Jbones

Thanks. I actually do thoroughly clean everything in the tank and my nitrate level is at an acceptable low level. So i must be doin something right. However I would like to see it a bit lower. I will give it some more time and keep on doin what im doin. All the fish are happy and so am i. the water is at a very healthy level and super clean and clear. I love it. It wouldn't be possible without the expertise and good advise from this forum and all the LFS's I have been to. So thanks to everyone who has helped me out. This is my first year in the hobby and I love it. Cheers.

Thanks..... It's a 55 gal. Im not sure of the formal species names but from what i know,,, I have a midnight blue, an electric yellow, a taiwan reef, a red shoulder, a dolphin, and the others im not sure. oh and im looking to get a ruby red. but they are really hard to come across.

Thanks..... It's a 55 gal. Im not sure of the formal species names but from what i know,,, I have a midnight blue, an electric yellow, a taiwan reef, a red shoulder, a dolphin, and the others im not sure.

Here's a pic of my tank. I have 8 african's and two bottom feeders. I went with a mid-evil/pirate theme.

She is using a canister type filtration system that supports a 100 gal. tank. It was being cleaned and maintained in 1 - 2 week interverals. now she will be doing this once a month to keep a ideal bacteria level. 25% Water changes were done once a week while cleaning the gravel. To get the tank back into cycle she will do 15% water changes for the next couple of days with the use a water stabalization formula that was recommended by a very knowledgeable employee at a LFS. He gave me instruction on how to get the tank back to an ideal level of health. We tested the water last night and found out the following: very high nitrate, a caution zone nitrite (yikes), hardness level was at very hard (good ol' edmonton city water), zero chlorine, PH level was at the low end of nuetral (which i would like to see a little higher), and the alkalinity was low. I will test the ammonia levels once a get an ammonia tester. Now that we know the results of these tests we can now utilize this info to implement fixes to the tank. Hopefully we can get it back to normal. Is there something else we should be doing?

I don't understand... stop feeding them completely for 2 months??

Hey all, My girlfriend has a 72 gal aquarium containing 2 very large koi, 3 large gold fish, and a small fan tailed gold fish. The water is always cloudy and we can't figure out why. Some research and help from a very knowlegable employee at a local fish store tells me that the fish are being fed waaaaay too much. She (my g.f.) feeds them 2 - 3 times a day substantially. So now she is going to cut back the feeding to once every 2 - 3 days. One would think the bigger the fish, the more food, but what from what i have learned it just doesn't work that way. Some people have a hard time understanding this so the easiest way to explain this is; the more food, the more waste, the more nitrite, the more problems.. which makes perfect sense but I would just like to have some extra feedback on this for peace at mind sake. Thanks.

I am in no way a cichlid expert, but I know that if you have a female with 4 or more males, it could be that they are stressing her out with trying to mate. Adding more males would make it worse... I would try to even out the female male ratio.... try breeding pairs rather then a mix of breeds... there will be some territory issues, but then again it won't be just on the lone female of the group... even out aggression/breeding. Or if your not interested in breeding, then remove her find her a good home, and get another male. I hope this helps your dilemma and Welcome to the forum... :thumbs: Okay i will try that. Thanks for the input BlackMumba. Do you think I should add more than just one male?? I've been told that if i am going to add more fish i should at least add 3 or more at a time. I don't want to overcroud my tank because they will grow. i am happy with the set up i have now with large pieces of slate in which i have created a sort of maze type structure in which they have many hiding spots. I have been watching them everyday and there seems to be no dominance struggles or fighting. They all seem to get along with each other except the female.

Hey all, I'm a newbie here at AA. I have a 55 gal aquarium and my choice of fish are african cichlids. I have 8 of them but not sure of all species quite yet but am in the process of identifying them all. So far I know I have 1-midnight blue, 1-taiwan reef, 1-electric yellow, 1-red shoulder, 1-dolphin, and three im not sure what they are. All peacocks though. One of them leads me to believe that it is a female due to no fancy color, also it is a "loner". It stays at the top corner behind my filter intake.... I've heard this is a bad thing because she has been "pushed away" from the rest of the group... Does anyone know of a good treatment for her to be accepted in the group? I guess i should also say that before i had 8 fish i started out with 4 and she was one of them. She was not accepted by the other three males (that I started out with) and someone told me to add more fish and she may be accepted by them. So I added 4 more males and she was swimming around and seemed to be interacting but still swims to her spot at the top of the tank where she stays for hours. hmmmm....?? what to do, what to do....