Ishkabod

I had allot of difficulty finding and Id'ing my fish i called Mr Blue. I found Cichlid forum to be very helpful with their pictures and profiles. Good luck L

If you still have the bag with the number on it then you can ask an ACE member to help you get into contact with the seller so you can find out what you now have. Good luck L

I need to slightly overfeed to be sure that the slower and smaller fish have the chance to get some food not to mention the snails. If it wasn't for NLS i'd have had multiple deaths from the infamous malawi bloat. I have some Omeaga fish food left over from when i switched to NLS and i'm very very slowly getting rid of it. It can be found at Natures Corner Store for the best price in edmonton and elsewhere too. Colour is absolutely stunning as well when on NLS. Go through what you have before switching or else you might have difficulty getting your fish to eat it after they have had NLS. Price wise I would say it's actually cheaper that other food since you need to use soo little in comparison. Don't let initial price deter you and definately cut down significantly the amount you feed your fish when feeding nls. (each fish should have one eyeball size of food and no more) Good Luck L

Eating habbits and if they are breathing rapidly for no aparent reason and are they flashing. What about the colour and consistancy of anything coming out of the other end. Watch them for a bit and you should see something that might tip you off as to what might be going on. Or point you in the right direction. If everything seems normal for readings then your best detector is your eyes. you might also want to think about anything that might have changed or been used in the room the fish are in. Good luck L

seachems product clarity should help allot. what most of those products do and would work very well for you is take floating fine particles and bind them together so that the filter can take them out of the tank. A couple of filter floss cleanings might be nessasary afterward since you didn't rinse the play sand but otherwise you should be good to go. If you stirr up the sand again another round might be nessasary. Good luck and let us know how that organic potting soil is working for you. L

congrats on your success. L

looks like the temperature is hotter than ideal even for the tropical fish but especially for the goldfish. Females can and will die durring or after pregnancy especially, sometimes due to complications. Someone had said that guppies had to have salt in their tanks but i'm not 100%sure on that but it could be something to look into. Don't just add salt because some of those fish don't like too much salt. Good luck solving the mystry. L

I have some very nice electric yellows which are a fairly peaceful(compared to the other fish in the lake) malawi aka african cichlid and go well with most others without aggression problems(and are willing to hold their own if nessasary) but i'm not sure if your setup has your fish in the much too soft south american water or if maybe the fish you have may not go well with the electric yellow in size or aggression. If anyone knows these fish personally and can help or if you would like to experiment then i can part with some smallish ones for really cheap. Good luck L

