Pet Forum / Aquaria / Freshwater / December 2005

They say a picture is worth 1000 words... Here is a picture of what comes
out of my aqua-mini filter's sponge.
       https://home.comcast.net/~lamikam/fish/a1.jpg
I cleaned my cloudy tank today again.  So, how does one get rid of this

I have an aquaclear 20-30 in a 20 gallon tank. How often should I change out
the filter and sponge?

We recently picked up a crayfish at a local pet shop, and we're curious
about what species it might be.  The pet store owner didn't know, but
said that it came from a goldfish breeding pond in Arkansas.  The top
of the carapace is grey-greenish.  The lighter parts of the carapace,

Please see previous post:  http://tinyurl.com/9h9ga
OK, here is what I have done since I got many helpful responses.  I got a
power head for the UGF and have been changing/vacuming
once a week.  I also reduced the # hours that my tank light is on.  I also

Would anyone care to give an opinion on my sick tetra with a swollen body
photo at
http://groups.msn.com/ArthurSuggittsphotos/shoebox.msnw
she seems to ok eating well but perhaps due to her shape is bobbing whilst

I'm currently having a problem with phosphates, they read at 2.0 mg/l
using a sera PO4 test kit.
I'm am trying find out more about phoshates where do they come from
eg. tap water, food, drift wood ?? etc and how

I know I have preached about the vortex xl in the past but because of todays
experience I had with mine I am planning on sending mine to storage.
Everything was going fine when I was going to use it to fix what I think is
a reduced overeating problem. But after I turned it on the ...

   Lately I have been having a great deal of trouble with algae in my tank.
Green algae will develop after a thorough cleaning within a few days - along
the gravel initially, and then all over the glass. I have a 4 foot tank. I
have 4 golden loaches in the tank and a plec, who ...

I've been reading through some of the postings at this group and at
afew aquarium sites and just joined, any advice even though my new tank
is small would be appreciated.  Perhaps later on I'll get a larger
tank...

I have a pair of albino corys that just started to lay eggs. I have
read about how to raise the fry, but none of my eggs have ever hatched.
I have done a variety of things to help them along, such as putting the
eggs in a small plastic breeding area inside the tank, and arranging

I got my potable water hoses (100 feet divided by 2 = 2 50 foot hoses) which
are high quality and now I feel comfortable filling my tanks back up to top
them off - no more eyeballing the previous hose which was vinyl (I love
vinyl but it just wasn't heavy duty enough) and worrying ...

i was out of town for a week, and had a non-fish friend taking care of
the feeding...
when i got home, both my green severum and my jelly bean cichlid had
these TERRIBLE-looking white wounds on their foreheads...  it's almost

I've never had trouble with hydra before.  So where do they first crop
up?  In my 2.5g shrimp tank, with a female holding eggs!  *mutter*  They
must have come in on some plants I grabbed from outside.
I'd prefer not to move the shrimp.  They're red cherry shrimp and very

I've tried several variations of the manual vac & pump/filter in an
interest to clean my tank a little more thorough. The best
configuration (so far) uses a whole house 30 micron filter insert
fitted to the input of a return pump in a 10gal plastic tote. The idea

I don't know if the original person still needs this or not, but it's
good info for anyone with baby fish to know. By removing the outer
shell of shrimp eggs, you can feed it directly to fry without having to
hatch it! That's the cool part...especially when you find yourself with