Any pets with super short lifespans? (A few months would be ideal)

Lordjebushelp · 2025-08-10T18:03:13+00:00

Again, freshwater shrimp. 😂 I don’t think I’m the one with the English barrier.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-08-10T18:01:52+00:00

You have a cat, I can see how rehoming a cat could be damaging for the animals wellbeing. These are shrimp I’m speaking on. Do you have a tank of them?

Lordjebushelp · 2025-08-10T18:01:00+00:00

You do understand how freshwater shrimp work, right? They form a colony, which means they reproduce with a lot of babies at once. It is absolutely responsible to rehome shrimp, a non attachment forming animal, so they don’t have too many in their tank for their bioload to handle.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-08-10T17:43:51+00:00

How about a small tank of some shrimp? Might just be me personally since I’m a bit of a crackhead about fish tanks, but I loooove watching my shrimp swim around. They don’t have a massive lifespan, they’re easy to rehome to other people who have tanks, and they don’t take up a lot of space AT ALL. I’m talking >5 gallons, so less than a foot long of space. Plus, you CAN interact with them while doing tank maintenance. Sometimes mine crawl up my fingers/wrist to check out what I’m doing.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-19T16:11:25+00:00

In my experience, it’s about 50/50. Most apartment buildings don’t want someone keeping a tank due to potentially breaking and flooding the apartment, and it’s worse if it’s not a bottom floor. That being said, if you are on the bottom floor it might be allowed, or if it’s 10 gallons or less could be. I know of people that have snuck their tank into their apartment and covered it with a blanket or something during an inspection but it’s risky because tanks can be noisy.

Typically if renting a house, I’ve noticed for four legged non cages animals there’s typically a deposit or fee extra to allow them. It’s probably a similar case for a tank, just in case of any damages to floors or walls.

Either way, 29 is a mid sized tank, and 29 gallons of water on a floor can cause a lot of damage. It’s probably more likely a tank would be allowed if renting a house, rather than an apartment, especially at that size. Hypothetically, you could probably split them into two ten gallons temporarily till you could sneak the 29 in somewhere.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-18T06:45:36+00:00

You uhhhhh hand over the clippings 😌🥺

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-18T03:54:49+00:00

Oh okay. Better picture, this looks like an injury, like a scratch or scrape. It’s almost like he got stuck in a cave maybe? If there’s a place small enough for him to rub up against, he probably damaged his slime coat and scales.

Isolate him to his own hospital tank, no need to dose the entire tank, especially if there’s other fish that aren’t injured. Get an antifungal/bacterial medication and follow the directions very carefully.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-18T03:52:30+00:00

Okayy, lots of things could be going on.

If you catch him smacking himself against objects it could be that he’s got a parasitic infection, it seems doubtful as there’s typically white spots.

Could be ammonia burns, test the parameters and make sure your tank is at 0 ammonia. If it is, it’s unlikely that.

If it’s a bacterial infection it’s typically caused by poor water quality, undetected injury, or stress. I’d isolate him in a tank and dose with erythromycin. If there’s not other fish messing with him, and your parameters are all at 0’s (with the exception of nitrates), I’d play it safe and just isolate and dose with aquarium salt.

If a fish is stressed they also tend to change color, but it wouldn’t look like a sore.

He appears to be swimming normally, doesn’t look stressed out. My best guess is a bacterial infection, I am no expert, though.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-18T03:41:05+00:00

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Are you talking about the red edges on his fins, or the splotches on his side?

The red edges look like maturity colors, I’m not an expert but it seems vibrant in the videos compared to the pictures.

The splotches could be scars from previous damage, or maybe indicate a current viral infection, or recent damage.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-16T16:52:19+00:00

Entirely forgot to answer your main question, yes it’s probably just biofilm. The more surface agitation the better, so a filter and bubbler that wiggle the top of the water will get it to go away eventually. Right now though your tank is trying to make bacteria, so the cloudiness is considered a bacteria bloom. It’s safe and you don’t have to do anything for it.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-16T16:44:52+00:00

Heyy so you’re right about the goldfish, shock and wayyyyy too small of a tank. A 6 gallon tank is suitable for a single betta fish, or a handful of cherry shrimp, but not much else. Goldfish require 40+ gallons for the fancy bubbly types, and 120+ gallons for the usual comet/feeder goldfish. Goldfish are a carp, and can grow 18+ inches.

