Evolution

Another possiblity is gill flukes or ich. Tanganyikins get harmed bad by them. Sorry about this mess.

About a month back I had a pair for about 3 months spawn ever few weeks. with them in the 20g was 12 black phantom tetras. Can you post a picture of the pair? Are you sure it is a pair and not two females?

I respect the desire to build a filter and I say go for it. However, I strongly suggest going out and buying or aquiring an Eheim 2217 and make it the biological foundation of this aquarium. So while you are playing around with a diy filter you'll know that you fish are safe with tried, true, and unbeatable 25 year old filtration technology!

This really sounds like a water quality problem. Fronts suffer from ammonia poisoning at low concentrations. The behaviour you are describing is something fish will do when there are low levels of ammonia in the water. How long has this tank been set up? What type of filter do you use? When was the last time you changed or cleaned the filter media? Just because ammonia or nitrite are not detected in a random water test, doesn't mean there wasn't ammonia in the tank a day or two before the test. Also, the highter the pH the deadlier ammonia becomes, so any ammonia in water with a pH over 8 is potentially deadly. That is why good biological filtration is the foundation of keeping fish alive and healthy.

Thanks a bazillion!!

Today I performed a 90% water change on my electric eel's 180. It is stacked ontop of my 180 ray tank, so I need a ladder to get in to play around. I have been electricuted by it 3 times in the 4 years that I've had it and all three times came from me playing around with an old fluval internal. The eel (really not an eel, but a knifefish) would spook and send a charge through the water and hit me. This guy packs 650 volts and what happens is the electricity enters the body, but doesn't travel through the body past the water line. So today I'm in there planting some awesome new plants I picked up yesterday from MarkN and I'm armpit deep into the tank planting a bunch of jungle val. I watched the little giant (3.5 feet) travel down the back of the tank and disappeared behind me and I gauged 4-5 seconds before it would come up behind me, so I played with the val a little more. WHAM!!! It came up and nudged me on the elbow with it's face and filled my entire hand, arm an shoulder with a massive jolt of power! I yelled "FAAAARG" and leaped up off the ladder and out of the water and down onto the floor. I landed on my feet completely shocked (no pun intended) and soaked. I walked about shaking the experience off and the energy out. It was witnessed by others and others too came running from else where because of my howling farg, so it certainly was not in vane! Everyone had a good laugh. For about an hour afterward I was still feeling what seemed like a mild form of energy dancing in the marrow of my bones and every now and then the hair on the upper half of my body would stand on end. In the end, all the plants look awesome and the tank water is crystal clear and the eel looks as if it is wearing a poop eating grin. It was just yesterday that I was thinking about finding a new home for it, but now I think I'll keep it another year. Will

If you're educated in the hobby big als won't hire you. There is a distinct yet subtle difference between a hobbiest and professional aquarist. A long long time ago in a land far far away called Toronto, Big Als was created by a man named Allan Soul. He quicly learned that if he wanted to stay in business he couldn't hire the hobbiest, because they were a liability and a conflict of intrest to making his dream come true. It turns out hobbiest tell customers what not to buy from the store they work in and professional aquarist tell customers what to buy in the store they work in, but its the professional aquarist that is a hobbiests that truly excels in a Big Als type environment, as they masterfully bring the best of both worlds into one place.

I only asked because I have not bought new gravel in over 10 years and I thought maybe things have changed with the new gravel since then.

I changed the water last week. There is one gold ram and 2 small endlers in the tank. I haven't replaced any filter or media. I moved him to a smaller tank (1 gal) this morning and don't know how he's doing yet. hopefully he'll still alive when I come home. thanks. The ram and it will get the best of the betta. Rams scrap, duke it out with each other and go on their merry way after a fight, bettas tend to fight to the death and become exhausted and highly stressed after a long scrap. This is likely the cause of the problem, but the betta should recover if his gills are not too damaged.

Why disinfect new gravel or is this used gravel new to you?

You almost need a sand sump. I don't know if such a thing exist, but when the sand enters into the intakes it goes down directly into a collecting sump that can easily be switch off with valves and then removed for cleaning out periodically.

May I suggest you stay away from Acanthicus adonis and Acanthicus hystrix as these huge bad boys will attack rays if they get to close to the pleco's territory. I had a 8 inch A. adonis that was constantly tearing the disk of my biggest female motoro, before I could relocate the pleco the motoro killed it. I came in one morning and found the A. adonis floating on the surface with a huge hole in it's side. I would also stay away from any Psuedacanthicus sp. as they have similar nasty and huge pectoral spikes that caused all the damage. I will be trying a Scobinancistrus sp. when they become availible. I now have a 5 inch royal pleco, Panaque nigrolineatus with my motoros. My female motoro is about 13 inches across and she doesn't seem to bother this little pleco. Panaque is a tough genus and they take no crap, but they are also not overly aggressive and this one has not touched any of my rays. They eat lots of algae and they do an awesome job keeping wood polished. Will when pregnant she will pretty much eat anything unless she is very well fed. I hear that! My big motoro hunted down and ate 5 six inch Pink tail Chelcius characins in 2 nights! Have you looked into Pterygoplichthys sp.? Thats the genus with the chocolate pleco and the spotted sailfin pleco. Thing with them is they are relatively cheap when large so if she does hoover one it will not hurt the pocket book so much. They can get up to 40cm and are great algae eaters too. I sometimes come across free ones. If you want one when I do and I'm heading up your way on business you can have it free, but for a little veiwing of the tank of course! Will

Sweet! Have you considered putting about a 2" layer of sand on the bottom? This will prevent any algae from growing on the bottom. Is it the video or is the tank's water cloudy? How often do you change the water and how much?

