BettaFishMommy

the ovipositor is quite distinct and if you know where to look for it you can't miss it. i had a pure white female (that later darkened, i love mutt genes!) and i could see her nub clearly. where are you located? if Edmonton, i could probably come by and help you out with sexing them.

plants need more than just ammonia to grow nicely. i dose Flourish comprehensive now and then and i find it gives my plants that little boost without me having to worry about measuring a bit of this and a tad of that for ferts, or follow a strict dosing schedule. i am the lazy planted tank keeper, lol.

your dragon male is gorgeous!!!

for double checking the females (and two of them look male to me - #1 and #2), you look on their underside, right behind the ventral fins. if you see a white nub, then it's a female. the white nub is their ovipositor, part of the lady betta's sexual anatomy. i find females will often have a rounder tummy region too, and less of a curve to their topside.

i had great growth on my plants in a little 2.5 gallon using a spiral 13 watt cfl bulb, but that was due to the light fixture being flush against the glass lid and all the light directing down into the tank, plus fertilizing them occasionally.

those fixtures you linked probably throw a lot of light around and not much goes directly into the tank, especially if they are above the water much.

what size tanks do you have these lights on? i'm assuming smaller, under the 20 gallon range?

and the type of plants you are trying to grow would help. plus substrate type, fert schedule, co2 used, etc. it's not just lighting that's a factor in healthy plant growth.

as far as cheap hardware store lights - home depot carries t8 bulbs and fixtures/fixture kits that are for aquariums, that would do fine for most easy low to medium light plants.

what about giant ramshorns?

giant ramshorns are marisa snails, and are plant eaters. i've never seen them for sale in Edmonton.

from my research, most of the bigger snail varieties are plant eaters - canas, marisa snails to name a couple.

rabbit snails are really neat, but far as i know they are slow at gaining numbers. rabbit snails give live birth to one baby snail at a time.

why do you want a snail that would multiply readily? i'd be concerned about a tank takeover that way!

Marko - big al's is definitely larger than aquarium central.

there are successful apisto and ram keepers here in Edmonton and our water has a bit higher ph than 7.6.

IMO somebody torturing fish like that doesn't deserve any money and should be giving up the fish for free, and not allowed to have another tank unless they learn to do it properly.

snails in a planted tank can be your friend, by eating the dead plant matter and cleaning up leftover food. i say leave them, tell the hubby they are good for the tank, and unless the population gets out of control (which really only happens if you overfeed your tank), and enjoy the lil critters.

oh my good god....... :boxed:

just post each set of photos in separate posts in the thread

loving that texas, she's a beaut!

lol, silly betta.....

my most recent betta would flare and chase the zebra danios and the perugiae livebearers i had in the tank with him.

i've seen those before.

i just use a fork. even leave it in the tank when there's no zucchini on it. i love it when non fishy people come over and ask why there's a fork in my tank. i tell them i taught my fish to eat with utensils, lol! never thought to tie a string/fishing line to it though, good idea.

Welcome to the forum!!!

freshwater is much less expensive to run than a salt tank, IMO.

no problem! i've had to deal with camallanus before and i know how difficult it can be when your fish are sick and you need a certain med that can be hard to obtain.

it might be because you are a new member and not able to access the pm system yet. i sent Jayba a message for you, telling him you need levamisole, and forwarded your profile page here on the forum to him so that he can contact you.

try contacting Jayba. he's in red deer and i believe he has levamisole.

good luck! it's a really yucky parasite to have to deal with.

many fish meds break down rather quickly in water (hence the reason for needing to re-dose most of them every 24 hours or so). i don't think metro and prazi, in the small amounts listed on General Cure (250 mg metro and 75 mg prazi, per tablet) would cause much harm if poured down the drain. earlier this year when i had to use General Cure, the tank water went down the drain.

The Eco station doesn't accept 'commercial biomedical waste' or expired medications, so i don't think they'd take medicated fish tank water.

perhaps call up a pharmacist and ask them what they think?

i would say parasitic infection. can you see any 'red threads' hanging out of his anus?

fishclubgirl on here is the gal to talk to on betta breeding she knows her stuff!

as for my advice, don't do it unless you are prepared to house a bunch of male bettas separately in minimum 1 gallon jars, and do water changes on those jars every day. it's a lot of time and work, making baby bettas, and that's the reason i've not tried to do it myself. plus, unless you are breeding a really nice pair (halfmoons or the other higher quality/fancier finned bettas) it isn't worth it, and can be difficult to find homes for all the fish, because the pet stores are already saturated with the common veil tail variety.

no problem! i'm a forum junkie, so i know my way around, hahaha!

you can change 'Jack Dempsey' to anything you want. just go into your user control panel (where your member name is at the top right of any screen on the forum), go into 'my settings', choose the 'profile' tab at the top (far right) right under where it says 'Your Options', scroll down a bit to find the box to type in right under 'Member Title', and put what you want. tada! lol.

the little yellow fish under your user name in all of your posts increases with the number of times you post. for example, you have 2 fish and 150 posts, and i have 4 fish and just over 1200 posts.

as for the photo size problem, if you have a Photobucket account (free to use!) you can re-size your photos on there and then use the image code to copy and paste them directly into your post. should work. try the 640x480 size, it works well for forum postings.

i wouldn't mix meds. just go with the API (General Cure). Epsom salts are quite often used for bloating, and from what i can see, this oscar has the exact opposite problem.

he definitely looks malnourished. i would soak some silverside pieces or bloodworms in garlic juice to entice him to eat. garlic is good for fish, it causes the fish's gut to be inhospitable to parasites, and from my experience, oscars LOVE garlic infused food. i feed my Gus his NLS pellets with garlic juice on them from time to time.

oscars will sulk for the littlest reason, lol, so don't be surprised if he takes some time to come around.

as for the problem he's having swimming/staying upright - i would use API's General Cure. it contains both metro and prazi, so both bacterial and protozoan (parasite) problems will be dealt with. I had a paratilapia polleni (black diamond cichlid) with swim bladder issues due to bacterial infection a little while ago and the General Cure fixed him right up. he was floating sideways at the top of the tank! you can get General Cure at petsmart.