Faran

Ira got that right on the nose. Remember to have a diameter that can handle the water flow from the filter. You can also do this a bit more permanently by using PVC and definitely putting mesh over the ends of the bridge/overflow to prevent fish from traveling from one tank to the other (could be disastrous with fry involved). You can even get serious and add UV filtration in between to prevent disease transmission.

Kills Riccia as well. Another solution for BBA is Flying Foxes/Siamese Algae Eaters. I just got some plants and ornaments covered with the stuff and they've worked about half of it off in the last week.

Best formula for getting CO2 - 1) Sell the Nutrafin systems on TradeMe. 2) Get a pressurized system. If you seriously want to keep using the mixture it's sugar yeast and water.

As I'm a bit of a neanderthal you'd probably find me with a knife and a coat hanger with a wood handle sitting next to a fire barrel to shape the poly. While I admire the ingenuity of it all, it's a lot of work for a one-time project. Anyone know if those little carbon face masks are enough to protect the lungs from poly fumes? That stuff stinks like nothing else. The neighbours sometimes chuck in poly and plastic when burning wood. Ugh.

My little pond is about 1/20th the size of that one and took a week to slap together (with only a plastic liner - no concrete) so you still have a few months to get it right on that schedule

The turkey thing looks like a nipple once it's popped. Works on the prinicple of the internal pressure of the cooked turkey or something. My female betta can be in another room and still pop the egg tube, doesn't have to be anywhere near the male.

I'm probably going to get a once over for saying this but books are an outdated form of ingormation for fish keepers. Had this discussion at the LFS the other day when I noticed all the books were on a 50% off clearance. I mean ALL of them. The shop owner simply stated that no one needs or buys books anymore due to the internet. I've used Dr Axelrods and find the information sparce and lacking many species of fish. For the record, many people still use the Axelrod atlas as a common reference. I'd probably go with Baensch if I were to make the decision again. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/388244 ... oding=UTF8

Keep an eye on her egg tube. When it pops out she's ready to go... like a turkey indicator! I hope this didn't just give me away as a yank and you have the same same things here - you stick it in the turkey/chicken and it pops out when it's cooked...

Which proves that shipping fish is far from idiot-proof and you can suffer losses no matter how much planning ahead you do. Always make sure that the person on the other end understands that there is a high risk involved so they don't come after you when the package spends an extra night on the way or even gets lost entirely...

Well, I was out most of the day yesterday at Uni and mid-terms, etc. so didn't get a chance to check on them or take pictures. I did see that everything looked good during the morning and evening meth rinse (just a drop in the incubator to cleanse them) but didn't get a chance to take any pictures. Went in this morning to find them hatching Here's a pic of them fully developed in the egg and some had already busted out - Empty eggs after being removed and discarded - Half the breeding trap - Full breeding trap - With a 100% hatch rate my best count was 70(ish) wrigglers while waiting for the last two to break free. Really wish I could capture in pictures the detail that a magnifying glass shows of the underdeveloped eyes, beating heart and blood vessels. So that's it - a how-to on how to raise those BN/GBA eggs artificially. Container with good flow of fresh water, an airstone and meth blue. You can always use a floating ice cream container with water changes but a breeding trap woeks just as well. Good luck!

Lived in Palau for a year back in '91-92 and snorkled and dove every day. What a spoiled kid, huh? Looking forward to seeing it again.

That Prime stuff uses complexed hydro-sulfite salts and smells like Rotovegas. Suppose it's so expensive cuz it uses something different? $40 for a 250ml bottle hurts the wallet, yo!

Sorry, that wasn't supposed to sound snide. Just trying to prevent misleading information here. Eggs need an airstone, wrigglers do not.

We came to an understanding about the shipping prices and the charges they hit me with. I learned that my boxes were too big and they learned my new address and that I pay my bills once the initial shock is over

Measure your poly box and figure out the volume. 5kg is a maximum scale weight but the volume of the container needs to be less than quarter of a cubic meter... A lot like figuring out the volume of a fish tank.

