Recent content by dalto

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...