Brandy

That's an olive nerite! You are lucky, they are great. He won't breed, and eats like a fiend!

Glass tubing. It would have been glass. I don't have any, but we used glass serological pipettes just a decade ago that would have been perfect if you snapped off the tapered tip. They have been phased out for plastic disposables. Students are too rich to wash glassware now.

Possibly ripped and then a secondary infection, or the infection could cause the rip--no real way to know unless you saw one before the other. I don't know whether it is fungal or bacterial, but salt should help with both.

Love this idea too. Especially with something like a pea puffer, but I am definitely having trouble finding a big enough container. My kid beat me to it tho--"rescued" a guppy runt that was too small on moving up day. He will get a boost in this little home until he can hold his own with my kid's betta and danios. I suspect this may become a standard practice...

I really like the fact that a dollar per gallon sale exists because it gives me a target to shoot under for a used tank. Mostly for standard sizes I agree that new is better. However, I am still kicking myself for not jumping on the $100 120g with stand, filter, lights, heater, plants and discus included that I saw on craigslist a month ago. I couldn't find room!!! By any measure that would have been a screaming deal. I also saw one with SA puffers about a month before that for about $250. Both would have been amazing if I were ready for that.

Hahaha, Awesome!! I have aquariums in almost every room now. Including the bathroom. You have to turn your head, but this would be the view from the throne....

That "jelly" I think is a type of water mold, which is reportedly harmless. I have had it on many kinds of wood before. You can manually remove it and it seems to just disappear abut a week or two after adding new wood to the tank. Looks alarming, but doesn't seem to do anything and resolves on its own. I didn't take this pic but it looks like what I think you are describing, and matches what I am talking about.

I do wish there was a really great chart of guppy genetics, and strains. The best one I have found is here... Academia.edu | Log In WWW.ACADEMIA.EDU Academia.edu is a place to share and follow research. i would just upload it, but it's a PDF and I can't put a PDF on the forum. In any case it isn't super useful for breeding mutts because it turns out guppy genetics are pretty complicated!

Sorry, I think that was unclear! There are other types of fish like cichlids and various rainbows that are natural strains. They can interbreed but they haven't for thousands of years because they were in different rivers or whatever. Crossing those lines can be controversial. Guppies are totally man made strains I think. Crossing those strains, imo, only becomes problematic if you are dishonest about it. If you get a mutt that looks like a blue Moscow you shouldn't sell it as a blue Moscow because it's offspring could be any random color, which could mess up someone else's project. That's really true of any mixed fish, we should just be honest about what they are.

Some strains (guppies) are man made. Some occur naturally due to geographic isolation (pseudomugil). The natural strains should probably not become mutts. But making a strain really breed true is hard. I think that's why people get upset about mutts. They are undoing the lifetimes of work to stabilize a strain. Still, mutts are fun. And there are enough guppy strain breeders that I doubt my mutts threaten the ability to keep pure lines in the world.

I have mutts breeding right now. My first fry are about one month old and one of them has pink steaks on his back like nothing I've seen before. I suspect another color will cover it eventually but since the parents are blue, green, black, it was a huge surprise. I do love surprises. I've been eyeing a strain of imported green dragon mosaics, but I'm torn. I used to breed rabbits. Started with mutts and every liter was a fun surprise. Graduated to a stable breed and got bored almost immediately. Better rabbits sure, but not fun anymore. Since fish are mostly just for fun for me, I might just stick with the mutts.

I have used this method successfully for ich. Shrimp and snails can't host ich, so I left the tank invert-only for 2 weeks (because I'm paranoid). No recurrences. For something like columnaris that probably wouldn't work as well, so this counts on a positive ID, but even in that case I feel like a fish rest is probably a reasonable plan if you have thriving inverts.

I don't know how to post a video directly and I think most forums would avoid that because it tends to be slow. What you can do is upload the video to youtube, which is designed for that, and then just put a link to the youtube video here. That will be fast to play and is how the rest of us are linking videos in.

Yeah, "biofilm" is lots of components, I am sure not all of them were damaged or nobody would use excel, and your tank would be cycling. But I don't know if excel would damage the algae portion of that...Honestly, I am guessing about the cause, but the behaviors seem hungry. I figure feeding hungry things is usually a safe first step. 🙂

I know it is expensive, but a friend gave me a bunch of ADA Green Brighty Mineral and Brighty K, which I think have no nitrogen. It recommends daily dosing which I loved and hated. On the one hand, I didn't have to think, I just dosed every morning. On the other hand, to do that it must be very dilute and you go through a lot. I wouldn't want to pay for it with as many tanks as I have now.

