BettaFishMommy

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.

useless for fish but would make an awesome habitat for a tree snake!

i would go with two of the same filter, for ease of cleaning for a fish newbie (i'm assuming your sister hasn't had a tank before?). that way she doesn't have to learn how to operate and maintain two new kinds of filters, just one. i'd go with two Aquaclear 70's.

what i would do with a sponge pre-filter is bore a hole into a square piece of sponge that is not much bigger than the end of the intake tube. shove the sponge onto the intake tube. a small piece of sponge inside the tube can clog too quickly.

what is the brand name and type of sand you have?

it's not the gravel that eats away at the barbels in most instances, it's bacterial infection. unless your cories are housed on a 'sharp' substrate such as flourite, their barbels are in no danger from gravel, and i've read of cories being on flourite with no problem too. i've kept 10 various cories on what was mostly pea gravel for quite a while with no issue at all. those 9 cories didn't really school together, but they did hang out now and then. that was 2 albinos, 4 bronze, 1 emerald green, 2 barbatus, and a peppered.

pothos plants do wonderfully when growing out of the back of a hob filter.

you could remove the zeocarb bit by bit, and that should avoid your tank crashing. or move some mature media from another tank to replace it? for proper shell growth, you should be supplementing calcium to the snails. i just use crushed up Tums when making snail jello and it works well (and is cheap! lol). if you want the recipe, it's floating around on AA here in a couple places. just search 'snail jello'.

IMO the zeocarb media isn't good - it basically steals the ammonia from the biological bacteria, resulting in a tank that doesn't have enough bacteria to sustain the bioload. i'd remove the zeocarb and just have sponge, biomax, and polyester batting (if you care about fine particle filtration). apple snails are pretty darn messy when they are cared for properly and are fed properly, and do add a substantial amount to the bioload. are you making calcium enriched snail jello for them? from my research and experience (raised 7 generations of apple snails), about 2 gallons per snail is good for smaller tanks, and once you hit the 40 gallon and up range you can get away with a few more apples in the tank. i had about 30 adult apples in a standard 55 gallon at one point, with a fairly good fish load in there too. all were perfectly healthy, although my nitrate level on that tank was constantly higher.

you could go with just about any fabric you liked. i use a jersey knit 'flat' black colour (not shiny at all).

i would say add a wall of vals to each back pane, and toss in a couple large swords to fill out everything. that'd look nice! as for making the background black now that the tank is set up, you could get some sticky backed velcro strips and run them along the top trim edges on those back panes, then take the corresponding sticky back velcro and put it on black fabric. you only need finger room behind the tank to do this. i did this to two 55 gallons after they were set up and running, close to a wall. it worked well!

BettaFishMommy has tank envy....... lol. very nice!!!!

as y'all may have figured, i'm selling one of my tanks. well, today i broke the tank down and emptied it to get it ready to go. guess what i found?!?!?!? baby bristlenose plecos!!! the are super duper tiny, not even half a centimetre long. i feel bad because a few probably ended up down the drain (i didn't notice the first one swimming until the tank was only 1/4 full), but i managed to save 4 of them. they are so darn cute! until recently i had a male bn (sold him), and i've kept the female (she was my first ever pleco, i couldn't bear to part with her). i figured the two were breeding but with the other fish in the tank, including rainbows and barbs, i didn't think any babies would make it. so yay! i'm a fish grandma again! lol. i say again because i've had perugiae limia babies born here too, but baby plecos are way darn cuter than livebearers they are now happily blipping about the 20 long, munching away at all the yummy goodness on the plants and wood. :thumbs:

if your ramshorns are that big i'd say you have marisa snails (Marisa cornuarietis). they are plant eaters. i'd look at removing them from the tank before adding any plants.

tip for breeding mollies - add fish to tank, feed fish, wait for babies. lol! but yes, different molly types will interbreed.

