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A beautiful fish, but I found that mine. particularly the males, tended to find a favourite corner, rock or plant and lurked there all the time. I also tried rosy tetras, but they tended to hide among the plants a lot of the time, but I have recently gone for groups of diamond tetras (8) and...

Quite. I must admit that I've often seen fish in stores with wonky spines and I've assumed that they were just genetic deformities, but I'm now having second thoughts.

It's either/or in my case; I haven't seen wonky spine AND white patch/lump on a single fish.

Yes, usually they do. They generally keep feeding until the disease is advanced though.

I have an outbreak of what I believe to be neon tetra disease in my 240 litre aquarium. So far I've lost a number of neons and silvertips and one diamond tetra. I euthanised another three neons yesterday. Typically the fish either lose weight and develop a wonky spine or develop a white patch...

Quite, apart from assassins which can do a good job. In my case I was lucky. I spotted that the two nets were infested just after I put them in and I quickly pulled them and the surrounding gravel out, gave them a good rinse and left them out for a couple of days before rinsing again. Once...

My method for catching overgrown Siamese Algae Eaters (once they lose interest in eating algae) and Bristlenoses (once they develop a preference for eating plants), both notoriously difficult to catch in a heavily planted tank, is to use a thin stick to chase them from their hiding places...

TBH that's what most tetras do in my experience. My Rummynose tetras have kept together well, but others have not. Congos were pretty good but Cardinals not so. Emperors were the worst; they each found a nice corner and hung around alone there all day. The jury is out on the Diamonds, but they...

I bought ten Moenkhausia Pitteri (Diamond Tetra) from Maidenhead Aquatics a couple of weeks ago (six males and four females I think). They are closely related to M Costae and they are shoaling better than anything else I've kept, particularly at dusk (my lights are on a dimmer). A beautiful...

I sometimes do a massive overdose like you during a water change to get rid of persistent BBA. Take out 50% of the water. Switch off filter. Put in overdose of Excel and leave to stand for an hour. Fill with fresh water. Switch on filter. This way the overdose becomes even more concentrated for...

No reply I'm afraid. Saw a couple more small snails on the quarantined plant yesterday so I picked up a couple of assassins this morning.

Affected plant is now in quarantine. If I see any more I'll get a few assassin snails. I'll be using a different plant supplier in future though.

I've washed the plant and stuck in a bag for a couple of days. they I've syphoned out the gravel from the affected area and boiled it. I've emailed the supplier for a comment. Hopefully I've got away with it. I can't stand snails!

I just bought a new batch of plants from a reputable online dealer and after planting in the substrate I noticed a couple of snails. Took it out (it was a on a net) and washed it and a number of very small sails came off. I didn't expect that at all having used this company several times before...

I'm from Essex too, but use RO rather than tap water. I only keep tetra species and have no major problems.

I hope so. FWIW I've just listed three used UpAqua 16/22 ceramic inserts on the for sale thread. Free to a good home.

My Qanvee atomiser arrived from China yesterday and I'll be installing it tomorrow.

Possibly a net contaminated with disinfectant; that's what my local shop reckon killed the 15 neons I bought a short while back. All dead in the bag. Replacements all fine.

I don't know about longevity of silicone, but flatness of base/stand plus glass thickness and weight of rocks, gravel, etc. will have some influence. My marine aquarium seal gave way because the stand couldn't take the weight in the centre, and the glass bowed enough for the seam to let go; it...

Hopefully neither tank will ever suffer a seam split then, which in my experience is a similar risk to an external device leak. I have had one bottom seal give out on a 325+ litre marine setup and one external device flood, so 1-1 so far.

As I said, the vibration noise was unacceptable with the power head in the aquarium. Of course I want to avoid flooding and in my opinion the risk of leaks is minor if hoses have have jubilee clips at each end. My accident was unfortunately caused by a poor quality piece of kit (the Up...

(my bolding) There is if your power head is external too. I tried mine internal, but the noise was unacceptable so I moved it outside.

My M2 has been shipped already; hopefully it won't take three weeks, but I'll probably just dose with glut until I can get the Co2 back online.

That's a pity about your Eheim; I'm not so optimistic now... The Up atomiser required a separate bubble counter anyway, so that's no surpise. I just received an email to say that my M2 has been shipped from China; hopefully it will arrive sooner that I thought. I hope the carpet (and Persian...

And the power head works! I'm really impressed that both of my Eheim products are working perfectly after running dry for 2+ days.

