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Sorry to need to disagree with you ZephyrStarPlaties. Mollies are not brackish at all. They do tolerate a large variety of water conditions but can live equally well in water anywhere from full fresh to full salt water conditions. As it happens they represent a small group of fish that are truly...

Orange is a fairly common color variation that we see on mollies, it is not a problem at all. I have seen many mollies that had a more or less orange body color to them rather than the more common grey or silvery color. I find it attractive but color forms of a fish have a beauty only in the eye...

Thanks ricefish. I have a covered tank for them but I really don't want them trying to escape. I was advised, on another site, to use floating mops as cover to make them less likely to jump. Does that make sense to you?

You could use a simple tester like I have to test for TDS. That will at least give you some indication of the total dissolved solids that you are facing. If you have a TDS reading, you have most of what it takes to control your dissolved solids number. You then treat any change at all as an...

Owen, any time you can get a good deal on plants, consider it a recommendation for low light situations. Let me shed a bit of reality here. When a plant is offered cheap it is reflective of the effort that the plant seller has experienced. If he had an easy time growing the plant, it will be...

A high temperature, whether expressed in degrees C or degrees F is a problem for many of us. I choose to simply ignore anything that would require me to cool a tank to a temperature lower than I use for human comfort in the same space. I am ready to bet that others do not agree with me. So be...

It sounds like you are doing just fine Salam. Continue and you will soon be ready for fish.

Thanks for your input Stewartb. Does anyone else see anything wrong with my present stocking. I had a bit of trouble placing the Fundulopanchax into their permanent homes. The Lafia female jumped out of her drip acclimation home, a 1 gallon container, but I found her a half hour later and...

Bugdozer, plants are fine at any time. If you choose to add plants, be sure to let us know that you have done so. It is not a particular problem for a cycle but it will help us interpret your chemical responses if we know that you have growing plants. Since plants take up nitrogen, we must take...

Bugdozer it is simple. If you do not have another source of ammonia to cycle your tank you can use simple ammonium hydroxide, often labeled as ammonia, or yon can even use ammonium chloride, the chemical used in the 1990s as a cycling source. I have no idea where to obtain ammonium chloride but...

I have used them and was disappointed. I used the gel foods that were rated to feed my fish for a week. When I returned from an extended absence I found all of my fry gone, I suspect they were treated as food on the hoof by the adult fish. Since I still had an unused sample of the week long...

If you are done with your cycle, consider easy care fish like guppies. They are readily available, can be had in your choice of colors and are fairly hearty fish in any typical environment. I am a livebearer specialist so you must recognize that I will favor livebearers in my own selections. If...

Moved this topic to a place where you might get more informed answers. I hope that is OK monkeys.

A fin will return to its full look on almost any excuse if the water conditions are right. I am struck by the lack of discussion you have provided in terms of tank/filter cycling. Are you aware that the requirements for care of any fish, including a betta, requires that it be given a properly...

You need to gradually add water, a bit each day, so that in another week or so the tank will be full.

A wild type Betta for me. I am especially fond of the group that comprise the mouth brooders. I have kept Betta imbellis, Betta simplex and Betta pugnax in the past but have never succeeded yet in breeding them. My simplex bred but the male died of starvation while carrying his mouthful of eggs...

Don't worry too much about the pictures fishtanksmomma. I find that my most reliable tests are the ones that I read with light coming over my shoulder from a well lit sunny window. Those tests give me something that I can rely on for a cycle. Hold the tube flat against the white part of the...

Fins grow back in just a few days linkubuspark. Have you checked other parameters in your tank? I never have seen a healthy betta that could not just swim away from a rather robust filter flow. How are the ammonia and nitrite levels in your tank? Nitrite can act to make the fish lack the oxygen...

Your filter flow is plenty at about 8x the tank volume per hour. If you have any mature filter media, by all means add it. It will greatly speed up the new filter's cycle process. I often run tanks at far lower flows relative to their size, but your filter flow will be no real problem for a...

