Recent content by Durvish

Just an fyi -- nerite snails have no problem stripping paint from decor! Just had to pull a piece of decor out of my tank last week because of this!

Yeah fishless cycling takes four to six weeks. Cycling with fish takes even longer.

Any updates? How is your upper body strength with all the PWC's? lol

The cloudiness is a bacteria bloom -- it is a good thing -- it will die down as all the good bacteria become established. I am guessing he advised you not to do any pwc's so your fish would die and you would return to him to buy more fish for the slaughter! Don't keep the marineland heater as a...

If it is the black Marineland stealth heater then you need to unplug it let it sit for about fifteen minutes then take it out of the tank and take it to your petstore. All of those have been recalled by Marineland! I just took 2 back a few weeks ago.

Is your heater the black stealth heater or does it have a glass surface?

just to give you an example may main tank is at 77-78 deg. and my betta tank is around 74-75.

bacterial bloom will not raise the temp! i would confirm your thermo reading with something else to make sure it is right. When the wife isn't looking I use the meat thermometer from the kitchen. Is your tank near a window?

why are the temps so high?

If you get a seeder filter don't let it dry out on the way home! The bacteria will die!

Remember 0.5 of Ammonia is a no no for fish. With 0.25 I would start getting my arms used to moving buckets and do a PWC. When your done cycling you want to keep it at 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, and below 50ppm Nitrates.

Don't worry about testing for Nitrates until you get your Nitrite spike. You'll just be getting false readings and wasting the Nitrate test liquid. Also not sure how the Tetra works but with the API kit you must,must,must shake the Nitrate bottles to move the activators up from the bottom --...

Surface movement and bubbles have no effect on Ammonia. You might try lowering the temp to about 76 or 78 in my opinion -- around there is where I have my best results.

5 days with 5 fish in an uncycled tank -- you got Ammonia -- with feeding and fish digestion -- you got Ammonia it's the natural process -- check check and re-check! Read about cycling with fish as much as possible. You are going to Ammonia spike and soon and you need to be ready to do alot of...

I would imagine they are hanging out there to try and get some oxygen from the surface and the out take of the filter. If they are doing that than you have a massive (for the fish) amount of Ammonia in your tank that is beginning to burn their gills and not allowing them to breath. If it was me...