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IMHO: The only thing enjoyable to stock in a 5 gallon tank is a betta... perhaps with some snails and/or shrimp. The minimum suggested size of a school of neon tetras is 6... and with 5 you're already pushing stock limits. (Live Aquaria lists 10 gallons as the minimum tank size for neons)

OK, no more new fish for this tank for a while... Came in this morning to two more guppies dead AND the betta died too... The guppies had surely been in the tank for less than two weeks. But the betta has been in there for at least a month. Yet at the same time, it looks like the fin of the...

Well, the male I added yesterday was dead this morning. :( But everyone else seems to be fine (including the two females I added along with the male yesterday). No new fin nipping. Since I'm not in the office at night, there's no way for me to exclude that possibility. But during the day, I'm...

There's a chance she might eat the shrimp... but she might not.

I believe all the guppies came from a local PetSmart, but they've come from at least three different shipments. Two guppies MIGHT have come from Petco... don't remember for sure, but during this time I also purchased 6 Red Cherry shrimp from Petco. More than half died the 1st night. During...

I've got a 13 gallon 'LED' tank at the office that I've had for two years. For about a month, the inhabitants were a 2yo Neon Tettra, Cosmic Blue GloFish Tetra, a male Betta. I've been trying to add a set of guppies (4 female and 1 male), but they keep dying on me. Not all at once. Usually...

Since it sounds like it shouldn't be a problem, let it run for three weeks. Afterwards, the only way to know if it is safe to remove is yo remove it and test water parameters at least 24 hours later. However, if the filter dries out, you will kill the bacterial colony. So when you remove it, it...

Not familiar with any of the filters you've listed... but you don't want to simply remove two working filters and replace them with one uncycled filter. Your filter media is where most of your nitrifying bacteria is located. Sure, there will be some on the rocks and such, but not enough to...

I don't see it as a bad idea, but I'm not sure how much help it is going to be. I don't know how much nitrifying bacteria is going to grow on a submerged decoration. The ideal material would be filter material from an established tank's filter; that's where the majority of nitrifying bacteria...

When a day's worth of food can good from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate in one day, the tank is cycled. One thing to check to know if you are building up any nitrates is to test your water source. It's possible for you water to already have some nitrates in them before you ever add it to the tank.

The fact that you started with water from an existing tank means very little. The bacteria that drive the nitrogen cycle mostly live in filter material and other surfaces in the tank. B is right in that you have to expect cycling to take a month (or more). While you might want to read up on...

Think about two things: Nature and Algae. In nature, fish see day light for about 8 to 14 hours per day (depending upon where they live and what time of year it is). So if you want to simulate the nature environment, you likely want to have the lights on for this amount of time at a minimum...

I've had great success with Water Sprite in my planted tank. It does better than the anubias. However, because of the way Water Sprite asexually reproduces, you'll have to occasionally remove dying parts of the plant as "children" sometimes take over. (Child plant will develop by new roots...

One obvious solution is to get a water heater and put it in the RO water while you let it sit for a day.

An exception to the rule. Gourami is a close relative to the betta, close enough that they are likely to fight just as if you placed two gouramis or two bettas in the same tank.

Don't see the need to get a 2nd tank just to start over. The sort of thing I've done when wanting to start a tank over is to simply move everything over to a bucket temporarily while I get the old tank cleaned up. (In the case of a cycled tank, that also means keeping the filter media wet by...

Takes less than a day for other fish (or snails) to eat a dead fish.

Cherry shrimp were the 1st thing that came to my mind as well.

The only thing I could come up with to stock a 10 gallon tank without over stocking the tank is a small school (6) of neon tettras, or a betta tank.

From what I understand, cyanobacteria, algae, and diatoms are everywhere and therefore I doubt your water source is your problem. It's sort of like mold... you don't have to have a certain type of water to get mold in your house... you simply have to provide the right type of environment and...

From what I read, you don't want charcoal in the filter of a planted tank because the charcoal will absorb some of the micro nutrients that the plants need. I haven't wanted to get into dealing with CO2... instead I make sure I have an air bubbler beyond what is basically needed so that the...

I've got no direct experience with dealing with soft water, a little bit of quick researching suggests putting crushed coral in the tank as a source of minerals to harden the water. Of course as you do water changes, you don't want to make sudden changes to the water quality. You should be...

My first tank was a relatively simple 10 gallon fish tank for a goldfish, but still cost over $100: Tank ~$10 Filter ~$20 Sand ~$10 Cover ~$15 Florescent light ~$30 Decoration ~$10 Test Kits ~$15 Plants ~$15 And that's before you get to the maintenance items: Water Conditioner Food Siphon for...

I don't recall much of anything that was all that special. I started with a Marineland 5 gallon corner tank. I did a fishless cycle based on the articles in the sticky thread at the top of the "getting started" sub-forum. The only details about that that I can recall is that I used Ace...

It should take about a month to 6 weeks or more before a tank cycles and you consistently get readings of zero for ammonia and nitrites. If you have had the tank setup for less than a month, readings of zero would be suspicious.