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Ok I will leave them to it.

We were doing a big clean out of the community tank the other day, when we discovered a very tiny baby all by itself. Im sure it's a swortail, we recently purchased 1 male and three females - all females extremely fat now so I am hoping for more. The baby is in its own tank now and doing just fine, growing very fast. I suspect that any siblings it had probably got eaten. Should I move the fattest female into the little tank to give birth, and if I do will she eat the baby.

Hi there, I think my electric yellows are preparing to breed. The male has always been chasing the female around, so much that we bought another female to take the pressure off. Well yesterday they started behaving very differently, instead of him chasing and her running they were circling around each other. His colour has got extremely bright and she looks different too. My question is, do I just leave them to it or is there something else I should be doing to help them along?

Thanks for all the advice, unfortunately we lost the gourami, I thought we would as we had left it too late. But now my favorite clown loach has a patch just above his mouth, it doesn't quite look the same, but we have bought Furan 2 and have dosed the tank tonight, will move him into hospital tank soon but want to treat whole tank first. I will be devestated if I loose him, he's the friendly show off out of the three of them.

Thanks for the advice - will look into an antibiotic, although the melafix label says that it cures mouth fungus. Mind you I'm not totally sure thats what it is. It looked more like cotton wool than string like. And it isn't grey, more pink and white. Will have to catch her again now, we sprung a leak in cichlid tank this morning so she had to go back to community tank, and cichlids lived in hospital tank for the day! Have sorted leak and they back in their own tank, but the gourami is hiding now, she's very uninterested in moving again. Hopefully I will be able to catch her tomorrow.

I have a Red Flame Gourami that has mouth fungus (I think), have been on the net, and can't see anything else it could be. She has a pink mouth with white stuff on it, her bite marks are looking a bit pink too. We had a golden gourami who killed off the red flame male, and striped male too, then he started atacking the red flame female. We had to empty the tank to catch the golden and gave him to the local fish store. We have moved the female into hospital tank and have been treating with melafix for 4 nights now. She isn't looking much better although she is still eating. No other fish in big tank are showing any signs of this. Is there anything else I can do?

Hey there, good to see that you have joined too. It was pretty amazing running in to you guys at the weekend. Just to let you know the little bristles are doing really well, loving the new tank, they are never still. We've been telling everyone about ozzie and elvis very cool fish. One of the girls at work would be interested in purchasing a couple of the baby bristles. I'll give you a call about that.

Well we bought a couple more yellows and they are doing fine very different fish. It's a very small world, while at Jansens we ran into DG who overheard our story and recognised us from here. Well we ended up back at her place and came home with a few more cichlids and a couple of baby bristlenoses. The new cichlids are all doing fine so we must have just got a bad pair from the first shop.

Our shark is recovering - blood is almost gone from fins. We almost lost him he is very skinny, but has started to eat heaps again, and far more active in tank. Don't know what really happened or what we did to fix him, but something went right.

Hi there - we are in the new catagorie too. We have a group of three clown loaches, you would love them, they really respond to you. Ours do this little wiggle thing at you when they know you are looking at them, great community fish. I don't know how they go with more aggressive fish but they certainly hold there own with our pictus!! He can be a bit pushy and when the biggest clown has had enough he gives him a good shove back. For little fish we have danio's they will swim around your fingers and nibble at them. We are really enjoying our gouramis too., they are relly friendly. These fish and all the others in our tank get on really well. When we upgraded we put cichlids in our smaller tank - we are having a bit of trouble with them, we lost two in the last 24 hours, I think we might wait until we are a bit more experienced before getting more. Anyway thats a recomendation from a fellow begginer. Let us know what you decide to go with.

Thanks everyone, the other yellow was dead this morning, will call into the shop they were bought from this weekend and check the rest out. It must have been from there, can't think of any other reason.

Well our worst fears have come to fruition. One or the yellows has died and the other one is probably not far behind. I'm stumped the PH is around 8.0 The water has been changed a couple of times in the last week, there is no nitrite or amonia showing up in the tests. The dubosis seem fine but from the day we put the yellows in the tank we never saw them eat once. Strangley their behavour was not that odd - a little shy and quiet but they swam around a bit - they just never ate anything.

