Recent content by YourPalCM

My Dad has tried to join me in my love of aquariums and has had a 40g freshwater tank set up for 2 years. He had about (3) Gouramis, about (7) very small Tetras, and a few bottom feeders. Overstocked a bit, but I gotta say they were thriving for about 18 months. It's also a beautifully...

Differentiating the colors of a liquid against the colors on the cards has always been difficult if you ask me...especially as the nitrates peak, the card shows blue, and then 5 slightly different shades of purple. At any rate, this is what I think I've seen... Day #1 - Day #2 - Day #3 -...

OK, I went with the raw shrimp to cycle the QT tank. I didn't see the first suggestion to use just part of a shrimp for a tank that small, and I used one single "medium" sized shrimp. Today makes it 3 days, so I started testing thinking I wouldn't see much the first 2 days until the shrimp...

Since jawfish like to have a hole in sand to hang out in, and Sand-sifting Gobies like to sift through the sand......how do you QT them if your QT tank doesn't have sand in it? I haven't put any fish in my show tank yet....I'm not there yet, so I could put them in first, and if there is a...

Thank you. :-)

To cycle the tank before adding the fish for the show tank.

Why what?

I'm coming down the home-stretch of having my 75g FOWLR set-up ready for fish. I barely saw a cycle spike with all of the live rock (and a little live sand) in the tank. At 4 weeks I added a bunch of various types of snails and a few hermits, and they did an amazing job on the bit of obvious...

OK...I must be missing something obvious. I THOUGHT I followed the directions... * I poured water into overflow until it overflowed into the main chamber of the sump * I then added water to the main tank until the level rose to 1/4" above the teeth of the skimmer box. * I started siphoning...

Setting up my first FOWLR tank... Here's my latest dumb question... When I add my live rock and begin cycling the tank, should I add the critters (snails, crabs, etc) right away or should I wait until the tank has fully cycled?

Well, I removed the Spring Water. I do have a TDS tester on the way, but I thought I'd remove the water anyway even before getting it. I dont' suspect I was going to get good results anyway. I really don't want to get an RO/DI unit...I am the worse plumber ever. The idea of installing it is...

I don't have an RO/DI unit, but I do live practically next door to a natural spring water place, so I thought I would be doing better than tap water if I filled my new 75g tank with Natural Spring Water. Now I'm reading that Spring Water can be worse than tap water. I've done nothing else so...

My LFS has SEVEN different types of Live Rock... * Tonga Branch * Kaelini * Tonga Slab * Cultured Fiji * Cured Tonga * Nano Rubble Rock * Solomon Island Is there a major difference between any of them? Is one better than another? (FWIW, I'm setting up a 75g FOWLR tank.)

I have had a Black Ghost Knife for about 6 months. He seemed incredibly healthy and happy - in fact, I just commented to my wife how much bigger he was getting ... until tonight. I just looked in the tank he shot from one side to the other, slammed into the side of the tank, and started...