Hardiest (NOT expendable) Fish for a Fish-in Cycling?...and foods...and art!

[Lajos_Detari]

I like Harlequin Rasboras too. Or even better is the Espei Rasboras.
Espei is slightly smaller but their colours seem to glow in the dark.
But observe the fish before buying as I have seen too often Harlequin that are skinny like they are having some internal infections.
There are 9 LFS near my house and I often drop by the stores to take a look at their fish.

For loaches, you can also consider Kuhli loaches that are smaller than Chain loaches but they won't look as nice as Chain loaches.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Any road, moving ever-so swiftly on...

Methinks my first inhabitants will be Cherry Barbs.

 

[itiwhetu]

Any road, moving ever-so swiftly on...

Methinks my first inhabitants will be Cherry Barbs.

Good job, great decision that took awhile but we got there

 

[itiwhetu]

I'm sorry I stirred but hopefully didn't shake your other thread as well.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

@AdoraBelle Dearheart Byron stated in post #24 that Cory's shouldn't have vegetable matter in their diet as they are Carnivorous so be careful of those Algae discs you are feeding your other fish.

That's why I asked!

Otos and cories do really well in the same tank together though. (provided the other water parameters like GH/temp etc are agreeable with a particular cory species of course). Stumbled across a fascinating study while researching otos in an old thread of mine here, I can dig it up if anyone is interested - that said otos are often found schooling near and among corydoras in the wild. Different oto species often being found paired with specific cory species even! The study suggested it worked out well for the otos, since they don't have the defensive barbs that cories have, and might help them avoid predation, by being mistaken for corydoras, along with the safety in numbers and peaceful nature of both species.

Observing my otos with my pygmy cories is awesome, they really suit each other as company, you'll often see an oto following a group of pygmies, eating with them, sitting on the same leaves etc, or vice versa. I'm sure that the cories give the otos more confidence to be out in the open too, since with a large group of cories (there are more than 20 pygmaeus in that tank now) there's always one or two that will spot me approaching the tank and startle, spooking the others to go hide! If I approach slowly and calmly, they quickly calm and return to pottering around though, and I see the otos out in the open more now than when the otos were with guppies.

The otocinclus and pygmies like the same water chemistry, heavily planted tank, lots of leaf litter and hidey spots. That along with the company/dither fish effect mentioned above means I'd like to continue keeping them together, and I'm sure @Byron and @seangee keep or have kept otos and cories together. I just gotta learn how to balance the feeding. I will of course be careful, but be careful in what way is the question!

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Any road, moving ever-so swiftly on...

Methinks my first inhabitants will be Cherry Barbs.

Sorry for rambling on about cories in your thread, man! I blame Byron because he always gets me thinking about how to improve my setups and fishkeeping

I hope to see pictures of your set up once it is all together!

Seconded! I'd love to see pictures or a tank journal thread as you set up and establish! I always love seeing other people's tanks, getting ideas and tips for setting up a new tank, so please think about making a journal thread to share how it's going, sounds like it'll be gorgeous. Or share a pic or two in this thread maybe?

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Sorry for rambling on about cories in your thread, man! I blame Byron because he always gets me thinking about how to improve my setups and fishkeeping

No worries...thread hijack is a common feature of an active Forum.

Seconded! I'd love to see pictures or a tank journal thread as you set up and establish! I always love seeing other people's tanks, getting ideas and tips for setting up a new tank, so please think about making a journal thread to share how it's going, sounds like it'll be gorgeous. Or share a pic or two in this thread maybe?

My journal is up and running and has been now for a while...I'll be updating it soon.

 

[Avel1896]

Very rarely feed mini bloodworms, maybe twice a month, never tubifex - do you mean it's best to avoid the 'meatier' foods like overdoing bloodworms etc, and stick to insects like the daphnia and cyclops? How about the live worms I culture?

Live bloodworms, tubifex can bring parasites if badly raised/collected. I fed my Betta with live "home made" daphnias and vinegar eels. Both are easy like taking candy from a baby !

 

[emeraldking]

View attachment 142294View attachment 142295
This is the only food that I have fed for almost 50 years. The most important thing about flake food is that you can grind it into a fine powder. This product I can grind between my fingers to get it as fine as flour. It also has none of those brightly colored pieces that you see in some other foods. Any flake food that is sold in bulk packs is usually pretty good, the reason I say that is because the people who buy the bulk packs are usually breeders and are very particular about what they feed, ask @emeraldking about food. So many people feed particles to their fish which are just far to big, the food needs to be ground so that the little mouths can handle it.
I also feed Algae discs and don't really care which ones they are all much of a muchness.