Just gotta watch that volumetric weight thing. You need to measure length, height and width and multiply to get under 0.025m3. For example - 40cm x 20cm x 15cm = 0.4 * 0.2 * 0.15 = 0.012m3 which is only half of the max size. I get big boxes and cut them in half these days.

Ah, I call that a wriggler. Eggs need much more water flow as they can't move themselves to supply oxygen. Dosed the container with meth blue and watched for a little while. Can actually see the little red lines moving as the developing embryos move. Very cool.

Paul - You've raised eggs artificially? I thought your experience was limited to wrigglers. As far as the removal of the previous days waste I pass on that in lieu of adding snails to the grow-out container to eat excess food and a healthy clump of java moss to soak up nitrates. This thread is more about the care of eggs than wrigglers, though. Caryl - completely agree, but think water flow is a little more important than air flow LL - thanks hun, I take these pics for my personal records but always happy to share a couple.

I only trust NZ Couriers with my babies.

Hey Thomas, Not sure if I've mentioned this but I have a rock background here made of poly and concrete that you can examine for ideas. It was made with individual "rocks" and then siliconed together and 'creted. The concrete gives it just enough weight to defeat the bouyant properties of poly.

So many times in the past have I heard the sage advice to place BN eggs in a container with an airstone that it only made sense to try it out after some dismal fatherly attempts by my GBAs. Eggs were laid, wrigglers hatched and dads... well, let's just say they were deadbeats. My first clutch had at least 30 wrigglers and a few days later I saw dad on the other side of the tank cruising around showing off to the other GBAs. To my dismay I saw a guppy in the cave and it looked like he was having lunch! I quickly jumped in and saved the remaining 4 GBA wrigglers and found a 5th a few days later behind a filter. Now when I saved the first 4 I placed them in a net breeding trap with pleco chips ready at hand. The size difference between the captive raised quartet and the wild brother was pretty phenominal for only a few days difference. The second clutch went much the same as the first and I ended up saving 9 wrigglers which soon became 8 as one had a white yolk sac and I never expected it to make it. They're about a month old now. This latest spawn I was ready for. I gave the male about a day to fertilize them and get comfy and then yanked the eggs. Was a bit surprised as I was told numerous times that GBA eggs aren't sticky.... wrong. I ended up popping a few removing them from the cave but hey, if I get even a 50% survival rate I'll be a happy camper. So I popped them in one of those plastic floating breeding traps with an airstone secured next to them. I put a drop of meth blue in the container once a day for a quick anti-fungal wash as I couldn't even remove the popped eggs from the sticky clutch and don't want them fouling the whole group. So here's pics from day 2. You can actually see the development of the spinal column and eyes with the aid of colour enhancement. Without flash - With flash - I believe that the opalescent eggs create a reflection that makes the contents of the eggs harder to see -

Landscaping a divider tank is easy. You get wood that sits up in the middle of the tank and looks good from both sides. Stumps on a side do well for this look. Otherwise you do a volcano design where everything is tallest in the middle and gets shorter as it approaches the sides of the tank.

Think of them as free food and fast the tank for a couple days at a time. You will soon see the fish in the tank hunting and eating them as they poke their 'heads' out of the gravel.

Mercury, which expands and contracts with the temperature and pushes the alcohol up and down the tube. Those little silver balls are poisonous, btw. Really cool to play with though.... they break and combine like the quicksilver Terminator.

Whenever you disturb gravel that has been sitting for a long time you release bacteria that can smell quite awful. This is known as 'dead gravel' and should be avoided by gravel siphoning or even simply raking the gravel occasionally to release nitrogen bubbles and give the bacteria some oxygen. Could have been the molly but that's not really the issue here. The release of that bacteria will create a possible oxygen depletion in the water so keep an eye on your fish and add aeration if they look crook. A water change is DEFINITELY needed now and you may as well do a big gravel vacuuming now. Just don't touch the filter at the same time as the gravel and vice versa. HTH Blue