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Welcome to the forum ronanmurphy. Zebras can indeed eat fry faster than you can spot them. They are very efficient predators. If you want to have swordtail fry survive,I would start by setting up a drop tank. Once you have that drop tank, add lots of either java moss or najas grass as cover...

If you want to protect fry from the filter inlet, try this one. I use a filter sponge that is made for use in a commercial filter. What I do is cut a slit in one end and push it up over the inlet tube. I use a sponge designed for use in an aquarium because other sponge types are made with...

A typical drop from a very young, maybe first time, female could be as few as 10 to 15 fry. A mature female poeciliid will drop at least 25 fry and often can drop as many as 50. A drop of only 2 fry found means one of two things. Either you failed to find most of the fry or, another distinct...

If you have water suitable for typical livebearers, you just add water and feed regularly and wait about 4 weeks. Suitable water is free of both ammonia and nitrite and often shows a pH of around 7.4 or more. I have water at 7.8 pH and can collect as many fry as I wish from my breeding colonies...

To answer your first post, there is no way a guppy can hold fry for more than maybe 5 weeks, at rather low temperatures. At typical temperatures, she can only carry fry for about 4 weeks. If you have not seen fry for much more than the 4 to 5 weeks, you have simply missed a drop. It happens way...

As fish48 said, the problem is not in-breeding, period. I have tanks that I have intentionally inbred for well over 5 years, figure at least 10 generations, and I have no trouble at all with them. The problem you may be facing is something that stressed the female into an early drop or some...

A net is probably your best bet. I would use the largest net available and stuff it with either java moss or najas grass. When the drop happens, the female will have trouble chasing her fry through the moss and many, not all, will survive. Once she is done with her drop, remove her to prevent...

It sounds like your female may well recover. That is indeed good news.

That female may well be carrying fry but she is not very close to a drop yet. Note: Sometimes I slip but I try to never say pregnant with common livebearers. The females of poeciliids, the most common type of livebearers, are more like vessels carrying fertilized eggs than like mammals that...

I am afraid that the main female in your video is no closer than a week away from her next drop. I never use color because it always fools me. Instead I use shape. That female is rather large but has yet to square off much. For Sam, use just the first part that ends with 7759.mp4 and it takes...

Good luck with that Miresiti. I have not had many survive very long after the weaker part died.

If your chemistry has returned to normal, I think you already have your answer. A canister type filter is always dead quiet compared to internals or hang on back filters. If you are used to one of those,you can bet the canister will seem silent by comparison.

Your rusting ail will add some iron to the water. Other than that I can see no effect. Since plant people will often add a substrate that enhances iron concentrations, I doubt it will have any adverse effects.

I doubt you really want to know what I think of them. Let me tone it down some and simply say that I find them totally useless.

Sorry Akasha, white spot is a parasite, not a water quality issue at all, although I am well aware that you have read that in other places. As Zoddy said, the key to dealing with NTS is water changes with no holds barred. The key to ich treatment, if that is needed, is to continue whatever...

If money were no object I would have my fish room now instead of a year or two in the future. Think of a fish room heated to around 75F, 23C, so that individual heaters are not needed. Make it big enough that I can rack 40 gallon tanks with the end facing out, instead of the usual face. That...

Actually cories love high protein live foods. Feed them things like frozen brine shrimp or frozen daphnia a few times each week. I even feed mine live microworms. Those guys go nuts for nice meaty foods. Mine are trying hard to breed for me right now on a diet of mostly frozen meaty foods mixed...

Cories definitely lay eggs. If it is cories the eggs will be stuck to an ornament or even the tank's glass. They will not be a clump as such, like you might see with apple snails, but will be a single layer thick over a few square inches of surface, at least judging by my own cories.

Inytom, most of us have tried at least one of those cycling nostrums with about the same result. The cycle took just as long with the product as it would have without the product. If you use that product, still do a fishless cycle and make sure it is complete before you stock your tank. That way...