I also use only bulk packaging from a wholesaler. And I also pay wholesale prices. Much cheaper and high quality food. With multiple tanks, this is a win.
Well, you can grind other kinds of food as well besides flake food. I do order different kinds of fish food. I'd like to offer my fish a variety of food to keep them healthy. Especially when you keep fish with different care sheets, like I have overhere.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

I like cheese.

 

[emeraldking]

I like cheese.

Then I won't keep you overhere... I don't have any cheese at home... Unless I can adapt you to fish food...

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Then I won't keep you overhere... I don't have any cheese at home... Unless I can adapt you to fish food...

Just noticed where you're from!
Lots of cheese, if I remember correctly!

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Live bloodworms, tubifex can bring parasites if badly raised/collected. I fed my Betta with live "home made" daphnias and vinegar eels. Both are easy like taking candy from a baby !

Ooohh, I'll need to pick your brain about how to culture those guys sometime!

I do want to culture some other live foods at some point, daphnia would be awesome to have on hand for livefeeding, since I use frozen daphnia a lot. I started with microworms and banana worms when my bronze cories surprised me by spawning while in quarantine, I'd only had them a few weeks! So I wanted tiny food to feed the fry, and microworms are super easy to culture, so I've kept those colonies going.

I love feeding home cultured life food, for the nutrition of course, but you also see different behaviour from the fish when they go into "hunting" mode. They get so much more excited for live food, and I enjoy watching them hunt down their meal instead of just pecking at some dry food. They seem more alert and excited when it's wriggling... I probably sound like a sadistic nutter now, lol.

Have also spotted seed shrimp and some other tiny water creatures in my pygmy cory tank when I do water changes. Nothing alarming, just harmless aquatic life living in the mulm and water column, and I'm pretty sure is what the pygmy fry are mainly feeding on between the meals I give them.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Ooohh, I'll need to pick your brain about how to culture those guys sometime!

I do want to culture some other live foods at some point, daphnia would be awesome to have on hand for livefeeding, since I use frozen daphnia a lot. I started with microworms and banana worms when my bronze cories surprised me by spawning while in quarantine, I'd only had them a few weeks! So I wanted tiny food to feed the fry, and microworms are super easy to culture, so I've kept those colonies going.

I love feeding home cultured life food, for the nutrition of course, but you also see different behaviour from the fish when they go into "hunting" mode. They get so much more excited for live food, and I enjoy watching them hunt down their meal instead of just pecking at some dry food. They seem more alert and excited when it's wriggling... I probably sound like a sadistic nutter now, lol.

Have also spotted seed shrimp and some other tiny water creatures in my pygmy cory tank when I do water changes. Nothing alarming, just harmless aquatic life living in the mulm and water column, and I'm pretty sure is what the pygmy fry are mainly feeding on between the meals I give them.

Perhaps, just perhaps, a new thread for rearing live foods might be more useful?

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

No worries...thread hijack is a common feature of an active Forum.

My journal is up and running and has been now for a while...I'll be updating it soon.

Doh, I should have checked the subforum before asking you to make one, lol! Awesome! I cheated and skipped to the pics - it's gorgeous! Love the scape and fish, and nice to see the MTS has kicked in already I'll go back and read the whole thing later tonight when I can sit with a cuppa and read properly. I want to get a couple of water changes done today, and I've been procrastinating on here, lol.

Also would like to tag you when I make my new tank journal thread if you don't mind... on the subjects of substrates, cories needing sand, mulm etc... because my pygmy tank has gravel at the back where the plants are, and a fine sand "beach" at the front that I added for the cories Was fun to see that we have a similar set up! I'd put eight juvenile cories in there, and now there's more than twenty of the little guys, and more fry emerging from the undergrowth all the time. I heard somewhere that mulm might be the secret to success with breeding these little dudes...? I'm planning an experiment to test it out.

Perhaps, just perhaps, a new thread for rearing live foods might be more useful?

But I thought your OP questions had been resolved and decided? You did say;

No worries...thread hijack is a common feature of an active Forum.

I'm afraid that I don't know you well enough to tell if it's genuinely bothering you that we're chitchatting in this thread and not elsewhere, or if it's banter... so my social anxiety and natural awkwardness is kicking in My apologies for waffling! Will go do some tank maintenance and stop procrastinating anyhow