This tank is awesome and very inspiring. May I suggest you stay away from Acanthicus adonis and Acanthicus hystrix as these huge bad boys will attack rays if they get to close to the pleco's territory. I had a 8 inch A. adonis that was constantly tearing the disk of my biggest female motoro, before I could relocate the pleco the motoro killed it. I came in one morning and found the A. adonis floating on the surface with a huge hole in it's side. I would also stay away from any Psuedacanthicus sp. as they have similar nasty and huge pectoral spikes that caused all the damage. I will be trying a Scobinancistrus sp. when they become availible. I now have a 5 inch royal pleco, Panaque nigrolineatus with my motoros. My female motoro is about 13 inches across and she doesn't seem to bother this little pleco. Panaque is a tough genus and they take no crap, but they are also not overly aggressive and this one has not touched any of my rays. They eat lots of algae and they do an awesome job keeping wood polished. Will

Ropefish eating off the surface? And don't you find tubifex worms in the cubes rather small? What brand do you use?

Your fish look awesome, very healthy. I'm impressed by the quality of your water!

You can keep them together, they are peaceful toward conspecifics and those fish you mentioned too. They will be fine in that size tank as long as the live rock is healthy and well established, but a 180 would be better. If the live rock dies off or there just isn't enough I suggest adding a very good biological filter to handle the bio-load of the growing fish and their huge demand for food. Also eels, all morays in general, have a voracious feeding response and once the smell of food hits their olfactory they go balistic and can bite other fish and human hands in a frenzy to get a mouth full. When a 3 foot moray clamps down on ones finger the teeth go to the bone and it hurts bad! I know, I've experienced it. I strongly suggest you always target feed the Snowflakes first using a feeding stick. Will

Last night I set up an old 125 as a display. I put in about one hundred small crypts as fore-ground plants and a few other species as background plants. I'm going to wait a few weeks before I start adding the fish to allow the plants to take root. I put laterite under the sand bed. This is going to be an African display, however none of the fish are going to be from the rift valley. One species that I am going to keep in there is E. calabaricus; the Ropefish. My concern is feeding them, six of them. I know once they are established they do well on sinking pellets and frozen thawed. However, I'll be adding 6 Synodontis sp., 12 - 18 congo tetras, 2 pairs of some kind of West African cichlid, probably Nanochromis sp. and Pelvicachromis sp, an elephant nose or two and a pair of African butterflies. Compation for food will be relatively high and I will not be at the tank everyday to target feed. I'm putting on the tank three dependable automatic feeders for feeding small quanties of high quality sinking and floating pelleted foods through out the day. Ropefish are such slow eaters that I'm concerned the Synos will have the sinking pellets hoovered before the ropefish will even get to the feeding stations. An idea is to seed the tank with trumpet snails, which I did last night. I put them in because I wanted them to keep the sand churned and eat off any ditritus and dead roots. Then I wondered, will the ropefish eat trumpet snails? If they do then this would make for an excellent way to supplement the Ropefishes diet and keep the trumpet snail population down to a managible, sustainable size. Does anyone know if Ropefish eat snails? Trumpets specifically? Also, has anyone witnessed any Polyterus sp. eating snails? Will

Hello, The email that I am using on this forum is one that I do not use often, I check it maybe once a month when I log into Live. I was wondering if I could be permitted to use my old email as that one is the one I use everyday. I would switch it myself, but the site tells me it is already in use. Is there a way to switch the two around or something? Thank you, Will

Often a fish that sits on the bottom of a tank and will not respond to tapping or food is suffering from Nitrite poisoning (NO2). First thing I do is a water change. Are there other fish in this tank? Have you cleaned the filter or replaced the media lately?

Again everyone, including Neil, I am sorry for my roll in this. I will not and cannot partake in it again here or anywhere else on this board. I just want to talk fish and make new friends. Will Shaw

I'm sorry I have offened some of you, but please understand that I was defending my opinion. I have no intention of attacking or insulting anyone, regardless of who they are. All I wanted to do was share my opinion and I did. My opinion was criticize to the point of having no validity and it was implied that my opinion was cruel in nature. I simply pointed out that I stood by my opinion and why I do and I pointed out the double standard in the one criticizing me. Will

Whatever, plants are filters too.

With the way we maintain bettas in bowls ammonia concentration is insignificant. I respect that you do not keep bettas in bowls as my own personal bettas are not in bowls either, but in custom made cube tanks that I made. I do not filter or heat my Betta bowls or tanks, but I do have live plants in them, including peace lilies that consume a lot of ammonia fast. We recommend keeping bettas in bowls with peace lilies because of this. We also advicate weekly water changes and bowl cleaning. What and how the betta is fed is an top priority. We are constantly told we have the healthiest bettas in the city (at a store level) and that is because of the time a care we put into them. Please understand that I am not saying bowls are better than tanks, but what I am saying is bowls can and do make good environments for maintaining bettas in.