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Average 66 mg/L - so it's soft to moderately hard.   pH is quite alkaline, but in the aquarium it has stabilized now at 7.8, after 4 days. On day 1 I've added the chloramine reducer, bumped ammonia to 2 ppm, and added a bacteria culture to start the fishless cycle. As of today, ammonia has...

I'm thinking 5 tetras. Not sure about the plants.

Done. Vinegar worked well for the whole thing. I cleaned up with water first until it looked clean, then cleaned again with vinegar, then rinsed with water. Let it dry out, then put everything back together.   I was able to take apart the pump too, and cleaned up the inside pretty well.    ...

I had a small tank for a few years. The fish (a few tetras) eventually died one by one of old age (were already mature when I bought them). Now there's only a few plants left, and the whole thing looks gross. I want to start over. I'll keep the hardware, but I'll start with new plants and...

40 liter aquarium, 6 tetras.   A while ago I bought these plants that look like wads of green cotton, the size of a small fist. They are kind of unusual and interesting to look at, but they are very high maintenance. They shoot these little tendrils, and pretty soon there's green cotton stuff...

Heh. Indeed. :) The aquarium is in the hallway. There's not much natural light there. I'm working from home today. Around 10am the tetras were pretty active. I turned the fluorescent on - they hid under the shrubs at the bottom. I turned the tube off around 1pm, they came out and now are...

What's the hardware that you use to manage the different lights? A simple cheap timer won't do that.

Regular 40 liter aquarium, 15W fluorescent full spectrum (8000K) light. 6 tetra fish, 1 small pitbull pleco. Temperature is stable at 76F. The water parameters are pretty good, here's the spreadsheet...

Are you using wood (or possibly bogwood) to decorate the fish tank? It lowers the pH. The bigger the wood chunk, the faster the pH drops. Learned it from 1st hand experience.

In my aquarium I just installed a piece of wood I bought at the LFS. Not sure if it's "bogwood" or just regular wood, but in any case it lowered the pH. But now I've a question of my own: Should I expect a steep lowering of the pH for a long time? Or does the effect slow down in time? I'd...

This is my 10 gal aquarium: 6 tetras, 1 bottom feeder. Ammonia 0, nitrites 0. Nitrates are going up (were a steady 5 ppm with only 2 tetras, went to 10 ppm shortly after adding the new fish). water test results I will do water changes, but I was wondering, since plants are supposed to eat...

I'm making progress with my new 10 gal aquarium. I added more tetras to a total of 6, they seem pretty happy. I added a small bottom feeder that looks like a pleco only it's a bit more white-ish and I was told it won't grow beyond its current size (2.5"); the little one cleaned up all the algae...

I see. Well, in that case I'll get 4 more tetras this week-end. The tank looks empty as of now.

Currently I've only 2 tetra fish in the aquarium. One is pink white, the other kind of a dirty white with dark gray vertical stripes. The pink one seems quite aggressive. I've seen it chasing the other tetra (and other fish when the aquarium was more populous), especially when I'm feeding them...

One of the plants I bought has a metal ring at the bottom, maybe to weigh it down, maybe for some other unknown purpose. :) The nature of the metal is unknown. I was wondering if there's a risk that the metal will react slowly with whatever substances might be there, and slowly leach into the...

40 liter aquarium, a couple months old. Had 3 tetras and 1 small pleco (I suspect not a real pleco, but a similar but smaller species). Due to my ignorance and the bad advice I received, I didn't change the water during cycling. Also, I changed the filter cartridge. Then the fish were over-fed...

Well, some surprises - take a look at the spreadsheet: water test spreadsheet Ammonia zero - my wife insisted there's a shade of green in the test tube, but all I could see was plain yellow; so it's either zero, or very close. Nitrite zero. Nitrate 5 ppm. pH however is pretty high. First I...

It's on at 7...8am, off at 9...11pm. Is that long time bad only for the plant, or could it be detrimental for the fish too? If it's just the plant, are there any species that tolerate longer times? The other plant I have seems fine. Currently I've 2 tetras, but the intended target is 3 tetras...

I did regular 75% water changes, almost every day (was dead tired yesterday so I skipped it). Fed the fish less food, skipped one feeding day as well for good measure. The changes are striking. The two survivors are pretty much back to their normal activity level - well, allowing for the fact...

Uh... It's just the fluorescent tube that came with the whole box? I guess it's a 14 watt or 17 watt or something like that. Looks pretty bright. I turn the light on when I wake up in the morning. Then I turn it off at night when I go to sleep.

Pretty new 40 liter aquarium. I'm having some problems with it - following the instructions on the box I replaced the water filter and now it's cycling again. A couple fish died. Anyway, that's a separate issue and I'm dealing with it better, now that I learned the correct information on this...

So, the root cause is what I did before I went on vacation. Okay, I'm gonna try and fix it. I changed 3 buckets full of water (the tank takes 4 buckets), de-chlorinated and brought to normal aquarium temperature. The bad news is one tetra died in the process. But the poor little one was in bad...

Relatively new 40 l (10 gal) tank. Was installed over 2 months ago. First inhabitants were 3 tetras. Later I added 1 small pleco and 2 plants. I don't know the current chemical status. Several weeks ago I took a sample of water to the shop and they tested it for me, all parameters were within...