Recent content by pondholler

Thanks very much for all the helpful info. I am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea what the gh and kh are. Please advise. I had a hunch the lighting might be part of the problem because the plant issue got worse when we added lighting thinking lack of light might be weakening the...

I wish I could tell you which plants we have, but I am pretty ignorant when it comes to plant names. For a couple of years, we had lots of water sprite, but it has all died off. We are left with some dark green broad leaf plants, some very tall spikey plants and some low-growing plants that...

We have a 300-gallon tropical aquarium. The fish are doing fine but the plants are really struggling. Black algae is part of the problem, I'm sure, and we are treating for that, but I am wondering if something else could be going on. Is it possible to have too much light? We have six 4-foot...

Is this possible? We rescued three different batches of newborn guppies from our guppy tank for a total of 19 babies. They have grown up in our nursery tank and ALL appear to be females. What could cause this, or what are the odds of this happening?

Thank you again, Byron. Everything you suggested is doable. I have one question. A neighbor who raised and distributed tropical fish for a couple of decades before retiring told me today that what we need is a UV sterilizing unit. Do you agree that this would help? Do you have any...

Attaching two pics. One is of the whole aquarium, as requested. It doesn't really show the extent of the algae bloom, so I'm also sending a close-up of part of the tank. Thanks so much for your help.

Thanks very much, Byron, for your thorough reply. I will get a photo of the tank up in the next couple of hours. Meanwhile, will try to figure out the Hygger lighting system.

Thanks for the tip on sinking pellets AND the plant food. We suspected it might be part of the problem.

I've been reading up here on algae blooms and am not sure where to start to remedy our problem -- dying plants AND a green-water algae bloom. We have a 300 gallon freshwater planted tank which is underpopulated mostly with various tetras, angelfish, algae eaters and catfish. We've been...

Our 300-gallon planted tank has been established for a couple of months. Then a few fish began disappearing. Two days ago. I spotted one with tell-tale white spots and yesterday treated the tank with API Super-Ick Cure and raised the tank temp to 85. Three weak/dead fish this morning but no...

We've been posting on the "Introduce Yourself" section about our mission to revive the 300-gallon aquarium we built into our living room wall 20+ years ago. We managed to keep it going for several years and then Life intervened, the tank failed, and we didn't have the time/energy/$$$ to revive...