I havent used the brand you are using...but in most cases, charcoal filters are for filtering out chemical impurities..and as such, will filter out the medication. I would defintely recommend you do so. thanks Smeg...I need to do some reading up on rainbows...I wonder if they will go well with my angels.
email me, i can't attach a pic to a bbs email it's only one pic at the moment, need to fix a light first then i take a pile more with the lights on
How difficult is it to breed/mate freshwater fish? I'm not interested but if I happen to get a male and female of the same species do they breed like rabbits or elephants?
depends on the species. if you want surefire younguns...get convict cichlids...but dont you even try putting them in with other fish...they are vicious little fockers when breeding. livebearers are also way easy to breed...platies, swordtails, guppies....but they have a tendency to eat their young. if you can tell the difference between male and female in a species, they can be bred. Its just a matter of keeping their environment in the conditionthey prefer, having the stuff the like to lay their eggs on, and keeping them until they are of breeding age..
Always take any charcoal out before medicating the tank. The charcoal is there to neutralize toxins... that often includes medication. Not trying to sound rude, but you may want to read about aquariums before you jump into it. Many people think they should just drop fish into some water and that's that.
Finally checked back here. Those are nice shots of two of my favorite fish! Sounds like we share an interest, Rockets2K. And thanks, it was a nice tank. That's basically what I had for several years in my main tank. Clown loaches do better in large schools, for anyone who wants to keep them happy. They can really interact in some cool ways. A few times I had some that I swore were gonna breed, but they didn't. (from what I understand, it's almost unheard of) I had really good luck with Apistogrammas in pairs in a large tank. You could only have a few pairs, though, and have some rocky caves for them to breed in. They laid eggs several times for me, and really became bad-a$$ when they did. Fantastic displays of color and very territorial. If I got a pair out in time and put them alone in a small tank, I got the eggs to hatch and that was fun to watch. Some of mine were non-discript... we couldn't figure out what they hell they were. I used to prowl the fish shops and look for young ones that didn't look like anything. You never knew what they might grow up to be. Even places like Walmart got them (and baby Congos, which don't look like anything either) mixed in with a shipment by accident on occasion. That was part of the fun for me, back when I was into it... trying to find things some of the shops and chain stores got in and didn't realize were valuable fish. I bought 20 Congos one time at a place like Walmart. They were listed as "Tetras" for 50 cents a piece. Amazingly cheap! Dr of Dunk, I like Africans, but it's hard to keep much of anything except Africans in a tank. Certain things work with them, but the selection is limited if you want variety. (except for the Africans!) And they love to eat plants, or just tear them up to keep them from providing hiding places for their "enemies". I like plants. With the hard water in Austin, however, they are easy to keep here. (Africans, not plants!) And limestone is all over the place. Lil Pun, I think water quality is everything if you want to breed something. If it's a softwater fish, you go with that. Sometimes you can do things like add a little peat into the gravel. The water gets a little amber in color and some types of freshwater fish love that. Another thing is, after you've had nice water quality for a long time and you have some that like warm water, bump up the temperature a little after a water change. And yes, changing out about a quarter of the water on a regular basis is essential for any tank. I used to keep a large plastic garbage can on wheels (I still have it) and an electric water pump... I'd mix the water in that after I used it to pump the old water out... when the water in the garbage can was groovy, I'd drop the pump in there and pump it back into the tank. That made things quick and easy, if you had a large tank. Damn, I'm getting antsy to get another tank!
What good is it for the filter to run at all if the charcoal is missing? Couldn't I just theoretically turn off the filter while treating the tank? And, could not removing the charcoal before I treated it the first time cause the cloudiness in the tank to be any worse?
The charcoal aids in filtration of "bad stuff". But it isn't absolutely necessary. Once you're done medicating you can put the charcoal back in. Most charcoal filtration doesn't last long anyway. Once it's done neutralizing and as it gets older, the problem becomes it may start leeching those chemicals back into the tank. Do some research on the internet about mechanical, biological, and chemical filtration. Of these 3, mechanical and biological are the most important. I hope you have more than just charcoal filtration. Yes, you could turn the filter off, but then you get no mechanical filtration and reduce your biological filtration. Nothing will get filtered - your ammonia levels will spike, which could cause your nitrite levels to spike. Both of these events could kill most fish. The lack of filtration, depending on how you have your filter set up, and what type it is, can cause a lack of oxygen exchange as well - not enough turbulence on the surface of the water. I don't know what could cause your tank to get cloudy in the case you described. Maybe it's the medication - I don't know. But... the charcoal is used to absorb and neutralize chemical "crap" floating in your tank. If it's absorbing and neutralizing your medication, it's not doing the fish much good.
I can understand that. It's one reason I now only have about 3 or 4 running around my tank. But there's so much variety within the African cichlid community, that it's enough for me. I want to get a house just so I can get a 100 gallon aquarium and build an african cichlid tank. I started with corys, algae eaters, plecos, danios, etc. - but they got boring after a while - enter those crazy african cichlids.
Damn...who knew there was so much to having fish... No wonder I could never keep a fish alive longer than a week when I was a kid...
I've got a new problem. I just saw a baby fish swimming around in the tank. I have a feeling that the mother is the molly who had been lounging around in the bottom of the tank because now whe is much more active. The problem is that the Tetra keeps trying to eat the baby. What should I do and do you think there are more than one baby? I can't even find the baby unless I see the Tetra chasing it. It is very hard to find. What should I do?
Put the babies in a holding tank. You can buy a little 2.5 or 5 gallon tank a Wal-Mart for about $15-$20 that comes with eveything you need, filter, heater, etc. That's my suggestion.
How can I do this when I can't even find the baby now? And I really don't see how a fish can only have one baby...maybe the Tetra killed the other babies...
Mollies are livebearers and livebearers as with many fish will eat their own young. Just keep an eye out and see if you see any other babies in the tank, if so get a holding tank if you want to keep the babies.