Welcome to our forum bellanouva. I would hold off on the otocinclus, maybe forever. I have tried to keep them in the past and found that once the tank they were in ran out of algae, they slowly starved. I early love those little guys but I hate to watch them starve in my tank. I even went so far...

You might as well give them a try Grant. What do you have to lose?

That stocking level should be within the capability of a tank the size of yours. Do you already have a firm commitment to that larger tank? If not I would advise against relying on it. No matter your good intentions, a large group of clown loaches will not long thrive in a tank too darned small...

One thing that both WD and I have found useful is to reduce your ammonia dose to only 2 ppm after the ammonia processing is working well. That reduces the ultimate high levels of nitrites that your filter will experience and seems to make the total cycle move a bit faster.

The brown stain is evidence of your bacterial colony. Leave it in place.

You will continue to gauge your water change frequency and size by water tests. If you add to your stock, it will mean re-establishing what it takes to keep your water good. What we suggest is that you do enough and large enough water changes that the nitrates in your tank never exceed your tap...

Your 7.8 pH is reminiscent of my own tap water. At least that is what I see when I inspect the color at the top of your picture against the card. The center of the color stripe compared to the card colors is how I read a test. The color will be a little darker toward the tube edges because of...

You have what we would call a 20 gallon in the US. It really holds a bit less than 20 gallons but we always round things off to higher numbers in our tank ratings. My 55 gallon tank only really holds about 52 gallons of water, even if it had no substrate.

You will have killed all of your cycle. Next time try actually scrubbing the filter pad in your waste tank water. A filter gains bacteria in a thin film in the media. It is not a slime coat but is pretty thin. I have seldom had any problem making sure that a filter pad is truly clean by washing...

It is not too unusual for it to take 2 weeks to clear that first dose of ammonia. After that the ammonia clears much more quickly.

Hi there Donk. Welcome to TFF. You have a nice looking tank there. I tend to avoid tiger barbs but I do recognize how good they look.

Unfortunately the various cycling additives have not proven to be very helpful so far. A few years ago a promising additive was made, but it required constant refrigeration, had a very short shelf life and even then failed about 1/2 of the time. It is no longer being produced and I have seen no...

It sounds to me like you do not have enough light. CO2 and ferts cannot make up for a lack of adequate light. I push light in even my low tech tanks, no ferts or CO2 added at all. Light is essential for any plant to prosper. If you have any trouble with the cycle itself, please be sure to tell...

Don't worry too much about your pH. Unless it reflects chloramines in the tap water, instead of chlorine, it will be no problem. Chloramines change into both chlorine, easily evaporated off, and ammonia, showing up as ammonium hydroxide, a weak base. That weak base will definitely raise your pH...

If your friend has a well established filter, not a recently cycled one, a 1/3 sample of her media should be safe to take and will get your tank cycled in the first week using the standard fishless cycling method. Do offer to swap media, not just take some from her filter.

On the safe side for mollies and guppies would be 22C, not 25C.

Painting complicates things. Paint contains volatile components that can harm your fish. You know the volatile components are present because you can smell the paint. If the paint has dried so much that you can no longer smell it, it is no longer producing volatiles in significant amounts. If...

Hold off on the neons for at least a month. Most of the rest are hardy enough to stock on day 1 although an initial stocking at no more than 2/3 of the ultimate stock level would place you in a more conservative position. If all is well after the first week, as shown by your testing, go ahead...

At a pH of 7.0 you can keep almost any fish. It is unlikely that your water is excessively hard or soft in that situation. I wish I had your water really. Be careful to get true SAEs and not CAEs which are sometimes mis-identified. Otocinclus are a fish that I have never kept successfully since...

Common pest snails lay eggs in a gelatinous mass that has tiny white spots in it. Since the snails do not require a mate, even a single snail can be the beginning of a snail problem.

A lot depends on the fish that you keep. I run water with a GH of 12 degrees, a KH of 12 degrees, a TDS of 225 ppm and a pH of about 7.8. My fish are almost all fine with nothing but tap water. My first bit of advice is to ignore the pH value as long as it doesn't damage things that you place...