[Electric blue acaras with mollies?]

You won't have any problem with unwanted fry surviving. 

EBAs will find them all and eat them up. No prisoners.

I don't know of any reason you couldn't keep adults together. EBAs will be much bigger and will definitely boss the mollies around, so there would have to be enough mollies to spread the aggression around. But 50 sounds like enough.

How about some pictures of the tank?

[How do I know if my planted tank is cycled?]

If by cycling a tank you mean developing beneficial bacteria, I think the key here is to understand that you are actually deciding not to cycle before you add fish. 

At the beginning of the video, Irene says that beneficial bacteria is not the only form of biological filtration. She is deciding to use another kind instead - plants. If the plants consume most of the ammonia and nitrites created by the fish, there is not much left over for beneficial bacteria to consume, so very little beneficial bacteria will develop, and it will be slow. 

 I think it would be more accurate to describe this as fish-in cycling with plants. Any beneficial bacteria that develops has to develop with fish in the tank.

The key is very light stocking, and very light feeding. The tank is going to be very susceptible to spikes because it does not have a strong colony of beneficial bacteria. Indeed, it has no beneficial bacteria at all when the fish are added.

And guess what? Most people don't like very light stocking and aren't inclined to feed lightly.

If more ammonia/nitrite is generated than the plants can consume, then beneficial bacteria will grow faster. But for the sake of the fish, it has to be only a little bit more, because the fish have to live in the water with the excess ammonia/nitrite until the beneficial bacteria develops. That is fish-in cycling.

I think this method would take more patience - the patience to start with light stocking and add fish very slowly - than most people have and it would take much longer to develop the beneficial bacteria needed for a mature and stable tank.

But with one betta in a 10-gallon tank, it probably works.

 

[White lump at the base of pectoral fin]

In that location - at the base of the fin - maybe it started as an injury. I would guess fungus, too.

Malachite green? Where is @Coluwhen we need him?

Since the fish is eating and behaving normally, I might give it a chance to resolve on its own, and treat if it gets worse.

Nice-looking fish. Hope he gets better.

[Selling/Trading to a fish store- what to expect?]

I recently sold 100 angels for $1 each. They were bigger than quarter-size bodies, but mostly smaller than 50-cent piece. The pet shop put them up for sale for $4, so my price was 25% of retail.

But negotiating in advance is good advice (see @Struggle above). And you want cash, not store credit. You cannot get significant money unless you dicker with the right person at the shop. You have no negotiating leverage if you are already at the shop with the fish in a bucket, so they are going to low-ball you. They may not want the fish at all, or the person who can make the decision to buy might not be there.

You also have to sell the fish at the right time. They may have plenty of those particular fish at the moment, but they may tell you to call next week when their inventory might be lower and they might need your fish.

Call multiple shops and then take the best deal(s). Let the spokesperson for each of the shops know that you are offering the fish to other stores. Don't tell them which stores or what the other stores are offering unless you think it will have a favorable effect. Especially when you have 250, it will probably take several transactions to sell them all.

I thought the price for my angels was too low, but I was out of tank space (and time) and they had to go. I have no future as a breeder.

I only have about 275 more to sell.

[Hold My Beer While I Detoxify This]

Prime claims that it does work in aged water. I have never seen any claim by Prime or any other manufacturer that the product works on the fish and not the ammonia.

This is my last post on this topic.

[Hold My Beer While I Detoxify This]

On 2/22/2022 at 4:18 PM, Cinnebuns said:

I would be interested on what you think about the detoxifying vs getting rid of ammonia though as you clearly have a better scientific background than mine. 

Hold my beer while I explain.

I am not a chemist.

Free ammonia is a chemical compound which is toxic to fish. If it is free ammonia, it is toxic. To make ammonia non-toxic, you must change the chemical compound into a different chemical compound - one which is not free ammonia. 

When the three writers described above used the Seachem test to measure free ammonia and the test showed free ammonia was present, they knew that it was still toxic, despite the addition of Prime or the other products tested.

