HummingBird

As others have said, terrestrial plants don't absorb co2 through their roots so you wouldn't be benefiting them by dosing with flourish excel, if you have any immersed plants it'd help them though. If you have water flowing through your substrate a normal aquatic fertilizer would be much better, something with iron, potassium and trace elements like normal Flourish or Plant Gro Iron. If you don't have any aquatic animals to produce nitrogen and phosphorus you could add something like Plant Gro NPK, just be careful of overdosing and causing an algae bloom! I've recently set up a Paludarium for some whistling tree frog tadpoles with terrestrial and aquatic plants, I dose with flourish excel and alternatingly with Plant Gro Iron and Flourish. I've got a powerhead in an upside down plant basket underneath the gravel on the terrestrial side, which has a hose that pumps to the aquatic side. This ensures both the aquatic and terrestrial plants get nutrients delivered to them and the water being sucked through the gravel provides good mechanical and biological filtration, too. Another fertilization option would be something like JBL 7 root balls, which you place directly under the plants and their roots grow through. That wouldn't be an option in a system like mine though, due to the high flow through the gravel.

Oh and re: the price of neons, that's changed recently because of Animates policy. During Jansens' reign they had been sold as a "loss leader" (below cost, to stimulate other sales) but apparently Animates' corporate doesn't approve of that.

I see noone's mentioned Animates Botany yet, I wonder if that's a good or bad thing I've worked at Animates (and once upon a time Jansens) Botany for three years, and I can't comment on any of the other branches, but Botany is pretty good when it comes to fish, if you talk to the right people. The manager of the fish section is 100% focused on the livestock's welfare and not just on selling people things, as am I. We water test all of our tanks at least twice weekly and if a batch of unhealthy fish comes in from a supplier we'll quarantine them and treat them before putting them on sale. The level of knowledge and experience among our three main fish guys is really good too, the fish manager having managed the Reptile & Aquatic section of the Zoo for a few years and worked at HFF too. Another of us is doing a degree in Marine biology, and I've been keeping fish and amphibians for over five years. I give people the best advice I can when talking to them, even if that means telling them something better or cheaper is available elsewhere or telling them how to make something themselves. I can understand why that might not be every employee's attitude though, they do pay us as little as they can, which, for the amount of knowledge required of us, realistically isn't enough. Since the day I started working there I've been repeatedly promised a pay rise, I'm sure they're not intentionally leading me on but they're just really slack about it. My take on it is that I may as well do the best job I can though, since there's no point in being an asshole to customers - generally if you're nice and helpful to them, they're pleasant enough back and that makes the day go faster and be a little less stressful. I'm in this job by choice, because I'm interested in fish and like talking to other people who are passionate about them (on the rare occasion that they do come in ) Not everyone who works at my branch is thoroughly versed in aquatics unfortunately, just like my knowledge of dogs and small animals is probably less extensive than the experts in those areas simply because I've never kept them before. Everyone's been trained on the basics but if you're looking for in depth knowledge and experience make sure you ask for a "fish expert". From the original post that store sounds pretty shoddy as far as customer service goes, that does come down to the individual store's manager though. Ours is a real taskmaster and doesn't let us congregate in groups of more than two!

Most cichlids will do fine in a community, it's the other inhabitants you should be worried about.

Evidently you have brought one though.

try having a look at http://axolotl.org/ before you rush out to buy an unsuspecting creature.

It's pretty hard to do anything wrong when trimming stem plants. Just cut off the top, replant it and it'll grow new roots while the old stem will grow new tips.

Man, I haven't seen someone trying to post a url from their C Drive for years. It's refreshing to know there're still noobs out there. ^Not being sarcastic at all.

Maybe we do already have hybrids but we shouldn't encourage people making more. Just because fish can breed with each other doesn't mean we should facilitate it, it wouldn't usually happen in the wild (otherwise they wouldn't be different species!). There are at least 59 different species of Ancistrus, some may look like "they are the same" to some people but they're not. I've had many discussions with catfish lovers about this, and sure, some ignorant people do it, but that doesn't mean we should accept it or not try and stop them when we do find out about it. If enough people do it there won't be any of the original of either species left.

Yeah 3/4 of an inch, what's that in furlongs?

Apocalypse Now, or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Yeah even if the sizes are okay right now you definitely need more than 2 clown loaches in a group.

I've only got one pic of it, I took this with my phone. It's the display tank in Animates (ex Jansens) botany. It's gone through many incarnations, this was before the Oscars etc, when it was planted. The cichlids are gone now too and it's got a bunch of silver dollars, rainbow fish and some barbs which are all pretty boring IMO. There's a school of clown loaches that've always been in there and the GBA is still around too.

Oscars would definitely be fine with it. At the pet shop I work at we used to have a parrot in with three oscars and various other cichlids and fish in our 2500L tank. The parrot got along fine and even tried to breed with a gold severum (she laid eggs but they never hatched).

I've actually seen this happen before, a friend had a female guppy that was living with a male platy - she had three offspring, similar looking. They were slow growing - two of them died after 6 months and the third died after a year. I think it's kind of freaky, really. I encouraged him to euthanise them as freaks of nature.

Another thing to try is maybe another cave. The smaller the better. I just got a male BN and within two weeks he was breeding with my female in a cave just bigger than himself. They love to be able to juuust cram themselves in - this is something I've found when I've bred them before too, which I have with two other pairs. It's worth a shot, anyways.

Yes I did indeed....internet'd

yeah, it's definitely sick-lid. Check the pronounciation: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=1&q=cichlid

wow weird, I'll have to try that with mine. They're not peeled, or anything?

Boats are so 2d. Remote control planes are where it's at. Although, in this weather, boats are probably the better option. I haven't flown my Electric Cessna in months

Yes, they are a different species, and a lot of people object to their being cross bred.

This happens occasionally, there are a few theories about why but noone's sure. In my experience it most often happens with a big water change after there hasn't been one for a while, or when the plants are first introduced. There's nothing much you can do, except maybe isolating some of the plants that haven't been affected yet. Some of the plants usually survive anyways and repopulate the tank quick enough.

Yeap that's him. I was hoping he'd eventually breed with my female, but didn't think it would happen this fast! I got them from from Ebay. They're great because they're fairly small but still big enough for my BN's to get into, which is good because they love jamming themselves into small spaces.

Two weeks ago I got a male BN with huge bristles, brought him home and put him in a 3ft tank with a big female and a few small ceramic caves, just yesterday I noticed a large clump of eggs in one of them. Here's a pic of the caves (they're buried in the gravel so they're longer than they look): Hopefully the young turn out like their dad!

There are some resins available like BioChem Zorb that will remove tannins from the water, but apart from that the simplest and cheapest way is just water changes. Different pieces of driftwood leech different amounts of tannins, a lot of them don't leech at all, so maybe you could hunt around for a pre-sunken one that's proven it doesn't leech?