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You should test yourself, rather than having your water tested. There's a lot of reasons - some pet shops will tell you bad water is "fine," or they'll say water is fine when it's not immediately problematic (for example, low nitrite, around 0.25 ppm, isn't immediately harmful, but indicates the...

Some killifish (especially annual species that live in temporary pools for a single season) are very hard to come by through normal means. There's basically only two species that I ever see at the LFS (golden wonders and blue panchax). There's a lot of killifish breeder associations, which are...

A variation on NonstickRon's solution that works well for me, I drop an unbroken algae wafer and some unbroken shrimp pellets at one end of the tank, where my keyhole cichlids and bristlenose claim - these three fish will claim food they have no intention of eating, and will defend it for...

I'm glad to hear you're sticking with it. You've made an excellent first step, doing your research and learning about how much is involved now, instead of the all-to-common way of coming here only after pet store advice has failed and left you frustrated. A good start like this really helps the...

Simply put, the water quality declined and became toxic. Since you didn't do a fishless cycle first, or monitor and control water quality after getting the danios, the water likely had high ammonia levels when you got your platys. Fish introduced into poor water quality often are stressed worse...

Normally, I don't, however, my tank is pretty heavily protected from this sort of thing. I did learn the hard way that my ground fault inturrupt plugs won't kick in when a heater is shorted out until I ground the tank trying to remove it, but at least I didn't kill myself learning that.

Do you have fish in the tank? If not, then it's probably just grit out of the gravel. If dye is coming off the gravel, I'd get rid of it. I've heard of colored gravel losing its color over years, but not days, so it can't be good. The grit can be removed by water changes and rinsing the gravel...

The tank is well insulated by glass - there isn't enough electricity going through it to hurt the fish when there's a short, until you ground the system by touching the water yourself.

Also, in most cases, the water in the shop's display tanks isn't all the water in the system. What looks like five 20 gallon display tanks might actually be part of the same water body, hooked up to a 100 gallon sump filter in the back room. You can get away with ridiculous temporary stocking...

Either. Healthy live plants take in ammonia, so they do form a part of your biofilter, and will aid in the cycle slightly (it's not a major difference unless you really pack them in). Best to go with hardy plants, particularly fast growing stemmed plants, during the cycle. Valis and bacopa are...

Probably, congo tetras get bigger than some of my fish, which have eaten bigger shrimp than cherries on me.

Never apologize for being a pain. I think this is the only forum I know on the internet where you won't be criticized for asking a question you might have found if you played with the search function enough. Simply put, every part of the hobby has enough variables that every situation is a bit...

Simple answer: No. All puffers are at least semi-aggressive (Some are called "peaceful," but it's in the same way that mbuna are sometimes called peaceful - it's relative to their aggressive cousins). Thanks to their beaks, they're equipped to turn fin nipping into lethal damage. Long answer...

There's a few brands for dried bloodworm. A small can from Tetra is I think $2 or $3, a bit more for better brands, and it'll last a long time if you're only feeding once or twice a week. I get much better results with frozen than dried, though - many of my fish barely touch the dried stuff. I...

I've lost a few, but I still have my first fish - a shoal of 6 black widow tetras. My second fish were two blue panchax, the male killed his mate, but I still have him. Those tetras have been through hell - I botched the end of my fishless cycle, so they were swimming in ammonia before I...

They like live food. I've never kept one for lack of a 1000 gallon tank, but my LFS has one just shy of 2 feet, and he seems a bit bigger every time I visit. The store owner fed him on livebearer fry until he got big enough to start taking feeder goldfish (he eats 6" goldfish now). It took him a...

Fishless cycling is a bit daunting, but it's not much work, and it literally does itself, you just watch it happen and add some stuff for a month. Cycling with fish is often a lot of work, but if you go into it knowing how to manage it, even that can be done without breaking your back. The...

Feed in small amounts as they finish for 2-3 minutes. Controllable, and easy to avoid excess food fouling the tank. You don't have any bottom feeders, but this method does mean they need special sinking food, which is harder to gauge food with, but there's other considerations there I won't...

Once a day for 2-3 minutes is enough. Every other day is sustainable, but with daily feeding, fish can usually miss a week or more without going hungry. Less is usually better - it's actually pretty hard to starve fish to death.

I've seen good things about the Nutrafin kit. A couple people have said it's better than the API kit in some ways.

