Faran

Update - Free Swimming Day 20 No more losses now that all the remaining fry understand what food is and that you need to eat it to survive I'm going to skip the "approaching 1cm" in this update and just say that there's biguns and little uns. Most are an average size but there's a couple that hang out in the back which are quite a bit bigger than the rest. And a bonus shot of one of the biguns in the back...

You mean where the rotating bits come out of the top of the filter? The parts that come attached and don't detach? Funny, I had the same prob with a CF1200 I had for a few weeks. I just switched the hoses around and it fixed it. No idea why, but I tested it over and over and when the hoses were attached to the taps one way it'd leak and not the other... Try switching the hoses around. I suppose te new filter isn't a secret now that you're running around with towels and buckets, aye?

NONONONONO!!!!! The AR980 is definitely glass, not acrylic. Don't hit it with sandpaper of any kind!

If the water seems pretty clear but has specks you might want to get some under a microscope to see what's going on. Most likely it's "green water" which is actually a type of algae and doesn't turn the water GREEN, but can be seen with the naked eye, like you're describing. Daphnia can be found on TradeMe, but I feel that your fish will make a meal out of them before they have any significant effect on the tank... pet shops often have breeding nets that are used for separating fry from adults. That might do the trick.

Update - Free Swimming Day 15 Fry are approcahing 1cm already and patterns have changed to more of a camouflage. Had quite a few die off for the regular reasons - sensitivity to ammonia and sensitivity to water changes. I keep on telling myself "survival of the fittest" but pretty depressing anyways. Here's a couple pics of the fry today. Sorry for any bluriness, but the patterns on the fry seem to give the camera issues with focusing :-?

I'd love to share my planted tank but it's been made a mess of by a load of fancy plecs I had to house there when I broke down a tank. Ah well, I'll shift them to breeding tanks in the new fishroom and rebuild a nice planted tank when it's upgraded (from 460L to 800L+). This WAS my planted tank 6 months ago, before the plant munchers moved in...

Suckermouth Catfish Common Bristlenose Catfish (L???) - Heaps breeding no pic, sorry! Gold Nugget Pleco (L018/L085) - 1x 10cm juvenile Gold Cloud Pleco (L048) - 1x 7cm juvenile Snowball Pleco (L102) - 1x 16cm adult (F) Clown Pleco (L104) - 4x 6cm juveniles Golden Blackeyed Ancistrus (L144) - keeping and breeding - quite a few (M) & (F) breeding Butterfly Pleco/Flounder Pleco (L168) - 2 males, juvenile and adult (pictured) Starlight Bristlenose (L182) - 1x 15cm (M), 1x 15cm (F) breeding Royal Pleco (L190) - keeping with dreams of breeding someday. 1x 16cm (F?) and 1x 11cm (M?) Flash Pleco (L204) - 3x 10cm young adults Gold Marbled/Matto Grosso Bristlenose (LDA08) - 1x 6cm adult (M), 3x 6cm adult (F), 10 little babies Corydoras Golden Leopard Corys - Heaps - keeping and breeding Adolfo's Cory - 3 - keeping no pic, sorry! Panda Corys - 10 - keeping and soon to breed Skunk Corys - Just the one no pic, sorry! Bronze Corys - half a dozen no pic, sorry! Whiptails Banded or Common Whiptails - Breeding Pair

At least I nailed the genus I'd love a smaller version of the L102 snowball, but rather tired of carnivorous plecs and territorial ones to boot... You have L066 as well? Wicked, best luck breeding them!

Holy cow! Those beauts are gorgeous! What are they? Body and head shape are very similar to my adult L102 but the spots are too small. I want some, can I get some? puh-leeeaasseeee? BTW, I've spent some time trying to get decent pics of plecs for this thread, will post them eventually!

LOL, people don't just say 'thank you' very often so let me reciprocate by saying you're welcome on behalf of everyone here

You're going to have some serious problems replacing the 25W bulb at a electrical shop. I ended up ordering a $20 10000k Boyu one in through a local pet shop as it seemed to be the only way to get them - aside from ordering them in from overseas and waiting 8 weeks. I found them later on at Animates, but carrying a price tag of over $25 and I believe they were Arcadia, with a nice range of spectrums available. As for the other bulb - Philips TL-D 30W/865 - commonly available at electrical wholesalers with a price from $8-12 each. AR980 filter. It'll slow down with age, but not enough to be quiet. You can let the filter intake get clogged and that slows it down to a trickle, but the powerhead will start buzzing if it's too blocked up. Hope all that helps rather than confuses!