When you pour something into your aquarium, you are not removing anything. You are adding something - in this case, something that you hope will change free ammonia into something else - some chemical compound that won't hurt your fish. This change would have to be brought about by a chemical reaction which should be predictable by chemists, who are the experts in this field.

[Hold My Beer While I Detoxify This]

Dechlorinators dechlorinate water almost instantly. They are great products. Do they detoxify ammonia? I am convinced they do not.

Let me explain why I don’t believe.

First, there is nothing wrong with being a nonbeliever. Do I feed my fish two or three times per day because that's what the fish food label says? No. Do I replace my biological filter media every two months because that is what the manufacturer says I must do? No, of course not. Bacteria in a bottle says it will instantly cycle your tank. Yeah, right.

It is part of my job as a fish keeper to evaluate manufacturer claims and reject those that don't make any sense.

Manufacturers put things on the label to make you use more of their product. Sometimes their claims are not accurate. We all know that.

There are at least two manufacturers who claim their products “detoxify” ammonia - Seachem and Fritz Aquatics. Natural Rapport water conditioner claims it removes ammonia and nitrites. API Ammo Lock is another such product. There are more. They all have secret proprietary formulas, and they all claim to detoxify ammonia.

The claims involve chemistry and chemical reactions, so they are difficult for most people (me included) to evaluate. We have to read what chemists say about these things. Anecdotal accounts - "I used it and my fish did not die"- are not science.

The author of aquariumscience.org convinced me that the claims of these manufacturers are false. He did tests on 11 different water conditioning products. He describes the tests in detail. He used Seachem's tester to determine whether any of the products detoxified ammonia. They did not.

Please read the articles. I think they are convincing.

The author of aquariumscience.org is a chemist who has lots of aquariums and has kept fish for decades. He has written over 300 articles addressing many subjects of interest to aquarists. He has made them available to everyone for free. He does not sell advertising and he does not make money from his website. He explains that chemically there is no way the ingredients in water conditioning products can detoxify ammonia or nitrite. His tests confirm that they don’t.

But the guy at aquariumscience.org is not the only one who has tested claims that dechlorinators or other water treatments detoxify ammonia/nitrite.

A post by Taricha on the Reef2Reef blog (reproduced on aquariumscience.org in the article titled “Prime, Safe and Ammonia”) describes in detail a series of tests by two posters  (Taricha and Dan_P) which come to the same conclusion – Prime does not detoxify ammonia.

Another chemist posted on the Aquarium Co-op forum making the same point: it is not chemically possible that any water conditioner detoxifies ammonia. In a thread entitled “How does Prime work,”@DShelton explained in a 5/11/21 post that there is no aquarium-safe chemistry to make ammonia safe.

Do I believe these four people? Yes I do. I do not believe they are comic book villains who are scheming to murder our fish. Do I believe that Prime does something that – in the manufacturer's words – is "unexpected chemically?" Well, no, I don’t.

Here is @DShelton’s 5/11/21 post in full:

Let me preface this in two ways:

• I have no axe to grind with Seachem, they make some fine products, many of which I buy and use. I do have an issue with their marketing on some products, especially prime.
• I am a degreed chemist.

I think everyone can agree that most municipal water supplies in the US will contain either 'chlorine' or chloramine, and those two chemical species are bad for fish and inverts.

When gaseous Cl2 is added to water, it reacts with the water like shown in the following two equilibria:

Cl2 + H2O  <--->   HCIO + H+ +  Cl−

HClO  + H20 <----> H3O+   +   ClO-

Reduction is the chemical process by which the dechlorinators work. They 'reduce' the chlorine species (CLO-) that are in water (as an anti-bacterial agent) to the harmless Cl-, and as the ClO- is consumed, both of the above equilibria are driven to the right.

