Recent content by raylove

This year I've hit 86F but in the past there have been periods where 90F has been sustained for several days. I never noticed anything detrimental with the fish though I would routinely leave the hood open, leave lights off and do smallish water changes using cold water to lower the temperature...

I looked for pictures online and that's definitely a sponge. Apparently those white balls are their reproductive pods. Very cool!

I've tried angels several times over the decades, usually in 55-60 gallons, in groups of 4-6. Always I've ended up with just one due to carnage. Once I ended up with a pair which spawned a number of times before they too fell out and the female was killed by the male. The remaining single always...

You may have seen a thread I started last year. I hadn't kept corries for years as I had no sand in my tank, and whilst I had kept them successfully years ago with gravel, current thinking was that sand was necessary to keep them happy. This year I finally set up a tank but because I like plants...

I went away for six weeks last year and my fish were fine with an Eheim fish feeder. I did get a family member to pop in after about 4 weeks to change a couple of buckets of water and gravel vac the substrate. When I got back the tank looked a bit of a mess as the plants were suffering from a...

Sounds like it's definitely the gravel. If it's the one I can see online, the reviews suggest others have had the same problem. The store probably has a centralised filter so the total volume is huge relative to the amount of gravel. With 3 fish your tank sounds like it might be quite small so...

Quick update one month on. The corys still seem to actively avoid the sand. Only twice have I seen them nose in it and on both occasions they seemed to choke and flashed against the substrate for a minute or two afterwards. When I first introduced the sand my denisoni barbs did the same thing...

Good point, the sand is yellow play sand and the gravel slightly lighter than 'standard' gravel but the sand is certainly lighter. However, the whole tank is fairly shady as I have lots of vallis trailing over the surface (there is enough room for them to reach the surface and gulp air if they...

Thanks for the responses. I'm absolutely going to leave the sand in place until they are fully settled/mature as I mentioned before, because I know 2 weeks isn't long. Yes, the tank is heavily planted so the sandy part is more exposed, however, they aren't hiding in the plants, they are all over...

I recently bought 10 (false) julii corys, the first time I've had corys for over a decade. Back in the day I didn't know any better so previously I've only kept groups of 4 and only ever with gravel substrate. This time I did it properly, bought a larger group and converted about 20% of the...

Many years ago I had a few in a community tank. At about 4" they got their own tank after they started eating my zebras, so they likely will eat smaller tank mates eventually.

I'm a bit confused as the dosage instructions on the bottle say to dose weekly. That's a big difference to the 12 months you have subsequently been quoted. Any idea why the massive discrepancy?

You won't find stranger lyrics....

There used to be a group of half a dozen corys in my local shop's display tank. Apparently they belonged to the manager who claimed that he had had them in his home tank for 34 years. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact species but I recall that they did look rather ancient!

Females are likely to be fuller bellied but it's not always easy to tell male from female. You can be sure you'll have a mixture in a group that size.