Tooootally. 🙂

By "clean" I just mean that you are adding new food to the tank, rather than relying on biofilm that may or may not have been contaminated or killed off by the excel or unspecified water additives.

No clue, haven't tried it, BUT could you post a pic of the algae? even just one from the internet. I have recently learned that "hair algae" can mean several types, what I always called "hair algae" is apparently thread or string algae, or blanket weed, or Cladophora Sp. and there are about 6 other types that also go by the same common name, but look and act very different. @Daniel and @Streetwise and I were describing and discussing different "types" that we have encountered which helped me to realize we were not talking about the same thing at all. Hopefully someone can chime in with suggestions, because I am curious about this question too! I have only heard of using this as a spot treatment for black beard algae.

I know it is a big tank, and has been set up a long time. You were dosing excel...to help control algae maybe? I wonder, were they straight up hungry, so they migrated to the filter? Are you target feeding any of the affected species? My vote is that the excel is at least part of the problem--either it is cutting down on the food that was supporting the colony, or it is toxic to them, or both. I seem to remember an ACO video that mentioned that if you don't see filter feeders opening their fan hands it can be because the water doesn't have enough particulates to feed on? Also If my khuli loaches are mid water it is because they are hungry and competing with the other fish. I think @Irene mentioned that she saw that in them too, and you said your corys were active and acting unusually. All the affected species are at least partially detritivores and all of them might be more sensitive to chemical pollutants for that reason. I know you are stopping excel, but maybe boost clean food for those guys for a bit to help them recover?

It is ok to put the prime right into the tank. Measure carefully. Try not to panic. 🙂 It will be ok. It is a lot of information to try to absorb all at once!

I am glad you are getting help here. You got thrown into the deep end and I am sorry that happened to you. Fish are wonderful pets, but the tank cycle is a necessary part of the process and it trips up new people a lot. Your fish store should have helped you with this, there was no way for you to have guessed this by yourself. I know it seems very complicated right now, but it is actually something that is harder to explain than to show or do. When you set up a new tank you need bacteria to grow in the tank that will help keep the water clean. That is this "cycle" everyone is talking about. That cloudy bloom in the water that you see is a good sign that the bacteria are getting started, and will be helping you in the long run. The store just sold you way too many fish at the start--it is a gradual process and setting up a tank takes a little time and patience while the bacteria grow in. There are ways to hurry that process along, but they can be complicated and confusing. Given that you are new, I think your safest bet is exactly what you have planned, return most of the fish. Then get some Seachem Prime OR a similar water conditioner that will both dechlorinate water and bind ammonia, and a test kit or test strips that measure ammonia and nitrite (which is different than nitrate). You will dose the tank with Prime every day for a while, until the bacteria are able to handle all the fish waste. Your test kit will tell you when the ammonia/nitrite is gone and then you can stop using the Prime every day. Then add new fish just a few at a time, and keep learning about how to keep an aquarium healthy. This forum and the aquarium co-op videos are a great place to start. You can go to the youtube channel and search through the videos for almost any question you have, or ask them on the forum. Good luck and welcome to the forum!

I'm really bad at this. I can't ever get myself to put in enough. But I test obsessively. When I dose at the recommended 1 pump per 10g, I notice a modest increase for a day or so (10ppm), and then watch the nitrates drop to zero. If I did water changes based on nitrate levels, I would literally never change my water. My tanks are over planted and under stocked right now. To get over it, I am planning on just springing for the BIIIG bottle. It is that, or set up seven auto dosers according to @Bill Smith's Starbucks dispensers.

Ok I just need lots more fertilizer then. Thanks @Cory! I suspect I am always too cautious with ferts. I have it weighted in the guppy tank and it is fabulous for fry recovery, I just lift the clump out, scoop the fry, and drop it back in place.

Alternative hypothesis--I am a bad photographer and you all are just better at capturing greens under aquarium lights...

So, I got this plant as a tiny shred of hornwort with some shrimp I ordered months ago. It is growing constantly, as it does. But I have seen some of you have really bright green hornwort. Mine has always been a little brown. You can see in this pic, one brighter green part and the rest browner. I don't know if I have a brownish variety, or if this plant is trying to tell me something. I have 10-15ppm nitrate in this tank, but I think it drops lower now and then. I have good Nicrew planted plus lights, so I think that should be adequate, and the tip of the plant is less than 4 inches from the light. Guessing it is a heavy feeder? Suggestions?