You said the fish were new. Did you Quarantine them before you added them to the tank? If not that could easily be the reason you have had one dead one and that in and of itself is a big warning flag to me that the new fish had problems. Now what i would do is wait for lights out and add a few sinking algae wafers near the front of the tank in an open area. Then i'd turn the lights off in the room and leave for a bit. come back in the room without letting light in to possibly scare them off then turn on the lights of the tank while watching for your missing fish. You might be able to spot them feeding this way. Anyway good luck edit. did you QT the apple snail too? if not it could be carrying even more problems. Salt does not kill Corys. It's a well know fact that salt does kill cories as it negatively effects their osmoregulation. Combine that with the already hard water of Alberta and if salt was added to suit the needs of the livebearers, then it would easily kill the cories in a few short weeks by way of blood and kidney poisoniong. And target feeding cories in a livebearer tank is not very hard to do considering cories and livebearer eat from completely opposite zones of the tank. Somebody better tell all those species of Corys that have bred for me, including the C. weitzmani, C. hastatus and Scleromystax barbatus that I'm raising now. Okay the debate does it or doesn't it. I'm no biologist and no expert yet but here is what i have gleened from reading multible articles from multiple sites and from people who have been in this hobby for many many many years. 1. Almost all fish can tolerate salt to some degree and quite a few can tolerate allot more than one might expect especially if they are aclimatized to the salt by increaseing it in small doses. 2. Fish breed in good conditions and if salt affected them as badly as you said then there is no way they would be breeding. 3. They are said to be salt sensitive because they lack scales from everything that i have heard but you have forgotten a KEY FACT. Freshwater fish like us humans have a higher concentration of salt in their bodies than in their surounding environment and constantly are looseing salt and do their best to extract as much as they can from the water around them to keep the amount in their bodies up. Saltwater fish do the exact opposite and have to constantly remove salt from their bodies and have very few ways of absorbing it and that is why salt in a freshwater tank won't kill the fish but too mush freshwater in a salt tank can kill the saltwater fish. I read and read allot from many different sources and i trust a few more than most but even the most knowlegeable person can have learned something that isn't completely true and pass it on. That is why i'm allways learning new things and i don't pass things on unless i have done research or warn about the fact that i heard or read or someone said. The above statements are things that i have come across many many times and have yet to see any contradiction to contadict that. It could be that all freshwater fish can tolerate some salt but i don't know that we have found all the freshwater fish in the world or that all of them have been tested and have shown to be salt tolerant. Biology of freshwater fish is something else entirely though. Do research and if you find a contradiction don't vehemently defend what you thought you knew. Do more research and possibly ammend your opinion. Many years ago tobacco companies and so called experts were saying that ciggaretts had medical benifits that outweighed any alleged health problems would you believe them? they even had studies and graphs and doctors and lab test and crap. Basicly don't believe something that came from one sourse. the internet can be a great tool for learning and also a great tool to fool the unsuspecting. The Skeptical Aquarist is the name of the site quoted and we should all remember to be exactly that even with the site itself. This is something to think about and the reason forums like this are soo intersting to me since i can ask a number of people with different experiences and backgrounds and access to different learning materials their opinions and i always seem to find something else to look up the reason for or a new interesting website to check out. I have a handful of things i would consider facts but 99 percent of those or more are still up for reevaluation. One fact would be take a fish out of the water and freeze it and it will die eventually. Thanks again for stimulating my brain everyone and I hope you find your fish or what might be wrong with them. L

definately at least 2 200 watt heaters and if you really want to make the water stay consistant one at every input or even inside the input if you can figure out how to manage that. Good luck and it sounds like it's going to be a lovely setup L

As soon as i saw the water come on i was like OUCH I CAN'T WATCH and seeing the dicus getting bashed against the glass i stopped watching. It's making me cringe. I know pressure delivers more water faster BUT why the heck wouldn't they put a spray bar or somehting so the fish don't get bashed around. Inhumane. Oh and a garden hose is a really really fast way to get water out of a tank(down the drain in the basement or down the shower or tub drain. I use filtered water after that to fill the tanks up again in 3ish gallon ice cream pails that have sat overnight to get them room temp. Thanks for sharing the video and ya that would remind me of her post. A fish tank leak is one thing but that really is something completely insane but the start is smart. :cry:

if you have carpet and fish tanks invest in a carpet cleaner. I have saved myself from many a headache with it not to mention you don't have to worry about renting and getting all the house carpets cleaned in a weekend. I just do mine one room at a time throughout the summer and have saved allot of money just in electricity and laundry by cleaning up my tank messes with it. The new bissel one is at Costco. Good luck L

if you have carpet and fish tanks invest in a carpet cleaner. I have saved myself from many a headache with it not to mention you don't have to worry about renting and getting all the house carpets cleaned in a weekend. I just do mine one room at a time throughout the summer and have saved allot of money just in electricity and laundry by cleaning up my tank messes with it. The new bissel one is at Costco. Good luck L

Aro's have never really been apealing to me but this one makes me want one of my own(not going to happen unless i win the lottery i didn't enter). Very very beautiful fish. Thanks for sharing L

You could always get a black trim tank and then cover the trim with some oak finishing strips from the hardware store stained to match the stand. I don't know what this might cost but it could be much cheaper than new depending on tank size. Me personally i like the black trim on a wooden stand because of the contrast in colours. From what i have seen of tanks most have a lip at the bottom of the stand and a hood that does a great job of hiding the black trim and you don't see the trim when looking into the tank from the front since the black blends soo well most of the time and doesn't stick out the rest of the time. Hope this might help L

I agree with everything but the last for a beginner tank. I have 1 tank without a plecco and i really really need to get one in there because doseing ferts, co2 and all that other stuff not to mention all the testing is just too complicated and too much work and i'm pretty sure it wouldn't work for me anyway because when that much math an numbers are involved I'm bound to mess up. I agree if you want a planted tank with high light output and difficultish plants then you should spend the time and money figuring it out and fixing it but for a starter i think it's just waaayyyy too much work. Unless you can give me a 2 second fix to my cynobacteria carpet that green hair algae is takeing over now. When it comes down to it the plecco will add to bioload quite a bit BUT the benifits of not needing to clean the tank repetedly of algae is really a 200lbs rock tipping the scales and a godsend when i first put one in my main tank.

