Luke*

You can put it in frozen but I prefer my fish not to eat semi-frozen/cold food. With Summer coming buy a bucket and leave it outside, it will go stagnant and you'll have live mosquito larvae in it in no time. A nice compliment to daphnia and white worms

Can't go wrong with blood worms and brine shrimp, fish love it. Sounds like you have more variety where you are, that's about it where i'm from. Just as a side note: it's a good idea to thaw the food on a saucer before giving to the fish.

MorknMindy, if you don't have a thermometer you really need to purchase one, you need to experiment with how much hot you need to add to get the temperature as close to the temperature in your fish tank as possible. Use a proper themometer that floats in the tank, not those cheap digital ones. Before you add it, always dip your finger in the bucket and then in the tank to see how close it is. Dramatic swings in temperature make your fish to disease such as ich (where they get covered in little white spots). Use filtered water, it will be more natural to the fish without human additives in it. You can find out from your council if it has chlorine in it, it probably will so as livebearer_breeder says use water ager (aka dechlorinator). Always clean your gravel whilst you siphon, if you're already in the tank doing it why not?!? This is obviously where all the fish waste goes so the cleaner you can keep it the better. Just think would you like to walk around in dirty smelly air, or clean fresh air? Remove more water more often if you want, just get into a routine and try to stick to that, e.g water changes of 25% on Sundays, as the fish don't like sudden changes. Hope this helps

Mine has I guess you could call compost in it too, smells like chicken manure, do you think this would be toxic to them?

Cheers Bill, are they ok to feed to fish?

I've asked about this before too, the general consensus was that potting mix was fine even if it says " contains slow release fertiliser." I instead went for soil from the garden at home but this had manure in it and I think the culture i tried to seed off this may have died. Now there's some other little white things in there, and they're not baby whiteworms either. I'd just go for unmanured/unfertilised soil next time, but that's just me.

With warm (not hot) water wet some: -bread -cornflakes -crushed up weetbix -cat biscuit There's other stuff too that I'm sure others will add. Put some in with them (not too much or it will go mouldy before they can eat it). Once it's gone add some more. Goodluck

Looks like a pictus cat

Congrats Steve, what area are you in?

Fish produce ammonia: small levels very toxic to fish, Desirable ammonia level = 0 Bacteria break ammonia down into nitrite. Nitrite is similarly very toxic to fish. Desirable nitrite level = 0 Other bacteria break nitrite down into nitrate. Nitrate is safe with fish unless it gets too high in which case it is also toxic. Desirable level = 0-20 pH: Just keep it constant and you'll be fine, but FYI Guppies/platies prefer 7.0-8.0 Neons 5.5-7.0 These test kits are essential, at least get ammonia, nitrite and pH testers (available at your LFS). My guess is they died because either your pH is different in your bucket when you do water changes to what it is in your tank (tank water being aerated/filtered/aged for 24hours often changes the pH) or the water you were adding was the wrong temperature (did you add any hot water to it? the temperature should be exactly the same), or both. Take your time with the brine shrimp, they probably are alive but you need to let the water settle (after removing the aeration) till it's perfectly still then you need to shine a lamp in, it's also much easier to see them if you shine the lamp bottom upwards instead of top downwards. Hope this helps

Hello, does anyone have any Adolfoi corydoras? I just purchased 3 from the local but I was hoping they would've had more like 5. What have your experiences with them been?

We've got some emerald eyes here, about eight, you're right Alan they are rasboras. They are very very hard to sex, almost no difference between males and females because they are so small. The only way I can tell is when the males chase a female and I notice the female has a slightly larger body, mainly from top to bottom rather than side to side.

How are the little guys doing mouse? Any more casualties? Hope not. How big are they now? Still in with the mother?

My gf was cleaning out one of our tanks today to move a betta into and noticed something small flit across the bottom of the tank. It was panda fry! Very happy with that especially because they cost so much to buy, there ended up being 5 of them. We moved them into a mesh net area so they are easy to feed, what should I be feeding them? They are about 5-6mm; how old do you think they are? Our intention was to breed them but didn't realise they actually were and had given up and moved them to a 5 foot community tank. Just goes to show aye...

Good advice TM. I've find glowlight tetras spawn very readily in the right conditions (which aren't hard to obtain), retail for about $3 and if done right you get hundreds of fry.

I like your attitude ac2 What kind of tetras do you have? I agree with you about price and quality. Runty, deformed, speckled discus for $90.00+ is a joke!

I seem to get brown algae with not enough light, although some think it's from too much light (e.g sunlight). Who knows with algae??!??

Check out the thread a lil higher up entitled "pool filter sand", started by cat.

Partial success, got them to breed but didn't get the fry past a few weeks, main reason was I didn't have enough of them so it wasn't worth dedicating the time and resources to it. It's very hard to make money from it, do it for yourself to have a nice big school of neons more than anything else. If you get enough to sell some then that is a bonus. Trust me, by the time you buy the foods to condition with, the extra tanks, the extra power used, the fry food (e.g brine shrimp and liquifry), you don't end up making your money back. Don't want you to get disheartened or anything, but just do it for your own personal satisfaction before anything else. Mine first bred at pH 7.2 but only a few hatched, they seemed to get fussier after this and required a more desirable pH of 6.8 (6.5 even better) and required adding boiled peat (available from most LFS). Basically, you put the female in in the afternoon (after a week or two of conditioning aka feeding good foods) then the male a half hour later. They will breed in the morning, keep the tank dark. Remove them after spawning. I have also tried cardinals but no success with these, they require a much lower pH (5-6) and the fry are very fussy eaters and thus much harder to raise than neons. HTH

Benlee are you talking couriering or flying? Must be hard to keep them warm enough for the length of journey not to mention ammonia build up in a bag(?)

Bummer! That sux. Commiserations.

They will certainly delight in the taste of fresh baby brine shrimp Just don't feed them that too much as i hear it can act as a laxative. Feed them some crushed up flake for variety.

Is that tubing running off the regulator 1/8" (aka normal air line size tubing)? Looks larger. Also, any pics of the reactor? Is it in the tank/visible in the pics somewhere? How effective is it?

Hi I've bred them before but haven't got the fry past a few weeks old, mainly because I didn't have enough of them to warrant looking after them strenously. Buy some liquifry (most petshops have this) and you need to feed it 4-6 times a day. Also hard boil an egg and then feed tiny amounts of the hardened yolk to them. Wrap the yolk in gladwrap and freeze it for later. Baby brine shrimp are what you want next. Also, remove all the adults and use a piece of air tubing with some fine mesh (maybe fish net) over the end to avoid sucking up any babies and do a 90% water change to get rid of any waste/ammonia left by the parents. Add water back that is 'exactly' the same, any shift in temperature/pH/KH will easily kill the sensitive fry. And cover the tank until they hatch (usually 24-36 hours). Congratulations and goodluck

I disagree you did too many water changes, I do large water changes every week. The key is use old tank water to rinse/wash the filter material in or clean water that is the same temperature as the tank, the extremes in hot or cold kill bacteria. Clean your tank as much as you want just keep the filter media bacteria alive. If you know someone else nearby with a tank, you can ask to borrow some of their filter material which should save the current fish and seed the material that has lost its bacteria at the same time which greatly speeds it up.