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Hiya, Are you growing filter bacteria with bottled ammonia, or just planning on doing a fish-in cycle?

HI Carli, Judging from the results that you gave us, I'm guessing you used the paper test strips. I'd really recommend that you invest in some liquid test kits. The paper strips aren't massively accurate, and you don't get an ammonia test, which is really important. I personally recommend the...

Again, that wasn't my experience with peacocks and pentazona barbs.

Just a quick thing, too, Fish Lips, you said that you are sure the girl guppy is gravid. Do you just have the one? If so, I'd recommend that you either move her, or get her some female company, so the ratio of male to female is 1:3. If she is on her own in a tank full of males, she will not get...

Yeah, I heard that too, but it wasn't my experience. I suspect that this is because they are very much bottom dwellers, and don't want to come to the top to feed on floating food. Again, having kept several specimens, I never found a problem, I fed them on floating and sinking granule food, as...

Hello Byron, I have not been active on here much since I left the Mod team a number of years ago, but I recall you being exceptionally knowledgeable and a huge asset to this forum. I wish you the speediest of recoveries.

If she's a livebearer that has been in the same water as a male of the same species at any time in the last 6 months, then, yes, she is gravid. Whether that's the cause of the heavy breathing is a different question. Have you run any water tests?

Peacock gobies are absolutely wonderful fish, quiet, peaceful and beautiful, one of my favourites, and they will co-exist happily with your 5-Banded Barbs and cories. Try to get a pair of them, they're easily sexable. Males have a more bulbous head than the females, whilst the females have a...

What, even the Petsmart guy who said it's OK to lose a fish?

I agree wholeheartedly with this. What the Petsmart bloke said was exceptionally poor advice. It is not OK to lose a fish.

It won't have helped, but it's not the main cause of the stress.

Follow the instructions in my long post in this thread.

No bottled ammonia is NOT the best option anymore - you have fish. Bottled ammonia is for a fishless cycle. You will need ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test kits. A 40l tank is fine for a betta. Make sure the filter flow isn't too harsh, bettas don't like strong currents.

Are you sure you're not getting confused? Most tapwater has a background level of nitrate in it, so it would be usual to see 0ppm nitrite and some nitrate.

Nik will produce his own ammonia. The recommended method for cycling a tank is to use bottled ammonia with no fish, but you can't do that now that Nik is there.

Cycling a tank means growing the beneficial bacteria in the filter which process the ammonia (which fish produce) and consequent nitrite, both of which are highly toxic. Now the hard work begins. You need to obtain test kits for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. I personally use the Salifert...

OK, just read your other thread, and clearly Nik is not in a cycled tank, and that the temporary tank does not have a heater either. However, it's still not clear how you are cycling the large tank, but it seems to me as though you are just running an empty tank with no source of ammonia. If...

Need a bit more info, really. 1) Is Nik currently in a cycled tank? 2) How are you cycling the large tank? 3) Are there other fish in the large tank?

Mate, that part is fine. I take issue with telling people to keep the ammonia/nitrite levels at 1ppm. I'm sorry you're unhappy with that, but as far as I'm concerned, that's poor advice. You give one lot of advice, I give another, it's up to the OP to figure out what resonates best with her...

Agree wholeheartedly - although with 4, I don't see any reason why Prime should not be used, so long as it is purely as a dechlorinator, not as a rescue product.

Yeah, I've cleaned it up, done a bit of pruning. The filter has stayed wet, so the dormant bacteria shouldn't take too long to pop back up. The pity is that all my test reagents are well out of date, so Amazon better get here quickly!

I have been out of the hobby for a couple of years, so things might have moved on, but as far as I am concerned, this is poor advice. 2ppm of either ammonia or nitrite is deadly to the fish. If you then change 50% of the water, you will still have 1ppm of either ammonia or nitrite. This is...

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I regularly perused this wonderful forum. I closed down my 34l tank several years ago, and condensed everything into the larger one.... and then the lights failed. These were custom-made LED lighting, made by a former moderator on here, and repairing them...

Hey, essjay, it has been a while!

Using bottled ammonia, it's far easier to control the dose.

In fairness, you can only assume that about the females.... ;-)

1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed. 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently. 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs. 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in...

The problem with what you say is that many of us have tapwater that has a higher nitrate level than that. The legal maximum in the UK is 50ppm (IIRC), in my particular area, we get 40ppm out of the tap. It's impossible for the average aquarist in this area to get down to 20ppm. I have a fairly...

Protozin is cracking stuff, I use that when I get white spot. Or at least, I use it when my fish get white spot. You should expect to see fish with no cysts at about day 6 or 7. You should follow the instructions on the bottle to the absolute letter of what it says, don't deviate at all. In...

5 or 6 male guppies is perfect, you don't really want less than that, else one of them tends to get picked on. I presume you are using only cold water during water changes? A temperature drop of 2 or 3 degrees is not really an issue, especially if your degrees are in Fahrenheit, rather than...

One caveat to that, if I may. You're quite right, nitrite needs to be at 0, and nitrate really at no higher than 20ppm above tap water level, certainly 160ppm is way too high. With a single, massive water change, you risk shocking the fish, and potentially killing them, if you reduce from...

And therein lies the problem. They will overpopulate your tank very easily and very quickly. Each female can have 30 or so fry every 4-6 weeks, so with 3 females, that's 90 fry in a couple of months. You will find it difficult to move the fry on, most LFS won't take them. After 3 or 4 months...

Waiting a week or so has done nothing to the water, unfortunately, so it's likely that the fish died from ammonia poisoning. It would be good if you could post up the results of an ammonia test to confirm this. Unless there is a source of ammonia in the water, there is nothing for the beneficial...

You didn't use the word "minimum" in your opening sentence, and people tend to only remember the first line or two of a post. You yourself have just pointed out some of the flaws of the rule, although I don't feel you did so in your first post, so I felt it worth doing so quite explicitly, not...

Yeah, I'd realised that Nick :-)

Personally, I'd say the tank is a little small for angels, depending upon how tall it is. The problem you may have is behaviour with the angels. Unless they are a mating pair (and they're choosy on their mates) they will probably fight.

Although not a shoaling species, platies do seem to like company of there own. There could also be an issue with the tetra being aggressive towards her, it will also be very stressed from being alone. The molly could also be showing aggression. I also agree with Nick that the pH and hardness on...

That's a pretty rubbish rule, if I'm honest. By that rule, you could keep a single oscar in a 12gallon tank. You can't. You might think you could keep a shoal of 6 zebra danios in a 20 gallon. You can't, they need a much longer tank than that, since they swim very fast, they need to have lots of...

My personal viewpoint is to never keep a fish in a tank that it will not be comfortable in when it's fully grown. You may have the best of intentions now, but when the fish are at a stage where they have to be moved, you may not have the time/money/ability to move them, and then it's too late...

I would agree that what Ch4rlie posted is the way to go - that way, you keep it all nicely controlled, and you get to fully stock once you're done. As Gruntle said, assuming there were some bacteria in the filter previously, they should simply have gone dormant, so giving them some food (ie...