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'rummynose' rasbora lose their colour in softwater. They're oddballs in the group, as hard water fish. They aren't Rasbora, but Sawbwa. harlequins aren't Rasbora, but Trigonostigma. Dwarfs are not Rasbora, but rather Bororas. There's a pattern showing here! My harlequins were always lower half...

I think it's luck. The Apisto njisseni have only been there a week or so. Biotodomo cupido has frustrated many a breeder because it only matures at over a year, sometimes a year and a half. It is way slower than its other Geophagine companions. Electric blue fish have been noted to be more chill...

I think all we can offer is opinions, and most opinions are valueless without real, proveable info to back them up. We're guessing. Scenario one: the established, survivor fish carry a pathogen the other fish die of, but that they have immunity from. This is common when we add wild fish to...

Rocky, that picture of you with the fish - that's a terrible acclimation method... Back when I used to fish, I used to love seeing and trying new types of fishing lures. I think my mind went from trying to figure out how fish lived in order to fool them into taking artificial bait, to just...

I wonder if I could enter the enormous invasive spiders from my daughter's basement in Pet of the Month? Half their charm is their accent as they yell back and forth about "getting enough trainers for all their feet" and "finding jumpers with enough armholes". I don't know what these jumpers and...

I don't think any sensible person thinks pet store employees are a problem. In most cases, it's their training, in the box stores. They're well meaning, but often totally unconnected to the hobby, and may never have kept fish. We had a good store that hired young offenders, and a dope dealer and...

The angel will probably never bother the njisseni. It's the old niche story - angels are not bottom oriented. It's the acaras and cupido that could become testy. None are cave spawners like the njisseni, so maybe it'll work out. I hope so. I never needed tannins with that species. I know you...

I suspect it's the golden mutation of the Chinese Algae Eater - a very unpleasant fish. They aren't the best algae eaters, and they have been known to attack tankmates. You aren't the first to be caught by that name. The shopkeeper probably believes they're great algae eaters. I mean, on the...

I don't think there's any instinct difference between wilds and tank bred. These species can be so old we can't get our heads around it, and even if they aren't, those instincts developed early in their evolution. I doubt very much they would fall away that quickly. Even the oldest fish lines in...

You'll have to do the identifications. @CassCats has given you a fantastic guide to work with. You can get close enough and have the time to look at each one - no video will let us do that. The 3 albino Cory group fish in the hobby all have slightly different needs in the aquarium, but can live...

Those tegenaria spiders are established along the dock areas in Halifax, Nova Scotia. How do I know this? They're in my daughter's house, and all though her neighourhood as invasives. That's a big, ugly spider. We don't have them where I live - we just have established invasive black widows up...

When I was 25 I'd look at the trust fund kids and wonder how much I could get done if I didn't have to work long hours to get by. Now I'm an older guy, retired, with a pension. I wonder how much I could get done if I were 25. You can deny age, but we do slow down and get tired more easily. My...

They're Hoplisoma panda now, with the recent revision of Corydoras. I gave mine to my daughter (not a kid and a very skilled catfish keeper) who has them spawning regularly. Her tank is for them is unheated, and is kept around 21 - 22c (70-72f) for most of the year. It creeps slightly higher in...

I've used them. You have to remove them once their work is done and the fry are freeswimming, so they aren't for the impatient. I'd suggest 2 layers, and don't use 1000 all at once.

Okay. I approach this as a fishbreeder, of egg laying fish. The standard pond or bladder snail is a ferocious egg destroyer. But ramshorns put in a petrie dish with killie eggs didn't eat them. I was told this, and being a skeptical sort, I collected up snails and killie eggs, and decided to see...

All snails are pest snails. But ramshorns are the best of a bad lot!

Bring garlic and a stake. Meet me at my fishroom tomorrow evening. I've done it twice this year. The larvae survived in exactly the tanks fry survive in - lots of floating plants, duckweed, and low populations of adults. I cheerfully stepped into the fishroom, and they descended like Stukas.

The changes make sense, incredible sense. It's just a few new names to learn. People who live in places where names change when women marry should find it easy. I already had tanks of Aspidoras, Scleromystax and Brochis. It's just learning how they are now lined up.

I am a big fan of dragon flies. Yesterday, I carried two kayaks to the edge of a lake (upper body effort) but knew my lower back wasn't in a mood to enjoy a paddle. So I sat on the edge and chilled while my wife and her friend kayaked the lake. I got to watch Canadian diaphanous killies, but the...

