TangoKitty

I am new to breeding Cichlids, and I have an Albino Kribensis family. They are being kept in a 20L, planted with sand substrate, and they are the only fish in the tank. Their fry are 6 days out of the cave and are doing very well in my opinion - I can see their little bellies turned pink from the BBS they've been fed, so I know they're eating well. They're active, and overall happy fries, but the parents keep darting at them and scattering them out of their school. The mom will be calm and gentle and then one moment she darts at a baby like it's prey. Then there's the papa who will swim back and forth over the top of the group rather fast, and sometimes he darts across like he's chasing an invisible intruder, and it kicks up the sand and scatters the fry. I'm not sure if this is normal, or if this is a sign the parents are stressed, or are they trying to circulate water around them to keep fungus from growing? (I read that they will mouth babies to clean them from fungus and such). I lean toward letting nature take its course, but at the same time I really would like to raise some of these babies to adulthood, so I'm watching closely for behavior that signals it's time to remove the parents, like the male being impatient to breed again. Since it's my first time with this species, I'm not exactly sure how that's going to look when they have fry.

I have a female betta that has become obese. She doesn't swim anymore, she lays on the bottom of the tank, leaning against something, and she only goes to the surface to get air. She won't even eat from the surface anymore, she will wait for the food to sink and she lays on her side and sucks it up. I've checked online, I can't find anything that really discusses how to help an obese fish, other than reducing high protein foods, and feeding smaller amounts, and less often. So I bought some Fluval Bug Bites Betta Formula because the grains are very small, and I feed her 5 or 6 of those every other day. My thought was that it needs to be enough that her organs don't shut down and she's not starving to death, but not enough to maintain the weight. There's no real guide out there for that sort of thing, so I'm just going on instinct here. The next thing I'm thinking of trying is adding some salt to the water to provide more buoyancy, but I don't even know if that will make any difference, or would actually be detrimental to her swim bladder. I could use some advice on that.

Glad I'm not the only one that has this issue! Most of the hair algae I was able to just pick off with tweezers. I'm sure it's not eradicated, but it's what I've got to work with right now. So far I've only found it on that one leaf, so the outbreak isn't severe yet.

Thanks for the quick replies! I'm glad to learn it's not some kind of worm parasite thing that will infect the fish, which was my biggest fear.

Hello fellow hobbyists! I have noticed some hairy stuff growing from my Anubias. I would like help identifying what it is please. I assumed algae would be colorful in some way, like green, or brown, or black, but this hairy stuff is white-ish, and it just doesn't look like I expect algae to look like, so I'm worried it's some kind of worm. I don't think it's hydra, or planaria, judging by pictures I've found on the internet. Could it just be roots? Is it an indication the plant is hungry?

Sorry it took me a minute to reply, but I did a little more research, and I think I have found a root cause. Sorry there's too many replies to quote, but to hit on the points: The tank is planted, there are 5 medium sized plants, and two small bunches of java moss, but in my research, I learned that with the exception of the java moss and a hornwort, my plants are all slow growing root feeders, which means they're not really capable of handling this kind of nitrate load. I will need to get some fast growing water column feeders, and an additional light bar so there's enough lumens to support faster plant growth. I believe the culprit for my never-ending bacterial bloom (and high nitrates) is the water from my tap. It leaves the tap reading between 1.0 and 2.0 ppm ammonium. Using Prime doesn't help because one of its functions is to convert ammonia to the less toxic ammonium. Regardless, ammonia or ammonium, it's still eaten by the nitrifying bacterias, eventually converting it to nitrate. I think you can see what's coming... Every time I'm doing a water change, I'm adding a huge hit to the bioload by adding a ton of ammonium and giving the bacteria a huge feast, and boom! in 2 days the bacteria have grown, and the nitrate levels are too high again, and I risk fish death or disease if I don't change the water and... well the wheel keeps on turning, so to speak. I need to find a way to remove the ammonium from the water before I do a water change, and the solution is not an RO filter because that's not in the budget during covid economy. Any ideas on how to accomplish that?

Sorry, there's too many people to quote - but if the consensus is that it's a bacterial bloom, I'll accept that as the answer. This tank is about 10 weeks old, and I knew from the start to try and wait out the NTS, but I thought I was beyond that because after a couple of weeks the water tests always showed 0ppm for ammonia and nitrite, and either 40 or 80ppm for nitrate (my eyes can't see any difference in the API color chart for 40 or 80ppm). The plethora of copy/paste articles I've found on the internet suggest that anything over 40ppm is dangerous and a "large" water change needs to be done, so I've been doing 50% water changes every week for the past 4 weeks. The water has always bounced back fairly quickly, in 2 days everything is back to 0ppm for ammonia and nitrite, and back up to 40 or 80ppm for nitrate. So now I would ask, about how long does it take for a bacterial bloom to run its course if I have to do a 50% water change every week because of the nitrate? Or, do I really need to do a 50% water change every week for 40/80ppm nitrate?

Oh, I do not, but that's a good idea, so I shall get some soon!

The water in my aquarium is always grey, but not cloudy, or at least, not in the sense that I can see particulates floating around. I checked the water, it's 0ppm on ammonia and nitrite, and 40ppm for nitrate, which is kind of normal for my tank before the weekly water change. I've noticed this grey water persists even after I do a water change (like immediately, as soon as the water goes in). So I'm wondering if it could be the gravel? I like color! and so I bought the black and neon color mix gravel (often sold for Glofish), but there's more black and purple than any other color in it. I'm wondering if this grey water could be the result of the dye used bleeding into the water? Does anyone have knowledge of that? If it matters, I'm using two filters in this tank, a HOTB that has cut-to-fit white filter floss and some Fluval beads for bacteria to live on, and, I also have a medium size sponge filter because I thought it might help to have another bacteria house. Which does bring up a point - I have read about bacteria blooms, but I do not know what one looks like, yet I would think that the water would look nice and clean after a water change, since a large amount of free floating bacteria would be removed, but this water looks grey as soon as I put it in, so I doubted that was the reason. Thanks in advance for suggestions!

Hello! My husband and I are new-ish to the fish keeping hobby, and we've been researching the issues we've encountered, and this is how we discovered Aquarium Co-op on Youtube. My husband is terrible at remembering names, but he will never forget a video Cory has about the nitrogen cycle with M&Ms candy representing the different things, and so Cory earned the nickname, "The M&M guy" from him. With that said, we do have issues we're trying to get some insight on, so I hope everyone here will be patient with our questions and not feel like we're challenging the answers given, but instead asking for a better understanding because one of us needs to hear it in several different ways (or with M&Ms) before it "clicks." Thanks for reading!