Recent content by MDDad

I have four shrimp. Seems like that’s the number that survived. One is double the size of the other three. I rarely see them, except when doing water changes or cleaning algae off the sides of the tank, that stirs them up.

The pH is around 7.0, ammonia and nitrites essentially zero, nitrates a bit higher (20-30ppm) because they are present in my well water.

Two days ago, I put ten small (3/4”) Amano shrimp in my 29g tank (lightly planted, barbs and tetras mostly). Two days later, I CAN’T FIND A SINGLE SHRIMP. None of my fish are large enough to eat them whole, I don’t see any “parts” so I don’t think they died or got eaten. Where did they go?

Is it possible? I have a 29 gallon, that is very well cycled. I never have spikes in ammonia or nitrites. However, over several years the tank is just gross. Between algae, embedded fish poop, and God knows what else, it just looks nasty. The substrate is very algae stained and discolored. I...

Yes, I removed the Lego structure...my son understood when I showed him what happened.

We have a 29G tank of mostly platies. My son built them a “house” out of legos and put it in the tank, against my wishes. A male platy tried to swim through an opening and got stuck. I got him freed, but during the process, his head and gill area got rubbed pretty raw, and somehow a big chunk...

Currently have a low-light, low tech 29g. For fish I have mostly second and third generation livebearers (platies plus a couple mollies) born and raised in this tank. I have one senior citizen platy left from my original stock as well. I am at near-max capacity with about 20 fish. I am...

I have an plain old Aqueon hood with a single tube T8 fluorescent light with some low light ferns that have done well. The light started flickering, so I replace the tube, and the new tube flickers as well. I’m beginning to think it’s the ballast in the unit that actually went bad. So am I...

Multiple thermometers get the same reading BTW.

Room is about 73. It’s one of those heaters with the built-in dial thermostat. I’m guessing it is faulty.

Even with the dial down to 76, the heater is maintaining my tank around 83-84 degrees. I have platies, mollies, and serpae tetras. pH 7.5, gH 12, ammonia and nitrites zero. Nitrates run in the 10-40 range because it’s in our tap water from the get-go.

We have an old male platy. Most of our platies are now second and third generation. He is one of two survivors from our original stock, and he wasn’t young when we got him, so he is probably about 4 years old despite his small size. He’s small but is the father of most of the younger fish...

We had a large, presumably old female swordtail. She was large when we bought her a year ago, and was 5” long at the time of her death. She seemed perfectly fine until yesterday morning, when I saw that she was swimming upside down. She was really trying hard to swim down further into the...

I bought a Marina. The problem - the instructions recommend an air pump that does 1L/min or less. The absolute bare bottom, crappiest air pumps I can find are all higher than that. Even a five dollar cheapo I found does 24 gal/hr which is 90/L an hour or 1.5L/Min. What did you use?

I have several plants, but I have a VERY low light setup (just the cheap single-tube that comes with the hood).