BettaFishMommy

she could very well be breeding with the pandas. i have an emerald green cory female (brochis splendens) that breeds with the bronze cory males (corydoras aneus) on a regular basis. never see any fry though because the other piggy fish in the tank go smorgasbord on the eggs all the time. as for the laying eggs while on her back, that is very odd! i've never even seen any of my 10 cories on their back, never mind in the act of propagation. does she release a lot of eggs each time?

Jason, when you consider the surface area of all the biomax and sponges in my two canisters, i'd say the filter media is much more surface area than sand substrate with this particular tank. i've been doing many ammonia/nitrite tests since taking the sand out (just to be on the safe side!) and have not noticed any spikes with either parameter. both have stayed at zero at all times. i did not touch my filters at all when i removed the sand.

depending on the amount of filtration/size of filters on the tank, IMO the substrate really doesn't hold a lot of bacteria. in the instance of my tank i recently removed sand from, the sand was very shallow (when spread evenly it would've been an inch or less), and i run the two rena xp canisters jam packed with sponge and ceramic biomedia. so in my tank's case, i would say over 80-85% of the ben. bacteria is in the filters. oooh, you wanna see a bare bottom huh? lol.

Raven, there are lots of 'gel food' recipes on the net for fish food. all you need to do is play with the snail jello recipe a bit - omit the calcium source, add other fish foods. tada! lol. when i had my apple snails i found the fish would eat the snail jello as much as the snails did, and i still have every one of those fish, so i'm pretty sure the calcium didn't hurt them any.

oh crud, so if i have four fuzzy balls and i'm not a guy, does that constitute a problem? hahahaha!!!

filtration is a rena xp2 and a xp4 (yeah.... i don't like to overfilter my tanks at all....... lol!). the intakes used to sit right above the sand (less than 1 inch above), and are now just over an inch from the bottom of the tank. my sand bed was very shallow before i took it out. i considered taking the strainers off and just having the bottom of the intakes open pipe, but i would need to get at least 2 more of the blue pipe sections to make them sit anywhere close to the bottom of the tank. actually, i'd need 1.5 sections for each canister to make the end happen right near the tank's bottom. wouldn't want to take the risk of Gus or Chuck getting hurt on the edges of the pipe. oh, aha! i might be able to modify a couple spare Aquaclear 110 intakes i have kicking around! hope they're the right diameter to fit on the xp piping.

and the best thing about going bare bottom..... when Gus or Chuck do their little 'freak outs' where they randomly decide to go zipping across the tank close to the bottom, no more sand flying everywhere, woo hoo! sometimes i think they do that just to tick me off, lol.

heheheee, figured that'd get your attention, lol. yesterday i took all the sand out of my big guys' tank and went bare bottom. as i was sucking out the sand i noticed it had gone black in an area where it was piled up between 2 and 3 inches, and as i sucked the sand out, large bubbles were released from the area. eeeek! i've read that deep substrates can cause gas pockets but didn't think the sand in this tank was deep enough in any area to do that. needless to say, the bucket of sand does NOT smell good at all, and definitely has a 'something died' aroma. i'm glad i caught that before anything happened to Gus and Chuck! so for all of you with bare bottom tanks for your big fish, what do you like about it? what don't you like? i know i'll be doing water changes more frequently, to keep the tank looking good, since there is no substrate to catch mulm and detritus any more. and now Gus has the whole bottom of the tank with which to box with his reflection, not just the middle where he would push the sand out of the way. silly fish dog..... lol.

so the fish have magnets inside? oh my........

ok folks! the wheels in my head have been turning (can you see the smoke coming out my ears? hahaha!) and i had an idea! lets do a mystery plant swap! everyone brings a plant in a bag you can't see through, we get together at my place, talk fish, hang out, and just generally have a good time, and then we put our names in a hat and do a random draw for swapping of said mystery plants. plants should be low or medium light, tolerant of different water chemistry, and generally not too difficult to keep for the average planted tank keeper. whaddya all think?

Jerry, the big corner planted tank at BA's doesn't have nearly as many rainbows as it used to, from what i can see. still some nice fish in there though, and yep, boesmani's are my favourite too! turquoise comes in a close second.

i'm not sure what HPTA means but i believe the 10% filter/display ratio means that your filter's volume (amount of water in it) is 10% of what your tank's water volume is.