I was thinking internal as well. If it was a parasite in the gills that could easily be a problem as well since you won't be able to see it but you would see 'flashing' aka the fish trying to scratch their gills repetedly against a hard surface. You also said you had rustyies and kribs. From my understanding the rusties are mbuna and overfeeding can cause malawi bloat and the main symptom in bloating in the belly combined with white stringy poop. You might have accidently over fed them due to the addition of more fish. I completely understand overfeeding so that everybody at least gets some but if you do that switch to NLS and only feed once a day and skip a day a week. Right now we are all guessing wildly as to what it could be. Natures Corner Store reccomends Jungle Paracite clear (even though they don't currently stock it) for internal parasites. It's a good general cure but knowing exactly what we are treating results in much leass stress for you and especially for the fish(resulting in less death). Before you add just any paracite medication be sure to either completely remove whatever it was you added last night OR buy more of the same stuff so you can complete a full doseage. You can also add Aquarium safe salt to the tank. By gradually increaseing the amount of salt content in the tank you can kill off a wide variety of pests. Generally speaking Healthy unstressed fish aren't very susceptable to dieing from diseases. Good luck and i hope you find the cause of the isssue. L

Good advice. I'd add a Plecco that will stay small to keep the glass clean. If you want a plecco I'd reccomend a Bristle Nose plecco of some kind as they are small and adaptable to planted tanks or whatever you want to put in there(within reason). Fairdeal usually has some and makes trips to edmonton on a semi regular basis. There is also the Canadian aquatics group order and i just checked their stock list and they have some beautiful angels and some bristle nose pleccos as well. good luck L

From everything i have seen it's personal preference combined with cost, conveinence and some needs. If you have for instance a 190 gallon tank with 3 koi at a foot each and they will run past the gallon capacity mark for a carp aka 1 inch per 5 gallons then a sump is the best option. If for instance you want a show tank that is quiet and you are worried about humidity then the cannister is your best bet. Sumps are more work and money to set up but there are many benifits and things about them that make them very conveinent. Hope this might help L

I have a super red empress and the face looks different to me. I'm not sure if there is a difference there in the super vs the not super but i'm thinking that there is cross breeding problems. OB Peacock is what i would have thought if not for the face which is different. Good luck with your mystry. Try googling pictures and see what comes up. Good luck L

Wowee i finally fell asleep lastnight with visions of pico tank ideas dancing in my head LITERALLY. THANK YOU sooo much for everything Sarah your presentation was absolutely inspireing. I was soo inspired i have my tank built allready. Thanks again L

FIRST OFF Thanks for the help and tips. I`ll need to get my hands on some KN03. The tank was pretty basic and messy plant wise when i got it and it`s even more so now so i need to rescape it. I`ve dosed a double dose of florish excel to try and get rid of the hair algae that was takeing over and now i have a problem with this stuff. I only have the basics for a planted tank. If someone is going to the auction and has a bit of KN03 to spare i`d much appreciate buying a little off you. Thanks L

I have this green slime algae (which i think might be a type of cynobacteria from what i read) and it`s slowly taking over my new fluval edge aquarium. I just set it up but all the gravel, plants, fish and filter media are from the previous set up. the only change was the 100% water change from moveing it. I tried to research it. I dosed with florish excel and even tried a black out and reduced feeding. Any other tips and tricks would be much appreciated. The fish in the tank are going to be replaced after the auction so if i need to treat with something that will harm the fish then that is a possiblility at that time. Thanks again L

If you don't have fish in there right now why not do as large of a water change as you can. the more water you replace and the less left in the tank the more diluted the nitrates will become until the numbers are back in line. Good job cycleing the tank though. Good luck

THANK YOU that's what i was looking for. I think we might check it out tomorrow or sunday -ham- -ham- -ham- :thumbs: L