Jennifer

No need to explain or show a pic, I know exactly what you mean - it looks sort of like a spider web or jelly. It even gets little white spots on it. Trust me, it stinks and trust me, it will go away after it runs its course. No need to worry.

Barrie makes a good point. The reason that you would defrost and rinse the fluid away from the worms is because the fluid contains a lot of phosphate which can cause algae issues in the tank. If you have breeding tanks (usually minimal lights thus minimal algae will occur) this will not be such a problem.

Some of us don't use our eft pos cards that much so they still have sharp edges. :oops:

A tea strainer works great (the ones with a little basket with handle that sits in a little bowl). Pop the frozen cube in the basket and fill with warm water. Wait until it defrosts. Then lift the basket out and drop in bits of worms using some tweezers or your fingers. Only feed as much as the fish can eat in a minute or two. I think all those fish will eat about one cube per day.

Crypt balansae should do ok with that lighting and will make a nice backdrop. What kind of foreground/substrate were you after?

Bacteria/biofilm. I get it on a lot of my driftwood, even after weeks of soaking and bleaching and sunning and all that. It stinks and I keep rubbing it off and then it eventually goes away after a couple of weeks. The fish don't seem to mind - I am sure the same thing happens in nature. :roll:

An old eft pos card works just as well IMO and it is free!

That branch looks like Manzanita. They are all over in the USA and are great for bird perches, very smooth. I haven't seen them here though...

Ah, the case of the missing fish. It seems everyone has a story like that. Sometimes they just disappear without a trace!

Cheers Ryan. I will just have to be patient then. It seems to be feast or famine with the fishlists. :roll:

Excellent! I would be very interested in either of those. Are they on the list very often?

Can we get Dicrossus maculatus here?

Great photo!

Those plants are slower growing so they will not be using much of the available nutrients. You might need to cut back on feeding, do small frequent water changes and lower the lighting/decrease the photoperiod. It would also be helpful to temporarily add some fast growing stem plants until the algae issue is over. Occasional supplementation with trace nutrients (like Flourish Comprehensive) will keep that Java fern looking fantastic.

Finding the right balance is a challenge. The light, nutrients and CO2 need to change at the same rate or algae will take over. It is good to get the plants going strong so that they outcompete the algae. They can best do this when the above are unlimiting however the plants will take longer to adjust to changing levels of light/CO2 and nutrients so it can take 2 to 3 weeks before they really start to grow fast enough to take over from the algae. In the mean time you can take the plants out and bleach dip them (1:20 plain bleach for 10 minutes, rinse very well and then plant them again) however the severely algae-affected leaves will be permanently damaged so it is best to remove them. Some of the very best running planted tanks have a lot of light and a LOT of plants that are well established. There also should be a lot of fish in there to provide all the nutrients and few water changes or filter cleans. The anaerobic areas of the filter will produce CO2, as will the fish. With occasional trace supplementation, these types of tanks can run well with no algae for years. The key is balance. Once we start adding extra CO2, the plants have an increased nutrient requirement, and vice versa. The more we add, the higher the maintenance requirements become. Once we start adding artificial fertilisers, we need to increase water changes in order to keep the tank in balance and prevent algae issues.

Looks to me like you could have black beard and staghorn there. Excel easily kills blackbeard. Staghorn is really hard to kill. You will need to sort out an imbalance in the tank to get rid of that. A load of stem plants floating on the top will help a lot, as will removing affected leaves.

Pull it out very gently and do a dilute bleach dip (1:20 for 10 minutes). Rinse well and gently plant it back in the same place. You are unlikely to see any negative effects other than a slowed growth rate for a month or so. If you are not keen on taking it out of the tank/pond you can try rubbing it off with your fingers (only really effective on slime) or squirting a dose of Flourish excel directly onto it (only works for some types of algae though).

Does it have tinges of red on the caudal fin? If so it could be a female Sawbwa resplendens - they have that great blue green colour and a similar body shape to the runnynose tetras. This one seems to have a deeper body shape though, so it may be something else. Sorry, can't help more...

Ember tetras are great. I have some with a trio of sparling gourami on my desk and I just love their interactions. Celestial pearl danios are nice too, as are tinwini danios - they look great in a group of 20 or more. Really nice. When growing hairgrass I find it very helpful to have some ground scavengers on board, otherwise all the muck gets caught up in it, not pretty at all IMHO.

I strongly encourage you to get a second opinion. The vet should check her blood and urine. They will look for excess glucose (a sign of diabetes which is easily treatable), thyroid function (hi thyroid hormone is easily controlled with a daily pill) and her blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and urine specific gravity, both indicators of kidney disease. It would be good to know which of these conditions she has so that you can potentially offer treatment.

Hi, welcome to the forums. Where abouts are you located? You can add your location to your profile by clicking under the user control panel at the top right of your screen.

I have been bleach dipping plants for years and I only ever just rinse them and pop them in a bucket of fresh water for 20 minutes then pop them in the tank. They don't usually smell like bleach anymore after the soaking in water. Honestly, I have done this with all sorts of fish including discus and have never had the slightest of issues. I do commend you though for being so thorough. You can never be too careful.

I had a very busy day today teaching anaesthetic drug dosing calculations. I have come to the conclusion that there are 3 types of people in this world, those that can do math and those that can't.

Can I put it on spotty glass, or will that be a waste of time?

Going back to my organic chemistry days here, but the soap scum is a result of saponification (the mixing of fats with an alkali to form an anionic soap) plus hard water. The harder the water, the more insuluble salts will be left over and appear as soap scum. Non ionic soaps or soapless body washes will result in less soap scum because there are fewer insoluble fatty acid salts to react with the calcium in hard water. The softer the water, the less soap scum you will have but if you are using saponified soap (generally these are bars of soap) then you will always have a certain amount of soap scum. Similarly, if your water is very hard, you will have calcium deposits but whether or not you also have sticky insoluble salts depends on what type of soap you use. The soap scum will appear as a foggy film whereas plain calcium deposits will appear as spots. Btw, Barry, I need to get some of that glass treatment, it sounds great!