Recent content by Otter2009

I've had tiger barbs for going on two years now and have noticed an unfortunate trend with my group. It seems that the group will all be doing well for a while and then all of a sudden one breaks off from the group and dies shortly their after. This repeats with one or two more (each breaking...

Thanks, Jay! I'm not super familiar with this problem (I'm used to bacteria being beneficial to an aquarium). What symptoms tipped you off to it? Also, how do I fix it?

I have a 20 gallon tank that's about 2 years old and my fish seem to have become very lethargic over the past few months. None have died but they're less active and don't respond to food the way that they used to. There has also been a lot of brown algae growing recently. Here are the specs...

Thanks, I stopped fertilizers and did a water change. Unfortunately, one of my fish has since died and the others are acting as if ammonia levels are high (but they're testing as 0). Some of my plants have also started losing their leaves. Any thoughts?

I have 20 gallon and 36 gallon planted tanks (the 36 has CO2 and the 20 does not). I've gone back and forth on using/ not using fertilizer with them but had settled on not using it a few months ago. About a month ago I noticed a lack of growth from some plants and started using Tropica Premium...

At this point, the platys have mostly retreated to various hiding spots but every time they come out, the gouramis are right there to cause trouble. I'm thinking I should maybe just move the platys but I don't want to overload my smaller tank. I have a few species of tetras in the smaller tank...

For a few days, the tiger barbs died on Sunday and I added the platys on Thursday.

The tank is heavily planted and also has some snails in it. Parameters: Ammonia - 0 Nitrite - 0 Nitrate - 5-10 pH - About 6.5 Diet: Flakes, Bug Bites, Bloodworms Light: Pre-programmed 24 hr cycle No signs of disease or parasites. I should note that I previously has tiger barbs in the...

I have a 36 gallon tank with two opaline gouramis (both males). There has been some aggression between them but nothing too much. Today, I added 6 platys to the tank and the gouramis have been chasing them all around. Any advice as to what I can do? Would it help if I moved one of the gouramis...

I have a tank with eight tiger barbs that are typically very active and school together all of the time. I noticed today that one of them is no longer staying with the group but is instead staying in a corner and not moving much. Is this normal or should I be concerned?

I've been having brown algae grow in my tank at a fairly slow rate for a while now. I've mostly addressed it by scrubbing patches of it off of my leaves/ glass as they arise. The biggest issue I have encountered is with my small-leaved plants (such as s. repens). It's difficult to scrub these...

As a quick followup, my ammonia levels have dropped back to 0 (as well as my nitrite and nitrate levels) but my fish have been swimming at the top a lot today. Any ideas as to why?

I recently trimmed a bunch of floating water sprite and cleaned some dead leaves on other plants throughout my tank. Afterwards, I noticed that the ammonia had spiked to 1.0ppm. Was this likely caused by me trimming and cleaning or is there something else I should be concerned about?

The kH is 50-100ppm.

I have a 5 gallon tank that has suddenly run into some pH issues. My tap-water's pH is typically a bit low (6.5ish) but the pH usually increases once I add it into the tank to about 7.5 (I assume this is due to the rocks I have in the tank). However, this has not been the case recently. After...