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Tough one... I not only admire fish for their physical beauty, but for their behavior and uniqueness. Take a few closeup shots with a camera and you can find some beauty in the scale patterns of what some might consider unattractive species. Or observe their behavior at different times of the...

It's fungus. When it eats all the leftover organic material that it prefers to eat, it will go away. I can't really comment if it's harmful or not, that would depend on what species of fungus it is.

Instructions on how to recharge can be found here.

I'd have to echo what everyone else has said. I have owned several aquaclears over the years and they have all been great filters. It's certainly possible you might have gotten a bad one though. Just like any company, every once in a while a bad product gets through and shipped out.

I used to sell rainbows on aquabid. Definitely check feedback as not everyone on there is a good seller, but also communicate with the sellers. Sometimes the new guys turn out to be really good. Ask about shipping procedures, quality control, and stock origin. Simple questions such as these...

When you say smell, what type of smell? Even a healthy tank will have an earthy odor, but an offensive odor isn't normal and clue you in to a problem brewing.

Nope. :) The bubbles rising through the tube pull water with them which in turn pulls water through the sponge.

They can tolerate pH over 7.2, so I wouldn't mess with your pH at all. pH adjusters that don't bother to buffer your water are notorious for being unable to hold pH at a stable value. Why would you want to add another chemical to your tank's environment that isn't going to have much if any...

Yes, do nothing :) It's best not to do anything. More well meaning fish keepers do much more harm than good trying to hit a target pH or KH when their native one is fine. It's a delicate and sometimes complicated process. Unless you have a very specific reason for doing so, it's best to be...

Yes, I had timers on mine.

Yes, this is fine to do. A siesta period helps with algae growth and lets people view their fish when they want to see them. Unless you have live plants, you don't need to have the lights on unless you want to view them. The fish can see fine with ambient lighting unless you keep your room...

Keep in mind, this is a public discussion forum and anyone can register and post. When you ask a question, it is usually best to wait for a few replies. Most often if someone gives a tidbit of bad advice, someone with more experience will pop in and give the correct advice shortly thereafter...

It's not that bad :) But you can always rinse out your mouth with something to kill any germs that may have gotten in there. I'm not a doctor so I can't recommend what to use. Use common sense :)

I can't speak for stores across the pond, but for stores here in my area of the US, they pay the employees almost nothing. So this attracts mostly people who really don't know much to begin with. The store trains them for about 2 hours from a manual and puts up stickers on the tanks on what is...

The real issue here is why would you want to alter your pH. Most often altering your pH is a delicate painstaking process to maintain and get right. Unless you have a very specific reason for doing so, like for breeding wild angels, it should be avoided. If it is simply because a website says...

Stable pH is far more important than correct pH. More than likely if you got them locally, they were already used to your local tap water's pH. no need to try and match their native conditions unless you were going to try and breed them. Far too much emphasis is placed on pH. Water quality...

Ok, inbreeding, never brother to sister. Get 2 lines going. Father to daughter is OK, but NEVER brother to sister. Two lines for the same trait is OK. Mother to son is OK. (Talking fish here people, not humans LOL) It's Best to go with 2 or more lines breeding for the same traits and then...

LV, I'm not sure on your market there in SA, but here in the US there's a decent market for Rainbows. Easy to breed, cheap to raise and they command a decent price. On the average I was getting +-100 a spawning and it cost me $1 (counting the cost of overhead) to raise a fry and I would get a...

Looks as if there is enough of a seal there to hold. Those are bubbles in the silicone, but they are sealed all the way around, so no harm there. Keep a watch to see if they get any closer to the inside edge. If they do then you will need to re-silicone that edge.

20% changes every few days. They might be suffering from what is referred to old tank syndrome and too quick of a change can shock them. They will need time to acclimate to new conditions. If you need to move the tank, save the old water and refill with the old water. Feed sparingly during...

Messing with your native pH can be difficult. Ph up and down are bad bad things. They don't work well as you have discovered becayse they do nothing to buffer your KH and GH allowing your pH to swing wildly back to it's original value. But you should test the water in which your stock comes...

Simple, effective, and cheap. These have been the secret (or not so secret) of breeders for years. Squeezing a dirty sponge from a mature filter will seed a sponge filter. Be sure to continue a fish less cycle afterwards to ensure you get a good strong culture going.

I loved mine. My favorite fish of all time. Their colors do improve with age, and you might notice that at different times of day as well. They tend to flash more in the early morning and have the best color early in the morning, but all day after a water change you get to watch a breeding...

Usually those white marks are bruises on the lips from bumping into too short of a tank or tank decorations, or an infection from too dirty water, of a tank, or filters. They are common to new rainbow owners and I fought with that for a while when I first got mine. You need to have spot on...

Some fish can tolerate much higher than a reading of 100. As for the thick covering of algae, I'd say there's where a good bit of the nitrates are going.

Nice youngsters.

I'm sure that if he does a 50% water change every 18 months his stock will feel pretty horrible for a while. Depending on if he has an under gravel filter and does a gravel vacuum, this might not have as big of an impact as you might think though. Often people who use an under gravel filter...

As mentioned, Old Tank Syndrome. Over time, fish will adapt to very high nitrates, etc and other species of bacteria will develop to take care of other types of waste that we don't test for. Anerobic bacteria develop in the substrate that doesn't get stirred up, and who knows what else. The...

Purigen vs. Carbon Purigen is a better choice in value over time. Carbon is non reusable and over time costs way more. The bleach recharge is safe. I have used purigen many times and have performed the recharge safely many times as well. You just have to remember that the chlorine...

I'm sure it is. I would suppose using a bleach/water solution would do the trick, but you would kill all of your beneficial bacteria in the process on the affected rings.

+1 on the sponges. While they don't provide as much surface area as ceramic rings, they have many advantages. The biggest being they are easy to clean. If a ceramic ring gets clogged deeper than surface deep, you might as well throw it away. If a sponge gets clogged, you can easily clean it...

Once a day is fine. The fish food manufactures and lfs want you to feed more so they can sell you more food :) Feeding more often won't hurt, it just makes more waste.

The forktail rainbows will be quite active and may stress out the bettas. I've never herd of them being kept together so I can't speak from experience however.

Oh! My fault, I misread the original post. Sorry about that!

It is true they do a 300% markup on cost. However when you factor in the overhead (food, losses, meds, accidents, customers, etc) and other misc costs they break even on livestock most of the time. I worked for 3 LFS and knew several LFS owners very well. Of course I'm speaking of your small...

Try a 50/50 mix with tap and see what your tds turn out to be. Watch your KH though you don't want it to drop out too low or you might get wild pH swings. You may need to buffer it a little or try mixing 75% tap to 25% RO. Your waste will always have a higher TDs than your tap. It's the...

It depends. As said above, if you live in a rural area, it may be safe. But also, rain water is devoid of any trace minerals. You would need to add trace minerals to it to make it suitable for fish (kind of like using straight distilled water.) You could mix it 50/50 with tap water and check...

Keep in mind, LFS are in business to make money. They are stores that have fish. They don't really make money on the fish, they make money on the supplies. I have received quite a lot of bad advice from LFS. Now that I know what bad advice is and what good advice is, it's surprising how much...

+1 to TwoTankAmin. I noticed on my last fish-less cycle that once my nitrites got over 5 ppm it took them forever to drop until I started performing water changes. No need to overfeed the bacteria. Once you get your nitrites processing well, start dosing daily again for your qualifying week...

Silicone is pretty tough stuff, plus it's flexible. If they use it to seal the edges, id trust it pretty well (but i'd still keep a close eye on it)