I kind of like duckweed too! Its a fast growing plant, absorbing all of those unwanted nutrients aswell. Tank update: The plants are growing a bit slower now. The tank looks a lot better this week though, with the background plants growing to the top of the tank. I need to work on the right side ...

They will do dead fish checks throughout the day. It involves netting dead fish, logging how many have died and from which tanks and chucking them into the freezer they have for dead animals. The dead fish you see in the tanks have probably died over the last hour or two. I bet some stores are just ...

Hi Hello! The plant floating on top of the water is duckweed. I have tried to get rid of it many times, but it just grows from nowhere:) It prevents light penetrating the water. My filter is an internal Fluval 3 and no CO2 is needed for this plant..I dont think it could grow any faster! I have tried ...

My 33US gallon tank was getting awfully messy back in Jan, so I decided to redecorate it. I removed everything and started from scratch! The plant I am using is Hygrophila difformis. January 16th 2007 (when tank was planted): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v372/arc200uk/16jan2007tank.jpg Feburary ...

Returned the rainbow shark to the store aswell! Didnt hang around. I dare to think what tank they will put him in.. He is many times bigger than a young shark! There is one display tank with 2 giant algae eaters in! He needs to live with some Oscar sized fish..

Oh my god.... I had 5 Tiger Barbs in my 125US gallon a few days ago, who live with my Red Eared Slider and Rainbow Shark. They have been in there since June 2005 and were fully grown Tiger Barbs.. I decided to buy 3 more to increase their numbers and my Rainbow Shark has suddenly decided to ...

Well, I checked on him at my lunch time and he seems a lot better! He has got some colour in him and seemed quite alert. I fed him and my pencilfish some brine shrimp and he was a bit shy, but gulped down a good few. He kept flaring his fins, which is always a good sign. After I did the water ...

Well, I checked on him at my lunch time and he seems a lot better! He has got some colour in him and seemed quite alert. I fed him and my pencilfish some brine shrimp and he was a bit shy, but gulped down a good few. He kept flaring his fins, which is always a good sign. After I did the water change ...

Sorry for such a late reply. Didnt get an email notification. :) He is still hanging on. He looked skinny last night and had a long poo hanging out. He sure ate a lot of brine shrimp though. I managed a big water change and im going to focus on water changes now. Went on a snail killing spree aswell ...

Good luck with your fish. I think that the Cory and the Platies would need rehoming. Bowls arent ideal, and especially not for a fish which spends its life on the bottom of a tank. I dont like Bio Orbs...the makers make it seem as if they are helping goldfish out with larger tanks, but keep making ...

His breathing does seem weird...big gill movements. Am I going to lose him if he also has the gill flukes? I've heard that aquarium salt is good, but I have corys. How could would a UV sterliser be? I dont really understand how one like this: http://www.aquariumsuperstore.co.uk/mall/v2vecton.asp ...

Mats, I looked at your aquarium pictures some time ago and was really impressed. How do you take such good pictures? With me, I have to turn the flash off as this makes the aquarium incredibly ugly (as if there is no water in the tank). Turning the flash off makes any movement really blurry and I ...

I dont know the temp..the little strip stuck to the tank is actually a bit damaged and it seems to always be stuck on 27 degrees C. This is even when I turn the thermostat off and do water changes.. The heater has been set to 24 degrees C. Gill flukes seems to make sense; she was sitting at the top ...

Hi Sharn and thanks for the reply. Didnt quarentine unfortunately...Had seen that lone cichlid in his tank at the shop for a few weeks now, so thought that he was ok. He was the only one they received in their shipment and was in with a tank of flying foxes which they also dont normally stock. Yeah ...

Female is now swimming at the surface of the water and is not swimming away from me when i adjust the filter.... male is as pale as the female was yesterday now and i've just noticed the pencilfish going to the top of the water. Water test strip showing same result as yesterday!!! I have to go to ...

My male is now losing his colour! On his black stripe across the body, only a spot of black in the middle is showing...help me guys!!!

Pencilfish are fine...they are showing their red colour.

Basingstoke, Hampshire. Home of lots of roundabouts.

My female Apistogramma cacatuoides (dwarf cockatoo cichlid) is looking awfully pale..She is hiding under a drift wood cave with my 5 corydoras and i can barely see her, but it looks as if she has lost a lot of her markings (using a torch)...She is laying really low to the gravel and she is normally ...

Yeah, looks poisoness...especially the way the water bubbles and fizzes.

I think the trade is wrong at the moment and that there should be more restrictions on buying fish. You've just got to look at all the goldfish/plecos/silver sharks being sold every day. It's horrible. The pet shop I worked at is now selling Oscars!! Imagine all the idiots who will go and buy those ...

Has anybody used wood as a tank substrate? And how acidic would the water become? I put some beech chippings into an empty tank and the PH is either at 6.5 (from around 8 with my tap water) or off the chart after just 24 hours... nitrates have also vanished (i have put an entire pot of fish food in ...

"So if this is the case, then how can fishkeeping be justified if nobody cares or wants to learn how to do it properly?"

Keeping goldfish in bowls is not justifiable.

edit: nevermind.

Cichlids have got mouths to nip, not eat.. If she has a bad time with her mate, she'll take it out on the smallest cory...he is growing fast though, so it wont be the case for long! the bandits are too big for her to boss about.

cichlid you!

Dwarf Cockatoo cichlids are really interesting fish...they are more intelligent than a lot of the others and will be the ones watching you rather than it being the other way round! My female does like to pick on my peppered cory sometimes...just because he is smaller than the other corys!

It depends on your aquarium and its fish. I do my terrapin's aquairum once a week at 35% and try to do my smaller 33 gallon twice a week and aim for about 35-40% a week in total (2 buckets on the weekend and a bucket in the middle of the week). Those fish in the smaller tank only eat frozen food and ...

Having worked in a pet store for 2 and a half years, im under the impression that most fish keepers should be banned from keeping fish. I spent 2 years giving people advice on fish keeping before I ever got to the stage of keeping fish myself. That sounds bad, but I knew a heck of a lot about fish ...

I'm under the impression that it is actually against the law in the UK to feed live vertebrates (fish) to animals. I came across this when looking at info with regards to feeding terrapins. It's also against the law to feed tadpoles to animals.. Can anybody back me up on this?

You've all been really helpful and i've chased up a lot of the options, thankyou very much. From the look of things, it seems as if the cabinet and hood are going to be the most expensive items to build. I'm quite close to finalising that side of things and i've had some welcome feedback. Tank to ...