Ummm... What's the problem? Your pH is stable and acceptable to any fish you might care to own, why do you want to muck with the KH? If you're worried the KH may get depleted and the pH suddenly go crashing down, add a significant amount of limestone (or coral, or seashells, or cuttlefishbone, or eg...

The reason I doubt it's a diverticulum, is that the diverticulum should be positioned in the dorsal side of the eye, as in this O. flexilis : http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/otocincl/1350_9.php and this (fright-colored) O. affinis : http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/otocinc...

To me that does not look like an iris diverticulum. Does the eye on the other side look the same?

Is that a recently bought fish? It looks a bit like fright coloration to me.

Griparn: as you're in Sweden, you have a number of alternatives to lower pH: 1) If your water is soft, then you can usepeat (from a plant nursery; make sure it's unfertilized) or, better still, alder cones ("alkottar"). One alder cone per liter is usually sufficient. There is also ready-ma...

They are multicellular and actually visible to the naked eye, if you get them on a contrasting background (i.e. not the gills), common species are 0.2 - 0.5 mm, and and some species may grow quite large. A student 'scope on low magnification should show them quite well. Here's what they'll look like...

A recent experience where a dying C. paleatus came back to life after being dumped in a brackish water tank has made me wonder about the old wisdom that Corys are sensitive to salt. That same cory is now, after three weeks at 3-4 ppt salinity, completely recovered, eating like a pig, but clearly a b...

First regarding the pictures, they're there and available, but they've changed server name from angelicus-net.com to angelicus-terraqua.com so the links points to the wrong location. So for example: http://www.angelicus-net.com/images/photos/synodontis_annectens.JPG doesn't work, but http://www.ange...

I chanced upon this french aquaristical/ichthyological resource: http://www.angelicus-terraqua.com/articles/liste.php?article_p=3 One of the articles listed is a species list of Synodontis, with data regarding distribution and picture: http://www.angelicus-terraqua.com/articles/classem_synodontis.ht...

Too bad. I'd have liked to get hold of real multimaculatus. Oh well, back to the LFS they go.

I've now managed to get some pictures, and as you can see here: http://mikes-machine.mine.nu/synodontis/DSCN8477.JPG it's not TOTALLY dissimilar to multimaculatus , but the markings are quite different. The fish is about 6-7 cm TL. The color in the photo is fairly accurate. I think this is the presu...

Thank you! You wouldn't happen to know if it's supposed to have spots on the belly? The fish in the picture looks to have a white belly, whereas the two alleged multimaculatus I've got have spotted bellies (and no white markings anywhere in the fins). They're also considerably fatter and have spots ...

Can someone point me towards a picture or description of what a S. multimaculatus looks like?

how about pond snail & ramshorns. anyone has a picture of what a MTS looks like? Pond snails are a diverse lot. Some wont touch anything but decaying vegetable matter, some are said tol eat pretty much anything, including fish eggs and aquarium plants. This is the only one I've had, and it seem...

Depending on what species of snail, it may also eat fish eggs. Malaysian Tower Snails definitely and Apple Snails probably will eat fish eggs; especially the nocturnal MTS is a serious threat to cave-spawning fish.

Not sure the minds are neither great nor sinister... When dams are built in the tropics, things go extinct, and the choice between a few commercially unimportant fishes, frogs, etc and a large dam generating millions of dollars in revenue and providing energy to the community is an easy one for most...

I too would guess that they're two different species of oto, and that whatever species they are is probably close to O. macrospilus and mariae. And that they're definitely not affinis. However, I'm by no means an expert on the group, but based on my experience with identifying Otocinclus vittatus an...

While we're on it, anyone else heard the rumor these fish may go on CITES protected list in the fall? Probably just aquatic myth? Yeah, it was it was up just a while ago here. I've from a very safe source that CITES have no plans at present to list the zebra plec, but may consider it in the future....

Ideas on what would have given him ascites? I thought that was just a sign of organ failure (as in kidney or liver), not a sign of infection? I take it that 'ascites' in this context is the same as 'dropsy'? Ie body swelling due to accumulation of fluid in the body cavity? It seems quite a few infe...

It's weird that bullet-proof fish such as ancistrus die when minute sensitive fish such as those Badis survive. That means it is unlikely to be due to a generalized poison such as copper or ammonia. The one thing I can think of, barring exotic pathogens, which might kill freshly introduced fish very...

I have full SUN java installed, but have disabled java for security reasons. Javascript is running though.

IMHO it might still be a good idea to change the navigational structure.

I just noticed that the buttons at the top of the L & LDA number resource page does not work with Mozilla Firefox, only with Microsoft Internet Explorer, so with Firefox there's no way to get to the next page. Perhaps the button bar could be replaced (or complemented) with normal clickable links...

Can't help you with the corral, but if all you want to do is hatch Artemia and feed the nauplii to your fish, you might find this interesting:

http://mikes-machine.mine.nu/EasyArtemia.htm

IMHO this method is much easier and much better, in every way, than using aerated bottles.

I'm no good at ID'ng plecos, but I'm curious - why is it obviously not a clown pleco (Panaque maccus)?

It could also be that they're breeding. Presumably your tetras were kept in tapwater at the LFS, and presumably you have soft, acidic water in your tank - if so your tetras probably think the rainy season is here. Tetras are often triggered to spawn when they are moved to a new aquarium, and many te...

ClayT101 wrote:

Felix wrote: Its really nice to hear them squak about, even though they are foreign.

Well, that particular species is alien, but there was once a vaguely similar parakeet in that neck of the woods, the carolina parakeet, hunted to extinction in the early 1900's:
http://www.georgehoward.net/parakeet.htm

Also consider apple snails. They're, IMO, as efficient and safe as otos, and require less space.

I thought this might interest people: http://www.ifga.org/articles/feeding6.htm One must of course allow for guppies being small omnivores, and for the fact that many popular foods are missing from the study, but still the results are interesting, no? Part of the result is common-sensical (e.g. a va...

S. Allen wrote: http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpFactSh ... ciesID=478 is a good example of one of the more bizarre location/species pairings.

LOL!
Sounds like that swine farmer could make a nice penny on the side selling wild-caught discus!

Hi Some of my cories are presently flicking in the sand rather a lot - no rapid gill movement(yet) , no sign of gill flukes (no microscope though). I've just lost 14 fish (Tetras, a Ram and 2 Cories) - I believed that the Tetras had Ich, but the Ram and Cories showed no sign of disease - they just ...

Not entirely true: http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpFactSheet.asp?speciesID=767 http://nis.gsmfc.org/nis_factsheet.php?toc_id=191 And, if you read nothing else, read this: http://www.wes.army.mil/el/ansrp/pdfs/ansrp-v04-1.pdf As an aside I'd expect several common aquarium species to be capable of su...