Aquariums anything you want to know about the hobby!

[Auto-Post] Weekly Question Thread! Ask /r/Aquariums anything you want to know about the hobby!
Post water change crispness
I don't know who has the dumber expression...
One of my cherry shrimp hitching a ride on its bigger cousin
My experience keeping multiple male bettas together in the same tank
Got baby pleco’s in my community tank!!!
Thought this would be appreciated here too
Herbert the baby Cory
Apparently Amano shrimps are only supposed to live for 2-3 years, but I've got a female that I've had for 10 years now! She's lived in 5 different tanks and has outlived other shrimp and fish. Is the information surrounding their life expectancy inaccurate or is she just a trooper?
Update on first planted tank! Everything is growing well expect my dwarf hair grass is starting to get a slightly yellow tinge and seems to be growing quite slowly. Some of the dirt seems to be getting covered in a layer of light brown algae as well. Advice welcome!
Team thiccc. Say hi to Goldilocks and Mongo, our severum and rhino fatties. They make keeping sand clean hard and bully the acaras but we love em
After months of trying to get his health back I think my handsome boy is giving up
Finally stayed down!
neon
tank progress! next thing to go is gonna be the red gravel, don’t know what i was thinking there. i’m still figuring somethings out but i’m happy it’s come so far!
These beans keep growing in my aquarium.
Late night snack
Stupidface the cory made several mini-me’s. What to do with them?
New tank and this is where my loaches have decided this is the best place to be, clogging up the intake.
Sponge filter corner location and filtration
Can someone help identify these worms that suddenly exploded in my tank? They seem too small to be detritus worms. Maybe planaria?
People seem to like angelfish here, so here's one of mine
My shrimp tank!
Thinking about black gravel?

[Auto-Post] Weekly Question Thread! Ask /r/Aquariums anything you want to know about the hobby!

Posted: 07 Sep 2020 12:17 AM PDT

This is an auto-post for the weekly question thread.

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Post water change crispness

Posted: 06 Sep 2020 08:04 PM PDT

submitted by /u/sledhardo
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I don't know who has the dumber expression...

Posted: 07 Sep 2020 02:54 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Snak_The_Ripper
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One of my cherry shrimp hitching a ride on its bigger cousin

Posted: 07 Sep 2020 07:02 AM PDT

submitted by /u/MiniHamster5
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My experience keeping multiple male bettas together in the same tank

Posted: 06 Sep 2020 11:24 PM PDT

I have been keeping bettas for a while now, and decided to test the theory that it is possible to keep multiple males together if conditions are appropriate. I'm happy to elaborate on any of these points if anyone is interesting, but I'll try to keep this post from being longwinded (so I'll summarize). I just want to point out something before I get into it: the welfare of these fish is my highest priority, I love my bettas, and strongly believe that keeping fish in conditions they evolved for helps improve their quality of life, provided bottlenecks and inhibitory factors are limited. I am quite convinced that if done properly, this is actually very beneficial to the welfare of the bettas. There was improved coloration, activity, feeding, interaction and enrichment. They develop very complex social hierarchies that are stuck to quite well, and a whole set of behaviors that I had never seen before in bettas emerge when they are kept this way. It is incredibly rewarding—and I hope equally so for the fish themselves!

What I did:

1) A large aquarium. I tried this with a 10G, 30G and 75G. The success increased with tank size, and I wouldn't recommend anything under 30G. A general rule of thumb is 1 appropriate territory per male betta, with 1 territory of space between each appropriate territory. Eg, if your tank is 3ft wide, 1ft on either end must be appropriately set up for each male, with 1ft of space between each.

2) Appropriate territories. Happy to upload photos if anyone is curious, but you need to have vertical coverage, so a tall anubias, stem plants etc. I find tall anubias and floating plants such as amazon frogbit idea because they provide the space to build bubble nests.

3) Females-- lots of females. The more the better. I keep a ratio of one male to 3-4 females. The females work out their own pecking order, with the dominant female deciding which male they want to mate with. The less dominant females tend to quarrel over being next in line/the dominant, but this usually never ends in violence, just flarring and improved colouration. When females are in the tank, the males lose interest in the other males and start to focus on the females, where they will display and beg for attention. Two males never seem to court the same female, instead they have a flarring competition. All the females in the tank turn up to watch the dominant male, which is decided usually pretty fast by 1) the colouration and 2) the territory that is having the event occur. I've had no issues with violence here, they seem to be surface level. Violence tends to arise from territory (in my experience).

4) You MUST have backup tanks set up, and monitor the bettas very closely for the first couple of weeks (in case you can't tell, it's been a very lonely quarantine for me,hah!). After that, it should be stable and casual monitoring is all you need.

5) Dither fish. These are really helpful for organizing he territories of the tank. Particularly more active ones such as danios or yoyo loaches. If you arrange the territories properly ,they will be arranged like so: planted section – negative space – planted section. Dither fish tend to hang out in the negative space, and they keep the slower moving slightly shy bettas to their own territories. This serves as an insurance policy against aggression

6) plants, sooooooooo many plants. You'll know you have enough when you don't see you nitrates move for 4-6 weeks at least.

What I found out:

1) Bubble nests have pros and cons. Pro: they keep the males to their territory, they stay busy, they look better and they show off more. Cons: if another male enters the territory, they'll get grumpy. This usually ends in a display and a rapid back off by the intruding male.

2) Males really respect eachother's territories once they have been established. When you add males, they have a few standoffs that you have to monitor carefully. If they resort to violence, you need to separate IF they don't back off quickly afterward. Once the pecking order is established, the males might have the occaisional territorial "discussion" but they are rare.

3) Personality makes a huge difference-- but it's not the only factor. You must have back up tanks in case you get males that can't reconcile. Pecking orders seem to be decided by two factors: the personality of the betta (aggression levels) and their size/virility/colour. Males are generally pretty chill, but you will occaisionally come across someone who's really not crash hot about rivals. These either have to be housed by themselves or with a bunch of lesser/non dominant males. Second factor isn't talked about anywhere (from what I can tell) but the fish's body size, colouration and age makes a pretty huge difference. If two males decide they are equal quality, they generally have to turn to more intense flarring or violence. The violence will either end quickly when a dominant is established (think one bite and they back off) or they will be locked in combat. If the latter happens, you MUST separate them or they will be harmed, or worse, killed.

4) Males who are raised together display barely any aggression toward eachother. This extends to young bettas of different genetic background kept in a group from a young age. They grow up together and probably have lower threat perception to eachother. Please let me know if you have any questions! And don't try this at home if you aren't prepared for the hard work it requires. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: TANK SET UP IMAGES: https://imgur.com/a/NkOxGLu

TLDR; it's totally doable, just don't try it if you aren't dedicated to investing the time.

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Got baby pleco’s in my community tank!!!

Posted: 07 Sep 2020 04:44 AM PDT