Dreams of Aquariums

Hmmmm, my sitution is similar. I have a bag of crushed mussel shells in my canister filter, whitch seems to have so far kept pH and kH in check. This method doesn't introduce potentially high swings in the pH and kH values, which might happen if you use salts or other similar quick methods. I guess crushed coral or wonder shell could also work, but we don't seem to have those readily available here where I live. Cory has at least on some of his videos talked about using crushed coral and wonder shell in his tanks. As @Tony s suggested, letting the tap water sit for a while might also help. You can test this quick by taking a glass of tap water aside, wait 24 h and then test the water to see how it changes.

@Scapexghost your question intrigued me enough to take a look at the scientific papers on this. I have never owned guppies, nor am I super knowledgable about genetics, so take it with a grain of salt. Just to look fancy I'll throw in a reference at the end, if someone wants to take a look. I won't bring too much new to the discussion, but hopefully this helps you forward. I'd also appreciate if someone with real experience in guppy genetics could chime in. As others pointed out, the reason for males having red tails and the females blue, lies in the colour genes being on the sex chromosomes. In the case of guppies they're in the X- and Y-chromosomes. These are not quite like the human ones as far as I've understood, the Y-chromosome on guppies being larger and housing more genes than the human one. But they are otherwise similar enough for our purpouse. The colour coding genes are usually on the Y-chromosome, but they can jump (usually through crossing-over events) to the X-chromosome too. This is why guppy males are usually colourful, while female are drab, but also why the females too can get some colours. In your case, my guess is that the father fish had a red tail gene on his Y-chromosome, while your mother fish had the blue tail gene on her X. Since females only get X-chromosomes they will also only inherit the blue tail. What makes me scratch my head however, is the fact that males get just red tails. See, both colours are dominant, so a male with X(blue) and Y(red) should theoretically express both and maybe have some blending of both. Or there should be some blue tailed mles, if the genes are shut off randomly. If that's not the case, then I would guess there are some male hormones that suppresses the expression on the X-chromosome (maybe the whole chromosome or maybe just some genes?). That's all I got for now, I'll await eagerly for the critics to tear me apart 😅 Here's a paper that kind of summarizes work on the colour genes involved: Khoo, G., Lim, T. M., Chan, W.-K., Phang, V. P. E. 1999. Linkage Analysis and Mapping of Three Sex-Linked Color Pattern Genes in the Guppy, Poecilia reticulata. Zoological Science 16(6):893-903

At least where I live the water works adds something to the water, so it comes out at around pH 8. It lacks the buffering capacity though, so in my tank it basically stabilizes around the tank water pH. In fact, if I'm not carefull, my pH may crash pretty fast due to the lack of this buffering capacity. I guess I'd be careful of doing large water changes in one go, but otherwise it might not be a problem as long as you follow your tanks.

As I said, not really an expert, but I'll try to answer as best as I can... I think it's fair to say that the hobby is quite small scale, though it's far from being bad. I think there are a handfull of clubs and the biggest ones have maybe a hundred or so members (of which maybe some ten-twenty are active). There are one or two "large" aquarium themed auctions in Southern Finland per year, otherwise it's just local club meetings and some excursions. I think the highlight of the year for many is when they take a ferry to Sweden to see how the aquarium hobby is done in the "big world" 😆 I haven't unfortunately had myself time to participate in this, so my highlight is usually the big auction in Helsinki. The fish club in my city has unfortunately gone on a hiatus, so I'm actually a member of the capital area fish club. I don't participte in person too often though, since it's a two hour drive there and the metings are a bit too small scale for me to make that effort. I have no clue about shipping, I have not done that myself and I haven't asked either. I do know that products and plants are shipped, but even with plants the winter shipping can be risky. There are some quite strict laws and regulations governing animal shipments, so it might be hard to get stuff shipped. With a quick googling at least the postal service and FedEX straight out refuse to ship live animals. Because of the laws and the finicky weather I suspect that it's not very common for hobbyists to ship fish to each other. It might be just easier to drive somewhere yourself and pick up what you want, most people live somewhat nearby anyway. I might be wrong though, I'll try and ask someone who might know better once I see somebody in the know. As for shops, there are local fish shops in at least the bigger cities in the South, and then there are quite good pet stores, that sell aquarium fish and other products. Most of the shops are really small, nothing more than a small room, so we don't have the widest variety at our hands. The shops do get fish in, mostly from Germany or otherwise from Sweden or locally, so the better ones at least have rarer species in their inventory too. The local fish stores can also often order fish in, so I suspect the easiest way to get the fish or plants you want is just to ask your local store to order them for you. Because of the somewhat strict laws and regulations on animal wellfare, the fish stores and pet stores are pretty well run, with usually healthy fish and plants. The personnel also do in many cases ask about your aquarium and try to persuade people to not buy things that grow too large for their tank or that otherwise might be bad choices.

Hi all! I'm not exactly new here, I've been following the forum for a while, but I never got around to introduce myself. At the moment, due to limited space and resources, I have just one 240 liter (55 gal) tank with Lemon tetras, Sterbai corys, a Bristle nose catfish and a lot of snails. I try to keep a good amount of plants, mostly easy slow growing ones like Anubias, Crypts etc. I have had an aquarium for quite some time, but I still wouldn't consider myself very knowledgable about the topic. When I was a child we had a smaller aquarium for ten-ish years, but in the teenage years I stopped for a good while, and then I got the one I have now in 2016. I have background as a biology student and I was a couple of summers also working with Finnish fish. Nothing too fancy, but I was two summers working with Three-spined sticklebacks and one with Nine-spined sticklebacks. Lovely and interesting fish for sure, but there wasn't a career there for me to be had. At the moment I'm again studying something else, so that I might become something else in the future. Most of the topics here are quite a bit out of my league, but I might chime in if there's something I just happen to know. Otherwise I'll just lean back, relax and follow the interesting topics you all post here! Thanks for reading, have a good one!