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My bichirs are used to eating floating sticks at the surface. A few times when I was messing with the tank I have â€￾hand fed" them unintentionally, as in they bit my hand. Couple times they even drew blood. Also I used to have a three foot African lungfish that bit me a couple times too. With...

Yeah there are mistakes all over in hobbyist books. TFH stuff is probably way worse. I know I've seen the brackish ropefish thing in more places than just Baensch. But again it is probably all taken from the same source. The first fish I ever got was a black shark because the TFH Exotic Tropical...

Yes I've been to that site but it doesn't have any pictures that help me.

Nitrate isn't your problem. Nitrate is in fact relatively harmless. There is about a 99.9% chance that you have a lot of ammonia in your tank that is killing your fish. After the ammonia goes down you will get a nitrite (notice the i not a in that word. Nitrate is different) spike which can also...

No this is what I'm talking about: http://www.elmersaquarium.com/h112aquaclears.htm

Hope no one minds if I respond to my own post :) but now I think Baensch is probably wrong. In some of these books one source says something and then everyone else quotes it and it gets spread around. However I've been checking my books and the web and I can't find anything definitive like...

Yes, and I have both male and female Endlicheri but this fish is different. The Endlicheri all have 4 or 5 broad bands (cable or DSL :)) that typically slant backwards from top to bottom. You can kind of see them in the back fish although they aren't real dark as in my other Endlicheri...

Yeah they do kind of look the same especially in the pictures but the back one is a P. Endlicheri and has a much heavier body. You would notice it if you saw them live. My other Endlicheri has much darker stripes so it’s easier to tell he’s different.

Well the Baensch Aquarium Atlas says "fresh and brackish" and I've read it other places too.

The rope fish (Erpetoichthys calabaricus) supposedly lives in brackish water. It's not really a bichir but it's closely related. It's in the Polypteridae family.

Actually it sounds like some sort of wet/dry or at least dry. It's not the classic wet/dry with the two nested Plexiglas boxes but it's probably meant to work on the same principal. In any case ignore my last post for now. Are you adding ammonia every day or did you just add it all in the...

No it's a backfilter. Actually I think they started making a powerhead called an Aquaclear also but what I'm talking about is the backfilter.

There are a lot of people that use canister filters and they do work well. I have no particular experience with the one you listed. However, In general I find canister filters to be a pain to clean. I used to look at all the fancy models and think "wow that must work well, cuz it looks cool"...

I mean one half inch. If you have Senegal bichirs they tend move more but they are also typically thinner bodied and more flexible. I also find that activity depends a lot on what else is going on in the tank. For instance bichirs are often the last to find the food so if you have other fish in...

In my experience it works fine. Most bichirs tend to sit on the bottom and just come up for air on occasion. They really don't need a lot of swimming space or food and oxygen isn't a problem for them. I tend to run about 1/2 inch per gallon just because I like to be conservative but I can easy...

Well you can use the 1" per gallon rule. It's actually pretty good with bichirs because they don't use up a lot of resources relative to their size. If you want to go for small ones you can try to find some P. retropinnis. However they may be hard to find. The bichir I would kill for is a P...

Anyone know what kind of bichir this is? I've had it for years and they sold it to me as a Congicus but now that I've seen pictures of Congicus I think it's something else. The one it back is a washed out P. Endlicheri. I know that much. I'm mainly interested in the one in the front. I think it...

Well Ok here's my guess. You are letting your ammonia sit at zero too long so you starve your bacteria and it starts to die off. At this point you might want to add one hardy fish. My guess is that you probably have enough bacteria to handle that. The fish will keep things on an even keel...

Hate to tell you this but you did everything wrong. If the guy really told you to add all those fish he's just ripping you off and killing your pets. Someone who runs a fish store should know better. The last thing you want to do at this point is get any more fish. You NEED to cycle your tank...

Yeah sounds like it isn't cycled fully. Nitrites should basically sit at zero. What kind of filter is it? Is it a canister of some sort or a back filter? Does it have a sponge, floss and/or carbon? Most importantly have you been cleaning it? If you rinse out the sponge in tap water you can kill...

Best way I have found is to have good lighting and grow tons of plants. It sort of depends what kind of fish you have too. Are they fish that will dig up plants for instance. There are also filter mediums which will grow anaerobic bacteria which eat nitrates but I haven’t had much luck with...

My initial guess is it may be cycled. You may just be adding more ammonia than your filter can handle. Or alternatively you may not have been adding enough to get the bacteria to grow. During the initial cycling process you don’t want to let ammonia go to zero because you will be starving your...

The other option I forget to mention is a fluidized bed filter. Lifegard makes are really good one although it’s a bit on the expensive side. I have used them quite a bit so I can tell you for sure they work well. This is basically a super compact bio filter that hangs on the back side of your...

I actually think tanks with plants are easier to maintain because they suck up Nitrate and reduce your water changes. After a lot of years of messing around I basically get the best lights I can I can afford and load the tank up with tons of plants. I haven't really messed with CO2 that much. I...

My personal favorite filter for that size tank is an Auqaclear Mini. It's not internal but it just hangs off the back. It's very easy to clean, you can adjust the water flow and it has a lot of space to add carbon or whatever else you want. My usual set up is the Aquaclear + a reverse flow UGF...

I can't tell you what the exact problem is but I can tell you I have had similar problems when trying to use wet/dry filters. I'm not a fan of them anymore. Is this a fresh or marine tank? What do you have in the wet section? One of my theories is that the wet filter media shifts causing the...

If you tank is cycled and running properly your ammonia and nitrites will basically read zero. Water changes are manly for getting rid of nitrates and any other crap that might build up. If you don’t have a test kit it’s probably a good idea to buy one. You really only need to do a water...

Pangasius cats grow big. There's an even bigger similar species too. However they grow slowly so you should be OK for a while at least. The other thing about them is they are kind of a nervous fish and tend to bash into things when startled. They do get a bit calmer when they are bigger. I had...

I've used about five or so different arrangements over the years. A lot depends on tank load. If you want to spend a lot of money you can go all out and get Rainbow Lifeguard modules but it's really overkill for most tanks. My basic store bought setup has always been Reverse flow UGFs + one or...

Just saying hi. I've been keeping fish for about 20 years. I used to have a bunch of different tanks and fish but these days I've paired it down to just a single tank with bichirs in it due to time constraints.