Update: I've ordered a Qanvee M2 via AliExpress. Estimated delivery is about the same Amazon at three weeks. Any recommendations for a reasonably good and cheap in-tank atomiser or diffuser that I can use until it arrives?

An update: Returned on Wednesday afternoon. No major issues apart from a wet, slightly smelly carpet. I could only find one dead Rummynose and the rest of the fish seem OK, including 20 Neons, the two Congos, five Bentosis and some copper tetras. Filter and in-line heater OK, but haven't tested...

Speaking from very recent experience I wouldn't...

Many thanks for all of the replies. As most of you have said, there is no (known or practical) way to stop the water flow once a leak has started in the flow line, apart from having the inlet pipe starting much closer to the top of the aquarium rather than at the bottom as is usually the case...

I have just posted a new thread "Holiday Disaster: 200+ Litres on Floor" in Filters and Filtration. I won't repeat anything from that thread to avoid dual posting, but the result is that the CO2 Art inline diffuser I've had for about three years sheared off and caused a major flood while on...

Overseas on holiday. Sister-in-law checks house after three days to find about 75mm of water in tank and the other 200+ litres on the lounge carpet. Autofeeder has been dumping food on the now exposed plants for at least a couple of days. The filter (an Eheim 2173) has been running dry as has an...

The bag was unopened and the aquarium lid was removed.

Definitely not dropped; I walked from the tank to the counter with him. Bag was on passenger seat (as was the replacement), but A/C was on and car was cool. I reckon it must have been either the small bag (I didn't think it looked big enough for 15 fish, but assumed that he believed it to be...

Insufficient oxygen? Maybe; the first bag was quite small, the second much larger (possibly 5x), with a much larger air space, but this shop does not add oxygen from a tank, unlike another I use. Fish were in bag for 15 mins from shop and 10 mins floating to equalise temperature, after which I...

I bought a group of 15 largish neons today from my LFS. They were part of a large group of several hundred and all looked healthy. Took them home, floated the bag for about 10 minutes and then went to open the bag to start slowly adding some of my water and found that all were either dead or...

Do the Esha products contain malachite green and/or methyene blue?

I'm 100% sure that I saw the beginnings on coumnaris on two of the silvertips within 24 hours of them arriving, so in this case it did come with them. Can't say I'm happy with the supplier. As suggested I'll treat with eSHa 2000, EXIT and gdex and see how things go before risking introducing...

I did treat a probable columnaris outbreak on a new batch of silvertips in March, but I'm sure that came with the new fish and no other fish were affected by it; the Congo die-off had already begun by then. Four of the Silvertips died rapidly despite the treatment, but the other six are...

I suspected that may be the case.

I have, or rather had, eight Congo Tetras; I bought them all as young males about 3.5 years ago and until about three months ago all were fine, feeding well, swimming around as a shoal, occasionally fighting and looking healthy. Then one by one they go through the same process; go off their...

Ultralife Blue Green Lime Stain Remover does the trick too. Worked 100% in two aquariums with horrible cyano outbreaks. Around £20 including p&p (from USA) from Amazon.co.uk.

These two may show the bulge a little better. Ignore the post water change streaks on the glass...

Two of my newish (I've had ten for about three weeks) Silvertips have developed different problems. The first has a white mouth, which I suspect is a kind of fungus. The second has deveolped a bulge in the centre of its body, which appears as a light patch in the photo, but in profile is a...

And these? Possibly pond snails?

Any idea what this could be. Looks like an empty shell but my son says that they (there's at least two of them) keep appearing in different places. Came in on some plants... Less than half an inch long. Could it be a Malaysian Trumpet?

If you can't get the prime button to work then disconnect the spray bar and suck the water through. As long as you don't mind a mouthful of tank water of course.

Not really cold, no. I heated it up over night and then drove it up to his place this moring, but I reckon it was down to about 10-15C by the time we'd got it in.

Set up the new aquarium this morning. Filled with RO water, cleaned filter, including replacing white and blue filters. Filter has been running for about four hours and the water is very milky, presumably due to micro bubbles. I've never seen this when cleaning my own Eheim cannister filter...

I am pretty sure that most of the beneficial bacteria live in the filter media, so I'm not conviced that there is enough bacteria in the gravel or on the plants to make much difference.

Thanks Konsa. The filter hasn't been cleaned for a few months so I imagine there's some gunk in there to keep it going for another week. Steve.

