SanityChelle

These are the ramshorn snails in my sorority tank. These ones here are paler because of the water parameters, they used to be fully brown like the ones you have.

Did you actually read the article I posted at all? Or did you just look at the first picture and make up your mind? You don't get ramshorn snails at the petstore, as they are too tiny. I also already said they only get to a few millimetres big. I have the snails you're talking about in my tanks. They're ramshorn snails.

How do you know they are babies? They don't get very big at all, mine are only a few mm, like the article says.

They are both ramshorn snails. See the caption below the image.

That's just a brown ramshorn snail. They're pretty common as a sign that you might be overfeeding your fish, as their numbers depend a lot on leftover food.

Please invest in a camera or borrow your parents phone or something. It would solve 90% of your questions. Can you spot them in this article? http://fishwise.co.nz/index.php/article ... end-or-foe

Love these guys. Very interesting looking.

That's looking amazing!

I quoted that from your own thread? And just took out the african cichlids that your said you were getting rid of. How am I suppose to know what fish you're getting in the future?

Why not add more to the schooling fish? Make them more comfortable and make them feel safer. One female siamese fighter will look tiny in a 500L tank.

I usually hear 8 hours is a good max on a highly planted tank, less if it's not planted much, so 12hours is heaps! Mine are set for when I am home and awake. 7am-8am, then 5pm-10.30pm.

If it helps 'coolie' loach is kuhli loach. Having the the real name will help you find out more about them. If the tank has only just been set up, it will take a while for the fish to settle in and get comfortable in the new location. Once they do, I'm sure you'll see them up and around the entire tank. Upping the number of fish in the schools will help them gain confidence as well. I've heard glassfish in particular can be very scattery and scaredy without decent backup. As has been mentioned, the stocking is rather odd. The best thing to do over the next little while is researching all the fish in there, and settle on what type of tank you want to set up ie African cichlids (with the yellows and lionheads as your base), or tropical community, etc etc. 500L is a great size tank! And your scape for the tank looks really good. If you went with tropical community, you could swap the plastic plants out for real ones. Just to check, I'd put your thermometer at the opposite end of the tank for a while, to see if the temp is different down there. If it is, I'd recommend putting the heater more horizontal in the middle of the tank (you could hide it with the driftwood and run the cord under the substrate to the side of the tank). Do you know how big the filter is?

A good looking tank! I would keep any eye on your male fighter though. He seems a bit chase-y, and combining males and females very rarely ends well.

Why not just do multiple water changes over a few day? Smooth it out a little.

Ah, sorry dude, someone else just bought it.

I actually have a large jar of xmas moss that I don't know what to do with, that you can have if you want. It came all tangled in a a bucket of lace java fern that I bought.

From the looks of things, Lemna aequinoctialis has only been collected from Auckland Zoo, where it probably got carried in, and hasn't been found anywhere else. If you have duckweed, it's probably Lemna disperma / Lemna minor.

If you knew that they were different species, that would have helped. http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=7585 - Lemna disperma / Lemna minor http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=2022 - Lemna aequinoctialis

Do you have a plant to identify? You could try check it again here -> http://www.fnzas.org.nz/?page_id=2379 From my knowledge though, I thought there was only one type of duckweed, and it's happy in both coldwater and tropical.

If they really cared about the fish, they'd do a moment of "This is really important, kids!", and diagram out the cycle in the space of about a minute or less. It's not that hard to block out basic understand of concepts. Instead, they drum up the stress of setting up a tank in a very hurried manner, even blaming the fish sitting out as a cause of drama. Don't blame the editing, if they really cared, they'd have a say about it and make sure the important info was shared and noted.

:slfg: How much sugar have you had tonight, Alex? It seems like a lot.

I would advise you to do your own research, rather than learn from a reality TV show.

That's gorgeous!

I had a crowntail betta in mine, but he had trouble against the current of the waterfall. I swapped him out for a large plakat boy, and he really love the tank, making huge bubble nests constantly in there. He's in a breeding tank at the moment, and I've got four ember tetra in there instead. They seem alright, just because they are so small, but I'll swap back to the plakat once he's ready. It's not really great for super active schooling fish, as it has such a small footprint and they can't get their horizontal swim on. If you think platties and neons are too small, I don't think any larger fish will fit at all.

One issue that I see would be the pH difference required by the mbuna. They like it rather high. Also mbuna are kinda known as aggressive. I have rusties, which are apparently among the least aggressive mbuna, but I've still had to take fish out of the tank and sell them on because they were being picked on to the point that they were close to death.