Recent content by Alien Anna

Better yet, get trip-switches fitted to your main fuse cupboard (by a qualified electrician, of course). Aquariums aren't the only sources of electricity and water - dribble on a lamp bulb can have pretty spectacular effects, not to mention orange juice in the VCR. I have an autistic little boy...

Chelating agents will be chemicals that bind heavy metals etc. I've no idea what its doing in your ammonia, but there are chelating agents in many dechlorinators for aquarium use.

Yeah, bogwood comes from bogs and driftwood gets washed up on the shores of lakes and seas. Bogwood is always acid (from the peat) but driftwood isn't always.

P.S. Bottom feeders don't "clean up after" anything. Some eat left over food (but only if you are in the habit of over-feeding in the first place). It is a myth that some fish live on the waste of other fish. If you have a messy piscavore in your tank you need heavy-duty filtration, plenty of...

Jennifer, if someone gave you a puppy and it was vicious would you say you couldn't get rid of it because it was a gift? This is the reason why its never a good idea to give someone a living creature as a gift (unless you know they want the creature and are prepared to look after it). This...

Its essential if you have plecos of any kind (such as bristlenose) as they eat the wood for roughage.

I wouldn't personally use a 1 gallon tank for anything other than a fry tank or hospital tank.

It depends. If you have live plants, you want it between 10 and 25ppm because they need it as fertiliser (in fact, some people actually have to add nitrates in some circumstances). If you have artificial plants you should try to keep your nitrate level down as low as possible by water changes...

If you buy anubias roots they'll rot, so make sure the roots are well out of the substrate, preferably anchored to some rocks or bogwood.

I personally wouldn't want a piscavore but your attitude doesn't shock me in the least. Of all the deaths a fish could have, munch, munch, gulp is probably one of the easier ones, and of course it is all part of the "cycle of life" (yeauch - that's Disney too, isn't it? ). I don't consider that...

I'd say get a 3 ft tank, but if you can get one that is deeper than average, and wider than average, you could get about 40 US gallons of water in it, no trouble. That way you'd have a lot of scope for development and bigger tanks are much easier to maintain. I've never heard of a catastrophic...

Yes, my chain loaches (pygmy botias) are fantastic for snail clearance. It was the major reason I got them, actually. But they don't touch my large golden apple snails. The main downside with them is that they are quite rare and therefore expensive and difficult to get hold of. They are also...

Why are you trying to boil your water? What's wrong with just adding dechlorinator to your tap water? That's what I do with the liquid granite that comes out of my taps and my fish are fine.

We all cycle with fish at least once. That's why many of us become fans of fishless cycling!

That advice is probably based on a couple of things: 1. The assumption is that you cycle with fish, so the beneficial bacteria need time to build up. This advice could be translated as "Avoid ammonia and nitrite at all costs". 2. pH can bounce around quite a lot in a newly set-up tank but...