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What kind of water do you have from the tap? That is what you will need to work with. I have hard water with a high pH so I concentrate on the livebearers but people who have soft water with a neutral to low pH would have trouble with my fish selections. What you choose to keep in your tanks...

You can expect a bubble nest any time once he is settled in and he is at around 80F, 27C, with other needs being met like proper feeding.

He looks like he is improving to me. If he is getting plenty of fresh water changes that will continue, with or without any nostrums as treatments.

Dexters, I am not going to tell you what fish you cannot keep with a nice male betta. I have kept plenty of community fish, especially peaceful community fish with Betta splendens over the last 50 years. I have yet to regret a pairing that I made while keeping in mind that a betta is a peaceful...

I like the pygmy cories like pygmaeus hastatus or habrosus Unfortunately I don't think any of them would really appreciate the temperatures in a betta tank. For that you probably would want something like C. sterbai, which you would only be able to keep in small numbers in such a small...

Don't give up so easily comocray. I have revived a microworm culture after over 6 weeks by being careful about what I used to start the next culture. If you have any decent microworms anywhere in your culture, you can revive it. It takes a bit more effort but it can be done. Don't give up so easily.

Leitlana80, wow, I was surprised to see someone suggest that your octogenarian was only 2 years old. I do not baby my bettas, in fact they live in large tanks with plenty of competition for food and strong water currents. This is my present guy, who is really young at only 2 years since I got...

I keep my tanks planted whenever I can. I think, my personal opinion, that fish do better in a planted tank. I have several with a fertile layer under the gravel layer and find that a good way to do plants. The dirt or potting soil in my case, provides a good place for the plants to root while...

I answered this concern in your other thread basboi. Unfortunately I think you are looking at a prolapse which has extremely variable chances of recovery. I lost a fish to a prolapse very recently but have seen some recover. As far as I know, there is really nothing we can do to help a prolapse...

Welcome to our forum Allan078. We are almost all amateurs here, but some of us do have some experience. If your "minnows" are white cloud mountain minnows, the fry will only need to be about 2 cm long to survive in the main tank. If they are something else, I have no idea.

Well done Akasha. It is good to show pictures of what people have a hard time understanding. Each time it happens more people learn to see it in their own fish. That was the whole point to my molly thread. I wanted people to understand each stage of fry development and told my story with pictures.

If you had virgin guppy females and placed them with a male, you could safely remove the male the next day and collect fry from both females about 4 weeks later. Guppies are prolific. There is a reason that they are called millions fish where they occur naturally.

It looks like a prolapse to me, and may well be why she is having so much trouble dropping her fry. I lost a wild type swordtail, an X. alvarezi, earlier this week to a prolapse in a female. Mine did not happen to be at the end of carrying her fry but the prolapse meant she could not expel her...

BlueDragon, guppies and endlers will get along just fine, in fact they will get along so well that you will have no idea what the fry are coming from. Guppies and endlers breed with each other way too easily and produce very fertile hybrids in the process. As soon as you mix them, both species...

Do you have a picture so that we can understand your filter? It sounds like something I have never seen before.

Trash is trash. Let us know and they can disappear.

There is no number of females that can be kept with your male. Just forget that, it is not an option.

Dropsy is easy. It is nothing more than a description, not a disease. Dropsy describes a fish that is so bloated that the scales on its belly are sticking out, not laying flat against the fish. Unless you can identify why the fish is bloated, your chances of a successful treatment are almost...

I have never seen true endlers pick on anything that was moving. I have seen them pick at snails the way many livebearers pick at almost any stationary object but I would not call it an attack by any stretch. True endlers display almost constantly but are far gentler than any guppy when it comes...

Mollies are another common poeciliid and have the same responses as guppies or platies. When the fry are ready, the will be dropped.

Welcome to the forum Mitch70. I see no conflict with feeding both flake and a high vegetable matter diet. What I do is feed plenty of "spirulina flake" which, if you read the actual ingredients on the label, is really a mix of fish meal and vegetable matter. Where that leaves us is feeding a...

