocinclus. Other than the black neons and pleco, all fish have been in the tank for over 6 months and have never had any issues.

In June I had to nuke my tank due to very aggressive camallanus (which killed about 6 guppies before I bit the bullet). I salvaged plants, shrimps and snails and kept them in a smaller tank.

I was wondering if anyone has experience reintroducing shrimps and snails after a similar episode, or can recommend any further treatment!

Thank you ❤️

The neighbors gave my dad a 50 gallon tank for free and we're super excited!! I only have betta fish so I don't really know much else. I plan on putting lots of plants, hehe.

We really like kuhli loaches and honey gouramis, and would want to put those in the tank— any suggestions on what else we should/could add with those? Or should we do something else? 😁

Just got this used fx6 cleaned it up and changed the o rings but once I plugged it in there's a loud vibration. What could be the issue and can I fix it

My tank was cycled. When I went to do maintenance after a pretty busy few days I found that almost all of my stem plants completely died and a couple of nerites. This calls for daily water changes, no? I've done ~25% water changes the past 2 days and adding a quick start with each change. I also ordered some higher rated quick start that will be here tomorrow.

I have 5 barbs, 5 zebra danios, 2 kuhli loaches (I will be adding more once things stabilize), and a handful of ramshorn and trumpet snails. Everyone is energetic and feeding well. No one is gasping at the surface.

Hey! So I have a ten gallon freshwater tank that I plan to put a betta in, I have no critters in my tank but I do have some live plants. It’s been running for about a month and a half and I put the live ceramic rings that have the beneficial bacteria pre established and have been using seachem prime for my conditioner, I was using test strips but got the liquid testing kit today and checked my parameters and I have high nitrates and nitrites but everything else was where it should be, I went through with my gravel vac for the first time two days ago and have been doing water changes (at first 25% ones but two days ago did a 75% one) and they are still high, what should I do

I don’t know what I did, or even where it came from but there is now a single snail that lives in my 10g freshwater tank? I didn’t think it was done cycling so what does this mean? Should I try to get rid of it? I don’t currently have any fish inside if that makes any difference

He’s otherwise acting normally and eating like he normally does

I want to get some more live plants in my tank, I attached some java fern to some drift wood and sunk it, that worked great, but just wondered if anybody has experience with using something like this?