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It seems counter-intuitive. How much builds up between weekly water changes? I never top up either, for what that info's worth. Water changes are good things.

This birthday could bring back the Canadian forest fire smoke thread.

Today is my birthday. I snuck out to the fishroom early, as my dog walk was shortened by a very high tide. I moved my Neolebias trewevasae into 2 tanks, one male tank, one female. The breeding tank is on the rack above. Natural set ups aren't doing it, so it's time to do a little work on them...

A Trini work colleague brought some wild guppies from a local stream at Christmas. Then, when she retired, she decided to go home, and I got the guppies. They were great little fish. I stopped keeping them as I prepared to move, but I hope they are still going in the tanks of the people I...

@Colin_T can help there, when he checks in. Gill flukes can have come from any fish in the tank, introduced over the past weeks to months. One man's specialty bred fish is another man's weak inbred form... Stress gives parasites a foothold as well. It sounds like a parasite in the gills, and...

Full disclosure: I think technicolour Discus are ugly as sin, and would stick with blues if I couldn't afford wilds. But if I were a Discus keeping man again, I'd concentrate on a good diet with a heavy plant component, and avoid colour foods. If, after a while, you saw the colour fade...

Eartheaters will bicker among themselves, but are easily dominated and shy in tanks where other fish are bigger. I doubt there would be a battle - just an ambush and probably a little creation of bite sized pieces. It's funny how we think. Eartheaters as food fish bother me, but I accept...

That's pricey.... I take my chances with about 200 grams at a time. The rest isn't opened til I want it, and only quickly. I'm sure there's deterioration once it's out, but I agree with moisture issue with keeping it in the fridge and taking it out is also a potential problem.

Panting usually says there's an internal infection, or parasitic gill flukes.

I've never heard of any problems. Back in the seventies, red, green and blue incandescent bulbs were the way to go, as they reflected well off my plastic galleon wreck.

Beefheart has its followers, and it's an old product. There are better options, but for the artificial coloured discus, it delivers. Even there though, I'd make my own food with shrimp, white fleshed fish, veggies and the added ingredients. But if I were selling beefheart, I'd tell you it's the...

Once Apistos are adult and settled, they should only share each other's company if they have paired off. Otherwise, they become enemies, or at the very best, frenemies. Is it 1m, 2f, or the reverse?

The answer is right there. Look at the garden gnomes, fishing. What have they been using as bait, may I ask? They'll never confess, but.

If I had hard water, I would be planning s future trip to try to buy fish from you (and meet you while seeing a beautiful country again while I was at it). You have quite a haul there. I wish North Americans could take their outside of the paycheque interests as seriously as people in the...

I label mine by the origin of the fish to be fed and the weight. I just put a Colombian kilo in the freezer, along with the livebearer food, the Central American kilo. That way, if anyone ever looks in my freezer, they'll know there's nothing fishy. The price increases are ludicrous though...

I don't have many biofilm grazers in the usual sense. but I find plant roots from above in the water are great for biofilm. Fry and adults constantly graze in the tangles. It's an added positive with roots in tanks. I bought an aquascaping book when I was a teenager, back in the 1970s. It was...

Rosys are as dangerous. But the easiest grow your own in our climate (we aren't in Australia) doesn't work. Tilapia have millions of quick growing food fish, but they also have spiky defences. Livebearers would take months to get to food size, and a ton of space. It's a catch 22. Feeders are...

And a curveball from the killie world. That's the slowest water hobby out there, yet other than one Epiplatys singa with a fungus infection, we never caught a killie in slow water. The almost mythical Aphyosemion joergenscheeli was in quick moving very shallow water over a sand bottom, where it...

It's a death wish. Putting feeder comets in the same tank as a Geophagus will probably kill the blackwater fish. I doubt the Geos want to eat them, but probably just dislike their colouration. The disease transfer is a game of Russian roulette, played with every feeding. They won't live long in...

That's an odd one, but I doubt a Pristella and a Hyphessobrycon would make viable eggs. It's a moot point in a community tank anyway, but I've never seen tetra species seriously try to spawn across species. It's coming up to breeding season now, so maybe they're just frisky.