Protein quantity has nothing to do with bloat. As stated by the OP, it already is eating properly, and the last thing that you want to do to a fish that is otherwise acting & eating normally, is withold nutrients, which is what amino acids (protein) are. If it was a serious case of internal parasites it wouldn't be eating at all, so I'm leaning more towards this being bacterial, sometimes referred to as wasting disease. Skinny disease in loaches is usually referring to internal parasites. commonly seen in recently collected loaches. Noodles - what species of cichlid is this fish, and what meds are you treating with? i agree with RD on proteins not causing bloat. it is stress combined with a weakened system that causes bloat in african cichlids. i had a beautiful and very healthy mbuna of sorts (never did pinpoint his exact species) and he was fed a high protein diet the whole time i had him from some point in mid 2008 up to late last year. never had a health issue with him and he grew to at least 6 inches. some of you might remember photos of Grindle. he's gone to live in a 300 something gallon tank now i mentioned wasting disease in my earlier post in this thread, and it seems nobody read/saw what i wrote. hopefully now that a second person has said something about it, it will be investigated as such? from what i have read, wasting disease is also known as fish tuberculosis, and highly contagious between fish, with the possibility of humans being affected too. make sure you wear gloves while mucking in your tank if you have any open cuts or sores! have you noticed any changes in the curvature of the fish's spine?

Welcome to the forum! 90 watts will bring you to 2 watts per gallon, which is good for low to medium light plants IMO. instead of buying a light fixture/glass lids brand new i would suggest putting a 'wanted' ad on here for a light and lid. i do believe you need a certain number of posts before you can access the classifieds though, maybe 5? you can also make your tank open topped if you don't have any fish likely to jump and you don't mind topping off the evaporated water every few days or so. as for diy co2, you're going to need a number of 2 litre bottles for a 45 gallon. i'd say at least 3 to make an impact with the co2. might be better to go pressurized, since that will be much less hassle, although it will cost you more than diy.

i agree with Jason. blue is used often in marine tanks and looks pretty darn good IMO. don't do black if you have any dark coloured fish, since they'll blend too well.

it could be internal parasites or it could be 'wasting disease', a bacterial infection. either way, quarantine and treatment is definitely necessary. i'm leaning towards wasting disease since none of your other fish are exhibiting any symptoms, although it is highly contagious so keep an extra watchful eye on your main tank!

beautiful fish! i've not done a lot of reading on different marine fish (yet, lol), is this one of those that drastically changes in colour and pattern as it matures?

i know for a fact that petsmart doesn't feed their snails the necessary calcium enriched diet. perhaps try posting a wanted ad in the classifieds here if you want to try again with these snails. if i was still breeding them i'd send you a few! this was one of my babies, a beautiful female jade a 2.5 gallon isn't large enough for an apple snail and a betta. these snails do make a good amount of waste when cared for properly and you'd be doing nearly daily water changes on a 2.5 to keep it clean enough for the snail and the fish. if you do try again, here's a great recipe for snail jello: 1 jar baby food (i used the butternut squash variety, my snails loved it!) about 10 Tums, crushed up into fine powder. flavour can be any, but i used the fruit ones. this is your calcium source. 1.5 packets knox gelatin (recipes i found online say only 1 packet, but i found my snail jello too runny with just 1) crushed up fish food, if desired. about 2 tablespoons. (i used nls pellets, my snails were spoiled, lol, but flake or any other dry food would work) nuke the baby food in a bowl in the microwave for a minute on high. stir in the knox gelatin, ensuring there are no lumps. stir in the crushed up Tums and fish food. make sure it is mixed well. spoon into an ice cube tray, filling each about 1/2 full. put tray in freezer until the cubes are set. remove cubes from tray (you'll need to dig them out with a spoon) and store in a ziploc in the freezer. they'll stay good a long time. i found that a cube the size i describe above is about enough for 4 or 5 snails each, and i would feed the snail jello a couple times a week. if you only have a couple snails, then either make smaller cubes or cut the size i mention in half.

yes, i know cana snails will eat plants. so will marisa snails. but all snails do need a calcium rich diet to enable proper/healthy shell growth and maintenance. in my experience, my apple snails really didn't eat dead/dying plant matter, but then again, they were fed well with calcium enriched snail jello.