 The two most common active ingredients in most commercial dechlorinators is either sodium dithionite, or sodium thiosuphate. The chemistry is below:

thiosulphate is one of the products of the decomposition of dithionite in water, so whether your dechlorinator starts with dithionite or thiosulphate, the chemistry is the same.

sodium dithionite          thiosulphate

2 Na2S2O4 + H2O ---> Na2S2O3 + 2 H2SO3

The thiosulphate reacts with hypochlorite in water:

Na2S2O3 + 4 NaClO + H2O ---> H2SO4 + Na2SO4 + 4 NaCl

2 H2SO3 + 4 NaClO + H2O ---> 3 H2SO4 + 4 NaCl

I think you will recognize that final component of both of those equations as common salt, but the key thing here is it has been 'reduced', i.e. its oxidation state has changed from being positive (in the hypochlorite ion) to being negative in the chloride ion. This is what I mean when i say they contain reducing agents. They cause a chemical reduction (gaining electrons).

 Now the second half of the chemistry, and the part which is marketing garbage, relates to its ability to 'detoxify' ammonia. In an aqueous solution (i.e. water) gaseous ammonia exists in the following equilibrium:

 NH3   +   H2O    <------>    NH4+  +  OH

 That particular equilibrium is pH and temperature dependent, but the key thing here:

• gaseous ammonia is toxic at ~.5 ppm total concentration.
• NH4+ is also toxic, but at much much much higher concentrations (dependant on pH)
• all of the titration based test kits (API, sera, etc) measure that concentration as a total, i.e. NH3 and NH4 together, so the test kits are not giving you the big picture. (The Seachem ammonia alert measures free ammonia. It is the one that hangs in the tank and is a good product since it is free ammonia)

 What is actually happening in almost all aquaria is:

 In just about all aquaria with a pH <  ~8.5 or so (which is a huge number of them;  here in N. Texas my tap ranges from 8.0 to 8.2) most of the ammonia (NH3) will exist as ammonium (NH4+). Free ammonia gas, actual NH3, is toxic at ~.5ppm.

A variety of factors (pH and temperature) will affect how much of the NH4 is free NH3 in solution, but in aquarium conditions, it is safe to approximate between .1 and 1% of total as NH3. In other words, your .25ppm "ammonia" as shown by the test kit, at your pH is less than 1% of that as free ammonia.

 So in other words, the prime is not 'detoxifying' the ammonia. There is just not enough ammonia in the water for it to be toxic. Using the example that @Solidus1833gave of 2ppm total ammonia in their tap water. The actual amount of free ammonia was between: .02 and .2ppm which is not toxic. The prime did nothing.

 The only way to truly make the ammonia safe is for it to be oxidized from NH3 ---> NO2-   ---->  NO3- and to my knowledge there is no aquarium safe chemistry to do this, beyond the Nitrosomas and Nitrobacter doing so through the nitrogen cycle.

 EDIT: I am sure there are some typos, I was typing furiously to get it posted.

Edited May 11, 2021 by DShelton

 

[What did you get done today?]

Here is a daylight video of the tank - now down to about 240 fish after most of the 100 fish sold came out of this tank. Water is a little more clear. Sump has been doing a great job so far of keeping up as the fish - and the bio-load - get bigger.

 

0:52 Now playing

 

 

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[What did you get done today?]

This weekend I sold 100 angels to a local pet shop, so water has cleared up some since this video was taken. 

 

1:02 Now playing

 

 

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[How to make water changes easier, and the ac power head]

I have 2 tanks, both over 100 gallons. I use this outside-the-tank transfer pump for water changes.

[What did you get done today?]

I set up a 10-gallon quarantine tank for 5 new angels from Angelmania. They are small, so I had to put on the macro lens.

[How to get Clear Water]

It does not look like particulate, which would generally settle out in a few hours, or certainly in a few days. 

It is bacteria, but not the beneficial kind. This bacteria puts a burden on the immune systems of your fish and makes them more susceptible to disease.

The long-term solution is more biological filtration and less feeding. See aquariumscience.org articles on crystal clear water.

You say you are sure you are overfeeding. If you think you are overfeeding, you most definitely are. Try cutting the amount of food in half and actually measuring the food each time.

I found that I was getting pleasure from feeding the fish and that made me feed more. Now I try not to consider feeding a source of pleasure, but more a chore. I measure the food. I try to derive my pleasure from the way the aquarium looks, and the way healthy fish look. The aquarium looks a lot better if the water is crystal clear. And the fish are healthier.

