Search results

air bubblers help aeration because the rising torrent of air bubbles draws water up with it. therefore you get continual water exchange at the surface which is where most oxygenation takes place. the water then descends elsewhere forming a "loop" current in the tank so you have continual...

bare handed.

I just squirt the shrimp in with the water and hope for the best.. The salt will dilute many times over, if you squirt in 50mL of brine solution into a 90 litre tank then the salt's not going to be very concentrated when it all gets mixed up is it? (You do see the water get an odd swirly...

I use an aqua one pipe cleaner, it has a bunch of bristles on the end of a long flexible metal feed wire. you feed the wire end through your pipe and then pull it through, the bristles clean the pipe on the way through. works great.

Any time I've bought from a pet store the fish have died a short time later. Whether it be from disease or just mistreatment in the pet store. LFS has been great, well worth the extra money IMO.

I keep a bottle of Jack Daniels in my tank cabinet. When things go bad it helps with the mourning process :lol:

They can be, so it's something to watch out for. They would do better in a tank where their tankmates are at least as aggressive as they are, passive fish will get bullied. As an example, I established a 90L tank and moved 6 x serpaes in to start with. I later added 2 x German Blue Ram...

Well you're still adding heat into the system when you use lights so I would avoid it. Night time is the only chance your tank has to cool off so why ruin its chances by running lights!! You can also aim a desk fan at the water surface to provide some evaporative cooling.

I have an AR620 (first "real" tank) and I'm quite happy with it. I avoided the 620T because the proportions are wrong.. and I now wish I'd bought the AR850 ;) Have found the standard filter arrangement to be sufficient, but you could convert it to external if you wanted more. Mostly I like...

I use the API liquid test kit as well and it usually looks like I have 0.25ppm ammonia, the test gets a very slight green tint compared with when I first add the drops. I'm not really worried about it, since it's consistent. If my ammonia was climbing then I would be worried but it seems in...

I had diatoms come up a couple of months after setting up my 90L, which was seeded from the old filter I was using in a 20L. Definitely not a cycling issue, it seems to just be a stage that many tanks go through at some point in their maturation. Some people say too much light, some people say...

I went with German Blue Rams, although some say they are hard to take care of. I bought mine quite cheaply from a breeder and they have been going great. Also I have 1 x red tailed black shark (RBTS). they are more suitably sized for 90L than a bala shark/silver shark which need a HUGE tank...

Depends what sort of tank you want to end up with - any fish you choose need to be compatible with later fish you want to add. I had good success with serpae tetras, they seem quite hardy and are very enthusiastic feeders. Great fun to watch. However if you add "slow" eaters later (eg my...

awesome!

Great post, epic length too! But plenty of good advice. I think this subject is one that only becomes apparent after a lot of experience, you need to spend plenty of time observing fish in a variety of habitats before you can judge what normal behaviour is. So while the guides on "this fish...

fill a plastic water bottle with water, leave an inch at the top of air, squeeze the bottle a bit and then seal the cap. put it in the freezer 24 hours. then you have an oversize novelty ice cube to cool your tank with (you will need to cycle bottles through the freezer to keep up the cooling...

on the plus side, if you don't get a pairing you could get a threesome :hyper:

sand is awesome. poo sits on the top, easily siphoned off without disturbing the sand. uneaten food sits on the top and will get consumed. with gravel, uneaten food falls out of reach of the fish and decomposes. when i gravel vacc'd my tank after putting an algae wafer in the amount of...

presumably your tapwater doesn't have much nitrate in it, if that's the case then nitrate should drop with each water change. the normal process of events is ammonia->nitrite->nitrate. so a cycled tank you should see 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and then 10 nitrate.. a week later 20 nitrate... a week...

Fair call, I didn't consider chemical processes in the substrate. I accept that diffusion out of a gas bubble is going to be a very small influence. In the context of this thread, yep, the bubbles do nothing. But in an actual tank the stirring caused by an upwell of bubbles will help...

