Recent content by IvanMike

nitrites go away with time. They are removed/eaten by a different genus of bacteria than ammonia is, so it's typical for a tank to undergo an ammonia spike, followed by a nitrite spike, followed by a slow increase in nitrates which get managed by water changes. I'm a little surprised that you're...

Nitrites should be ZERO, not 1. I think you're not giving it time to cycle. That and a bacterial colony will adjust over time when the fish load goes up or down (as more or less food dictates how many bacteria there can be). Declaring a tank "cycled" and then tossing in the maximum number of...

easiest thing to do to get rid of nitrAtes is to do water changes - plants will help, but water changes are it. When you think school/shoal - be honest, do you think 2-4 fish?.............:lol: 6 is a good start, it all depends on tank size. Much better to get many of one schooling species...

There's not a hard and fast rule for nitrates in freshwater, but the less the better. Partial water changes will take care of that. In most cases I find 50% a week to be good for a lot of cichlids and fish in general, some more messy fish or fish more sensitive to dissolved metabolites require...

Looks all JD to me - there are many geographical variants, but it could be a hybrid I suppose. Nice looking fish in any event. That fish oozes nasty right through the monitor though - looks like a killer.

Nice - you can get some awesome "he got too big" fish. Often you can search local classifieds and get them free or for 5 bucks if you go pick them up. (Just quarantine them and see how it goes). I've rescued many a fish from idiots that way - I've even gone so far as to be at someone's house...

Looks a bit female to me only due to the lack of filaments on the dorsal/anal at this size. IIRC, all terrors have a bit of a hump, males just have it get larger. If you get a second terror I'd make a divider out of egg crate before you introduce the new one and give them a few days (a week?)...

Yep - fish sleep. Some sleep closer to the top, some sleep on the bottom. Many a time I've turned on a light in the fish room in the middle of the night and see all these washed out fish sink to the bottom - some lying on their sides. (they don't do that normally, they're just freaked out and...

heh - let them get picked off or feed them to the re-housed girl in her own tank. just because convict fry are not all that sell-able is no reason not to watch the best part of being a cichlid owner IMO. They can always be used as food for fish in other tanks, or in a large community tank they...

It's odd that she quit eating after not being fed for a few days (you didn't have someone feed her while gone did you? - fish, particularly bigger fish, don't need to eat every day, and I've often left mine for a week). I would raise the temp a couple of degrees and not feed for a few days -...

hmm - go look up the guide to fishless cycling on this site - looks like you'll need it before you start considering fish (unless you can get a good chunk of active filter media from someone).

rock as in gravel or little pieces of rock or big chunks of rock?

oh - well open the box! These days they have a white foam block which goes on the bottom, and then a white mesh bag you put the contents of a clear plastic bag in which are labeled as biomax. these are really porous "rocks" and are in fact great for biological filtration. Then you can buy...

IME jack dempseys are a lot more aggressive than oscars. I've found oscars to be kind of big bully/wimps. They can dish it out, but can't take it quite as well as a lot of the larger central americans that people house them with. Sometimes you get lucky, often you don't. I've had reasonably good...

Convicts aren't generally harem polygamists and form a semi-stable pair bond, so in 99% of the cases he will pair off and spawn with one, and the pair will harass the other one.