[What was the last movie you watched?]

I just saw the trailer for "The 355."

Obviously a rip-off of Pulp Fiction's Fox Force Five.

I don't need to see it. I already know the punch line - Ketchup!

Best if you play videos simultaneously.

 

[Are fancy goldfish varieties unethical?]

[What did you get done today?]

Too lazy to work on tanks tonight. Here is what 300 angels looks like.

[What did you get done today?]

Tomorrow is water change day. Today I found a pretty clean spot on the glass and took pictures

[Cycling Issues]

I agree that if you don't have fish, don't change the water.

I don't know how much ammonia snails create. I never heard of anyone doing a snail-in cycle, so I don't know how that might work.

If you are doing a fish-in cycle, plants might help to lessen the severity of ammonia spikes and protect the fish. Maybe it is the same for snails.

But if there are no fish (or snails) in the tank, ammonia spikes are harmless. Ammonia/nitrite is the food that beneficial bacteria needs to multiply. Plants consume that ammonia/nitrite, and it seems logical to me that plants might slow the cycle by consuming the ammonia/nitrite that the beneficial bacteria needs.

If you think there is beneficial bacteria in the plant pot, then put the pot in the tank without the plant.

I would recommend that you use an ammonia source other than snails (buy some ammonium chloride powder online). I highly recommend the aquariumscience.org articles on cycling. I recently cycled a 120 gallon tank using the "how I cycle" method on that site. It took 2 weeks to complete the cycle (I had some seasoned filter media from my other tank) and the tank has been great now for more than 7 weeks after the fish were added. I did not add plants until a couple of weeks after the fish.

I would take the snails and plants out.

Bacteria-in-a-bottle products don't work. You should not rely on them. Again, see aquariumscience.org. articles regarding those products.

Good luck!

[Potential legislative change that will impact fish imports/trade in U.S.?]

The law gives power to a federal agency to create a white list. You can only buy what is on the list. If they have not thought about it and approved it - if they don't even consider it - you cannot buy it. If it is new, you cannot buy it until the agency considers it and decides you can.

A blacklist is better for hobbyists. With a blacklist the agency has to address a particular species and do something to take away your right to own it. 

I don't understand why anyone would feel better because we don't know now what the law will ultimately be. That is precisely the problem.

This is part of a long-standing trend in congressional legislation. I would say since the 1930's. The trend is that Congress does not make substantive law. They create an administrative authority (here the Department of the Interior), appoint some experts, and give them the power to make law. We call it administrative law. Whether the law is good or bad depends on what experts are appointed. Are the experts concerned with protecting the rights of hobbyists to keep fish? Or are the experts more concerned with protecting the environment?

I would suggest that it is extremely likely that hobbyists are going to get the short end of that stick. Using a white list rather than a black list is a clue, but you really don't need the clue. Aquarium hobbyists are not an influential interest group. But there are dozens of environmental organizations that have been working for decades to influence legislation. And the appointment of experts.

Is that good or bad? It depends on your point of view I suppose.

 

 

 

[Pogostemon Octopus]

The leaves on your PSO now will eventually all fall off and be replaced with longer, thinner leaves. The leaves in your pictures were grown while the plant was "emersed," with the roots in water and the leaves in the air. The leaves that will grow while the plant is submerged are different.

Also, my PSOs lose leaves all the time. I am considering taking the PSOs out of one of my tanks because the tank has a sump fed by an overflow, and I am worried that PSO leaves might clog the overflow.

[Fast]

I suggest you read the articles regarding cycling and ammonia at aquariumscience.org. Sometimes it is helpful to think of the process as cycling your filter rather than cycling the aquarium. The filter is where 90%-plus of your beneficial bacteria will reside.

Bacteria-in-a-bottle products don't work. I know they say you can add fish right away, but that is not true. If it were true, nobody would ever bother with any other method of cycling. They would just pour the bacteria in the tank and go.

It is sad, but in this hobby, you cannot believe everything you read on a label.

[A bottom of the tank Matten filter?]