If you are feeding fish that are only 3 days old, feed several times each day with whatever you find acceptable. The tiniest of fry can only eat so much at each meal but should receive food rather steadily. That will mean many small feedings each day. Small portions are indeed difficult to judge...

I presently have a nice young group of molly fry myself. What I am feeding them is what I feed the4 adults, since they are in the same tank. The concession I make to the fry is that I grind part of the food between my fingertips and I feed several times each day so that they are never very...

Frank and Peter C, do not be surprised if you see no more fry for a period of 4 weeks after your recent fry discoveries. If you are relying on things like the color of a gravid spot or the swelling of a female, you have fallen into a trap based on poor understanding of the way to judge females...

One thing that I always avoid, as a registered wild type endler breeder, is allowing endlers and guppies to mix in any tank. I even refuse to keep both species in the same room for fear of accidentally using a net in both tanks that moves one fish to the other fish's tank. Your mollies and...

Welcome to the forum Mainer. Anyone who breeds fish, livebearer or egg layer, must deal with the resulting fry. It is even worse for egg layers where a single breeding can produce hundreds of fry. My daughter found that out when she "accidentally" bred her cichlids and hit up dad for some...

Welcome to the forum MikeT. I must admit to being an old diehard, emphasis on old. My question is why you feel some kind of obligation to any particular fish type. Why not build a nice easy DIY stand to suit your tanks? I have a large number of them for my own tanks but a single layer stand...

It may have something to say about the pH of tap water at its initial value and its value after a couple of days. Tap water is often manipulated by your supplier to achieve some particular value. Where I live the tap water has chloramine added to such a large extent that once I add...

A typical 20 gallon is plenty big enough for a nice assortment of small fish. I would stock it based more on the tap water available than on any desire for a particular fish. If you have hard high pH water, stick to African rift lake fish or common livebearers. If you have somewhat soft water...

As long as the donor tank is left with plenty of mature media, the donor tank should be fine and the good sized sample should help you get cycled very quickly. The exact ratio of 1/3 is really not critical. If you take anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of the mature media, both tanks should be fine, but...

I am looking for a ratio myself. I run way too many tanks on fluorescent tubes and have no LEDs at all. I would love to have someone say that X fluorescent is equivalent to Y LED wattage. Unfortunately, I have yet to see that comparison made here or elsewhere. Come on guys. I know that some of...

I just love the experimentation that people are doing with LEDs and look forward to any final results that get posted. I am very much an "old school" fish keeper, which means I will never know about any of this stuff without reading your posts. Has anyone figured out an equivalent to the old...

Deaver, you do not win the record for oldest resurrection of a thread but you are definitely in the competition for it. How the heck did you find a thread from 2006 to bring to the front? I recently saw one from 2005 that had been resurrected so that is why you do not win. Why not start your...

Any way that you make good use of waste water is always welcome. Since a typical RO wastes between 5 and 10 times as much water as it produces, any use of that waste water is very welcome.

Once any chemical filter has all "sites" occupied, it will release less tightly bound chemicals in order to attach to more reactive chemicals. It does not matter whether you have purigen or carbon, the principles never change. We never see such a criticism of purigen because they are often the...

Go forward and get those guys in the right condition to breed them. If you get no more than typical guppies demand in your area, it will be just fine and you will profit a tiny bit. If there is a local demand, you may do much better than that. There is no telling until you actually have...

One thing you have yet to answer is the type of water that you have. Mollies, among all livebearers, are probably the ones most likely to have troubles if they do not have enough minerals in their water. Some people provide those minerals with salt although I never use the stuff myself. In my...

It could indeed be a problem with your female. I just lost a Xiphophorus alvarezi female today to a prolapse. She had shown that symptom for a couple of days but I had no way to help her.

Hi there tropiquaria. I also focus on goodeids but spend plenty of time right here talking about things like mollies and guppies. Everyone has their own interests after all and few people have much access to goodeids. I wish it were not so, but it is true. Are you a participant in the C.A.R.E.S...

Hi there and welcome Demfish. I always try to drip acclimate my new fish. That means that I open the bag from the fish shop and dump the water and fish into a gallon container. Often the water from the bag makes the bucket only about 1/2 inch deep or even less. Once I have the fish in there, I...