5/1/2025 ; introduction to the 30 gallon

behold, my lovely 30 gallon tank! i guess starting from the beginning, i initially set this tank up in early december to begin cycling. the substrate consists of aquasoil capped with some plain white sand from caribsea. i did add some root tabs throughout the substrate as well since i knew i would be heavily planting it. as far as hardscape goes, pretty straightforward with just cool rocks i've collected on hikes. i did eventually get some dragonstone that i was using partially to help hold down the big piece of mangrove wood, but i do like how it looks! i actually have one more piece i never put in, that i'm saving for another project.

for plants, i've got some lovely amazon swords, an ozelot sword, lots of java ferns, anubias tied to the wood, and some jungle val. can't forget the water lettuce and duckweed on the top either! i swear, my water lettuce grows faster than i can stay on top of it. every other week i'm scooping out multiple handfuls because it starts blocking the light and i can't feed the fish! but, i'm not complaining, because this stuff is the reason i barely have to do water changes on this tank.

yes, yes, i know. not doing water changes is a bit controversial in the fishkeeping hobby, and i can attest it's not for everyone. depending on your setup, the amount of live plants, and how many fish you have, you can do just fine with a once a month water change, or need to do them weekly. in my case, this water lettuce sucks up all the nitrates from my fish, and i regularly test the tank and paramaters are perfect! on top of plenty of live plants, i regularly stock the tank with botanicals like mango, jackfruit, and avocado leaves (thanks to my uncle for supplying), sweet gum pods, and indian almond leaves. not only does it turn the water a lovely tea brown, the fish and shrimp in here love to munch the biofilm that eventually starts to grow on it.

now on to the fun part, what little guys i have in here! initially i had 9 black neon tetras, 2 peacock gudgeons, and 3 otocinclus catfish. i unfortunately recently lost ALL of the tetras at once, due to doing a big water change before we moved and it stunned them :(( one of my peacock gudgeons swam up the filter and ended up actually breaking it, so i'm down to 1. and the other 2 otocinclus catfish... honestly i'm not sure what happened to them. they just sort of disappeared one day and i never saw them again. there are a lot of hiding places in here, so who knows where they went... right now though, i've got 7 male guppies as my main schooling fish, 1 peacock gudgeon, 1 pearl gourami, 1 oto, and 5 peppered cory cats!

this is plomby, my pearl gourami! he is the biggest fucking jerk on the planet, but i do love him very much! when it comes to feeding time, he does his best to hog as much of the food as possible, and keep the other guys away from it. he was such a tiny baby when i first got him, but look how beautiful he's turned out! his pearly dots are so bright, and his orange underbelly is super colorful. sometimes he'll build bubble nests, and then go up and down from the bottom of the tank with mouthfuls of sand to blow onto the bubbles. apparently they do this to make the bubbles stronger, because if there were eggs, he would be putting them amongst the bubbles! i would love to breed him one day and raise some baby gouramis!

here is the best photo i could get of the guppies! i got these guys about a month ago at this point, maybe 2 weeks after the tetras passed. now listen, if you would have talked to be before i got these guys, i would have told you i wasn't the biggest fan of guppies. they just seemed... tacky to me for some reason. i don't know why i thought this, i guess i just associated them with cheesy tanks with colored gravel and fake decorations. but i went to petsmart one day, and as i was looking through the fish section, i saw one of the tanks with these 7 guys in it. i was like "dang, those guppies are pretty nice!". having just lost the tetras, i was in need of a new schooling fish. they did have black neons, but they didn't look great, so i opted for the guppies. i just told the person at petsmart "give me all the guys in there". and thus, my mind was changed about guppies!

honestly, having them has been such a treat. they have colored up so nicely, and their tails have grown in SO much since i first got them. they more or less school together, and seem like they're always exploring and looking around the tank. one of the biggest things that turned me off about guppies was that they seemed too "chaotic". they never really schooled together whenever i saw them at the pet store. but having them in this more natural, planted environment i think has brought out more of their natural behavior! i wouldn't say they school like a tetra, more like shoaling where they more or less stick together. but their colors is what i really like! they're dumbo guppies with a mix of either cobra or mosaic tail patterns. and since their tails have grown in, i can really appreciate the full extent of the patterns! i plan to get at least 3 or 4 females at some point just to even out the group. i know they'll breed, but the babies will most likely get eaten before they get any bigger.

last but not least, the cory cats! so i originally only had 1. i had gotten a group of 3, but 1 didn't make the drive home and the other disappeared while we were moving! since i had to scoop everyone out of the tank to move it, i couldn't find him so he stayed in the tank and i never saw him again... so of course our 1 lonely guy needed some friends! he had grown considerably since i had him for a couple months. thankfully they had plenty when i went to petsmart, so i got him 4 new baby friends! the size difference between them is crazy. big cory was definitely this small when i got him, but he looks HUGE next to these babies! these guys are so damn cute!! i have never seen a species of fish that so obviously enjoys the company of others of its kind. these guys are inseparable!

i always see them in a group together, just huddled around swimming next to each other. when feeding time comes, big cory leads the way and all the little guys follow him in a line. they all graze together on the bottom, filtering their food out of the sand and then puffing the sand out through their gills. but yeah, always together, never leaving each other! there's a little cave underneath the dragonstone that they all hide out in. when i put leaves in the tank, they all go and chill under them. they'll sometimes swim to the top and eat algae off the bottom of the water lettuce, or dart to the surface, take a breath of air, and then swim back to the bottom. so entertaining to watch them just do their thing!

amongst all the fishies, i also have 2 nerite snails, and a dozen ghost shrimp! the shrimp unfortunately don't last long, because plomby is a jerk and likes to chase them, but the ones that do survive are HUGE. i'm currently growing a hair algae wall on the back wall of the tank since the sun shines in through the window, and i often see the shrimp grazing on it like little cows eating grass. the tank is also home to lots of microfauna like copepods, nematodes, and hydra! the hydra especially are very cool to watch. they're essentially like freshwater anemones, with long tentacles to catch things drifting by. all signs of a healthy, well-rounded ecosystem!

anyways, i do have some more fish projects in the works, and i'll definitely be posting about them here!