@gardenman, there is now an article at aquariumscience.org dedicated to you and your bottom-of-the-tank Matten filter. The author (Dave) thinks it is a great idea:

2022-01-24 Added an article on “8.7.7. Bottom of Tank Matten Filter”

Today in the comments:

Dave says:

In reply to Scott …. It has a very large surface area and void volume. So under “normal” circumstances it wouldn’t plug up. The rate of decomposition of the “brown gunk” would be greater than the rate of deposition. But there are extreme circumstances which could change that. A food with low protein content, very heavy stocking, heavy feeding, low aeration, no good inoculate during cycling: can all combine to create plugging. But it has to be extreme. And yes, plants will root in it but as long as the tank is reasonably stocked, reasonably fed with a high protein food, properly inoculated and reasonably aerated one does not need to worry about plugging. I go into this in greater depth in this article https://aquariumscience.org/index.php/18-5-heavy-stocked-maintenance/

Scott Mitchell says

Hi Dave,
The bottom of the tank matten seems like a great biofilter but unlike an under gravel would it not plug up eventually?
I just can’t see how it could not. Could you explain why it wouldn’t or is this just considered ‘ok’ and just needs maintenance? I just would not want to take the whole thing out to clean it up and reinstall, especially if plants have rooted in it!
Thanks.

[How to glue metal to wood? Advice wanted.]

Can you put one magnet on the wood and the other magnet on the outside of the aquarium Where it can attract the wood magnet through the glass? Like a magnet-mounted powerhead.

[Some cycling questions]

1) I think the plants would not be bothered by cloudy water, and they would enjoy the ammonia, But I would recommend that you not add plants until cycling is complete. Plants consume ammonia and nitrites, and that is what beneficial bacteria need in order to multiply. Plants might be useful for a fish-in cycle in order to provide a margin of safety for the fish. But in a fishless cycle, it seems logical to me that plants would delay the process by consuming ammonia and nitrites unless you add more fish food to compensate. You don't explicitly say whether there are fish in the tank, but I assume not from your comment about adding a guppy..

2) I think rinsing the gravel is fine. A clean tank and a clean filter will not cycle. That is why you put fish food in and wait for it to rot.

3) I have never boiled a rock. I confess I boiled a small piece of driftwood to remove tannins and make it sink. I won't do that again.

4) A cover is good for limiting evaporation. I don't know whether evaporation and replacing the evaporated water will affect the cycle. I doubt it.

5) I am not sure what instructions you are referring to, but there is no reason to do water changes if there are no fish. You would just be removing ammonia and/or nitrites that the beneficial bacteria need in order to multiply.

I would also recommend that you read the aquariumscience.org articles regarding ammonia and cycling.

Good luck to you and your guppies!

[Ideal Flow for Angelfish Tank]

I have angelfish and I find they will simply avoid areas of the tank where there is a strong current. Their body shape means they are not strong swimmers.

The only flow in my tanks is from the filter returns or from small powerheads on under-gravel filters. I limit the amount of flow by directing the powerheads upward towards the surface. They aerate better that way anyway. I also direct the filter returns toward the surface where possible. Pushing the water upward absorbs some of the energy and disperses the flow.

In one tank, the canister filter returns have spray-bars, but I used a knife to enlarge the holes in the spray-bars (and create some new holes in different directions) so they create less current. In my other tank, the return from the sump has loc-line returns, so I found loc-line links with small outlets on the side of each link to release some of the pressure and disperse the flow, sometimes towards the glass.

Obstacles like wood, rock, and tall plants can also make the current less bothersome to angels.

Probably too much information. I have thought about this a lot.

[Save my 29 gallon tank!]

You can either turn down the intensity or shorten the time period when the lights are on.

I like to have the light on so I can enjoy the aquarium, so I would turn down the intensity for a week or two and see how that works. If you still have too much algae (you will always have some), then turn down the intensity a little more.

You should also check to see if the tank is getting natural sunlight from a window at some point during the day. My experience is that even a little natural light can cause a lot of algae. You can draw curtains or pull the shades to limit natural light. You can also consider moving the aquarium if that is practical.

Good luck, @Oblivious_666!

I am a little afraid to ask how you chose that name.