mangolm

Have you tried food with garlic in it or the ..I think its seachem.. garlic guard liquid you can soak food in before feeding? Might get him more interested. As far as the hiding goes I found the more hiding places my rams were supplied with the less time they spent hiding. Not sure if that will hold true with larger cichlids .

I'm pretty sure I have 4 females and two males in the tank based on the crookedness of the blue lateral line. The tank has no lighting atm, and with the peat/oak i'm hoping the eggs will be well enough protected by the darkened water and falling among the oak leaves that I wont need to actually cover the tank. We will see. I just had a spare tank and thought I would see what happened.

Yes, I read the article on here as well. I was just wondering if my water was too hard and getting impatient. Ill just keep waiting.

Exactly what the title says. I have set up a 40L tank with oak leaves, a little peat to try to breed neon tetras after doing a bunch of research online. I don't really have any way to collect rainwater since my apartment doesn't have an 'outside' as such. I'm really struggling to get the pH to go down. Theres about 8 cups of oak leaves on the base of the tank and ~1/2 cup of peat in the filter but the pH is staying steady at 7.0 after 5days. Im just using Prime and tap water, I would prefer to lower the pH naturally rather than with chemicals so do I just need to be more patient or does anyone have any ideas? Could i use part r/o water so that there are fewer minerals in the water - the softer water would be easier to lower pH? I also don't have a hardness test kit, which I realise doesn't really help.

Best feedback I could have hoped for I'll get on with ordering!

Did this ever get off the ground?

Wanting to buy some decaped brine shrimp and the freeze dried artemia and daphnia from them but first wondering if anyone has had any (good/bad/otherwise) experiences with either the business or the food? Thanks.

Ta

On some of my plants in my newly planted out aquarium some of the existing growth is starting to develop small (1-3mm) holes with brown edges. The plants are otherwise growing well. I set up the tank a month ago. Algae isn't an issue at all. Tank is 135 Litres. Its planted very densely in Flourite Dark. I use 3mL of Flourish Excel daily and am dosing Flourish twice weekly at recommended dosage. Light is 2x 30W T8s - one "cool daylight" and one "tropical pink" plus one smaller 20w pink bulb which hardly gives off any light at all... I'll get round to replacing it eventually. There are only guppy fry in the tank, all under a month old so I'm pretty sure they're not doing the damage. I havn't seen any snails but the last owner did have snails in the tank... so if its possible for a few eggs to survive the bleaching, vinegaring (to soften the calcium deposits on the glass), and all over scraping with a paint scraper and then sitting dry for a bit I suppose there could be some babies I havn't seen yet. (Based on the last lot of snails i unwittingly brought home on a plant it wouldn't surprise me what they can survive ) Im thinking this is likely to be some kind of deficiency but I've no idea what it is. Given how densely planted the tank is should I try increasing the Flourish dose or is it some nutrient not included in the flourish?

Flourite, it got stirred up quite badly a few days ago so im not sure if thats related. The bumps are on the upper half of its body mainly so i didnt think it would be eggs. Since the borneos have been in this tank (~4months) they haven't demonstrated any spawning behaviour like they did in the sand bottomed tank. Ill keep an eye on it and try to get photos for you tonight. He looks quite puffy all over so I wondered if it might just be how they look with bloat? I put a shelled pea in but I dont think he'll get any the way the guppies are hogging it.

Just noticed my smallest borneo sucker seems to have multiple bubbles or blisters which have come up under his skin. He is still active and showing no signs of stress. Water is Amm = 0, Nitrite = 0 nitrate = under 5. He's in a community tank with two other borneos, a few rams, guppies, platies and neons The other two borneos dont appear to have any of these blisters/bubbles. Any ideas?

Personally with the first tank I set up with flourite i rinsed it tons and still had cloudiness but no foamy stuff on the surface of water after it settled. Second tank i dumped it in dry without rinsing, filled with water by laying old fish bags on the surface to avoid too much turbulence and pouring onto a plate on top of the bags, waited 24 hours then used an icecream container to skim the surface and vacuumed the gravel to get most of the dust off. I wouldn't just dump it in without rinsing if you have to have fish in the tank immediately, but for a LOT less work I have the exact same result. The flourite in both tanks still stirs up if i plant new stuff or rip out old plants, but it settles down again pretty quickly. I had more cloudiness in my first (rinsed) tank and filled my filter with cosmetic cotton balls to get the dust out of the water after 2 days of no change. (which then took care of the cloudiness in about 2 hours... and i threw out some VERY brown cotton ) 2nd tank I had far fewer cloudiness issues - after the vacuum it took only 4-5hours to clear again by itself. Barking Buddies has the cheapest flourite that i've found. (And the cheapest for most seachem products). http://www.barkingbuddies.co.nz/

Ive got regular flourite in my 150L and flourite dark in my 135L. Before the flourite I had some plants which were basically melting away from the bottom up. I stuck them in the flourite then went to pull them up about a month later...and they all had a rediculous amount of roots so I replanted. Plus I know its safe for the fish and it doesn't stir up much, don't need to worry about layers etc etc. I got it for $42ish per 7kg bag so it wasn't too expensive, especially as i have my tanks pretty heavily planted.