Ours are hardly kittens anymore. They just had their 3rd Birthdays last week (bro and sis from the same litter) and Gizmo is over 6kgs and Lexi is near 5kgs. Gizmo - Seal Bi-Colour Ragdoll - 2nd place lower North Island Champion 2005, 4th overall in NZ Lexie - Sealpoint Ragdoll - Doesn't really have the temperment for cat shows

Feel free to buy expensive LFS bulbs with pretty pictures on the box, but the bulbs at any electrical shop are the exact same things, just a simpler label. On that same note you won't find any 25W 2.5ft bulbs ANYWHERE aside from a pet shop, and they'll be the Boyu 10000k ones for at least $17 each. If you come across some cheap 6500k 2.5ft bulbs please let me know. I'll buy half a box.

After some long discussions and making arrangements I've managed to score a healthy selection of CO2 gear and some tasty prices. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/co2-eq ... 18364.html You'll notice a similar DAZs bubble counter, but the newer model has coils inside. The Gamba XII diffuser looks exactly like discusgurus, tho. K, I'm exhausted after all that formatting. Night all!

If the heater has an internal thermostat, then the rising warm water will fool the heater into thinking the tank is actually warmer than it is. Best to put it at an angle or horizontal for geater accuracy (IMO). Then again, 50% of heaterstats out there aren't accurate anyways, so what's the point? :lol:

Hey bud, this is just a guess but take a look at Heteranthera zosterifolia (Indian Star Grass) and compare some pics to see if it's the same... http://images.google.co.nz/images?q=Het ... a=N&tab=wi or perhaps Heteranthera dubia - http://images.google.co.nz/images?q=Het ... a=N&tab=wi Here's a question, why's H. zosterifolia called Indian Star Grass if it's from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil?

They've been on the wholesalers lists and mentioned on here (as above). Cool fish, but pretty hard to breed in captivity as you need a "super special setup" for them... I have an Amazon fish vid that shows them breeding. Pretty wicked!

Sorry you lost her! A local bred some GAEs in his 600L tank behind some driftwood. Babies were eaten by the royal clown knives, but it definitely happened.

LOL, good luck mate. We're all rootin for ya The only reason I'm even thinking of giving breeding them a go is because the thought of a hundred of these wee fellas in a big planted tank would be breathtaking....

Yeah, I feel stink when I think about the fact that I'm going to have to shift all these plants soon and lose quite a bit of growth and "maturity". All these random tanks will soon be replaced for some proper plumbed and designed tanks for discus breeding. O course, some will naturally be used for plants, tho! Evil - Cryptocoryne Balansae - http://www.tropica.dk/productcard_1.asp?id=125

Echinodirus Quadricostatus - http://www.tropica.dk/productcard_1.asp?id=068

Yup, if you have messy fish (or discus) an external is recommended. Never too much filtration, as Afrikan mentioned Here's a pic I just took of my AR980 in its current role as a plant, guppy and bristlenose propogation tank. No ferts, no CO2, no extra filtration.... just a basic AR980 with a sponge filter on the intake to prevent losing young fry. This is the same tank over 18 months ago as my living room display tank. At this time I was running an external Fluval 204 with ferts and CO2. The hood filter was left clogged up and running just a trickle as it was too loud.

Ah, I have a pair that does the same thing. They only spawn successfully in green water, and eat the eggs and wrigglers pretty quickly when the water is clear. I blame it on nerves. Best way to fix green water is one of those $79 internal UV jobbies that just about every pet shop carries these days. Pop it in your tank, use it for a couple days til the water clears, then put it away. Bulbs last 6 months of continuous use, so if you do this right you can stretch that over a couple of years. best of luck with the new batch, mate!

Okay, a lot of topics to cover. Your wet dry filter does up to 1200lph which is the entire tank 6 times per hour, so a canister filter isn't necessary. Wild discus are sensitive creatures that require huge amounts of filtration, but captive bred discus can be very hardy in comparison. Whatever filter you get, make sure that both hoses will fit through the rather small hole at the back of the AR980 (used for power cords for the powerhead for the hood filter) or you'll need to cut and I'd avoid that if possible. To finish this up, I've been running an AR980 for over a year with only the wet dry filter and haven't had any problems at all (aside from the intake getting clogged at times). Heaps of breedings, lots of happy fish and plants. The output can stir things up, but use that spot for a chunk of driftwood and problem solved. Happy to help, best of luck with your new setup.

In other words, it'll kill green water but do nothing for algae on surfaces.