Recent content by sducky

Yes, that looks like the diagrams I used. 8 males and about 40 females, which I thought was suspicious. But based on some other sources I found online, it's not.

Actually, I spent some time researching a variety of forums online, and apparently it's pretty common to have mostly females, with only a few males. (I guess that makes sense biologically, as you only need a few males to impregnate a lot of females.) Some people claimed water temperature and pH...

A few months ago someone offered me an absolutely beautiful male cobra guppy and a couple of pretty yellow females with orange tails. In a total lapse of judgment, I took them, and predictably, I now have more guppies than I know what to do with. I kept the babies in the tank with the adults...

Nitrates were reading in the 50-60 ppm range. It took 3 weeks of 20% water changes twice per week to get it down to 40 ppm, and it's a struggle to get it to stay there. It's a 20 gallon tank with 5 cory cats, a flower shrimp, 2 cherry shrimp, 2 otos, and 4 white clouds. That's a little more...

I've been struggling a bit with some algae problems in my tanks. Nothing huge, but I've also noticed that some of my fish aren't as active as they used to be. Water tests consistently show that my nitrate levels are high, and I can't seem to get them down. I'm doing 20% water changes every week...

What Barliman said just rang a bell. I checked my bottle of Amquel Plus, which is a similar product, and it carries a warning that it can affect water chemistry tests. According to the bottle, tests that use Nessler reagents won't be accurate, but ones that use salicylate reagents (like the API...

That seems odd. It's common for the pH of your tap water to change after you let it sit for a while. That has to do with oxygenation. But I'm not aware of ammonia doing that. Your tap water likely contains ammonium - which is a byproduct of municipal chlorination. It's not as harmful as...

Hey, thanks for the quick reply. What do you cut it with to get nice clean edges? I've had to cut that stuff before to go in odd-size grid ceilings, and I could never get the edges to cut cleanly. Those Wave Points look nice. I'll have to check if any of the LFSs have them in any of their...

I want to upgrade the cheap integrated hood/light combos that came with my aquariums. My tanks are all small (20g is the biggest), and they're mostly non-standard shapes/sizes, so I'm not going find off-the shelf hoods for most of them. And I have inverts, so I need to replace them with...

No, I still don't have any ideas. My guppy fry that were born around the same time are all starting to get the cobra markings on their tails, but these other fry are still just plain white - not gray or silver, which is a little odd - with no markings at all. I guess I'll have to wait until...

I have a planted 6-gallon nano tank that houses two clown killifish, three amano shrimp, a nerite snail, and nothing else. About a month ago, I noticed a few tiny white fry in the tank. After about three days, I had a dozen or so of them. Obviously I assumed they were baby killies, as those...

Quick update - 20G tank is doing really well now. But I had an eye-opening experience a couple of weeks ago buying stock for both that tank and the little nano. I was in an LFS where I had shopped before, and where I'd previously had good experiences. There was a different guy working there this...

So, I went over to the Petco closest to my house and bought a couple of cories. I figured their tap water comes from the exact same place as mine, so it's likely to have the same water chemistry. And the guy who works in their aquatics department seems to care about his job - is always cleaning...

So, I took advice from several of you guys (thanks!). I put the old ugly HOB biowheel on the tank in addition to the Aqueon underwater filter I was using. I went out and bought a bottle of Cycle and used that instead of the API Quickstart, which didn't seem to be effective at all. And within a...

Thanks. At first I used a bacterial product made by API that specifically said it didn't need to be refrigerated, but that didn't seem to do anything. Finally I bought a bottle of Cycle, which is what I've used in the past, and it does need to be refrigerated. It didn't "instantly" cycle my...