Faran

I'm glad that you're still happy even after that horrible shipping charge! Will do better next time, promise! So half the price, three times the size and much better quality than the LFS you say? Good description of bulldog's cichlids. He's a great guy, to boot.

Good point.... but the male was getting distracted really easily even when I was walking by the tank so I could only assume a massive FLASH would just kill the mood completely.... maybe if I tried taking pictures by candlelight? Too true. My bad, I was trying to find a more PC term than "Gettin' it on!!!" Ohhhh... last time I took out dad right after the spawning was over. Duh.

Yup, which is why he was very specific about it being a 60cm tank and that the "cave" was in one corner with plenty of plant and decor to give the male a corner all to his self Currently in exactly that config.... female guarding the cave on one end and male sitting in a corner in the other. Poor guy... which is the reason why I took him out last time. Ah the joys of fish keeping. Wish they'd make up their bloody minds! :lol:

Spoke with the breeder I got them from and he suggests leaving the male as last time I removed him and she ate the eggs. Will be doing lots of small water changes and hoping she doesn't get flustered enough to eat them again. The top of the cave/pot is COVERED in eggs... twice as many as there were last time! Yeah, he's a nice un. My previous males were nicer but a breeding pair of Bolivian Rams got territorial when spawning and :bounce: them.... I was left with this gorgeous girl and had to get a new male... only took them 2 or 3 days to get it on the first time around!

I'd like to mention that having cory cats in with spawning egg-layers is a bad combination. They don't take much heed to pecking due to the armour plating and easily get past the parents and eat the eggs.... just a thought!

Got a nice shot of my male displaying for the female and camera pre-coitus. They're doing the deed now, would take some pictures but don't want to distract them

pumice tubes you say? Interesting. I suppose they used to be ceramic tubes and have degraded considerably with time. I recommend replacing that media or just using a bit of it to "seed" the new filter media. Filter wool is a pain, you're much better off replacing it with sponges. Good luck with the upgrade!

Only one reported incident that I could find, and it was unintentional - http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/bre ... Eater.html

Good morning, It would seem that you've treated the white spot but have yet to deal with the fungus on the tail. Treat with an anti-fungal agent such as Methylene Blue in the water but keep in mind that this product is not filter friendly and will likely damage the bacteria in the filtration of the quarantine tank (if any). Good luck!

Congrats. If I were in Aucks I woulde have bought a 8ft tank and stand that a FNZAS member was selling up there. Sadly enough if I had a tank that size it'd have to go in the garage and I just can't bear to do that quite yet My FX5 will be here in a few days. Will let you know how it runs!

Welcome! Have dropped you a PM, hope to hear from you soon and you're welcome to come by for a coffee some time

There's been years of rumours that angels give discus worms. Some say it happens, others say it won't. I keep angels separate from my discus anyways. As for the rest of the fish, as long as they're slow moving and can handle the high temperatures that discus live in you should be fine. I'd like to recommend cardinal tetras rather than neons as they handle the heat better (from the Amazon as well). Your dwarf cichlids will do well, advise keeping away from the gouramis and red tailed shark. If you;re getting into discus, come by for a visit. We're in Upper Hutt and it'll be worth the drive

Thanks for the heads up Robert, that's actually the price I originally picked up the 2028 for. Heck of a price drop from $740! The other LFSes around here have only had the 2028 down to $630 in the past so I imagine it'll never get any lower. As far as the Aqua One filter goes, I've seen it before and it's just another Aqua One in my opinion. You should really check out the FX5s specs on the Hagen site. For the extra $70 it pushes "3500lph without load" but a more realistic 2200lph even under load. The Aqua One filter would drop to somewhere around 1500lph when under load. My tank's gonna be well-filtered, yo!

Uh oh.... now you've gotten them going.... gonna be hard to get them to stop! The other day I was at Animates and saw a pair of convicts (presumably added to the tank as live food) who were guarding/raising fry. Made us chuckle a bit and coin the old phrase "just add water". Congrats on the spawnings!!!

I'm afraid it'll be too much for the 460L tank it's going in, but there's always room for improvement (bigger tank, that is)!!! Hoping it has a decent flow control to turn it down without killing the impeller. As for the price, I just spent nearly that much on the 2028 (on sale) so it was an easy choice for me. $500 you say? I'm paying nearly $600.... one of the LFSes here had it for almost $700.... Aucks always seems to have much better prices. Best price I saw was $570 from PetPlanet, but I'm getting almost that same price with $20 in the little $10 gift vouchers you get back from Animates with the $600 purchase.

