Faran

LOVE my portable heat pump I use it to heat the fish room 8 or 9 months out of the year, and it gets rolled into the house during the hottest months to keep us cool. Hopefully your problems are solved with the little beasty, just remember not to sit in the draft or you're gonna get ill!

Aww, you're not a bad fishkeeper! It's just a year of good luck catching up with you. I had something similar happen around the time I hit 1 year back in the hobby. Walked into the fish room and found an entire aquarium (hundreds of fish and red ramshorn snails) all dead. I was nearly in tears as I spent the next few hours fishing out bodies. Turned out the new CO2 system had gone haywire and emptied an entire 3.5kg cylinder into the aquarium overnight dropping the pH to some crazy low number that none of my pH test kits could register. These things happen, keep your chin up hun!

Lemme guess, it was in a light tank with a light or no background previously and now it's in a dark background planted tank? If so it's just the discus' natural tendency to blend with surroundings.

Peppering is common for the orange strains, the less freckles the higher the grade. Usually blamed on cross breeding but I've had a fair few even with pure strains and non-peppered parents. I see is as nature, kinda like the freckles on my face.

Nice to see someone selling these for a reasonable price (finally) on TradeMe. I still reckon the price is still very high so therefore your market is limited to a small percentile, but with time the prices will drop and they'll become mainstream. Gorgeous frogs, congrats.

The dates are a little off but Grabaseat has WGTN -Blenheim tickets for $29 each way. Dates of travel are 4-17 June which means it's a couple of days later but hey, a couple days extra on the South Island is always welcome. It should be noted that the interislander special is $190 each way and I'm willing to do it with my wagon if others want to carpool and share the fare.

Good looking out, but the dates of travel are 14-20 April

From reviews online all the NLS stuff is top qual. As for price, I couldn't import it cheaper so yeah, good price but the growth formula is pricier than the rest. I'm ordering 3kgs of food from that guy.

New Life Spectrum Discus Formula has just hit the market (on TradeMe, at least). I'm just running out of Colourbits and stocking up on it asap.

Yup, happy to send over a sample for you to try out. PM me. While looking that up I also confirmed storing in a cool, dry place. This type anyways.

I've been using decap - Decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs - for a couple months now and I learned just through experience that filling a 1/2 teaspoon scoop with water and using it to pick up some decap lets it rehydrate and sink for fry (it was floating and getting wasted when fed direct) but today a friend recommended letting it soak for 20 minutes before feeding. Went to the manufacturers site and it reads which I never learned before as I didn't get instructions with mine, just an unmarked plastic bag. So I wanted to ask the other decap users how long they let it soak and how do you do it? Another question, how do you store it? I've just been keeping it dry and cool but others recommend refrigeration... if it's technically dead what's the point?

I have to ask - did you quarantine your fish before adding them to the tank? My Suggestion I've been through similar situations with unexplainable fish loss and if it's not the cycling then you have a bacterial infection. Treat with a strong antibacterial like Furan 2 and start cycling your tank again from scratch.

Bit of a catch 22, I'm afraid. Carbon filtration will remove the stain the fastest but I have a suggestion - do 10% daily water changes and pre-treat the water you're adding to the tank with the tonic. That way you'll stay on top of any waste issues and keep your fish as happy and healthy as possible. Might as well gravel vac with the water changes as the ich cysts need to be picked up anyways. Do you have any other (healthy) aquariums running? Use the filter media from another aquarium to seed your filter for an instant cycle once the treatment is over. I have to say that I don't think wunder tonic would be strong enough to wipe out all the bacteria in your filter

Aww thanks FineArtist, if you want to have a go at taking some pics of my fish I'd love some by a pro. The axie eggs are a bit distorted due to curving in the sides of the plastic container they're in, but go for it! ...but losing the ability to metamorphosize kinda takes them out of the amphibian class and back to fish :lol: Water is lightly treated with Methylene Blue to prevent fungus growth so duds won't be too obvious from that alone. I can definitely see a difference between some which are still fully spherical and others that have compressed vertically (half moon from the side) which would indicate proper embryo development according to the photo series. Funny thing is, I'm still not sure if the one I think is a male is actually a male. Hardly any difference in the cloaca between the 4. They bred in a bare bottom plastic container which I now read is pretty hard to do as the spermataphores don't attach properly. Pretty sure I can see some rolling around the container now looking like massive eggs but curious how they managed to spawn... Either way I'm happy to have eggs surprisingly soon. Crossing my fingers hoping for a good fert and hatch rate as there's only about 40 eggs max. On the bright side, the daphnia are booming - right in time! Gonna start with the daphnia (trying to feed out of my cultures rather than collect from the wild), then on to chopped frozen bloodworms to full bloodworms then on to progressively larger bits of beef heart. Worked well for my previous batches but if you have better advice, I'm keen! Oh, I always managed to kill off my white worms. Might have better luck now as I have a cool place for them - always too warm in my previous fish rooms but now I'm setting up a "cold water section" - but no goldies...

