alanmin4304

methylene blue is used as a fungicide usually. Does it say on the bottle what the active ingredients are?

Green algae are microscopic plants and use CO2 in photosynthesis like plants. the difference is all algae nutrient is from the water but most plant can feed through the roots as well. Nutrient in the water will encourage algae.

Just an observation. When I was breeding and selling 50,000 fish a year I did not sell them at the back door. You can't expect wholesalers or retailers to buy your fish if you are taking away their market by selling them at the back door for the same price they are buying them for.

It is not a coincidence they are called Siamese fighting fish

If you spawn a pair of goldfish in a bare tank the site is pretty impressive. there can be a looooot of eggs.

Generally the algae bloom and the plants like the same condititions,but the plants will pull the nutrient from the water and starve the algae. Someone else may have more knowledge, but I understand the additive you were using does not contain phosphate/nitrate, it supplies more trace elements and makes them more readily available. I agree with the previous advice saying you can provide a lot of light to an established heavily planted tank without an algae bloom. I think you probably have an excess of phosphate or nitrate or both in solution (both are very soluble)

The males usually get sick of putting the fry back in the nest fairly early on. You should still be successful if you take the male out as soon as he loses interest , but make sure the water leval is very low and the air above is warm and moist.

I used to have a quantine room with about 50 tanks and was licenced to import. The way it is set up is a very personal thing and relates to the quarantine requirements of your country and the type of quarntine you wish to be involved in. Goldfish, fresh water, marine and plants are all different and may well have to be seperate depending on your national requirements. I personally don't like common filtration systems, others do. I also prefer shallower tanks with a good surface area, others don't. I think you need to decide what you want to do and design something that suits you and your quarantine requirements. Good luck.

What you need to do is decide what types of plant and fish you want: soft acid water with low light, or strong light,heavy feeding through the roots and mediun pH and hardness, then you can decide what types of plant to try. In the end you can be as scientific as you like but if the plants like the conditions they will take off and if not they wont. I have a tank like the second described which has 6 types of Echinodorus (sword plants) doing well, 3 types of ludwigia, Rotala, sagittaria, 3 types of hygrophila, ambulia and 2 types of crypyocoryne. The plants would do better with CO2 but it is in a cabinet and is not very practical. I add other plants from time to time and if they do well they stay, if not they get relocated or chucked.

Guilty your honour. You may find it is me selling E. tenellus on Trade me. You will have some difficulty in growing all of those plants in the same tank and my advice would be to set it up for the sort of plants you mainly want and just try adding small amounts of others and see how you go. I have bought plants off John Peters (waterplantz) and found him very good to deal with. His plants are mainly grown emersed and are therefore easier to grow and cheap. I sell mainly plant that has been aquarium grown. Emersed plants generally need stong light to survive while converting to the submersed state (this is particularly so of red or brown plants) My tanks are set up to grow Echinodorus sp. and any other plant that does well is welcome.

The pump needs to be lubricated and the fish don't. The other aspect is that you want a pump to move large volumes of air at low pressure not a pump to produce high pressure on a low volume.

If they are well conditioned and the female is ripe with eggs give them a water change and raise the temperature a few degrees.

All chlorinated water supplies contain chloramines. This is what you get when chlorine reacts with the amines (from proteins) in the water.

Most people forget that pH is minus the log of the hydrogen ion concentration, which put simply means that if it takes one drop of acid to change the pH from 7 to 6, it will take 10 drops to change from 6 to 5. If I remember correctly Coca Cola has a pH of 4.6. If you wish to alter pH and it is around 7 you are dealing with very minor changes and you will be changing it forever. As was said earlier most fish will tolerate a reasonable range, but what they don't like is frequent changes, it needs to be very gradual. I would go with previous advice and get rid of the carbon and put in a bit of bird grit (oyster shell --calcium carbonate) then keep your hands in your pockets and watch and enjoy.

If you have a lot of well established plants they will generally take the nutrient out of the water and the algae will not thrive. Unfortunately plant and algae pretty much like the same conditions. I have some tanks (without plant) which I encourage to go green and use the water as food for daphnia cultures. I was not kidding about my previous comment. I have established gold fish ponds, allowed them to go green, add lottsa daphnia and gold fish. The daphnia eat the algae, the fish eat the daphnia and all is well. Don't forget the fish probably like the green water (feel more secure) its only you that doesn't.

lotsa daphnia

Syphon a bit out and smell it. It is a distinctive smell.

Some people add salt with killies (particularly Nothobranchius sp.) to discourage velvet. Salt increases the amount of slime produced by the fish, which can be usefull, but I suspect not very usefull in treating fin rot. I have never used malifix so I don't know how good it would be.

If it is blue green algae it has a distinctive smell

I went down the river to get some oxygen weed to feed to my turtles. After rinsing it clean I left it to drain and when I picked it up there were daphnia sitting there. Suggest you get a fine net and run it through some weed in a stream and empty the contents into clean water. You can pick the daphnia by the way they swim and you only need a few to start a culture. I got a pipette from the chemist which is like a large eye dropper (used for measuring baby medicines)and you can pick out the food you want from a culture. You can buy them as "pure cultures" but if you keep them outside you will end up with mossies and blood worms etc as well. All good tucker. I spent ages trying to get hold of a culture and I was probably washing it down the drain each time I went to get weed.

Looks like a good site but it keeps telling me there is an error on the page.

Have you ever tried community spawning with, say, 6 males and 12 females? Another question: mine are now about half full size. What size would you start breeding at?

Fin rot is a bacterial disease and neads to be treated with an antibiotic. These are expensive and prescription only meds. I would use Furan 2 from your pet shop. It also contains methylene blue in small amounts which will help with the opportunist invasion of fungi which usually follows.

I have a rena timer about 30 years old on one of my tanks. turns lights on and off,turns off airstone and feeds fish up to 4 times daily. It works very well and I don't know if they are still available. All works off the mains.

Thanks to you both. I hope to get started shortly. I'M a bit behind with redecoratig the room my killi tanks are going into and it is easier to store the tanks in pieces. We will get there.