from my reading and experience, you should go for about 5 watts of heater per gallon. so a 10 gallon tank would get a 50 watt heater for example. if your house stays warm, then you can get away with a slightly lower wattage than if your house is cool. my apartment stays pretty warm, so out of my three tanks, only two need heaters (they are closer to the windows and patio door, which is open nearly all the time). my 20 gallon has a 100 watt and my 55 has a 200 watt. both tanks stay between 76 and 79 F, with the heaters set at about 24 C (they are the Elite brand ones that only have C on the dial, and i suck at temperature conversion without the online calculator, lol!). as for filters, it's all about what your preference is. i have both hobs and canisters and i like both. if you are running co2 into a planted tank, canister is better because it won't off-gas the co2 like a hob would. as for your cloudy tank, it could be a bacterial bloom. have you recently added more fish to the tank or is it a newly set up tank at all? if yes to either question, then i would say it's the bacteria playing catch up and it will clear in time. adding more filters won't help with cloudy water due to bacteria bloom, because the bacteria will only populate enough to handle the bioload of however many fish you have in there. more filters just means more water movement.

root tabs will help any plant that is a 'root feeder', like swords and crypts, regardless of the amount of light on your tank. stem plants take most of their nutrients from the water column.

or scroll to the bottom of the main forum index screen and click 'today's active content'.

that is what i call 'new wood goo'. i have yet to see a new piece of wood not get it. my mopani piece in my 20 long still has a few remnants of the goo on the backside, and i set that tank up in December. i find that wood that has never been underwater is more prone to new wood goo. the mopani i have was originally in a reptile tank and was never submerged. and Jason is right, it is harmless. some fish will eat it (not just catfish - i've seen mollies, plecos, goldfish, etc eat it), and it will go away eventually. you can manually remove it if you want, by wiping it off the wood and sucking it up with your gravel vac.

what i am saying is that Prime makes ammonia convert to ammonium. Ammonium is perfectly safe for your fish. your test kit will still pick up the ammonium on the ammonia test, but if you have used Prime at the proper dosage (or even a little more) then you have no worries on any ammonia touching your fish. during spring run-off, i too noticed ammonia in the tap water. dosed a bit extra Prime during water changes, and had no issue at all with any of my fish.

as long as you are using Prime for dechlor, it will convert the ammonia to ammonium, which is safe for fish, but will still feed the beneficial bacteria.

your ph being low tells me that your tank could be experiencing 'old tank syndrome'. what is the ph in your tank? do you add peat or any other buffers to lower your ph? the other fish in there may be experiencing the effects of this, and are lethargic and not wanting to eat due to it. i'd be doing daily water changes of 25 to 30% for a week, then do a larger water change on day 8 of about 50 to 60%. this will bring your tank's parameters back into check slowly, and will reduce the 'shock' your fish may experience by having a large change to their environment/parameters too quickly. are you using Prime for dechlorinator? and filter cleaning, how do you usually go about that? another thing to consider is to add more variety to the diet. piranhas are omnivorous, and would appreciate a little vegetable matter in their diet. the insides of peas and bits of zucchini would be good for them. you can also try to get them on a good quality pellet food as their staple. NLS is wonderful food! Omega One is a good one too. stop feeding feeders. they are notorious for bringing disease into your tank, and are high in thiaminase, which can block the uptake of vitamin B1. they are also fatty and not a nutritional feed choice. as for the sick guy, have you tried medicating him at all?

the beneficial bacteria do not live in the water, they live on surfaces in the filter and in the tank. removing large amounts of the water and replacing it with new will not harm your bacteria, it will just reduce your nitrates, TDS (total dissolved solids) and DOC (dissolved organic compounds). those three things you don't want to have build up in your tank, as quite often it will lead to 'old tank syndrome'. i wouldn't do a big water change, deep gravel vacuum, and a filter cleaning all on the same day though, as that could possibly put a good dent in your bacteria numbers.

welcome!!! as far as our Edmonton water goes, it's a bit high in ph (usually around the 7.8 mark) and is hard, but not 'liquid rock', lol. most fish bought here would be acclimated and used to our water already, so no issues on setting up a community tank. not sure on the angel breeding though.

a 25% water change weekly isn't nearly enough when dealing with bigger fish. i'd be doing minimum 50 to 60%, along with a good gravel vac (if you have substrate in there) to remove waste. i'd try the med i suggested, if it isn't already too late for him.