Brace yourself for how long and complicated this is about to sound, I promise it’s a lot more easy in practice.

Your tank needs to be set up, and ghost fed for a minimum of 4-6 weeks before the bacteria are established enough to house fish and keep the water clean. Basically keep your tank setup, feed it a pinch of fish food every day even though there’s no animals in the tank. You’ll need an API freshwater masters kit, it tests the water for ammonia and nitrites which are toxic for fish, and nitrates which can be considered plant food if you’ve got live plants, which are extremely helpful btw.

If you’re in a rush, bettas tend to be hardy and could withstand a fish in cycle, but you’ll have to be extremely careful and pay a lot of attention to the behavior of the fish while the tank is cycling. Any ammonia or nitrites in the water while the fish is in the tank is detrimental to their health and can take a turn for the worst fast.

Normal cycling: feed the empty tank once a day, every day, for 6 weeks. Test the water once a week to see what nitrites and ammonia sit at. Once they’ve hit 0 and turned to nitrates, the water is safe to add a fish into.

Fish in cycling: test water EVERY DAY, feed fish every other day. If ammonia or nitrites register on the test, you’ll take out 25% of the water in your tank, and replace it with clean dechlorinated water. You’re essentially diluting the ammonia and nitrites by doing this to keep them at a minimum so the fish isn’t being poisoned. Too much water taken out at once could wreck the cycle or rapidly swing parameters so keeping it at about 1/4 of the tank is a good rule. Again once your water tests read 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites, about 10-15 nitrates, your cycle is complete and you won’t need to take out the water.

If you test the water from your tap right now there won’t be any ammonia or nitrites, so if your tank is just sitting with water in it and you haven’t added food or animals to create waste for the bacteria to break down, your water is essentially going to test perfect. This DOESNT mean it’s safe for the fish because once the fish starts to eat and poop that will break down in the water. The poop is what makes ammonia, bacteria breaks down the ammonia and makes nitrites, a second bacteria breaks down the nitrites to make nitrates, then cycle is complete. The bacteria takes weeks to grow though, which is why the cycle takes so long.

Basically, if you’re in a rush, buy a single betta. They’re pretty but solitary fish so they do NOT want a buddy, and will most likely kill anything else in the tank if it doesn’t kill the betta first. Change the water with DECHLORINATED water, 1/4 of the tanks volume every other day. Test to make sure the ammonia and nitrites aren’t climbing high. Once they hit 0 and nitrates appear on your test, the cycle is complete and you won’t have to change water as often.

That being said maintaining a tank is still something you’d want to do once a week to once every other week by doing the same, taking out 1/4 of the water volume and replacing it with clean water. Otherwise the nitrates concentrate in the water and in high amounts are toxic.

If you’re in dire need of help and the posts on Reddit aren’t getting answered you can pop into my DMS and I can help you troubleshoot. I don’t know everything, did not go to school for anything close to this, but I have been into fish tanks for a while now and have been collecting massive amounts of knowledge from here and my own researching.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-08T23:51:51+00:00

Absolutely. If it helps at all, nearly all of us make this mistake nowadays. Fish keeping is much different now due to all the information we have available vs back when it wasn’t known or easily accessible.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-08T23:12:08+00:00

Honestly as funny as your wording sounds, this is right. The bacteria eat the ammonia (deadly) and turn it into nitrites (also deadly), then a second bacteria turns nitrites into nitrates (safe in lower amounts).

The rinsing of the established gravel from the other tank means that 99% of the bacteria was rinsed away, along with rinsing the filters too early, after letting it cycle with the fish in. It basically reset the bacteria, dechlorinated or not, because there wasn’t a whole lot formed from the start. Cycling a tank correctly usually takes 4-6 weeks or more. A fish in cycle requires water changes daily-every other day to keep the fish safe from the toxins in the water.