I have just looked at the link you put in Frenchy - thanks for that. I do realise that the tank is a tad small, but I have plans to move them to a bigger tank as soon as we can afford it. We have seriously been bitten by this bug!! Any loss is awful. If we can learn to look after the cichlids well we would like a much bigger cichlid feature tank, and we are also talking about a feature discus tank - boy do we need to win lotto :lol: I will try and load a picture of the cichlid tank on tonight. once again thanks to everyone for all your advice. Paul & Nicolle

Hi there, I'll give you some more information. We think they may be male and female because of the colouring - one of them has a lot of black in the lower fins where the other has none. Although in saying that there are no signs of aggression and they don't really hang out together much, the one with lighter colouring hangs out more with the dubosis. We are aware of the food thing and a very careful what we put in so that we don't bloat the dubosis. Mainly we are feeding them some flakes (which we have stopped as nobody likes them), Tetra Cichlid mini granules, JBL Novo vegetable food, and frozen cichlid mix. The tank is a 90 litre which has fully cycled and the fish are fairly small about 4-5 cm. There are plenty of caves and some fake plants in there. Like I said they seem ok just not moving around as much as the dubosis, and we haven't seen them eat. Yes we have been doing regular water changes, we have had them for a week today and done two changes - is that enough. Would be very grateful for any advice, they are beautiful and would hate to loose them because we are doing something stupid. We have realised that the different eating habits means that they probably weren't the best mix, but we have them now and hope that we can keep them.

Yep our cat is getting used to it all, knows not to jump at tank and its really funny watching her try to hold herself back!! The other day she found the perfect possie - her basket is under the cichlid tank, she was almost laying on her back with her head resting on side just gazing at them swimming by. She particularly likes the clown loaches in the community tank, and I'm positive that they love teasing her. Great to meet you all.

Hi there, we are fairly new to tropical fish and have just set up a tank with cichlids. We have 2 young dubouis (sorry about spelling) the spotty ones who change. And 2 electric yellows. The electric yellows are behaving (we think) a bit oddly. They spend a lot of time staying quite still in a cave, we have yet to see them eat (have had them nearly a week). We changed tank around and made more caves they seemed happier but are still not very active. PH and everything else is fine. The two different sorts of cichlids don't bother each other at all. We have looked online but can't find anything to help. So we thought one of you guys was bound to be able to give us some advice. We are pretty sure that we have a male and a female. Thanks Paul & Nicolle

Thanks for your coments - yes the heater was completely submerged in the 20 litre bucket. We believe that the heater was faulty (although brand new) the water was overheated when we transfered fish back. A couple of days after that we were woken at 5:00am with the thermostat alarm, the temperature in the tank had dropped really quickly - thank god for the alarm. WE HAVE REPLACED THAT HEATER NOW. Our poor fish they have sure been through a bit lately.

Just to let you know - we have done something right :-? he is getting better, the horrible red colour is starting to turn pinkish and fading. Really bizarre we have had two sick/injured fish that have survived and two apparently healthy fish wedge themselves behind some wood (which is now gone :oops: ) and die. I guess it's all a learning curve, pretty sad to have them die though.

Hi there, we're new to this to and have recently added a bristlenose to our community tank. I thought he was dead and just holding onto the back of the tank by his mouth - I stayed there for ages watching for signs of movement. We've hardly seen him. But tonight he came and poked his head out quite a few times - I finally know what he looks like!!

Hi Guys! Thanks for all the welcomes. We have just finished setting up our Cichlid tank and the little guys love it. We may have bitten off more than we can chew (been told a few stories about these guys) but at the moment they all seem to get on and everything going well. Paul & Nicolle

Thanks for that seems like we placed the wood badly! Now I feel real bad! If anyone was a bully it was the gourami and he mainly chased the other (female) gourami away from food, it never looked to serious though. We are in the process of changing things around yet again. Real sad to loose him he was just starting to get really colourful.

We have had two fish die for no apparent reason - except maybe being stuck. They both died wedged behind a large piece of wood in the tank. We are new to this and are unsure whether they swum in there and got stuck or were dieing and went there for that reason. Other than being dead they both seemed perfectly fine. The first one (a small silver shark) died last Saturday. And our lovely male Gourami was dead when I got home tonight. Obviously we have taken the wood out now but I guess the question is are fish stupid enough to swim into something they can't get out of or was there possibly another reason.

Thanks for the tips, we are going to buy a small tank for that very reason this week end.

Hi Jude, Thanks for the welcome, was really pleased to find this sight I'm sure we will have lots of fun on it - I'll do the surfing and leave hubby to the cleaning of the tanks :roll: Will definitely call into chat-room one night. We're busy trying to fix our silver shark at the moment. Nicolle

Funny you should suggest that, its what we have just done as well as regular water changes and adding salt to water. We gave them live white worms tonight and he had a real good go at them. Last night we gave them frozen shrimp and he enjoyed that too. Have just relised that we may have burnt him accidently in temporary tank while making changes in main, heater went really high because of smaller area - all other fish seemed fine (loaches, pictus, plectomus, gouramis, red tail shark) - are silver sharks more sensative to heat?