Aquatopia

Lol, so a bit like being circumsized instead, huh ?

lol, you wish :lol:

Hi Vee, I KNEW you would be getting her a boyfriend, hehe. Look forward to seeing babies

Top stuff - :bounce: :bounce: Gotta love Julies . . .

Oh, duh ! just saw it was me being quoted so thought someone got confused :-)

My cousin ? am i being dense ? You can send your water this way if you want.

lucky swines, lol :lol:

Awesome pics phoenix - and a stunning example. I really hope you find a mate for this one - it would be awesome to see more of these. Probably in my top 5 favorites :-)

Local Fish Shop in my dictionary Im sure there are alternatives... depending on how pedantic people want to be ...

Great thanks - Im in the process of making a lid for mine.

Thats exactly what my concern was in my original posting about having a tank pH of 6.0 where the likelyhood was that the pH of your LFS (or other supplier of the type of fish you seem interested in so far) would be around 7 to 7.4 As I said, its not recommended to up the pH of a fish's environment by more than 0.3 per day. I think thats probably the extreme and they might cope with more than that - but remember for every 0.1 change in pH its a ten times multiplier to indicate how much more acidic or alkali the tank is. A good start is to test the water they come from, then you know the difference you are dealing with. But again, as I originally suggested - I don't believe a pH of 6 is suitable for your tank and situation. It ought not to take you very long (no more than a week or so) to get it back up to a neutral pH of 7.0 with daily or bi-daily water changes and really I would advise not adding fish until you have sorted that out. Im sure the people on TM will hold the fish you buy for a week, especially if you agree to pay them electronically after the auction - that way they wont be thinking you might not show up.

Ouch

Sounds like you care more about the fish than a lot of shops I have encountered throughout my fishkeeping interest then - good on ya. (PS That does not necessarily refer to the ones in my current city)

That stand is awesome ! what wood/thickness is it ?

phoenix44 go back and read my post - i said in my experience most pet shops tanks are around the 7.4pH. It was a general comment meaning that if, as has been the case for me, the LFS that Saxenas uses has a pH of around the 7.4 too, then running his/her tank at 6.0 would make life more difficult for introducing other community fish.

:roll: :roll: because I have tested it - from 4 different shops

then shoot huh ?

:oops: guess i should have read from the start, lol

I agree - the darker exposure makes the contrast look awesome

I dont think they are livingart - this member is from Los Angeles

Well in my opinion, no. The reason I say this is because it is likely you will want to add other fish in the future. And the pH of the tanks those fish will come from is most likely to be around the 7.0 to 7.4 range. This means you would have to acclimatise your new fish over a much longer period or you would give the new fish a pH shock which can be fatal. My best suggestion for a community style tank is to run it as close to neutral as possible (pH 7.0).

Tell us a bit more about your tank - stuff like the dimensions, what filter you have, what decoration it already has - that way we can make appropriate suggestions for you . Though from your description, those fish are mainly free-swimming mid to top level fish so it might be nice to add a few corydoras or a small pleco for the substrate levels. Albino corys are often very visible in contrast to most aquarium substrates, and are one of the cheaper varieties, though corydoras sterbai are more beautiful IMHO.

Lol, make it $1000 and I will even fly up, catch the fish, take the photographs and publish the results

Surely a pH of 6.0 in a community tank where other fish from the LFS (who mostly seem to run their tanks around the 7.4 level in my experience) are likely to be added, is not really all that desirable - unless the tank owner is cautious about introducing the new fish - or you would get the same kind of pH shock as if they were to suddenly up it from 6 to 7 straight off (as mentioned in my post about changing the pH by water changes). Also, i got the impression that the question was being asked in the context of indicating a falling pH trend, rather than a static level, (but may have misread that).

Regular water changes are a necessary part of your tank routine in any case, so unless you have been doing that I would start. Having said that you do not really want to change the pH by more than 0.3 per day as the pH scale is exponential - meaning that for a 1.0 increase in pH it changes by a factor of 10 (pH 8.0 is ten times more alkali than pH7.0) So, you may find you need to do several water changes over the next week and then maintain a more regular water change regime in the future. Over time, if the water is not buffered in terms of hardness and alkalinity, stuff like fish waste, the carbon dioxide they expire, nightly CO2 release from live plants, tannic acid from certain types of wood etc will all increase the acidity of the aquarium and cause such a pH drop. Check what it is out of the tap too though (although its unlikely to be pH6.0) Hope this helps.