DX

Thanks for your reply. I talked to a friend about the problem of my plant. Here is her advice, "Too much light will kill the plants and encourage algae. The dying plant material will also encourage the algae and that is why you should throw it out ASAP. The links talk about artificial light which would be only a small fraction of the sunlight your plants are getting near the window. Move the tank away form window " I believe she knows what she is talking about, as she did a PhD about light, water plant and new zealand lake. And I also believe you guys know what you are talking about, as you have good health plants in your tank. really confused. :roll: :roll:

the stargrass in my tank does not look very healthy. New leaves have very pale green colour while old ones become wither. My tank is about 100 liter and is placed near a window. I have a tank light with a normal fluorescent tube (18w?) and I turn it on between 6pm and 10pm. Would the direct sun be a problem? Or the lighting is not enough for growing the star grass? or disease? I have another puzzle. I usually see fresh nice looking plants in fish shop. But I always wonder what they look like when wither and die. Will they look like those of mine in the photo?

:bounce: busy cleaning

The real fish is not that orange actually. I guess it is because of the backgroud and perhaps the lighting. :oops: "Breed true" is a new term for me. I just did search and got a definition: A phenotype for a simply-inherited trait is said to breed true if two parents with that phenotype produce offspring of that same phenotype exclusively. I suppose I could find out only when their offsprings grow up. Right? Anyway, here are what I have now:

To caserole: Yes. the female had about 50 babies on 13th of Oct. They are doing well and have started colouring. But really hard to get good photo for those little guys.

I bought 3 felmale guppies two weeks ago from Jansens. This morning the last one of them died. I noticed all of them got rot fin/tail with some whiteish stuff attached (fungus?). I had frequent water change after I found they were not well, but it did not help. I still have 4 adult guppies in the tank which were bought a month ago, and they are not affected at all. Does that indicate I got a 'bad' batch? I read some posts saying guppy likes salt. I would try that. but would that affect my other fish, like neons? peppered corys? red eye tetra? plecos? One of the dead guppy had some fries a few days ago. Sure she will be missed by her babies. :roll:

I only have a 10 gallon tank so there is no too much hassle in water changing. Each time I siphon out a bucket of water and then pour in another bucket of fresh water which is aged for a couple of days.Then I fill up the empty bucket with cold tap water for next water changing a few days later. Before water chanign, I do mix some hot tap water in to try to get the temp right and also add a cupful of AquaPlus. My tank temp is normally 25C. After water chaning, temp sometimes goes up to 28C and sometimes drops to 22C, as it is a bit tricky to get the hot/cold ratio right. But fish seems OK to that anyway.

Around 8 am this morning one of my guppies gave birth to at least 16 fries in the tank. (I managed to catch 16 and put them into the breeding net.) It is really amusing to see small fries popping out from mom's tummy. The mom is not the one I long expected, so really a big suprise . I have another guppy having a huge tummy which is at least twice big as the mom of today, but she still has no sign to drop. Donot know what she thinks. :-? I fed the fries with some crushed flake and the powder I scratch off shrimp pellet. I found this webpage about feeding guppy fires. http://guppyplace.tripod.com/Fry.html Will try egg yolk tonight as it seems to be the easiest to get.

Thanks everybody. Feel pretty warm here. Got some fish photos here for you guys. http://spaces.msn.com/members/nothin9/ Not of very good quality though. Will go to a LFS to upgrade my digital camera soon.

Thanks blue. I do have a breeding net. I put the mom into the net for a couple of times before but nothing really happened. The guppy was a bit upset in the net and she once got one black eye after stayed in the net overnight. The black eye went away in a few hours after back to main tank though, but that really scared me. I am still waiting for a right moment to put her back in again although I have no idea about when is right. Cheers, Dan

Have learnt a lot from this forum since I started up my first tropical tank a month ago. What a great site! Atm, I have a 10 gallon community tank (50cm x 30cm x 25cm) with 23 tropical freshwater fish. It is a bit overstocked I guess. (I was addicted and cannot help myself from visiting LFS at the begining. ) I have: 7 x guppies 8 x neon tetra 2 x pleco (donot know what kind) 4 x red eye tetra 2 x peppered cory All are great fish. I lost 4 neon tetras in the first two week, and now it seems settled, hopefully. 8) I wont buy any new fish for a while, but I am very keen to breed some. There must be a breeding fish in the tank, as the other day I suprisely saw a small fish (about 1cm long, should be a large fry). I have not seen it again. Wish the little guy could survive. One of my guppies is pregnant too. Really look forward to the birth of fries. That is for today. Be good. Dan