Quick answer: Tiger barbs (Puntigrus tetrazona) are bold, orange and black striped schooling fish from Sumatra that grow to about 2.5 to 3 inches and live 5 to 7 years. They’re hardy and easy to feed, and they do best in a group of at least 6, ideally 8 to 12, in a 30 gallon tank or larger at 72 to 81 F. The thing most people get wrong is group size. Tiger barbs aren’t Read more
Quick answer: Cloudy fish tank water is usually caused by one of five things, and the color tells you which. White or milky water in a new tank is a bacterial bloom, which clears by itself in a few days to about two weeks. Gray water right after setup is dust from new gravel or sand. Green water is free-floating algae. Yellow or brown tint is tannins from driftwood or leaves, which are harmless. Cloudy Read more
Quick answer: Black beard algae (BBA) is a red algae that grows as dark, bristly tufts on leaf edges, driftwood, rocks and filter outlets. To get rid of it, cut off the worst leaves, spot treat the rest with liquid carbon or 3% hydrogen peroxide using a syringe, and then fix the real cause, which is usually CO2 that rises and falls through the day, weak or uneven flow, and old, slow-growing leaves with organic Read more
Quick answer: Bristlenose pleco care is easy once you get the diet right. These small South American catfish grow to about 4 to 5 inches (10 to 13 cm), live 10 years or more, and do well in a 20 gallon or larger tank at 72 to 80 F (22 to 27 C) with a pH of about 6.5 to 7.8. Give them a cave, a piece of driftwood and clean, well filtered water. The Read more
Quick answer: “Pleco fish” is the common name for the armored suckermouth catfish (family Loricariidae) sold as algae eaters, and the most important thing to know is that they are not one fish. Some, like the bristlenose pleco, stay around 3 to 5 inches and fit a 20 to 30 gallon tank. Others, like the common pleco and sailfin pleco, are sold at 2 inches but grow to 12 to 17 inches or more and Read more
Quick answer: A basic fish tank setup takes one afternoon: put the tank on a level stand, rinse everything with plain water, add substrate, decor and plants, install the filter and heater, fill it with dechlorinated water, and switch everything on. The part most beginners get wrong is what comes next. A new tank isn’t ready for fish until it has cycled, which means growing the bacteria that break down fish waste, and that usually Read more
Quick answer: Anubias is one of the toughest, most beginner-friendly aquarium plants there is, so hardy it is named after the Egyptian god of the dead and often called almost impossible to kill. But there is exactly one way people do kill it: burying the rhizome. Anubias grows from a thick horizontal stem called a rhizome, and if you bury that rhizome in the substrate, it rots and the plant dies. So you attach anubias Read more
Quick answer: Flame moss (Taxiphyllum sp. “Flame”) is the aquascaping moss that grows upward, in twisting, flame-like spires, instead of sprawling sideways like most mosses. That vertical, green-campfire look is why aquascapers love it, and it is an easy, low-tech plant: attach it to a rock or piece of wood, give it low to moderate light, and it needs no CO2. The two things to get right are the ones most guides skip. To keep Read more
Quick answer: Hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum) is one of the toughest, fastest-growing, and most useful plants you can add to a tank. It has no roots, so you either float it or loosely anchor it, and it thrives in almost any conditions, from tropical tanks to unheated coldwater setups and ponds. It soaks up excess nutrients, fights algae, oxygenates the water, and gives fry and shrimp a place to hide. The one thing to expect: hornwort Read more
Quick answer: The kissing gourami (Helostoma temminckii) is a large, hardy, distinctive fish famous for the lip-locking behavior that gives it its name. Here is the first thing to know: that kissing is not affection. It is a display of dominance and aggression, usually between males squaring off over territory. The second thing: these fish grow to 8 to 12 inches, so they are not the cute little community fish they look like in the Read more