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You could go with snails--"mystery snails", p. bridgesii, one on each side. They don't reproduce like pest snails do, and they're a good cleanup crew for uneaten food and algae.

Frozen are a lot better. Canned peas are often seasoned, at least with salt, and are more likely to have preservatives added. Also, canned peas are more prone to going "off" and getting bacterial growth in them, or picking up metals from the can.

I doubt they'll take them right away. Most LFS won't take homegrown livebearers until they're at least half an inch long.

Nearly all aerosol sprays of any type and even many "pump" bottle sprays (cleaning products, deodorizers, scents, pesticides, etc) can be extremely toxic to aquatic animals. If one tank is covered and having fewer problems, and the trouble tank is open to the air, I'd say that's a clear...

Nearly all commercial processed food (flake, pellets, granules) has *some* dye in it, and that will influence the color of the fish waste. Pellets are usually just color--red, or green--but most commercial flake foods are tricolored, a light yellow/brown, a green, and a red mixed together. A...

Oh good, I have a lot more variety in brigs than I do in the canas! (Just have brown and gold canas.) As far as brigs go, I have some ivories, a couple chestnuts, one or two "blacks", a couple purples, and a couple light-striped pinks ("peppermint"). The purples are small--marble sized--but...

I'd be quite interested in trading for a couple of these guys, they sound like a perfect match for a spawn I have that's mostly girlies! Do you mean "real" apple snales (P. caniculata) or the more common, more plant safe "mystery snails" P. bridgesii? Any particular color? I also have asolene...

Sounds like a bloodworm allergy to me. My husband's highly allergic to them. If I've just been using them and there's powder in the air, he gets really stuffy in the face and sneezes and can't breathe; if I'd been handling them and touched him without getting everything off, he broke out in...

If a store has a single tank of 'em, there's no guarantee any of them are pure at this point. In fact, it's incredibly unlikely. The two can and do interbreed extremely easily, so being tanked together the ones that "look" like Endler's are almost guaranteed to be hybrids. Endler's hybrids...

They're most likely your typical wild-type guppies. Endler's and guppies are very closely related (and can interbreed) and the wild-types do look fairly similar to the Endler's (which are "wild type" Endler's, as they haven't been bred for fancy variations to the same degree that guppies have)...

I'm a "betta person"--I've bred them casually for many years. (Never got into the show circuit, but I've worked with some pretty nice fish as opportunity presents itself.) When breeding, growing out, and jarring fry, yes, I use the traditional smaller jars and frequent water changes, and it...

The oldest "trade" fish on record seems to be the koi, with individuals living multiple human generations--100 years is not unheard of at all--and, APPARENTLY, the oldest koi on record died at the age of 226 (calculated by looking at growth plates on scales under a microscope, much like tree...

Relatively little bacteria is contained in the water itself. The vast majority is in the gravel, and in the filter media. If you can transfer some gravel and/or used filter media, that'll essentially "clone" the smaller tank into a 'mature' tank right away. Adding aged water will not help...

In a 20-gallon tank, you're much, much better off with a single pair than any other option. If you get a trio, two will pair off and harass the single female and probably kill her. Two males in a space that small, and the males will fight a lot (the females less so) and you'll end up with one...

Fish don't see color the same way we do, so to them, they don't care if it's neon yellow or bright purple. HOWEVER, they do tend to be happist on NATURAL tones of gravel with some variation in the color. Kribs, especially if you're plannning to breed them, will "mouth" the substrate a LOT--pick...

Hee, can NEVER have too many bettas, in my less than humble opinion! Glad to be of help!

You can usually find IAL on ebay, from sellers that do have feedback. I'd suggest that.

Whales and dolphins are both mammals. The wholphin is an uncommon, but documented, mammalian hybrid.

I hate you for getting such good pictures of yours, mine won't hold still for ANYTHING :P Did you breed the juvies yourself from your adults, or just pick them up somewhere small?

No. I've tried both, for betta splendens, wild-type bettas, and South American fish tanks. The actual leaf is far superior. Not only do fish seem to like the leaves themselves (to nest under, hide under, etc) but putting leaf in the tank means it continues to release the good stuff for days...

Kribs sometimes have a wonky growth rate--they seem to grow in spurts, fast, then slow, then fast again. What size tank are they in? I'd reccomend trying live food (tubifex, brine shrimp, or daphnia, if you can find it) or at least frozen (bloodworms or brine shrimp). That's all higher in...