My son is upgrading his aquarium; he has found a new home for the fish and has already stripped the old one down (it somehow ended up in my garage) and I suggested he keep the (external) filter media alive by running the filter through a (heated) bucket of the old aqaurium water for the two...

Could it be this? https://www.petcha.com/hexamita-fish-hole-in-the-head-disease

I half fill 10 litre buckets of pre-heated RO water and pour very fast over my hand to break the flow. Never seems to uproot any plants or stir up the substrate. I've been doing 50-100 litres per week using this method for more than two years.

Yes, I have an Eheim autofeeder. It could be due to less food over the holiday, but I doubt it; I've been back for a month and all still looks good. I just think that the algae and diatom blooms ran their course and finally the plants/CO2/lighting are just right. For now...

Update: Whatever it was, when I returned from a two week holiday the black stuff and the diatoms had completely gone and the water was crystal clear, having lost a slight cloudiness which was visible when viewing the tank end on. The only thing I did was to increase the Ottos from four to ten...

You need more snails :eek:. Assassins to be precise :hungry:.

Difficult without a closeup. Some kind of livebearer, maybe a type of Platy?

In the end I bought a hose-connector pressure gauge and compared the pressure from the outdoor mains tap and the water softener-fed washing machine connector; the mains was almost 5 bar vs. about 3 bar. So I bought a V2 Pure 100 RO system, hooked it up to the mains and get my 100 litre of RO...

My lights are LEDs and are about 18 months old; I've run with that lighting schedule for all of that time from what I can remember. Apart from CO2 and EI plus extra iron I also add root tabs to the substrate every few months and generally the plant growth is fine. The black stuff has been...

As an update, I've also noticed that my Ottos don't seem to eat the black stuff (I'm still not sure what it is). So, should I: - Get some more/different cleaners (maybe Nerite snials or bristlenose Plecs)? - Cut back on the EI dosing (could it be an overdose of nutrients)? - Cut the light...

CO2 on one hour before lights. pH about 7.7 before CO2 starts and 6.7 around lights on.

Almost three years!

The title speaks for itself really. Plant leaves get covered in black algae; its especially noticable on the Amazon swords, but also affect other plants. I have some brown diatoms on the glass, which I remove weekly along with the worst affected leaves, but I don't think the stuff on the leaves...

I could if I had one! :). At the moment I'm just thinking about installing an RO system; TBH I'm getting too old to lug 50 litres of RO from my LFS every week :(. First thing I need to do is to check my maims pressure as I'm not sure it will be up to it without a booster pump. Then I'd need to...

Thanks for the reply. The only reason I'm considering doing this is that I've read that processing the softened water is better for the RO membrane in that it doesn't get clogged by calcium carbonate scale and is also more efficient, presumably for the same reason. If the RO process removes...

I know that water that has been softened in a domestic water softener is not suitable for use in a freshwater aquarium, but I'm wondering if it would be suitable if I then put it through an RO system. From what I've read I understand that processing the softened water is more efficient and...

I'd say easyish or easyier when compared to some other plants. In the end no plants will grow without sufficient nutrients and light and a source of carbon. Once those are depleted, then the plants will die.

Your setup is very similar to mine including size of aquarium (240l), substrate (fine gravel), plants and even fish (I like Congos too). When I set it up about three years ago it looked great. Initially the plants semed to be growing fine, but then I started to see all of the problems I see in...

Are you sure you've got enough CO2 in there at 1bps? From those pictures the drop checker liquid looks more like dark green than lime green to me.

I usually use APF too, but they seem to be having supply problems with some of their salts at the moment. I need some Fe now though, so is this the same as this?

Either of the two ideas above sound good to me. I have my Eheim filter in a wooden cabinet and have it on a square of carpet plus a piece of polystyrene under each corner and it is now near silent; neither seemed to work sufficiently on their own. I also rest the filter tubing on a piece of...

Ultralife Blue Green Algae Remover from Amazon.co.uk works and did not harm the fish or plants when I used it for a horrible outbreak in February 2015; the BGA was 100% gone within a week and has not returned. I have no idea what is in it, but as it isn't sold in the UK I suspect that it could...

I have eight Congos and they are beautiful fish given the right conditions, tank mates, etc., but I don't think that one as a feature fish would work.

That could be it. If they are raised and without a cover to reflect the light then there may be too much light leakage.

Really? Are you absolutely sure that the Zetlights are the problem? FWIW I have two 46w Zetlight Lancia units in my 4' aquarium, mounted about 2" above the water surface in an enclosed hood, and my plants are all growing like crazy. Are you also dosing EI ferts and injecting CO2?

