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Neither of these papers makes any mention whatsoever about either archaea, or established tanks with minimal ammonia production after cycling.

Actually the bacteria that “grow at high nitrite levels” along with the bacteria that grow at high ammonia levels, are the ones that cycle tanks. Once the tank is cycled and the ammonia and nitrite are down to very low levels, these bacteria largely get replaced in the filter by Archaea...

Sounds like Gary has already embraced some of the Christmas spirit. ;)

Females tend to be bigger in the ‘belly’ area. More rounded.

5” Arowanas, 3” Red Tailed Cats, foot long Kuhlies, foot long Chromaphyosemions, foot long Glass Cats…. I could go on…

You should really be changing water every week. I suspect the possibility of high nitrates. Which test kits are you using? Strips are unreliable, and liquid nitrate kits need bottle #2 banged a few times on a hard surface before the shaking, or they’ll start to give false results at some point...

What are the water parameters? How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?

The Baensch Atlas is 4 volumes. I have them. It won’t tell you about individual fish species, but The Tropical Fishlopaedia, by Dr Peter Burgess and Mary Bailey, tells you about all aspects of keeping fish, and is a book every aquarist should have. My favourite book is very old and a lot of...

Any food should help.

With mature filtration you don’t get any build up of ammonia. Bubbles not popping is about films on the surface. Any protein or fat presence in the water (mostly from foods) will form a film on the surface and prevent bubbles from popping quickly. It shows you need to skim the surface (to aid...

Oops. My bad.

Shoulda brought some fire ants home for a culture aswell….

It would be a double edged sword, wouldn’t it. Pecked to death by mollies…. We need to be careful what we wish for. We already have foot long tetras. We call them piranhas…

Dead but hasn’t been pooped out yet? I don’t know.

Egypt is in Africa. Asia is not part of Africa.

All of them. Guppies, tetras, killies, tiger barbs, Kuhlies, Corys… you name it, any small fish would look great at a foot long, especially the very colourful ones. And a lot of big fish would be good at 2-3”. Not related, but imagine if dolphins grew to a foot long…..

I would always assume a strip result to be innaccurate. :)

Wrong way round. The fish are not grounded, which is why they are not shocked. Glass isn’t a conductor.

My doctor said that was down to the full moon…

Bear in mind that they’re not tropical fish. Best temperature for them would be the upper 60s, and tropical temperatures (up to mid 70s) in summer only.

Carpet bombing… good or bad? GaryE mentioned carpet bombing. It’s what aquarists in the US have to do to treat fish diseases. They use antibiotics, because they don’t have access to the plethora of ‘milder’ but very effective disease treatments available to the rest of the world. With some...

Happy Birthday. Hope you have / had a nice day. :)

In the 70s I was a huge fan of Bowie, Queen and Roxy Music. In the late 70s, being a “rebellious adolescent”, I was also heavily into the Stranglers. I tend to like music that is not mainstream, but I find it impossible to describe my musical tastes, which are very eclectic and varied. I like...

As above pretty much. They can grow to 10-12”. They need to be in a group. Recent research has discovered physiological benefits from physical contact with their own kind… along with Kuhlies, ropefish and presumably (imo) the botiine loaches. They’re from cold water which can reach tropical...

In the UK we have access to good treatments for the whole range of curable fish diseases and pests… bacterial, fungal, protozoans, worms… from half a dozen manufacturers. We have the Tetra range, Waterlife, Interpet, API (Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc), and others. We even have a couple of good...

That’s not a good site.

US (and Canada?) medication laws are very strange to me. Sterazin is readily available and cheap here, and the Waterlife range will cure just about everything that can be cured without antibiotics. In the US, antibiotics, and other extremely powerful over-the-top treatments, that we would use...

It’s similar here. We’re trying to stop our government using pesticides that will kill all the bees (for example). They’re not listening. It’s all a compromise, isn’t it, between health and big business. We learn from our mistakes, even when we know enough to not make them in the first place...

We don’t have much fish TB in the UK. It’s quite rare here.

Apparently so… I think…

[Note to self… stop altering posts after I’ve posted them.]

Hmmm. Different ingredients? Piperazine banned in Oz? That’s all I can think of…

There’s some wierd folk about, lol. Is it the CO2 or a pH drop?

I always assumed the whole of North America got its fish from Florida farms. On our maps we put Britain in the middle, so it’s easy to forget that you’re not much further away from Singapore than we are. Tetras… yes, Serpae. They would often have them, I remember. And Black Widows…

I just about managed to get past “ja” and “nee” for the cookies. There is an ‘English’ button but it goes to the homepage when you click it. I did see “8” and “12” though, so I can speak a little Dutch after all. ;)

When you see little red ‘strings’ prodtruding from the anus you know… If a newly acquired fish is unusually fat (lots of worms in the gut) or unusually skinny (lack of nutrition because the worms are getting it all) then that’s also a sign of possible worms. It does seem to be a lot less...

Im sure that applies everywhere, unfortunately.