Getting rid of Cloudy water in your aquarium

There are a couple of reasons. Let me go through the most frequent causes

1. Bacterial bloom. The foremost reason for cloudy tank water. This happens in almost all beginners tanks that are not cycled properly or not cycled at all. I'm not going to go into the specifics of the exact process of the water clouding . Lets just say the bacteria that causes milkiness grows very fast in uncycled tanks. In some occasions even old tanks get their water clouded up.
2. Excessive feeding, which in turn causes the water to foul up, thereby leading to bacterial bloom again.
3. Over-cleaning tanks, this leads to destruction of the good biological bacteria colonies and and subsequently cloudy water
4. Driftwood, bog-wood, substrate leaching material into the water
5. New substrate that hasn't been washed well enough

Methods to get rid of cloudy aquarium water

1. water changes all the way.
2. Overfeeding causes water to cloud up. You could try reducing the amount of food you feed the fish
3. Remove any new driftwood/bog-wood you introduced into the tank and perform a water change and check (50% water change should be fine)
4. Turbid water from the Tap (check your source of water i e well, municipal etc)

How can I get rid of aquarium snail infestations?

There are a number of methods to control snail infestations.

The Cabbage/Lettuce trap.

       You will need to blanch a piece of cabbage or lettuce and then sink it in your tank overnight. The next morning you can just pick off the snails from the piece of cabbage and repeat the process with fresh lettuce till the numbers come down. This methods is effective against all snails but not against snail eggs. So once you have picked out the adults out , it will be just a matter of time before the eggs hatch out

Loaches

A very good option, if the infestation is in a large tank, but is impractical for smaller tanks, such as nano tanks or planted tanks as loaches have a tendency to dig a little.

Assassin Snails

This in my opinion is the best method for getting rid of snail infestations. Assassin Snails devour the pest snails as a whole, shell and everything, so you won't find a ton of empty snail shells on your substrate. They eat everything, Snails, Snail eggs, hunt them down and eat then away. In my opinion they are the best way to get rid of your snail infestation. And mind you, you needn't get rid of them once they are done with the snails, the assassins will continue grazing on the stray algae, bits of food that may have been left behind, substrate debris and just about anything they can eat. 

Medication

I really wouldn't suggest this method as the medication may kill all invertebrates in the tank and you will have to manually find them and remove them from the water in order to ensure that the water doesn't go bad.

Here are a few steps you might want to take to ensure you wont get the snail problems again in the future.

1. Boil all rocks and driftwood before adding to the tank.
2. Give all live plants a 10% potassium permanganate dip for about 5 seconds. Do not dip the roots in the permanganate solution, just the Stems and leaves.
3. Check the plant leaves for snail eggs(usually small glassy bumps ie in case of the small pest black snails that hitch hike on plants)

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Clinton-Neil

Breeding Opaline Gouramis

**Disclaimer: This is a purely personal experience of breeding gouramis and in no ways should be taken as canon**


My Opaline Gourami Breeding project.


Step 1: Buying the fish.
I bought a pair of healthy opaline gouramis from Jackson Aquarists on the 13th of  September 2014.
A main sub step I would like to add is the identification of the male and the female gouramis.
                                       
    i. The male has a pointed dorsal fin    
          
                                                  Image 1
 ii. The female has a more rounded dorsal fin.
                                  Image 2
I introduced both fish into my main display tank for a good 3 months before I decided to breed them. This helps to rest them well, including the quarantine period, checking for any defects in the fish, treating for general illnesses etc. The rest period is particularly necessary since the fish will be pretty stressed out, a result of its journey from the breeder to your local aquarium shop to your aquarium.


Step 2: Conditioning the fish
For conditioning the fish, the following can be used
1. Freeze dried tubifex
2. Freeze dried blood worms
3. High protein fish food
4. Live foods like mosquito larvae, earthworms, live tubifex and live blood worms and maggots.

Care should be taken to ensure that these foods are all eaten as they can pollute the water pretty quickly.

Image 3: Freeze dried bloodworms.


Step 3: Setting up the breeding tank.
I used a shallow tank 4 inches deep, 15X10 inches wide. I introduced the male gourami first and the female a day later. The tank had no filters and no water movement, so daily water changes were a must. Float half a Styrofoam cup or a piece of Styrofoam. In a day or two the male will start building the bubble nest around the piece of Styrofoam. Once the bubble nest is built, the male will try to mate with the female, so watch the bubble nest carefully. Be careful while performing water changes. You don't want to damage the bubble nest in any way.
Step 4: Wait for the spawning
In 2 weeks, my gouramis had spawned. Gouramis are anabantids. That means in addition to using their gills they can also gulp down air from the atmosphere. Another notable feature of gouramis is building bubble nests, like the Betta. That is our marker for a successful spawn. The moment you see tiny fry as shown below, stop making water changes.
Below you will find my 1 day old fry.

Image 4:

Once you see the fry, remove the female. Otherwise the male will harass the female and possibly kill even. The male will pick up the fry that fall off from the bubble nest and put them back in. Keep the male in the breeding tank for a couple more days till the fry are free swimming. Since the male does not eat during the time between spawn and the free swimming fry, it may try and eat some fry. Once the fry are free swimming remove the male.

A not so long ago story

This is the story of how I got into keeping aquariums.

Ever since I was a kid I was intrigued by aquatic life. I was used to trapping fish in roadside puddles that were connected to the rivers and keeping them at home until they usually died a few days later. I had no clue what I was doing and being young it didn't occur to me to study and find out what I was doing wrong.

Fast forward ten years later, My dad randomly gets a 4 litre fishbowl and gets two goldfish just for fun.I am 20 years old now and I decide let me do this right. I go online and study as much as I can about goldfish keeping. I quickly find out I am not keeping them right and I don't have a filter for them. So I started doing 100% water changes daily so that my fish does not get ammonia poisoning.

A week later I am shopping with a friend. I am supposed to stall him as we had a surprise for him at the local restaurant so I suggested we check out the local aquarist, just for fun you see. And what happens next was like a total blur. I see all these fish and I totally fall in love with fishkeeping. For courtesy sake I asked the aquarist how much a two feet tank costs and found out it is really inexpensive. Next thing I know I am buying a tank, a filter and everything else i need to set up my first real aquarium.

I will keep out of the nitrogen cycle and stuff, but here are the specifics of my first tank.

Tank: 80 liters (20) gallons
Dimensions: 24X12X18 (inches)
Filter: Internal power filter 300 liters/hour (8 watt, Boyu)
Livestock: 2 Goldfish
                  2 black marbled Angelfish
                  2 Black moors
                  1 plecostomus(Sucker fish)
Substrate: Marble chips
Lighting: 20W CFL lights



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