With the spray bar on the back wall you'll end up with a high flow area on the left and a low flow area on the right. This can be quite useful when spawning tetras as they like jumping in between but can cause areas of low filtration on the right side when you have more decorations/plants. For a second there I thought your tank was looking like the background. Made me sit up until I realized it's a picture

Yup, bloodworm or whiteworms (better) will get it past some rough times. Good on ya for giving it a tank to itself but 30cm tall isn't quite enough for a 15cm fish. It's weak and/or ill and you need to identify the problem. The most common problem is commonly called "Hole in the Head" which starts as darkening and inability to eat and it advances to lesions on the lateral lines that look like pimples but fall off to leave holes. Treatment with Metronidazole as per this site once you've identified it, always works for me. Whatever you do, treat it as soon as possible and get it back into condition as quick as you can with lots of food once it starts eating and clean up leftover food and poos from the bottom of the tank before and after feedings. You'll have to keep an eye on the other two discus and see if they are getting along. If one starts getting picked on by the other then you need to get your numbers up to 6 to spread the agression. If they're getting along then you might have a pair and your tank should be large enough to re-introduce the third wheel without much fuss once it's re-conditioned.

Actually, it doesn't say koura on the listing, only "freshwater crayfish". Glad it's just natives rather than some nong trying to sell something smuggled in!

Hi all, I've been keeping (and breeding) axies for over a year now and I absolutely love them. In the middle of last year I got some golden juveniles from a seller in Tauranga and they've just spawned for the first time on Friday/Saturday for me. Pretty exciting and intersting as it's so hard to determine if this batch is good to go or a bunch of duds. From what I can tell on the Albino Embryo Photo Log they're developing properly but it's still hard to tell if the eggs are... cytolysing or neurulating (got that from the photo series). Macro on my camera is too bad to get a quality shot, bummer.

Amazing Thomas, looks even better in person! The blue bulb reflects off the white bands and really sets off the Fronts like you said it would. I say go for Anubias as the flow from your filter will make Val go to the left and you'll lose the clean lines of the tank. With the amount of light you have it'll be happy, and suck up nutrients that would otherwise help algae grow too. I reckon Bolbitis might be happy in there as well and it's really tough so not many fish mess with it. Congrats on a stunner of a tank, mate. Well done.

Times like these make me wish that the microchips also worked like a LOJAC which could be turned on to locate the critter. I've been dwelling on this ever since we chipped our purebred cats and it dawned on me that it would be nice if someone was trying to find the owner but makes no difference at all if stolen... obviously a thief will avoid anyone scanning a stolen pet. I'd keep an eye on TradeMe and let your local authorities and vets know.

I'd have to assume that Wunder Tonic is just an anti-fungal then. Furan 2 will take care of the fungus and the initial bacterial infection as well. Keep in minf that adding Furan 2 will kill ALL bacteria in the tank and filter, so that lovely bag of filter bacteria I gave you will be dead and you'll have to re-seed the tank, so treat in another container like I advised. Melafix has antibiotic and antifungal properties but only a very mild result so if you really want to save your fish go with Furan 2. As Ryan mentioned direct application of Meth Blue - or Wunder Tonic - to the fungus will achieve the best result. This means catching the fish and literally applying it directly using drops or a cotton swab. Remember that you'll still have that initial bacterial infection to deal with though! Happy to help, see you around and say hi to Jaz for me!

Hi Jo, Blue here. Glad you made it to the forums I was helping you with your little sick tetra. Odd white spots on the sides indicating a bacterial infection of a wound as can be seen in your pic here (i've taken the libery of photoshopping the contrast and size) This has now developed into a secondary fungal infection which looks like fluffy cotton. I've advised treating with Furan 2 to get rid of the fungal and bacterial infection. With that added info someone will hopefully be able to advise whether or not Wunder Tonic will do the same thing. I'm not familiar with it so can't advise. Good luck!

Corys can't be trained as janitors.

Yup, Chinese Algae Eaters are extremely territorial. Knew someone that had a pair in a 460L tank and was told they spawned in a tree trunk but I never saw it. Point being that they can coexist if the aquarium is large enough and/or they are opposite sexes but most times one kills the other.

Pretty much. It's the fibre that keeps things moving in the gut, a lot like roughage for us. If you really don't wanna put wood in the tank just feed pleco chips that have wood in them like JBL Pleco Chips. HTH P.S. - Ancistrus is correct