+1 for Bristlenoses. Mine is called "cat crap". He hides almost constantly, is the biggest scaredy cat ive ever seen (hides if someone talks in the same room, let alone walks past the tank), ruins any and all plants and just looks plain ugly.

She didn't get put in the breeder box. They two small males pecking at her did. Was wondering if the sores and white spots are more likely a response to that bullying before the males were removed or to something else. Thanks for your response. Ill go and see a vet tomorrow about the parasites.

Thankyou! Do you use hydrogen peroxide or sodium chloride? What kind of dilution? I have finally rid my tank of snails from the last lot of plants i got from LFS, I definitely don't want to have to go through that again! I was also more worried if any kinds of fishy diseases or parasites could survive on plants from an infected tank?

I had mine dig a pit under a rock when i had a sand bottom, they laid eggs but I didn't think to remove them or remove the other fish. My largest guppy had quite the meal It didnt happen again in that tank so I can't say if any specific conditions trigger them to spawn and now that ive switched to flourite I havn't seen any of the pit digging or spawning behaviour at all. I prefer the flourite for aesthetics (poop disappears rather than sitting on top) and for plant growth, but im sure the Borneo suckers (they're also known as Hong Kong Plecs and the Hillstream Loaches) prefered the sand. I'm 99% sure mine are the same species as well, so that may have played a part. Sorry I can't be more help.

I have two guppies (one new which seemed to develop the illness due to stress from arriving at the LFS and then arriving at mine later that day. Very stressful day for the poor girl! and the other male I've had for ~4months) Both are now in the same quarantine tank. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 2 nitrate using API freshwater testkits. (nitrate is so low because I just took the smaller filter from my main big tank, but otherwise the water in the quarantine is all new. I prefer just keeping the filter ready so that I dont have to have the quarantine set up permanently) The tank is in day 4 of treating with Melafix and Pimafix. 1. Male adult guppy. I noticed this guppy had white poop for a few days and had become more 'shy'. He was still eating so I didn't think much of it, just that maybe the Rams had been bullying him a bit. I kept an eye on him and he still occasionally had white poop but the rest of the time it was either green or brown dependent on what he had eaten. The white poop was party see-through and rather stringy. He began to bash himself against the gravel and moss tunnel and the next day i noticed he had some tears in his tail. He was removed to quarantine so that he could have some peace to recover, and two days later I began dosing with melafix and pimafix as a preventative measure for his tail and in hopes it would help with whatever was causing the white poop. He remains interested in food but isn't managing to get much down. He spits most food back up. I have not seen any more white poop since I started dosing but that doesn't mean it isn't still happening. Any ideas, based on the behaviour and poo what could be wrong with him? His tail is repairing nicely but I still don't know the cause. 2. Female adult guppy (Huge blue tail! Its crazy ) Looked fine in the LFS tank - a bit stressed but I was informed that she had been recieved only a few hours previously. I already had the quarantine set up with the blue guppy and two other males which were new and was 2 days into dosing so I figured any stress related illnesses would figure themselves out with the dosing. When i put her in to the tank (after drip acclimation - she had already had a hard day so I wanted to go slowly) the two other males attacked her, 'pecking' at her back. They were so determined and it seemed to be really stressing her they went into a breeder box in the tank overnight. She had no visible signs of any illness at this stage. Next morning she has two sores, one large one on her back left, just behind and above the gill - it looked like a scab and came off today to reveal a red sore underneath. Unfortunately one of the other fish ate it just as I went to fish it out :-? The other is two little white flecks sticking out from her right side just before the tail. It doesn't look like ich to me, but ive never seen it in person so it is hard for me to tell. She has a tear down the middle of her tail... goes about half the way to the base but no sign of fin rot. She is no longer being bullied or looking stressed. The images can also be viewed here: http://imgur.com/a/sj0i3

I ordered some plants from waterplantz on Trademe, they mostly dont have roots but look healthy - no visible algae, snails or eggs etc. It says they are sterilized before dispatch - would you still recommend quarantining the plants? Would you recommend quarantining LFS plants? For how long would you quarantine and other than snails what should I be looking out for?