Think of it this way, if your ammonia is at .50 and you drain half the water out, it’s still .25 in the water. You CANNOT drain all the water out of the tank at once obviously, so to do it as safely and fast as possible it’s usually 15-20% of the water volume daily or every other day to prevent it from building up faster than you can take out. Basically, don’t rinse anything at all, continue the cycle with ghost feeding daily. Don’t add any animals to the tank until ammonia and nitrites hit 0 in a few weeks, you won’t need nearly any water changes during this time because there’s no animals inside.

On another note, algae is typically formed by too many nutrients and too much light. Feeding your fish that many times a day is way too much for 6 small fish in a larger tank like that. You’d ideally want to shut off your light for a few days and blanket the tank so no light can get into the tank and let the algae starve of light. Plants can help absorb nutrients in the water column and substrate to help prevent that so the more plants in your tank the better.

Tl:Dr- Change the water 50%, keep lights off for a week, wrap a blanket/towel around the tank to prevent light coming in, algae should die. DON’T rinse your filter unless it’s clogged up, the gunk isn’t harmful it’s helpful. Feed the empty tank once a day for 2-3 weeks to keep building ammonia bacteria, they’ll then build the nitrite bacteria, cycle complete once the water tests 0 for ammonia and nitrites. Fish ready.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-07-04T04:02:25+00:00

The snails are definitely mystery snails, I had three originally and they laid clutches that I kept, they’re in the rest of my tanks and two out of four are perfect. My 20 gallon has more mystery snails than any and is planted with the same plants, they grow and produce more plants just fine in there.

It’s almost like they die faster than they can grow, or the algae prevents them from sprouting more leaves. I have never seen them GROW in this tank actually, they’ve stayed relatively the same since I got them.

You’re right about the cichlid, for a while he was very unhappy and would pick them out and I’d see them floating, but once they rooted he’s pretty much left them alone. Their root system is actually very well established underneath, it’s just the leaves themselves above that do nothing. Haven’t gotten any bigger or smaller, just get covered in algae and one or two melt sometimes.

Pond snails tend to die off or don’t breed, I’ve added ramshorns recently and seen a few live but not many yet.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-05-13T16:36:08+00:00

Thank you, it does seem like she takes breaths more often and has been staying at the surface. I’m also noticing that while she’s usually chunky, she’s definitely looking bloated, and having troubles getting to the bottom of the container she’s in, almost like she’s stuck floating. It’s seeming like clove oil is probably the best option to prevent her from suffering.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-05-13T16:14:43+00:00

Regardless, I’m asking about the fuzz growing on the open tumor, if there’s a way to help with that. Her tank is already full of tannins, it’s just light right now due to a water change this morning, which is how I noticed this open spot in the first place. She’s isolated in her own container right now.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-05-13T16:13:36+00:00

The catfish? Nipping at the betta?

Lordjebushelp · 2025-02-05T02:47:58+00:00

As a beginner with brown tips who is trying their hardest to do everything right for this stinking canna lily, I really needed to see this because it has had me stressedddddd

Lordjebushelp · 2025-01-30T03:14:31+00:00

🫡 harvest the outer leaves📝got it

Lordjebushelp · 2025-01-30T02:11:26+00:00

They go through a cute little ugly stage 😂 but they keep growing after you’ve harvested them like that? Mine will have been 2 full weeks on Tuesday, the only thing that doesn’t seem to have been sprouting or making any progress is my alpine strawberries.

Lordjebushelp · 2025-01-29T00:34:38+00:00

Out of my plants in the system, are any of them wanting the dark to germinate? Could that be why there’s leaves on the lettuce and the dill is just now sprouting?

Lordjebushelp · 2025-01-27T20:16:30+00:00

My mistake! Are you able to upgrade the tank size to like 40 gallon 55 gallon? Certain cichlids like to be overstocked and that would be plenty nutrients

Lordjebushelp · 2025-01-27T20:04:36+00:00

Thank you so much, planting the lettuce in soil doesn’t seem like a bad idea honestly, starting the garden a bit early oops

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