You have good stores. That's an extremely rare one, part of the equally uncommon in aquariums Betta unimaculata complex. I've kept a number of wild betta species, but I've never had that one. I've never seen it. It should be a clearwater, male mouthbrooder, like a lot of bettas. It would be...

I'm good at algae - I grow it well. But I also control it with no algicides (dangerous for fish) or dips. Here, I have 3 main culprits: 1) over lighting - too much or for too long 2) not doing enough water changes (it takes off in untended tanks, where I'm not doing 30% every week. It comes...

I see you have "Vengeance" on that rod, @Rocky998 . What secret wars have you and the bass been having?

I'm a carnivore, to a degree, as I write this. It would be much easier for me to accept a belief system that said I was the only "intelligent" species out there. If I had power over other species and they were there for me, that would be great. I can see why people believe that. No one ever got...

Tuscany is a future dream. This will be a short touristic look at Pompeii in November, when it should be possible to avoid the largest crowds. We will just have 3 days in Italy. When I was a child, Montreal had an Italian language TV channel for 3 hours every weekend, and I used to watch it for...

Thank you. I need to wake up the Italian I knew as a kid (from my street) and learn more, and reading about fish in Italian will help a lot. I learn visually, so I'll be reading that site a lot. I'm planning a trip, and all the Italian I currently use is when I'm driving, and another driver...

I had the paradise fish indoors, for the Canadian winter. If you put white clouds, it might work. But in a small tank like yours, I would put one paradise fish.

There's a simple experiment any aquarist should try, in summer. Look around your region. Choose a lake, a stream, a brook and a large river. Go to them, take your shoes off and stand in them. The average still looking lake has a lot of swish around the edges, and away from the shore will drag...

I used to breed them, and had a problem with numbers. I had dozens and was giving them away as fast as I could, But I kept them in a classroom aquarium. They had bred in a pond at the school. Like Bettas they seemed only a danger to other fish of they were kept in too small tanks with other...

If the algicide is building up, it can easily kill everything. It's a dangerous thing to play with.

I bag it and put it in the freezer. I just bought a kilo of flake - 500 grams of 2 different types. Even bulk food has skyrocketed in price.

It's probably biofilm. If so, it goes. I've never put a piece of wood in a tank without a short visit from that life form.

It depends on what you want. Pot scrubbers carry a good archaea and bacteria load, and that's what I want. If you don't overfeed and use a siphon for regular water changes, there isn't s great need for mechanical filters.

I find scrubbers, the plastic tangled ones very good. I don't really care about mechanical filtration, but for biological filtration, they do the job. The colours are kind of ugly, but no one sees them. I jam them into a HOB, and use a coarse sponge on top. Plus I use a lot of Japanese filter...

Oryzias, however, aren't killifish. Most Aphyosemion, Fundulopanchax and Epiplatys will live 2 to 3 years. Some lampeyes will, if you are an experienced keeper and take good care of them. https://aka.org/!area_Affiliates/wak/Genera_Index.htm You can go into that site and have a look for info...

I may be the one who talks most about breeding fish. When I get a fish, it's usually because I've researched about it. Most of my fish would be considered rare in the hobby, and that would make them expensive and hard to find, if I hadn't developed a network over my many years in the hobby. So...

Malinois? Okay, you have energy. I may not be the best person to talk to, because I really don't like Bettas. That's heresy in the hobby, but I really like natural fish, and think fancy breeding ruins a fish. Usually, the fish that pay the most attention to humans are predators. By nature...

Plants don;t need cycling. But if they did water from tanks is just dirty water.

When some people age, they get nostalgic about their old bodies, cheesy old songs or lost loves. Here, we miss the good old days of aquarium stores, before Box stores, online stores and the decline of the hobby. Montreal had several stores with 100 plus tanks, as well as probably 30 hobby...

Usually, mega stores with that look, that many tanks and that long a history (I've heard of them a couple of times on forums, going back a ways) will have some of the less popular commercially produced tetras, barbs and Rasbora types. There are a lot of farm produced tetras that rarely get into...