If the other behaviour is normal then no need for concern. You mentioned they were new, they are probably still adapting to the tank. I notice my BN catfish air breathes after a major water change. I'm not sure why this is, but the only time I ever see it is when I do a change. So give the...

I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but "virtually limitless source in the atmosphere" got a chuckle out of me. I guess 21% oxygen will forcefully diffuse itself right through a body of water? Some quick googling found me a report on mine tailings: click me. Slide 6 shows a graph of...

An individual bubble may have very little time but it is immediately replaced by another bubble, therefore it's not the time of flight of 1 bubble that matters it is how much surface area you are creating with your bubble stream. Which may or may not be significant, but that's a different...

corys would be fine for the tank size, they only get to 4-5cm. however, corys love digging in the substrate so it would be cruel to house them with a clear bottom they really need sand (which isn't that hard to keep clean, much better than gravel). you could get away with a regular or...

^pfft just get your arm wet! the water's warm even, what's the problem :) i used a kitchen wipe that has been washed a bunch of times, it cleans algae very effectively my tank is amazingly clear now. i'll be keeping that in my fishy arsenal from now on!

5ppm is a concentration, not a rate of anything. the principle of reducing your nitrate levels is balancing plants and animal biomass, yes. it also depends heavily on how much you feed - basically any fish food you introduce will end up as ammonia or nitrates whether processed through a fish...

It certainly works for transient periods, I have 6 serpae tetras in a 90L tank and added a pair of german blue rams, my dominant tetra attacked the smaller ram viciously until i managed to net one of the tetras (can't remember if it was the bad one, i think it was). The rest of them chilled...

^^ feed wafers 30 minutes after total lights out (room lights too), the regular fish go to sleep and the BN will still be active. sounds like it has plenty of food to survive on though.

Whatever. Matt's already trying less light and less food, to the point where his fish aren't enjoying it. 50% weekly changes too. That counts as fighting the cause in my book. Should he just continue doing that, to the detriment of his fish's health and his own enjoyment of the hobby? SAEs...

You're right, I rescind my previous advice. Matt, the cause of your diatoms is clearly that you have a fish tank. Take the fish back to the LFS, drain your tank and sell it on ebay. That will definitely solve it and is better than promoting an ecosystem in which the fish naturally maintain...

get siamese algae eaters. they'll help keep things clean.

try some driftwood in the tank. it can help lower pH a bit. 8.4 is really really high.. just because the pet store uses that pH doesn't mean it's right for the fish.

get siamese algae eaters. they won't get silk spotless because some algae remains in the thread/gaps of the silk but you won't get an excess of algae on the leaf surface. and zero effort to maintain!

german blue ram - because they can stop or swim backwards, and go nuts whenever you walk up to the tank as they associate external movement with being fed. siamese algae eater - for studiously eating all the algae in my tank :good: they're a lot more active than my bristlenose catfish too.

Yep I got it last week too. Using Firefox (I have since switched back to Opera). Gone off Firefox, it used to be more secure but it has certainly let a few nasties in the last couple of years. Haven't had anything come through Opera yet!

yep chop the frozen cube in half witha knife and put the unwanted portion back in the freezer. i toss the other half of the cube in the tank still frozen. my rams go bonkers they love it!

in addition to the water change you can try seachem stability. it certainly won't hurt anything besides your wallet :) i used it and my tank finished its nitrite part of the cycle a few days later - although it certainly could have been a complete coincidence i was just happy to havew the...

It can be dangerous, depending on the modifications. Don't forget that nature experiences natural genetic mutations that ARE sudden changes in DNA. If it's a beneficial mutation then breeding is more successful and the mutation becomes commonplace. If it's a setback then that DNA line dies...

Miles the Hydor is a thermostat, not a heater! If it was a heater then what you describe is true.

sounds like the females like the fresh meat. and one male in the group getting more than his fair share of the action. not much different to humans eh? :)