I don't know where you're getting this information, and it may be done this way OCCASIONALLY--perhaps the expensive "custom designed" blood parrots and such--but it's not the common method used on fish that are going to retail for $2 USD. The common tattoo method involves grabbing the fish...

The most commonly seen one is "Pelvicachromis pulcher", which is what you're 99% likely getting if you're just being offered "kribensis". The other species are usually referred to by their species names.

Chinese algae eaters ("sucking loaches") are extremely prone to this behaviour and will suck the slime and scales off of bigger fish. CAE's also get fairly big--four, five, six inches without much trouble. Otocinclus top out at MAYBE an inch and a half, are completely herbivorous, and...

The ones we get at my store we feed freeze-dried plankton. It floats, so it's in the natural feeding zone, and it smells strongly enough that it triggers a feeding response in even small, just off their sac, fish. Be careful not to give them too large of pieces they could choke on, though.

LFS was wrong. While a few good stores will try to talk you out of overstocking your tank, most of them will tell you what you want to hear, and don't care if your tank or your fish are healthy as long as they make the sales. And hey, if your fish get sick from being overfed or overcrowded...

Weirdly, the female dropped in the middle of the day, so the fry were still just a couple hours old when I came home from work, and a few of them had (what appears to my untrained eye to be) remnants of the 'umbilical cord' still in place. I doubt it was this female's first drop since she was...

Here ya are! They're not the best shots--these guys are FAST--but they'll give you some idea. They're one of a very few true African tetras, and they get big (mine range between 2.5 and 3 inches), but if you have the space, they're LOVELY.

I know giant gouramis are a food fish in their native area (Thailand) and other parts of Asia. Don't know about the pangassius, though.

Wait a couple days and see is good advice, if it's just habitual "I liked this other food I was used to, I don't want this new stuff!" pickiness. It may, however, be that the fish really just don't like the food at all and won't take it, or take it very reluctantly, even after going hungry for...

I have 2 albino males. They are the same species, care is identical, and they will pair and breed with normal-colored kribs, although creating pairs is a little more difficult. It's much easier to pair a regular male with an albino female, than a regular female with an albino male. The albino...

I have some half-decent but dimly lit photos of mine on the memory card currently in my camera from a photo session a couple days ago. I'll be dumping them to my hard drive and sorting through them tomorrow or the next day, so I'll try to get them posted then :)

1) You NEVER "need" an algae eater. The ONLY 100% reliable, works-for-everyone-guaranteed way of getting rid of algae is this: You can try all the notions, potions, fish, snails, and shrimp you want, but the only surefire way to control/prevent aglae is by managing your water chemistry, and...

Fungus is extremely bad for any fish, but particularly babies. The decaying food will foul the water and increase the liklihood of disease in your fry. You can clean fry tanks in a couple of ways to make it easier. You can try to siphon just using a very fine piece of airline tubing. If the...

My store got a few in to see for ourselves if they were dyed. (We're very against selling dyed fish, and we kept them in the back off the floor, but we couldn't get a straight answer so we decided to see for ourselves.) They do seem to be "juiced" in some way, shape, or form, be it food or...

PROBABLY not, they are different species, and have just enough difference in color signals and behaviour that it's unlikely and to my knowledge hasn't been documented, although I'd be hesitant to say it's impossible. Crossing between color/regional morphs of the same species happens a lot (such...

I *heart* my kribs alright. Currently working with pulcher (common and albino), taeniatus "Moliwe", and a single "sp. blue fin" (blue-fin rollofi/Guinean Blue Fin'). I had a pair of the blue-fins but lost the female, although I've got a replacement lined up in the next couple of months once...

Two species have "yellow" in their common names-- Pelvicachromis subocellatus is commonly called the "yellow-cheek krib" and the extra yellow tends to be mostly in the face and on the chest. They look a lot like "normal" kribs (pulcher-type) but do have more yellow in the face, and more and...

Tiny ones are babies. Your "common" plecos, Hypostomus punctatus, easily reach over a foot long--we have one at work that's a good 14 inches. They should NOT be kept in a small tank with the assumption you'll move them "eventually". Big plecos, if you decide not to upgrade, are near...

What in heck are you doing owning a fish store, then? You could be retired, a millionaire, from writing up scientific papers on this fish, if you actually bred them! ...since they have a larval freeswimming stage and there are NO known or available records for the successful breeding of the...