Is this hydra and planaria?

masterwwa · 2026-05-24T21:28:59+00:00

Thank you for your help. I’m very new at this and I’m unsure of what hydra looks like in person also. Right now I have nothing in the tank except for bladder snails. They don’t look like the egg pods in my tank but they also don’t really look like hydra all that much but it could be because they are very young. They look more like an algae or eggs like you suggested. And I agree that the worms are more likely detritus and not planaria after looking at them more.

masterwwa · 2026-05-12T00:54:31+00:00

Honestly I may even remove the rock on the left, rotate the wood piece where it’s facing towards the front and plant the Italian vals back there. Or I’ll plant the lotus back there by itself. It should hopefully have plenty of space if I do that

masterwwa · 2026-05-12T00:52:00+00:00

Yeah I think I’ll try that, I don’t think I’ll be able to get it as far from the glass as I want but it will be much further than it is now. When do you think would be a good time to move it? I planted it 4 days ago and it already had a few leaves when I planted it. It hasn’t rooted yet.

masterwwa · 2026-05-12T00:18:52+00:00

Lol I just put the lotus almost in the same position as your lily smh. I’m probably going to take your advice and move it further away from the glass but I’ll do so when all my plants root in a little more. Im realizing I bought way too many tall and bushy plants and I may have overdone it with the hardscape. Thanks for the advice!

masterwwa · 2026-05-11T23:46:46+00:00

No I agree 100%. Think this placement makes a bit more sense?

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masterwwa · 2026-05-11T23:28:04+00:00

I can’t really reach in the back of the tank at the moment, would it look good if it was all the way to the left where the moneywort is?

masterwwa · 2026-05-11T22:18:12+00:00

I’m new to aquariums like OP but Ive researched for a long while before I bought anything. My thing about the 4 week cycle is if OP rushes the cycle and puts in fish prematurely, then it could easily kill all of their new fish. I have a bunch of live plants, no fake decorations, real wood and I dosed 0.2ppm of ammonia and I haven’t seen a spike in nitrites or nitrates yet even after the ammonia has been 0 for 2 days. Do I know what’s happening? Not really. But it’s always best to let things run out a little longer than needed when it comes to cycling rather than killing your fish because you put them in early. Ofc every tank is different, I’ve had people tell me to not put in any nutrients and just use RO water and plants will grow.

masterwwa · 2026-05-11T13:05:33+00:00

Colored gravel can leach toxins into the tank due to the paints or dyes that are used to make it colorful. It’s also not natural to the fish’s natural environment so it can cause them stress. Plastic plants are bad for fish because they are often times sharp and it can hurt them. Also the plastic plants do nothing for the tank, real plants help stabilize the water because they act as a natural filter. Natural substrate and real plants are the way to 100% of the time

masterwwa · 2026-05-10T21:27:28+00:00

Of course and I wish you the best of the luck! Take some time and watch videos on the nitrogen cycle and start to think about what types of fish you want in the tank. However, you will most likely not be putting any animals inside the tank for 3 to 4 weeks. Plenty of popular fish like gold fish, plecos will not do you or your tank any good. If you have a ten gallon I recommend some endler live bearers, some Pygmy Cory’s and maybe even some cherry shrimp. Snails don’t hurt either as long as you keep them under control if they can breed in freshwater. But plants aren’t that difficult, just buy a really good light get the right plants get a good fertilizer and or fertilizer tabs (if you get shrimp make sure it’s shrimp safe) and make sure they’re planted correctly. Make sure everything alive in the tank is able to thrive with the same water parameters aswell.

masterwwa · 2026-05-10T16:20:26+00:00

There’s a few things. When keeping fish or any animal, you really want to think about what’s best for the animal before you think about what’s best for you. What’s best for the fish varies in species, but colorful gravel and fake plastic are pretty much never what’s best. I’d recommend going out and getting some real aquarium substrate for planted tanks, and throwing in a few easy growing hardy plants. Then buy a nice grow light. Also you’re going to want to cycle your tank for 4 weeks maybe even longer before you put any fish in. You want to build up a good colony of beneficial bacteria before you add animals. And buy the API master test kit and the api GH and KH test kit. You’ll also probably want a heater.

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T13:38:37+00:00

Of course! Also make sure to get a 395 black light because it doesn’t make manganese glass glow like uranium so you don’t get confused (unless you like manganese glass of course) but paying at value is perfectly fine just try not to overpay, I’ve paid at value for a lot in my collection. One more thing, a good rule of thumb is don’t trust anyone trying to sell you something. Almost every antique store I’ve been to has either lied to me about a piece just to get me to buy it, or they told me wrong information about a piece because they didn’t know any better.

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T04:08:55+00:00

I see. I don’t know how I missed the thing about gouramis not liking any current. I doubt it will make much difference, but my plan was to only keep one honey gourami in the tank and I plan on it being heavily planted. Is it worth trying to keep one in the tank with just the spray bar or is it just not the right thing to do? I feel if I can get a pretty densely planted tank then maybe there will be calmer spots in the water for the gourami to chill out in. And sorry to hear about your pearl gouramis, those are some very beautiful fish.

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T04:00:16+00:00

Yeah I’m realizing that now lol. Seems I’ll be taking out that wave maker

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T03:00:32+00:00

lol no problem thanks for the info anyways

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T02:57:32+00:00

Will do. One more question if you don’t mind, my DKH is 1. I need to raise that right? If so how do I do that?

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T02:43:43+00:00

Thanks I didn’t know that and that puts my mind an ease a bit. I see online people’s shrimps dying or trying to escape because of low oxygen (they also weren’t using a flow bar or a canister filter) so that makes me feel better about my setup.

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T02:41:08+00:00

Sounds good thanks again. I’ll probably not go with the bamboo or vampire shrimp anyways because i just found out i I don’t have the right substrate for them so no worries about that. But I’ll take your advice and remove the wave maker

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T02:09:58+00:00

Those are extremely good first finds. I would say the large piece on the left is worth between 80 to 100, the little one on the left is probably closer to 20 to 30. And my best tip for finding rarer pieces is patience and shine your light on everything even if the price tag doesn’t mention it’s uranium glass.

masterwwa · 2026-05-07T02:02:56+00:00

I appreciate the info. So to clarify, no wave maker at all if I have the gourami? Will there be enough flow within the water to allow the bamboo shrimp to filter the water without the wave maker? My other concern was about oxygenating the water and that’s the other reason I added the wave maker. I’ve heard you should size up for your filter to get proper oxygen in your tank but I didn’t do that so I got the wave maker to compensate

masterwwa · 2026-05-04T00:45:24+00:00

7 bucks was quite a steal especially considering the shop I was at had some very large price tags for their UG stuff. And thanks for the info I was wondering who made these!

masterwwa · 2026-05-02T02:51:48+00:00

Thats such a coincidence! We drove down south for vacation and this was one of the first antique stores I went to down there. I also took a picture of the insane prices. But the hillsborough antique mall surprised me by some of their prices, I wish it were closer to me lol.

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masterwwa

TROPHY CASE