So I jumped on an offer the other day for a Eheim Pro 2 2028 filter and then read up on the new Fluval FX5 and regretted the choice. Now, I knopw Fluvals are supposed to be noisier and less reliable, but what a filter!!!! I went to the LFS who had just gotten one in (someone ordered it on layby) and was really impressed by it, overall. Does anyone have one of these yet? How does it run? Would it be serious overkill for a 460L discus tank? I currently run a 204 and 404 on the tank with a nice calm water flow and hardly any surface agitation, so was a bit hesitant to install the 2028 but MAN am I glad I didn't! Gonna be picking up the new FX5 and returning the 2028 early next week....

Mooloo - I'd recommend the new Fluval FX5 for your 1000L tank. I'm getting one for my 460L discus tank and can't imagine forking out the $$ for anything else. I just spent $380 on a 2028 (on sale at Animates) and quickly decided that I'd made the wrong choice when I started looking into the FX5s. Animates orders the FX5s in for $600, or you can order/pick them up from PetPlanet for $570 plus $5 shipping if you need it shipped.... (it's on TradeMe if you haven't seen it yet). I'm thinking about doing the Animates thing just for simplicity in case warranty service is needed...

Kookie means to say move the substrate and apply the silicone from the inside of the tank. You'll have to figure out some way to keep stuff off the silicone while it cures (unless you don't mind a bit of dirty silicone - but who does at the bottom of a tank anyways?). Good luck with the repair and always worth a go while full before stripping it down....

You set up a jar with an airstone and salt it to the same concentration (1 teaspoon per litre) to keep them alive for longer periods of time. That's just for the sake of telling you how to do it, though. Your fry will have very small mouths and need freshly hatched BBS. Best to set up multiple hatching bottles. HTH and GL!

yeah, that's the one.

Hey, pretty pictures.... hard to tell what KIND of amazon it is, but it's definitely an Echinodorus (Amazon Sword). You can try cutting the plantlets off the stalk and submerging them to grow roots on their own, but I strongly recommend setting up another bucket and bending the stalk into it so they can get nutrients from the parent plant while doing this. Here's a picture of my sword tank.... you can see the pup plants in various states of growth.... note the lack of flowers - they only appear when the stalk is emerged. P.S. - the white blobs are snails.... still working on getting some clown loaches to get rid of them!

Without seeing the pictures here's the general answer for pup plants (the little ones that grow on the stalks). Keep stalks submerged as beast as you can. When emerged from the water you'll end up with flowering followed by plantlets. If submerged you'll end up with all plantlets. Keep plantlets submerged and remove when you have a good amount of root growth and three or four leaves. Plant as you wish or sell on!

As someone that's seen him in person I have to say I'm insanely jealous! Thi has to be one of the coolest fish around and I'm seriously considering trying to kidnap a little Christmas Poo and stick him in my pocket next time I come over.... What happened to my leg? Hold on... what happened to my HAND???

CONGRATS!!!! Are these those gorgeous normal-bodied Gold Rams you posted the pics of on guppy.co.nz? I've found Rams to be VERY protective of eggs and tend to eat them at even the slightest disturbance (I have my Blue Rams in a tank with so much vegitiation I hardly ever see them anymore) so if they end up eating them, no worries. Also, don't fret too much about inbreeding them. If you end up with genetic defects (like balloon rams) be sure and cull them though! Once again, congrats!!! :bounce:

There's a formula to figure out necessary tank size for breeding plecostomus depending on body size. For Royal Plecos with a mature size of 38cm that works out to be about 500 litres so a 1500L tank may be sufficient for sailfins. I'd recommend trying to breed a smaller hypostomus/ancistrus/panaque that has a higher value to get a better cost-profit ratio. With sailfins you'd literally spend thousands of dollars getting the set up, while they have an import wholsale price of $8 which means you'll only get probably $3-4 from LFSes for juveniles and would probably never even break even. The thought of setting up a breeding ground in even a thermal area seemed a bit odd to me, but some people do these things just to prove they can. And kyle, I'm not sure what your logic is but even an enclosed river farm is captivity....