Recent content by smiles

I hope I didn't offend anyone.. I have a tendency to babble about things. It's still new to me and the science of it is still very interesting. It seems the formalin is doing the trick. I've seen quite an improvement in just 24 hours. All the fish are more active and I haven't noticed any of...

I fishless cycled the tank using material from an established aquarium. The tank has been set up for about two months, but stocked only about a month ago. The fishless cycle took a little under a month thanks to the cycled filter media I used. My ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate has been 0 since...

Okay, I dosed Formalin 3. Do you know how long it stays active in the water? The directions say it can be dosed every 24 hours until symptoms subside, but does that mean it actually dissipates in 24 hours? Basically I want to know how soon I can put the Purigen back in (Seachem advises that...

I tend to agree. The ammonia has not increased since I first measured it, and it seems like it dropped since this morning, now very close to zero. From what I understand about gill flukes, they're kind of like fleas on a dog. It's difficult to eradicate the flukes from a tank once infected...

I did a large water change (~75%) yesterday afternoon and got the ammonia down to well below 0.25 ppm, but not quite 0. I'm hoping my plants will suck up the rest of it throughout the day. This morning when I checked the tank, one of the tiger barbs was on its death throes, and kicked it...

I'm using the API liquid test kit. My tap water is very soft - pH between 6 and 6.4, dkH 1 after gassing out. Once in the aquarium it goes up to almost exactly 6.4 and stays there. I'm using liquid carbon, not CO2 infusion. I did think to test the LFS water before I threw it out and its pH...

Point taken - even though ammonium is "less" toxic it still needs to be removed. If they're still showing symptoms some time after the ammonia is completely gone, then I'll worry about parasites/fungi etc. Thanks for the advice.

Hello, I'm new to this forum and pretty new to the hobby, but things have been going smoothly until now. I have practically no experiences with fish illnesses, so I'm calling on your expertise. Late last night I noticed a couple of my tiger barbs acting oddly. I'll use the copy-and-paste...