A bristlenose plec would be great. Active, peaceful (can get a bit pushy at feeding time), and are smaller than a gull grown CAE.

How big was the tank again? Glass cats get quite large (4-6 inches), and need good sized groups, so they can take a big bite out of stocking. Rainbowfish are peaceful, active, colorful, and most are reasonably hardy IME (granted I've only kept a couple species). They vary a lot in size - some...

How tall is the tank? Sometimes in tanks more than 12 inches tall, they have trouble getting to the surface for air. They also aren't good at competing with more active bottom feeders like corys. Really, no. Probably not bad, but not necessary, and not as beneficial as LFS often claim it is...

Even being skeptical, I wouldn't mind getting ahold of it and testing. The part that bothers me, these products claim to work because marine fish only require a high specific gravity and not the ionic content of salt water. If it works at all, I think it would be best case scenario like using...

Eventually, it probably will. Some people get lucky and have a relatively laid back one, but as they mature they switch diet from algae to meat, which usually means the slime coat, scales, fins and eyes of other fish.

As rabbut said, strips are notoriously inaccurate, but there's more to it than that. Ammonia (NH3) is the most important water stat, being more toxic than nitrite and causing permanent damage from prolonged exposure. It's also far cheaper to get a liquid kit. A set of 5-in-1 strips plus an...

Considering the size of the tank, you could also tailor stocking to control breeding. Limit the number of platys, say a m/f/f trio, and include some active, reasonable sized fish - danios, barbs, bigger tetras, dwarf cichlid perhaps - to ensure the fry get snapped up. Make sure hiding places are...

Keyhole cichlids, definitely. Mine are peaceful almost to a fault - even when spawning, they didn't get bad enough to keep the corys from investigating the eggs constantly, they just sort of nudged intruders away. They're bigger than rams, and give a nice touch of the "big cichlid" look to a...

The same store uses cuckoo for multipunctatus. My neighbor said it was a petricola, which I'm only about 50% sure about, since his fins are too bad to see the telltale white. Coming from that LFS, there's nothing else it could be (I doubt they'd spend the price on a special order and then dump...

Never seen a common name associated with them, the store they got it from sells it under the scientific name Petricola synodontis, which is backwards - it's Synodontis petricola.

Rescued one out of a neighbor's goldfish bowl. It's in rough shape right now, treating it for ich and finrot. If it survives, I have two questions: 1. I've found conflicting size info in my books and online, ranging from 3.5 to 8 inches. How big do they get? 2. Pretty much the same question...

Any of these look like it? There's a few small rainbowfish with blue eyes. A couple of them are transparent white or yellow.

After a quick check of the particular puffer (they vary a lot in terms of care and behavior). It'd be best to post down in the marine section, as most of the traffic in this part of the forum is freshwater, and your two species are quite different than the ones many of us are familiar with. I...

Neons can be pretty nippy too. All tetras have it in them, the bigger they are, the worse (Some of them rival tiger barbs, really). Danios are a bit more active, but not terribly nippy unless kept in a small group (IME, a danio kept alone will become defensive and drive off any fish that comes...

Can't find a good picture of one, but I see this thing sold around here a lot. The funniest part is, the place that sells them don't sell tanks they fit into - they're too big for a 10 gallon, and the background doesn't cover all of a 20 or 29 gallon. There's a couple variations. One is...

Not sure about bloodworm, but blackworm will burrow in the substrate and stick their heads out to feed. Any sort of bottom feeder loves rooting those out.

No kind of weather this part of the country gets in September really justifies closing a store. Anybody who lives in any state touching the Great Lakes knows how to drive in snowstorms, let alone rain. Anyway, I'd complain to management, preferably during a different shift than the problem...

It'll eat nearly all of the fish you list - the pleco and clown loach would be the only likely survivors, and as oscars grow quickly, it may end up outgrowing a small clown loach fast enough to eat it, too. Because of their size, a 75 gallon tank would be a better choice for an oscar. If you...

It looks yellow. Is that the nitrate tube? I'd say it's pretty much 0. Definitely not 10 yet, though it might not be exactly 0. It's worth noting the nitrate test is prone to giving lower readings than is there - I'm assuming you do make sure to follow all the annoying steps like shaking the...

All Wilder's questions are important, but black skirt tetras will drain their color pretty quick if they're spooked. Mine usually go mostly silver during water changes, or if they get chased by a bigger fish. If he was like this when you got him, there is a variety called white skirt tetras...