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You say you use coral sand as a buffer. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when using a substrate material like coral sand or crushed coral, it is essential to keep a check on your hardness. If for some reason you waited a little longer than normal to perform your water change or changed...

Now, I like that idea OM. The health benefits of feeding live food is well known, and using this resource like that only makes sense.

Yep, those are hydra. No real danger to medium to large fish, but small fish and fry are at risk. Not sure on the second picture though.

That's green water. It is caused by the presence of ammonia (even trace amounts that are too low to be detected by our test kits) and light. Luckily it is not too difficult to treat, I recommend the blackout method. What you do is perform an 80% or larger water change, leave the lights off...

Take it back. Not only do the need to be in groups, but they also need a 4 foot tank.

This is very bad advice. While stunting fish may be a common practice, it's cruel. Imagine living your entire life in a closet with no way out.

Scary.

Clear eggs are fertile. When they turn white, it just means that they may not have been fertilized or either the male or female may be young. It is not unheard of for the first few batches of eggs to be infertile, but over time as the pair matures they produce more fertile eggs. Try setting...

It sounds as if your alpha fish has left the tank, and the ember tetra has assumed the role. Tetras need to be in groups of 6+, and upping their numbers may resolve this issue for you.

These guys can get to a foot long, so really a smaller tank would not be advised.

This is actually true. Bignose said here (post number 3):

My only concerns will be price and availability. Undoubtedly the suppliers would be the ones administering the vaccine, and they would surely pass on any cost incurred. This would drive the price of fish up by quite a bit. Suddenly a $2 fish sells for $10, and there is no way to tell if they...

Sorry for the slow reply, I've been at the zoo all weekend! Rainbows and angels do fine together. I have kept them together in the past, and the fast rainbows can easily get out of the way of a boisterous angelfish. Remember, with rainbows having more females than males is the way to go. Too...

Hope you have a massive filter to handle all that fish load!

Try romaine lettuce. Some fish go nuts for the stuff, and it's good for them. You can even use the seaweed wraps for sushi (nori) and it can be found in most supermarkets.

It takes a while for the bacteria to develop that break down ammonia, certainly more than a week if you did not use any mature media. I would save my reagents until then.

In short, yes you can. It's going to take a bit of work though to get it ready. You need to get rid of the salt and salt creep that is often found in saltwater tanks. The best method for this is rinsing all the surfaces of the tank with fresh water a few times. If there is any limescale...

If you know for a fact that chlorine is the only thing used in your tap water, you can always go the ultra cheap way and order some sodium thiosulfate crystals.

I'm not sure where he gets his information from about them being good in a 180L gallon aquarium, but it was probably the internet. He probably just searched the internet until he found a page saying that it could be done. 209L 200L 209L 3 foot (some people stop here, but the conflicting...

That pleco is too big for a 30 gallon tank. A 9 or 10 inch fish needs more space than a 30 gallon can provide, plus they produce a lot of waste. Have a look at Panaque albomaculatus or a Panaque maccusor even a nice L002? The rest of the fish look fine though.

:fish:

Well, there you go! Someone has done the effort for you. Wow, I am sure it took him less time to open the new topic (do the work for you, lazybones) than it did to type all that jabber above, but I suppose IC1 has won the battle, he got someone else to do the work for him.

Whether you dilute it or not, there is only so much chemical. If you add water you will need to use more to get the same effect making the whole process of dilution pointless. Honestly, I always add too much on purpose to ensure that the water is dechlorinated. You never know when your water...

Tetras can be funny. When they are kept in a group of at least 6 they tend to exhibit schooling behavior and that little bit of aggression that they naturally have is spread around to the other members of the group. It's entirely possible that since you didn't have 6 of the same species for...

No, sorry that would dilute the Prime and the chlorine from the tap would use some of it up.

Wow! They have a few large koi at the fishing lake near where I live. They can get huge!

Unless you are going for a heavily planted setup, I would hold off on the plants for now. Plants will remove ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate from the water column and they could affect your cycle. There is talk that cycling isn't really needed in some heavily planted tank setups as the plants...

I've used slate in my setups for many years with great success. If it changes water chemistry, I haven't noticed it. I have really soft water so If it were making the water harder, I am sure I would have noticed the change in KH and GH (I keep a real close eye on this!)

I must say, I've never seen or heard of anyone actually keeping a cold water marine tank before. Brilliant! Such originality should be celebrated! Please send in a write up and some pictures to PFK, I would love to read that article.

I have to agree with Assaye on this one. Some of the species you have selected aren't suitable.

I live very close to you Gvilleguy as you know. My water reads the same as yours minus the ammonia. The only way that I have found to keep the pH stable is to use crushed coral in the filter. Many people will say that it's not good to do so, but in our situation it can be an asset. While...

If we say the hardness scale goes Very hard > Moderately hard > Soft > Very soft, yours rates as soft with those results. A KH of 4 is what is said to be adequate to keeping your pH stable. I would say stay away from African cichlids and other very hard water fish, but as far as anything...

About the tight school. While most tetras are schooling fish, some keepers have found that if you fill a tank with schooling fish and nothing else, they don't school because schooling is a natural defense against predators. If there is nothing to defend against, then they won't school. If you...

In this case if you are finding high levels of ammonia between possible water changes, you might invest in some Prime water conditioner and overdose the tank a bit with it. Prime will detoxify ammonia, effectively turning it into ammonium and helping you bridge the gap between water changes...

Just hover the end of the water changing tube a few centimeters over the debris and it will be sucked up :)

Really, there was very little scientific information proving the writer's point in that article, in fact he speculates as to why UGF have fallen by the wayside. Some of the writers points may have been valid, but most are just feature observations. Some of the strengths the writer suggested...

Something we haven't hinted on here is tank maintenance. While it might be true that some of the calcium may leach into the water, this takes time, and with regular maintenance the rate at which the calcium may dissolve shouldn't be a problem. We can use crushed coral to buffer our water, but...

I doubt it. Fin rot is a fungal or bacterial infection (or both at the same time.) Melafix is an antibacterial med and pimafix is an anti fungal med, so in essence you treated correctly as long as you followed the instructions. There have been reports that neither medication does very much to...

Boesemani rainbows get fairly large at 4 to 5 inches in total length and they need to be kept in groups of at least 6. 20 gallons is too small for them unfortunately. If you were to keep only boesemani rainbows you would need a tank at least 3 feet long and at least 30 gallons.

Have you checked behind and under any furniture in the room? Fish love to flop when out of water and they can get into any small openings such as under a chair or couch or behind the tank stand.