u/crisp_cove52

Had six corydoras for about a year and they always just sort of hung out near the heater, never really schooled, just scattered around the bottom doing their own thing. Read somewhere that six is kind of a bare minimum and they actually feel more secure in bigger groups, so a few weeks ago I added six more panda cories to bring the total to twelve.

The difference honestly surprised me. Within a few days they started moving together as a loose group, foraging across the substrate in a pack instead of each one picking its own spot. Now when one gets spooked and darts off, the whole group follows instead of just that one fish bolting alone. Feeding time looks completely different too, they all converge on the same area and work through the substrate together instead of being spread out across the tank.

I knew the "shoaling species need bigger groups" advice in theory but seeing it play out was a different thing. My tank is a 55 gallon so bioload wasn't really a worry, filtration handles it fine and I kept up with slightly more frequent water changes the first couple weeks just to be safe.

Only downside is I definitely underestimated how much substrate disturbance twelve cories create compared to six. My sand gets rearranged into little dunes overnight now, which honestly I don't mind, just wasn't expecting it.

Anyone else notice a similar shift in behavior after increasing a cory group? Curious if there's a point of diminishing returns or if more is just generally better for them within reason.

Three of us spent most of Saturday in a system I've been visiting on and off since I joined the local grotto last year. There's a section past the second squeeze that nobody on the current roster had actually surveyed, mostly because getting the tape and compass through that crawl is miserable and everyone kept putting it off.

We finally did it. Took about five hours for maybe sixty meters of actual passage, which sounds absurd until you're the one lying on your side trying to read a compass while your helmet light fogs up from the humidity. The crawl itself isn't dangerous, just tight and low enough that you're basically breathing against the ceiling for a stretch. One spot required taking the pack off and pushing it ahead separately.

What made it worth it was finding a small side lead about two thirds of the way through that opens into a little dome room nobody had logged before. Nothing huge, maybe four meters of relief, but there's some decent flowstone starting to form on one wall and a draft coming from somewhere we couldn't immediately trace. That draft is now the thing everyone in the club wants to chase next.

Drew up the rough sketch last night with the raw numbers from the Suunto and tape. Still needs cleaning up before it goes into the official file, but it already shows the passage trending a bit differently than the old hand-drawn map from the eighties suggested. Makes me wonder how much of our older cave data is just slightly off because nobody wanted to crawl back in and double check it.

Anyone else have a system in their area with a section that's technically mapped but everyone secretly knows the survey was rushed or guessed at? Curious how common this actually is.

Not a huge milestone in the grand scheme of things but I've been stuck on this for way too long so I need to share it somewhere people will actually get it.

Started riding back in May, mostly just trying to get comfortable going in a straight line without grabbing a fence every ten feet. Free mounting took me about six weeks to feel natural, and once that clicked I got kind of cocky and assumed idling would come just as fast. It did not. I spent probably three months rocking back and forth like a broken metronome, always leaning too far one way and bailing before I could even get a second rock going.

What finally helped was slowing everything down way more than felt right. I kept trying to idle at a pace that felt "normal" and my brain just couldn't process the balance corrections fast enough. Once I forced myself to go almost comically slow, barely rocking the pedals at all, something clicked and I could suddenly feel where my weight needed to be over the seat. Did it against a wall for support at first, then tried it freestanding in my driveway yesterday and got about eight rocks before I put a foot down. Tried again this morning before work and got fifteen.

My commute is only about a mile and a half so I don't get a ton of practice time riding to places, most of my skill work happens in a church parking lot near my house on weekend mornings when nobody's around to watch me fall. Curious if anyone else found that slowing way down was the trick for idling, or if there's another cue that worked better for you. Also open to hearing what skill to chase next once idling feels more solid, I keep hearing hopping is a natural next step but it looks terrifying from where I'm standing.