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Did you try your test kit with purified bottled water like I suggested? It's the best way to be sure your kit isn't spoiled. If the ammonia is really there, I agree with holidayinn. Add another filter. Also put in some fast-growing plants to soak up the ammonia. Ammonia is good plant food.

Glad some of your fish are on the mend. I've got some new fish struggling with what appears to be flukes at the moment, and haven't lost any yet, but fingers crossed. It does sound like you could have more than one disease present. Keep in mind that white poo can also be a sign of not eating...

Params: Ammonia-0 Nitrite-0 pH-7.5 Thanks for the replies. The fish swim in a straight line, and don't seem disoriented at all. They just have to swim harder to stay afloat. I saw some abnormal poo on one of the week-old babies today. It was white and stringy. A few days ago the two adults...

I initially thought my new guppies were just having trouble adjusting, but their symptoms resumed. I'm treating with chelated copper for gill flukes, but would appreciate another opinion. I have only had them a week, and the tank is new but the filter is established, all params perfect...

I'd also recommend the java moss. It does sometimes need a wash, and you'll have to remove excess growth. Java fern also does well. Mine eat the algae off of it and leave the plant itself alone.

Also, a good test to make sure your kit is still in good shape is to use some positive and negative controls, meaning things you know do and don't have ammonia. Pure ammonia makes a good positive, plus you can check accuracy. A bottled filtered water like Dasani should test negative.

Cool stuff. Making the vaccine targeted enough to be cost-effective for farmers would be the biggest challenge, I think. Getting the vaccine into food would be pretty cool, like they mention in the article. There are already antibacterial fish foods out on the market, and some anti-parasite...

Thanks for the helpful replies! Got some sand today. I'm doing a gradient of smooth black gravel to black sand. Hopefully it'll look nice.

Sounds like your tank is breaking it down. In a weird situation like this, you may want to limit water changes to 10% of the volume per two weeks and use Prime. Since you just did a water change, why not track the filter's progress with daily tests? It would be interesting to log it on here...

You probably already know this (I didn't until a few days ago), but Prime causes false readings on most kits for 24 hours after the water change. My impression is that this is true for both salicylate and nessler test types. API should be a fine brand, but kits can go bad, so if your results...

The surface breathing behavior increased again after I backed off on water changes. It's the two adult females breathing at the surface. The single stow-away fry that came with them seems just fine. Ammonia = 0, nitrites = 0 as usual. I also saw them rubbing on plants today. I see no signs...

Thanks for the reassurance :) I also verified that ammonia is 0ppm today :D Anywho, I think I've figured out the cause of stress. I'm pretty sure my LPS was keeping them at room temperature -_- All of this freaking out and breathing at the top could have been heat shock, and now I feel...

I've got this scheme to use black sand for a tank of multies so they stand out better. Are there special issues with black sand, such as Tahitian Moon or Seachem Flourite that make it unsuitable for diggers? Googling produced mixed reviews saying it can damage filters, or that the grains are...

Yep, in both of the linked setups they're using a lot of light and getting a lot of growth. The only biological filters are the substrate and the growing plants. It's necessary to have a fair amount of light once you've got that many plants competing for it, esp. when you're using fast-growing...

They both ate today and explored the tank more. Maybe they're just taking awhile to get settled. I also got some Nutrafin water conditioner that doesn't react with my test kit. This means I can start monitoring ammonia tomorrow.

Ditto to everyone else. Inbreeding causes problems, including kinked spines and malformed gill-covers. Line breeding is probably the way to go to truly establish a strain. 1 tank works for the hobbyist who's noodling around, if they bring in new fish and cull bad traits aggressively, but to...

Are you talking about a Leiden type of setup? Those used to be pretty common before filtration was readily available. Some fishkeepers swear by this method, and I've been planning to try it. I'd say a minimum of about 40 liters to stock it with a betta or a couple white clouds. You'd need a...

I first started keeping fish 10 years ago, keeping a large community tank and a few small single-species tanks. Been out of the hobby for a few years, but finally settled down enough to set up a nano here in Saskatchewan. My planned setup is a guppy trio and a small colony of multies. I've...

Got a pair of female guppies to start my new tank. I'm doing a fish-in cycle with mature media added to a new filter (sponge pieces and filter squeeze). I'm doing daily water changes. The guppies seemed extremely stressed and were piping at the surface quite often within a few minutes of...