"Torrent loaches"... I'm not into loaches at all, but I went digging as this fish was new to me. The description is paywalled, so there's not much to dig up there. I would lean to the cooler side as its oxygen requirements must be really something, given the 'torrent' name and the info I could...

I've always seen them as a fish to be kept in groups, even if breeding isn't the goal. They seem very social, although they spar a lot. You have to be careful - they are an entry drug to Parosphromenus, the licorice gourami group, and that gets expensive.

When I buy fish, I know I may not be able to pick individuals. So I study the tank. If it contains fish with problems like bent spines, I don't buy anything from it. There will be future shipments, and they may be good. Bent spines can be injury, or communicable disease. I take no risks. With...

Have they gone in with the spawning acaras?

That's interesting convergent evolution. If it works in one place, then it's going to work somewhere else. It's like if you look at a Tateurndina peacock gudgeon from Papua New Guinea beside a Fundulopanchax gardneri (steel blue) killie from Nigeria. Worlds apart, but a cool basic look...

I wouldn't say that. My German Blue Detritus has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, and glo and blood parrot detritus heaps are potential discussion pieces. As for the java lava, no one wants to go there. Yeah, I know. I taught Grade 9 boys for far too long...

The market has shrunk crazily, and rare fish sales have fallen. Now, the market is for large predatory fish, and it seems we're down to very few outlets for "oddballs" like dwarf Cichlids. I was hanging around with wholesalers, who didn't sell small orders to buyers without business numbers...

My importing friend used to have a different Apisto or three in almost every Colombian, Peruvian or Brazilian shipment, but if he brings them in now, they are clutter in tanks he could be selling fish from. Absolutely no one will buy them anymore. Those of us into dwarf Cichlids lose out on the...

I used to breed njisseni, and it's one of my (too many) favourites. They are not an adaptable species. But they are beautiful and really interesting. I always had direct wild caughts, picked up when they arrived (I usually helped out by unpacking the bags from Peru - I'm kind that way). If I...

Bible study? Does that mean you're reading the Baensch Aquarium Atlas? Maybe we have different religions ;) I never actually kept Apistogramma in any tank with other Cichlids, after my first few disasters. I see myself drifting back to dwarf Cichlids, but I'm still sticking to that one...

Opal may refer to the face. It seems sensible. But as far as the trade goes, it rapidly came to refer to the face and an extended dorsal fin. In the 90s, when they were a new thing, it was the dorsal that was sold as opal, and the face pattern was more or less the same for both. There were no...

One of the really important basics to know is what fish you can't keep. So the sig line works for fish, once that process of elimination has been worked through. I'm still traumatized because I saw Dicrossus filamentosus, the checkerboard lyretail, on a list I'm ordering from, and didn't ask for...

Is that a moustache, or does she have a ... neckbeard

I miss my evelynae. It's a wonderful fish.

I do really well with Vallisneria americana. I don't have any tanks above 25c. The plant grows wild around here, but if it's collected after mid July, as the sunlight begins to shorten, it dies off. Anytime around the summer solstice, or before it, and it's still thriving 6 years on. I use...

I saw the early opals (1990s), then presented as a linebred sport. They've been developed further, but I think they're a "fancy" borellii. I'm the wild type purist, with a love of the blue bodied, yellow faced ones.

I saw some freshwater pipefish in Gabon. Very very cool to find.

Has anyone here kept Baryancistrus beggini? I've been looking at the written online sources and think I have a pretty good understanding of its taxonomy, etc. I'd love to hear from someone with hands on observations of its territoriality and tank sizes.

They have the ability to recognize other individuals, and they remember who plays by the rules, and who doesn't. What their rules are can be a mystery to humans, but they seem to exist. I'd take a guess and say the ones she accepts accept her as an alpha, and the others challenge her status.

It takes time, and what you're saying is really familiar to a lot of aquarists. Stopping to consider the consequences is a learned thing - you have to decide to do it. Most of the time we learn that from not doing what we should, even if we stop and think first. I've had fish for 57 years, and...

Even a poorly bred angel has the possibility to grow as large as an adult's hand. I made the mistake of 3 in a 33 gallon when I was new to this. Two paired off and killed the third, and I got a lot of babies from them. But 5 in an enclosed space would have been a slow, awful to watch slaughter...