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Tip for picking out healthy otos: look at their bellies! They should have nice, large, round bellies that look almost like a little pearl. That'll let you know that they're eating well in captivity. Also make sure to ask the LFS owners how long they've had the otos, what they've been feeding...

Happy birthday, Adora! I hope you at least got to have some cake ❤️🎂

I'm sorry it's so frustrating :( Parents can definitely be that way sometimes. Personally, I don't believe in the attitude of "their house their rules", so I'm not going to tell you to just suck it up and deal with it. The house is not just your parents' house. It's your house too, and it can...

If you're so inclined, you could always try building your own. That's what I've done. You can design it so that the lower tank is a bit more front and center, because I agree, the space that most commercial stands allocate for the second tank is often really low to the ground and off to one...

If you don't mind saying it, what is the deal that you have with your parents? What are the terms and the requirements that you have to follow? It's okay if you'd prefer not to talk about it, you don't have to, but I'm curious because you've mentioned the deal a few times before and I realized...

Yeah, that makes sense. If you're motivated to problem-solve, you could try to find a structure that the shrimp can get into but the platies can't. Could be manmade or a piece of wood or rock, as long as it has an entrance the shrimp can fit through but the fish can't. Potentially a small...

Oh, I adore him. There's something so special about crayfish. I'm glad it turned out that he hadn't suddenly become a murderer! p.s. if you have a Mac computer, you can press and hold down a letter key and you should see a menu pop up on screen with accented letter options. You just press the...

Oh, I forgot I also wanted to mention this. It's possible you might actually not need to keep your water that hard for your shrimp. I haven't tried it myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've heard if your water isn't hard enough for proper molting, you can feed your shrimp food...

I imagine you're probably in southern England? I hear the water there is basically liquid rock! Definitely seems like a pain to deal with. I'm glad you at least have plenty of rain at your disposal 😁 Honestly, I'm lucky I've never been interested in any of the livebearers. That way, I don't...

Adora's pretty on the money with her explanation. As she mentioned, there are some corys that can tolerate harder water. To be honest, most of the popular or well-known fish in the aquarium trade are relatively adaptable. However, I will always drive this point home: there's only so far that you...

Absolutely no offense taken! It's true, the technique in the video isn't actually very well-known, so it's always good to share it around! Also, I have a confession to make: I know very little about keeping marine tanks haha. At least, not in terms of how they're kept by hobbyists. I honestly...

A bribe is nice and all, but sometimes you need a threat to really keep everyone in line. Whether a snail will take a fish hook seriously is up for debate though

I always call the large tube part the gravel vac or gravel attachment. The hose is the hose, and the siphon is the entire system because siphon is more of an action than an object. I have started siphons using the method Cory shows in the video, and it does work well, but to be honest, I rarely...

I usually start siphons by mouth if I don't have a siphon pump, but this is a very good method too and useful if you're worried about getting tank water in your mouth. I've definitely gotten a mouthful of sea urchin spines before, when cleaning out leftovers from a sea star's meal. Not very...

Yup, I usually go in at 8:00 or 9:00am and work until 4:00-5:00pm. The difference for me is that for my samples, it's 90% work and 10% waiting lol. Most of the time is spent pipetting, either adding reagents or moving them around to different test tubes and the like. We use a variety of nasty...

Marine ecology! Primarily kelp forest and trophic (food web) ecology. What about you?

Just finished some more tissue extractions for my research. It takes about 8 hours from start to finish to complete 10 samples, and most of that time is spent actively working 😵‍💫 I'm glad I can listen to music...

There's nothing inherently wrong with daydreaming. I do plenty of it myself, and it can be a very good thing. It only becomes a hindrance when you prioritize planning new things rather than the projects you already have. Trying your best is all you need to do. That's all anyone can do. Thank...

I'm going to be straightforward and maybe a bit blunt with you here. This is not criticism, it's just life advice based on my own experience. Stop trying to change the subject. It's fantastic that you're daydreaming and creating ideas for new tanks. I've been doing plenty of that myself...

If you have large floating plants like frogbit, water lettuce, or salvinia, then they'll be much easier to remove when you have excess growth. Duckweed is a bother to deal with primarily because of its tiny size, but large floaters are easier to manage. As others have said, just remove some of...

Still waiting on the ferts to get to me, but in the meantime, it's been interesting to watch this tank progress without any real input (just stuck a sponge filter and a heater in there and got it running). I have some rhabdocoel flatworms now! They seemingly popped up overnight. I have no idea...

Well hello there, sir (He's waiting very politely for his shrimp delivery) You can see his wife down below in the video. She also got some shrimp :)

I don't know about mystery snails off the top of my head, but I know the vast majority of nerites won't breed in freshwater. Like amanos, they require brackish water for successful reproduction.

Incidentally, I've always pictured him as some old British bloke as well 🤣

I volunteer at a local public aquarium that exclusively keeps species native to the Pacific Northwest (USA). I've been volunteering for a few years now and really enjoy the work. I always end up with a lot of pictures of the animals, so even though these aren't my personal tanks, I figured I'd...

This looks pretty good! I would recommend adding more branches or other driftwood to add structure to the water column, as well as potentially botanicals on the substrate. The Orinoco and many other South American rivers are characterized by having a lot of submerged sticks and logs and dead...

Gorgeous fish! They're definitely going in my next tank setup

Zoos are professional institutions with money, resources, researchers, and veterinarians to back them up. Hobbyists don't typically have those. Most large public zoos around the world are also accredited by an outside organization that creates guidelines and requirements for animal husbandry...

I think I'm going to pick up some liquid fertilizer for the floaters. They're growing really fast, but I'm still seeing a bit of leaf melting. I know it's not water flow or anything physical. I removed the glass lid a while ago, so they're open to the air. So, my best guess is lack of nutrients...

Within the past couple weeks, I've added a couple pellet foods to my neon tetra's feeding rotation to vary his diet. His previous owner only fed him flakes. He still gets flakes, just not every day. And... well... there's really no other way to say it. He's pretty bad at eating the pellets. He...

This is shocking... and frankly rather disappointing, as are all of your other examples. I'm sorry you have to deal with a government that doesn't seem to actually care about its native species. There must be at least a few fish and wildlife employees that are actually knowledgeable, but it...

This might be of some interest to those following this thread, but I recently found a Youtube channel called Freshwater Ichthyology. It's run by a woman named Rebecca who's a PhD candidate studying the evolution of plecos and other Loricarids (but mostly plecos). She's also a fishkeeper herself...

I'll have to make a slight correction here! It's an extremely common misconception that some organisms have stopped evolving, and that is not the case. Everything is constantly evolving and always has been, it's just that rates of adaptation development and species divergence are different...

I agree with Gary. If you want to learn about evolution, I recommend finding books or documentaries. Forums will not be the best place to get the information you're looking for. Even though I have been taught extensively about evolution through my university degrees, I still don't have all the...