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You need to measure your KH before we can provide any meaningful answers on the effects of ph down.

It is really, really difficult to sex the heavily line bred forms of A. cacatuoides from pictures because the females acquire male traits. It is not uncommon to see females with long caudal or dorsal fin extensions. If I had to guess I would say that is a male but I wouldn't vouch for it.

How high? What did you use to cycle the tank? If you used any kind of decaying matter you should thoroughly vacuum and remove it all. If you used ammonia then a 100% water change should be enough.

In the heavily line bred forms of A. cacatuoides the females often have many male traits including fin coloration, caudal fin extensions, dorsal fin shape, etc. The males will usually be larger at full adult size but sometimes sub-dominant males will stay small.

A standard 10g would be fine. If they are large enough to spawn avoid putting any kind of caves or cave like structures unless you want your qt tank to be a fry grow-out tank as moving new apisto fry is not fun since they are so tiny.

Are you sure you are putting back the same amount you are taking out? If your tank water is evaporating at all and you are refilling with salt water your salinity will rise. You could try topping off the tank with RODI or some other 0 TDS water before water changes and see if that helps.

Assuming "mega red" is some color variant of A. cacatuoides they should be relatively hardy and easy to keep. Hard to know in hindsight but I would expect the common causes for death shortly after acclimation to be: The fish already had a disease or internal parasite The tank has going through...

The size of the tank depends what you are trying to qt. I like hob filters for qt tanks unless the fish need low flow conditions in which case I would use sponge filters. Both are easy to clean and sterilize. The likelihood of needing to sterilize is much higher with a qt tank so I put as...

You need to do larger water changes. 4.0ppm of ammonia is very toxic. I would do a series of large water changes every few hours.

You need to test before your water change, testing after the change is going to give inconsistent results, especially if you have chloramines in your tap water. If you can add ammonia and have ammonia and nitrite at 0 after 24 hours you are ready for fish.

It is a bacteria in a bottle product. In theory, it contains several types of bacteria in it. Some of these are used to kick-start the growth of your bacteria colony others exist to consume short-term ammonia and nitrites in the aquarium. If it works, it will speed up the cycle significantly.

My favorite was A. baenschi, have you kept them yet?

Welcome! What kind of new worlds are you considering?

Did the ich infection occur in the main tank? What temperature is the hospital tank at and how long has it been at that temperature? Ich has a specific lifecycle and I usually treat 7-10 days after the last of the spots disappears when using the heat treatment.

The strips are less accurate than the liquid tests but they work fine. The API 5 in 1 does not have ammonia so you will also need to buy ammonia test strips. You also only are getting 25 tests with the strips so factor that into your cost equation as well. On the other hand, the test strips...

If your water is hard and alkaline I would recommend doing your fishless cycle with dechlorinated tap water. The reason for that a fishless cycle consumes kh and using high kh water ensures you won't have any ph crashes during your cycle. Neither keyhole cichlids nor A. cacatuoides require...

Even on well established tanks, I find it is a worthwhile effort to test for nitrates every few months. It gives me a point of reference to know if I am changing enough water on a weekly basis. How much water I need to change varies a lot depending on stocking levels so it is important(for my...

The cacatuoides and the keyholes? There are never guarantees but a pair of each of those should be a pretty safe combination in a tank that size as long as the Apistos don't decide to make their home in the very center of the tank. If they start to do so, rearrange the tank and put some caves...

A typical cycle takes 4-6 weeks so not seeing nitrites after 2 is nothing to worry about. Also, with a fish-in cycle, you may never see a nitrite spike. Have your nitrates started going up? Lastly, 1ppm is a lot. I would try to keep ammonia lower than that.

Great choice, I have found them to be very easy to keep. Both wild caught fish and the tank raised line bred variety. How about keyhole cichlids? They make great community fish.

Even in a 40 breeder, you are looking at no more than 2 adult pairs. Even that may be pushing it. Personally, I would do a single trio in a tank that size and add some other fish. Apistogramma cacatuoides is a great Apisto for moderate/hard water conditions. Most of the tank raised A...

Yes, but test daily in a tank that small. I think you are going to find you will need larger, more frequent water changes than would normally needed during a cycle because you relative bio-load is very high(meaning the amount of fish as compared to the volume of water). Don't be afraid to do...

This would be an understatement. A spawning pair of jewels are hyper aggressive. They are not usually content to chase offenders out of their territory, they want to rip them apart. I have seen jewels kill aggressive fish 4x their size. How about keyhole cichlids? Although not my personal...

The Tunze Osmolator. I am not familiar with the Hydor but is there no way to tweak your current setup? Is it possible/safe to just bring the max and the in closer together?

There is a pump and a hose permanently attached to the RODI storage drums. For freshwater applications we pump the water straight into the tank. For saltwater we pump it into a container for mixing. My wife uses brute trashcans. I use 2 2.5g water containers. Her marine tank is bigger than...