The built-in T5s in my 4ft were somewhat short like your new LEDs and the shaded areas at either end had stunted (or no) plant growth. I recently replaced them with a pair of Zetlight Lancia ZP4000 1200mm LEDs, which are just about 1" short of full coverage, and have already noticed the...

Silicon cord works well too. Your comment about not overheating is very valid; I did overheat mine, which caused some bubbling of the surface. That said they are still perfectly useable and hidden under/behind the hood. One other thing to bear in mind is that clear tubing (glass or plastic)...

I made my own. Maybe those were DIY too.

I do only dose the recommended amounts of Macro, Micro and Iron. Happy to increase this if anyone recommends that I do so. Apologies to the bristlenose if he wasn't to blame for the holes, but he seems happy enough in his new (temporary) home at the LFS.

Ha! Got him.Off to my LFS now.

Right, thanks for the confirmation. Time for him to move on then. Now to try to catch him...

Ah, OK. I'm 100% sure that there are no snails, so this charming fella is probably to blame.

What could cause mechanical damage to plants?

Back to this one again. Now injecting CO2, new LED lights (Zetlight) and dosing EI with added K2SO4 as suggested. Plant growth generally excellent (especially Crypts and Vallis), but holes appearing again in Amazon Sword leaves, although this time they seem to be concentrated towards the center...

I got them from here. Good discount on at the moment too, which of course I missed :mad:. There are different models for marine and freshwater and you would need one receiver (package B) per light strip and one controller (package C) for full automation. The supplied instructions are useless...

No problem; I appreciate your input and will now keep an eye out for anything nasty and cut the lighting % back if necessary.

:eek: that's all I need! Interestingly, Luis Cardoso mentioned that he had no algae problems with his Zetlights (some Zetlight models as mine, same size aquarium, roughly the same lighting schedule), but he did with his new LEDs in his Through the Forest thread.

Done. Two Zetlight 46W lightbars and controller installed and running. Light is now so much brighter and extends to both ends of the aquarium rather than leaving dead spots at both ends as with the T5s. Fish colours are much better and plants are now pearling, which never happened under the old...

I started injecting CO2 in August and have been achieving the desired pH drop, lime green drop checker, etc. daily since then, but have never seen any pearling; I was even beginning to believe that it was a myth. However, roll on to Xmas Day when Santa brought me a new pair of Zetlight Lancia...

I'm still having the same problem and can't seem to find a solution. The HP gauge is steady reading and 750 psi or so. If I up the WP to 50-60 psi the bubble rate speeds up and then slows down within a few seconds; the needle valve no longer has any effect on bubble rate. I have checked the...

I've just conducted a leak test with bubble solution and can't find any leaks so I'm pretty sure that isn't the issue. One other thing I've noticed is that the water level in the bubble counter gradually drops over a couple of weeks. I understand that it is possible that water from the bubble...

I doubt that is the case otherwise I would have expected the tank to be empty by now or at least showing a pressure drop on the HP gauge, but I'll check the connections anyway just in case. It's a dual stage. Once the liquid is depleted I would expect the HP gauge to start showing a continuous...

I don't think so; I replaced the atomizer's ceramic tube about a month ago due to a problem with large CO2 bubbles accumulating in the outflow tube; I initially thought it had fixed that issue, but it hadn't really.

I agree that the HP gauge should drop once the cylinder is almost empty. CO2 cylinder is a 3.15kg. Bubble rate is subjective, but I have mine set to something like 6-10 per second, dropping to maybe 1-2 per second or less now. I'll give CO2Art a call tomorrow to see if they think that the...

My CO2 system has been running since the end of August; I have a CO2Art dual stage regulator and a 3.15kg cylinder. The high pressure gauge has been stable at around 750 psi (slightly higher during the summer probably due to the higher ambient temperature) since installation and the working...

Thanks Michel.

Do aluminum LED aquarium light units (e.g. Zetlight Lancia ZP4000 1200mm) typically generate much heat? I'm wondering how close to the top of the hood I can safely mount them.

Cheers zozo. They look like a good solution if I have to resort to bolts, but I'd prefer not to have to drill through the hood and aluminium section unless I really have to. Tec7 sounds a possibility too; I'll look into it.

Thanks for the tips ian_m & papa_cee. I think I'll try some superglue gel first and then pop rivets if that doesn't stick