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I only kept one domestic cacatuoides. I used to get the fish directly from the boxes as they arrived from Peru. That's why I saw such a variety. I just assume with Apistos that you have one species per tank, and a few fast dithers/distraction fish up around the surface. They never got much of a...

I'm soft hearted, and have grown a few runts out. They tend to have a lot more problems than size, and are generally short lived. They often develop deformities as they grow. In many cases, they seem to have digestive issues, because while they eat, they get the oversized eyes of starving fish...

This will sound odd, but it's been my online experience that if someone asks if they are overstocked, they are. The question is usually the answer. We have a gut feeling, and we look for a friendly voice to say "No, it's fine." If we're confident in our stocking, we don't ask that question...

I've never had a healthy fish get stuck on a filter inlet. Usually, that's a sign the fish is unwell. As always when there's a question, do a 30% water change with dechlorination, and keep doing one weekly, at least.

Hey everyone, no politics. We don't know what the people we happily discuss fish really think. Let's keep it that way, he said, putting his mod badge away..

I kept 8 or 9 different imports of cacatuoides, all different enough. I never had aggression problems unless the tank was too small. They were pretty easy going, on par with all the others I kept and bred. I still sometimes wish I could get one of them again - a yellow morph with enormous fin...

Hang in with the power cuts and the storm. I hope it isn't too hot as the hurricane moves away.

Rummys are notoriously difficult shipping fish. High oxygen needs...

Even if you aren't saving and raising fry, if the set up is correct for them, you're 'spawning' fish. I have kept Pristellas off and on since I saw them in an old colourized picture in a book that had been my grandfather's, when I was maybe 12. I set up my first breeding tank for them this week...

There was a hole in the wall shop near me at one time. The front was all fishing lures and fishing gear, and the back was all tanks - only maybe 20 of them. I know of a cat groomer, whose place smells like a litter box, but who boyfriend has added a small fish section with really good choices...

Who bit them? That's my question. I know it's a typo, but I want to see an African Glass Car. People who drive them shouldn't throw stones.

I think much has to do with our different eye structures.We can't even see ultra violet. Plus colour spectrums change with depth filtering light. Red is the new black. I notice horizontal stripes tend to go with fast fish, lateral stripes with reed and plant stem species. I know Otocinclus...

Why did you include a picture of your lawyer? When's the surgery? Here, I am very very far from any current hurricane activity, but Poseidon is stirring it up. I often hear the surf from the house when it's high tide and I'm outside, but this morning, it's roaring and crashing even from...

I always stayed away from the slender, iniridae type Apistogramma. Nice fish, but totally subjectively, I preferred the look of the higher bodied ones. What can you tell us about the fish going into the tank? I'm not familiar with lineata, and I doubt many people here are. That's a rare one in...

I'd agree with him. I use white floss (pillow batting, or 'the guts of unmade stuffed animals') to polish water if for whatever reason it gets suspended particles in it. I take it out after it's done. It isn't because of fibre in the impeller, but because it clogs too quickly. It doesn't...

If it's legal where you are, native plants (in North America) collected before mid July seem to establish themselves well. After then, as the days begin to shorten, they seem to have one of those 'initiate self destruct' buttons from the movies. They won't grow past September. I have Valls I...

I don't know what the internet and cultural change has done, but when I spoke with German immigrants older than me, they seemed to have a club culture. Walking, gardening, fishkeeping, birdkeeping - it seemed whenever there was an activity that could bring people together, they made a club out...

Yesterday, I was kayaking on a shallow, muddy river. I was surrounded by scarlet maple trees, as the leaves have begun to turn. I realized I was into something rare around here - a hardwood habitat with no evergreens. So I started drifting the banks, picking up driftwood pieces for the tanks. I...

Even if you're easy going, well informed and sensibly confident, retail can be hard to take. A lot of people don't understand that a friendly approach generally gets a friendly response. If you start badly, it ends spectacularly badly. There are people who would rather fight than eat, as my...

