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My guys readily eat frozen bloodworms. Any small live prey (brine shrimp, small scuds or blackworms, baby ghost shrimp, etc.) will be eaten. Daphnia and copepods are easily cultured in buckets with a little vegetable matter such as grass clippings added. If the buckets are left outdoors...

N.A. natives aren't all big bruisers; plenty of natives do fine in 10 gallon or even smaller tanks. Pygmy sunfish and some of the smaller killies and darters are great for planted pico tanks.

Not a good combo. Ropefish like to lie around on the bottom, which makes them much more vulnerable to the crayfish. As the ropefish gets larger, he will in turn become a threat to the cray, especially when the cray is freshly molted.

Pygmy sunfish! Very small, pretty, not insanely prolific, love dense vegetation.

Least killies (actually livebearers) are a good choice for feeder-breeders. A small heavily planted tank will produce plenty. Mosquitofish young are fine, but don't keep adults in the tank with your angels- they are vicious fin-nippers. Just as an aside- you guys whose pet shops carry rosies...

Does your basement get warmer in the summer or is the temp pretty constant? 74 F is not a problem for most temperate species, especially if there's plenty of current and surface agitation. Several people at the NANFA forum keep darters at similar temps.

Yep. There are freshwater amphipods and isopods too! Most people just don't introduce them to their tanks; the live rock concept hasn't caught on in freshwater.

They look like copepods to me. These guys are harmless and feed on bacteria, euglenoids, and other tiny organisms in the water column. If the population is booming, it may be a sign that you are overfeeding.

Now you can get some serious shrimp!

According to the manufacturer, double-bagging does not inhibit gas exchange.

Hybridization is extremely unlikely. Despite their similar appearances, Gambusia and Poecilia are not that closely related within Poeciliidae. Also, they have different chromosome numbers (2n=48 in Gambusia, 46 in guppy/Endler).

Beautiful! I suspect your Ludwigia is L. grandiflora, AKA L. uruguayensis. The leaves are alternate, right?

I always double them up just in case. I haven't had any misfortunes yet.

There are some dark granites as well. Don't worry too much about the acid test; limestones and other carbonates are harmless unless you are going for a softwater setup.

They are fairly common in lakes and slow-moving streams; you just have to look very closely at the substrate to see them. There are some big ones out there. Senescent colonies of Pectinatella magnifica start washing up on lake shores around here this time of year. I don't know how easy it would...

A chisel and mallet is probably the best thing. You could also use a power drill and a big spade bit.

Golden club! That's a very nice plant. It gets pretty large; how big a tank do you have it in? You've got me thinking about a redesign of my riparium (thanks for the name, by the way; I'd just been calling mine a landless paludarium). I may continue to use pots for my plants and replace the...

The root pattern and shape remind me of redcedar, but it doesn't have the brightly colored heartwood. Telling us what part of the world you are in will help narrow it down. If you're in western NA then thorpbrian's suggestion of Douglas fir seems likely to me.

My substrate is just play sand and gravel, so it's nutritionally empty. I have only two plants rooted directly in the substrate, neither an emergent - a Cabomba caroliniana and a Potamogeton diversifolius. I really need to add some sturdier submersed plants, because my siren mauls these...

Neat! If it were my tank I would go for a low-tech planted tank with some low-bioload critters, maybe cherry red shrimp and some small livebearers. A sponge filter would be all you really need; even that would be unnecessary if you plant heavily.