Well done KrystaK. I always feel better when my bettas have company, and I think they are healthier too. It may just be my own prejudice but I feel that my bettas do better when they are treated like fish, not invalids. No restricted filter flows and no tiny solitary confinement tanks for my...

Well done craftyfishlady. I recently had 3 separate drops on the same day and was just walking on air about it. Aren't new fry fun?

Just vary the diet a bit .I feed mostly general purpose flake to platies but once in a while I feed spirulina flake and at other times I feed frozen foods like brine shrimp or daphnia. No single food is ever ideal for any fish. Let me make that a flat out statement. No fish ever is perfectly...

It is where you are posting.

I see that I am the only "Other" vote so far. The best food for fry depends on both what you have available and the specific needs of your fry. If I feed my killies on nothing but BBS, I am probably going to deprive them of things that they need although BBS is regarded as the best killie fry...

nessar, I am going to suggest something a bit out of the ordinary. I always keep my bettas in really big tanks these days. I choose a tank that holds a community of peaceful fish like endlers and just add him in as if he was any ordinary fish. They all seem to thrive and survive to a ripe old...

I have no idea about your linked lighting system since I have never used them. You have several things to consider. The first is a basic question, do you have a planted tank that requires a particular light arrangement? If not, use the standard lighting system and forget about any problems...

That is a real beauty in my opinion. I never worry over much about final appearance so mine never look that good. Well done.

You can add the Rena XP2 to the list that Jay has provided. Let's face it, there are literally tons of good filters for a tank that size.

NO. An Emperor 400 is a rather simple cartridge filter that has no fine filtration built in. I use a bit smaller Emperor on one of my tanks but I have no illusion about its effectiveness as a particulate filter. It is a poor particulate filter that merely removes the largest particles from the...

An obvious choice is to use aquarium sealer, the silicone stuff. I have a very similar tank that I rehabilitated by using a wooden top frame and including stress bracing in that top frame. What I did was to build a simple frame that surrounds my tank at the top and to join the front to the back...

It should be far cheaper than e-bay if you don't insist on something marked as appropriate for fish. E-bay merchants probably buy the stuff from places like you are investigating and then divide it into small quantities and sell it to you as specialist materials in the auctions. You are...

Your fish are not yet close to a drop. Please see the link in my signature area where I discuss the progress of my molly, with lots of pictures. The idea of that thread was to make you confident in your own analysis of your own fish. There is no way we can be as accurate as you can on your own...

The heck with treatments, do a 95%+ water change with proper dechlorination. My bet is that he will perk right up. I am a very simplistic fish keeper but my methods seem to work. If something is wrong that you can't identify, the first step is always an enormous water change. 90 times out of 100...

The swordies definitely need a bigger tank, they are very fast swimmers that need some room for regular exercise. When to comes to micro tanks like a 2 1/2 gallon, three are plenty of tiny possible tank mates. Off the cuff, as a livebearer specialist, I can recommend some nice Heterandria...

Congrats twingogeekeo. What are those guys? Are they mollies?

Welcome to the forum and don't be so harsh basboi85. I see a healthy tank in your pictures that may not suit your own tastes. The bit of algae, and it is very little, is not a health threat to any fish. The decor may not suit you, I doubt your own best efforts would suit me, we are all a bit...

Dropsy is a symptom description not a disease. You could think of it much like pneumonia which simply mans that the pneumo, the air sacs in the lungs, are swollen. It also is not a disease but a set of symptoms. There is no such thing as a cure for dropsy although there may well be a cure for...

How long has their tank been set up and what are your chemical test results? I find that is often the best questions to ask when I have a fish in trouble because water is their entire world. Unlike us, they have no alternative to the water they live in and cannot take any precautions to make it...

There are just tons of livebearers that you will seldom see in the LFS. A problem that many of them share is that they are not as colorful as the more common livebearers that you do see. As has been indicated, I keep lots of less common livebearers including a species once though to be extinct...

In general a betta is not a livebearer. Would you two like to take this discussion to the betta splendens section?