A lot of us seem to live on the wrong side of the Atlantic. We get rude retail without fish and gear like that.

They have magnificent camouflage. It was often very hard to know if they were in the tank.

I saw certain neolebias fry this morning - not many, but there is life! They are soooooo tiny. I'm not sure even my rainbow fry foods aren't too big, so I threw clumps of java moss in so they could graze. Getting them to spawn is a sort of victory, but raising those fish isn't going to be...

It's a curious time to watch tanks. I think some fish like to wait til their eyes adjust - vision first fish like Apistos. They want to be able to see how things look. Pristellas are silvery, so they seem to want a bit more brightness so their camouflage kicks in. Rummies have similar colours...

I had three. They are fascinating, but they will catch any small tetra. They are good at what they do. They are heavy eaters of guppy sized fish. I only kept them so a friend could get good photos, and then passed them along. Eventually all of them were killed by diseased feeder guppies. It's...

If you're in the US state of Pennsylvania, the Penn family the state was named for kept paradise fish in the 1660s. Samuel Pepys noted that in his diary, and thought it was a quite remarkable thing. So there's a little fish historical background.

The bottom line is always species by species. It's just logic that the fish most available from the farms are generally the easiest to breed. They like easy, and don't want to deal with labour expensive special set ups to mass produce fish. So when we get those fish home, we have to be more...

Like a lot of Asian barbs, they get to a good size, and 10 or more would be the whole tank. Beautiful creatures though.

Ask Tails and Scales in Toronto. They stock good things.

They do come in to Montreal sporadically, and if I see them, I'll try to send you a note. Once or twice a year, sold through a guy in Cornwall Ontario who generally specializes in predators.

One of my daughters phoned last night (too excited to even text!) to say she had found two killifish fry thriving in her community tank. She likes catfish, and they evidently hadn't gotten to the eggs. She was feeling very proud of her set up and how things were working. It got me thinking. My...

When fish are in good condition, they often aren't full of eggs. They're healthy and hardy, but putting their energy there. With many species, if they are full of eggs, they'll regularly spawn where you can't raise fry. So if I want numbers of babies from an egg layer, or any babies at all, I...

I'm in the "egg layer" wait. I set up 2 species to spawn. Looking at the females before and after, I think the deed was done. They spawned over an egg protecting set up, but I can't see eggs. Both species are supposed to have tiny eggs, so that means little. By today, they'll have hatched, and...

That looks to me to be the 'gardneri gold' linebred morph. It's a colour mutation, and a nice fish. I had a friend who was crazy about them and bred them for years. His fishroom was out in a village in the woods, north of northern Maine and far from any large place where he could get fish. So he...

Oops. or filter capacity? Filters rated for 55-60?

I'd argue you can't do a Walstad tank without first reading all of her book. There are a lot of cherry picked versions online, but it's one of those things where you have to understand what you're doing to troubleshoot later on down the line. Those tanks are an entire process. I'm a fish first...

I don't often disagree with Colin, but I see no hexamita. I would do the basic, 30-40% water changes every week, forever, no matter the tank size, and just keep an eye on it. I've had cysts on the fins of angels in very soft, low calcium water, but it makes sense it would be more likely in...

55-60 what? You have to frame the question more clearly or we are just guessing. 60 embers or 60 oscars...

Fin cysts sit on the rays, directly. usually, a bite fractured the ray, and that develops as a result. The pectoral would worry me more, but it's also a common injury spot. Viral fish pox things are all over the body. Young angels have ways of hurting each other. But your angel has wild type...

It's one of the nicest angels I've seen on the forum. And to me, those look like cysts, probably from old injuries. They often have them, and they're harmless.

Plants are plants. The availability of species may change, as with fish, but the info is still good. The technology really changes - I can grow plants with LEDs I couldn't with fluorescents. But there were plants that went nuts with old incandescent lights that I couldn't grow with fluorescents...