Recent content by SeanMurphy

Possibly a diatom bloom. Not sure what color marine diatom algae is, but it's definately a dark brown color in my fresh tank when I first set it up. This should go away once the initial bloom gets under control. I think it's caused by the huge influx of silicates that suddenly get added when...

I bought a small clump of rotala last year and now it populates both of my 30g tanks, and i've given a lot away to friends and thrown out tons of it. It grows straight up and is kind of weedy looking if you don't have it in a large cluster with it's friends. A single stalk in my tank grows to...

Well, I had about given up on my two yellow lab cichlids. I assumed that I'd gotten two males or two females, because they hadn't done anything that looked like mating rituals in the 3 months since I'd bought them, but it's quite obvious that the one I thought was male now has a mouthful of...

Dollarama, right? I've got 8 of those bulbs in each of my hoods on my two 30 gallons. The plants went nuts.

Congratz! I've got a bunch of platys in a 30g along with a few guppies. The guppies have had a few successful fry drops but the platys have yet to have any little ones born or survive. Make sure you have lots of plants and stuff for fry to live in, if you're not going to seperate them in a...

Looks to me like the tube carries oxygenated water into the fishes mouth, where it floods out over their gills (at least the bottom gill), and into the surgery tray, where it would keep their skin from drying out an becoming sticky, as well.

Below is an image of what my PFS looks like, just for comparison. This was shortly after the switch, so it's still nice and clean. The sand has turned a darker color since then (almost 4 months since).

I've kept common plecos in 30g tanks before. You just need to have an adoption procedure in mind for when they outgrow it in a few years. Common plecos are about $2-$5 a pop and have lots of personality (if you can get them to come out during the day). I just traded back to a baby one in my...

Below is an example of my planted tank. Just a bunch of livebearers, a trio of corys, a baby pleco and two mystery snails. I don't use CO2 (just the air bubble wand), and I haven't fertilized in months (though I do have 6 root tabs in total, each under a major plant cluster). I've got 88W of...

if you don't have a lot of plants in the tank, then fry will sometimes hide in the gravel for a few days (the ones that didn't get eaten). You may also want to check your filter, as I've found quite a few in the sponge of my filters after a drop.

Any aquatic parasites would just as easily be killed by leaving the rocks to dry for a couple days, as a soaking in bleach. And like I said, its not the bleach on the surface of the rocks that's the problem, its what was absorbed into the rock. If you do a soak, then as long as you soak for at...

I can tell you from experience that a betta WILL beat the crap out of just about any livebearer you put in the tank. I lost 2 guppies and a lyretail molly (they weren't even fancy, flappy, big fin guppies) to betta attacks. Mine might have just been mean, but they're aggressive, territorial...

That definately sounds like the ballast has bucked the kicket. What type of hood is it? Is it an aftermarket light, or one that came with your kit? Might be time to look at upgrading, or maybe make a DIY light like the one I made. I gutted the light fixture and installed 8 standard screw in...

Is she in a tank with a male livebearer? It sounds to me like she was pregnant and dropped her fry. She's now in the post-drop phase where she looks like she's hollowed out, if that's the case. If so, she'll start eating again and put on a bit of her own weight again, most likely, though I've...

You'd be hard pressed to explode rocks by boiling them. Crack them, maybe, but not violently explode. If you baked them in a 400-500'F degree oven, they might explode, but otherwise, unlikely. Exploding rocks occur when the water inside them is heated past 100'C, and it boils, which creates...