Faran

You need to bottle that Wainoui water and sell it!!!! Congrats, Paul. Great pics, as well!

Nah, correction. Just went around and my tanks are about a 50/50 split between 10 and 6.5K and the plants are doing splendidly over here. I just saw your last post about Animates, the special, wattage and sizes. Each different length of flouro tube has a different wattage, ie 30cm/8W, 60cm/20w, 90cm/30w so on and so forth. This simply tells you the amount of energy that the bulb uses. The K rating is the actual wavelength of the light itself. I'm running out of time to explain it, sadly enough. I'm sure one of the mods have covered the flouro light bulb subject in the past and can direct you to the relevant thread...

6500K tubes are the closest to natural light you can get. That's what I use.

Yeah, start a new fishclub for all you members in the far south! From what I've seen, you guys seem to have a growing number of members down there. CARYL- I believe the poecilia club was taken over, turned into a livebearer club and fell apart due to lack of/problems with leadership/organization... that's what I heard, at least. No clue from personal experience. Back to the topic - Killies are an interesting fish - most interesting due to the relatively short "annual" lifespans. Absolutely stunning colourations, I hope that they evolve longer life spans through generations of fish keeping.

Well, you're in a very warm country (from what I remember from Haifa) and the release of large cichlids into your waterways could mean disaster for many local wildlife... MAF (the NZ Agriculture office) restricts many fish that can't even survive in our temperate zone. Now THAT doesn't make much sense, does it? Anyways, good luck with the tank! We're just setting up a 800ltr discus tank and I have this crazy feeling that we'll be going through the same process. Thanks for the thread, very helpful for people in the future with similar situation

Wow, that's a lot of symptoms. Do you still have the molly that died? It might pay to take a look at her gills under a microscope or magnifying glass to check for gill flukes - would explain the redness behind the eye (inflammation of gills) and the lack of oxygen would also result in wasting away and dying. Other than that, malnutrition and lack of rest after birthing causes 'saddleback'ing which is the deformity of the spine and wasting away until possible rest. No matter what, when you have a fish showing signs of duress as described it is very important to quarantine/hospitalize the fish. You can do this by either getting a breeding net and popping the fish in there or you can set up a tank for them. This is to give you a chance to observe the fish under controlled conditions, give it time/space to rest and recover. Fish keeping is a constant learning experience, so try and learn something with every sick/dying fish.

Hiya simfish, as Alan said some more info would help... I can say that from your tankmate descriptions that you probably won't have compatibility issues. They're a dwarf ram and very placid and keep to themselves unless breeding, in general. During breeding you may notice aggression, but this is purely defensive for the eggs and not intended to hurt the other tankmates. You should always watch out for this with any cichlids though, as I had a pair of Blue Rams kill a Cardinal Tetra the other day. Just a bit over-protective, I think. Cockatoos can grow up to 12cm (this is rare, but my friends grandaddy cockatoo is BIG). My books say that they generally grow 5-7cm like Rams. Colouration is very much like guppies. There are quite a few different colour strains and breeders are developing new ones every day. Haven't noticed any plant chomping as of yet. Breeders - you'll have keep watching this space!

LOL, too funny. Good advice, suphew!

Hi Chris, Water plants are usually grown hydroponically before being taken to the shops for sale. Due to this, when planted properly in an aquarium many (if not all) leaves die off and new ones are grown. It's an ugly process, but something we all have to go through. Just to let you know, the leaves that grow back will actually have a different shape than the leaves you have now. Once again, a completely normal process. Now, if I'm completely off base and these are well-developed aquarium plants, you may have a problem. Plants can lose leaves and sometimes just "melt" for a number of things - too high of temps (this is a discus tank, right?), salt in the water, too much/little fertilizer, etc etc. Good luck, hope that helps! Blue

So how are the two remaining discus doing? Rather sad to lose two discus due to this, but you can often lose small discus quickly anyways. Mind you, I'm currently nursing two discus that are in shock after a bad move so it doesn't just end when they get larger.... just easier. Usually a learning process for the owner as well. Are these your first discus?

I suppose I'd be paying about $40 incl courier for a trio in this instance. If it was a local breeder it would be more like $20, I suppose. Personally, I haven't paid more than $2 for a guppy in the past but as long as it helps PJ and encourages her to breed them seriously... Like a few other people around here, I don't mind paying a fair penny for fish from (or getting good deals for) other members, 'specially if it's an investment.

Canada is bigger than America, far as I remember, so not so little Impressive range of pets - I miss the diversity that you have when MAF doesn't control what pets you're allowed to play with. Iguanas! Man, I miss my iguana. He used to jump in the shower before me every day (for a drink and poo) and got :bounce: when I was having carne & cheese burriltos. Great pets, sounds like you've had him most of his life? But on to fish. What do you have? Welcome the forums, I hope you enjoy, learn and can feel free to ask when in trouble. There's a wealth of experience on here that you can't just find on Google. Between the members here, we have hundreds of years of keeping fish. Quite helpful and... fun. Sadly enough, we can't give you stuff to help out since you're so far away, but you can always get some gorgeous show guppies right there in Canada and send them to us!!!

I think a BN is the best suckermouth catfish for any planted tank, personally. Plecos can be plant eaters but BNs seem to only eat decayingplant matter, which prevents the rotting and release of ammonia in the water. They're overall great fish for planted tanks. 6cm... including tails? If you've measured them properly - not including the tails - you should see bristle development and can sex them. Females would be better as they don't make burrows but hey, hook him up with a pair and it'll be an ideal place for breeding - lots of algae and no predators.

Wow, good luck with that. When they're born let us know if they have pink or black eyes. I'll buy a trio off ya for full retail gupper price when/if you have some to share!

I have heavily planted tanks and TONS of bristlenoses. The only problems I have is when a breeding cave is made. The males tend to uproot everything except swords (strong roots). Aside form that, there's never any problems with plants getitng uprooted as long as they've got good root structures. Have to run - nursing two discus back to health from shock after a bad transport...

No other tanks to put them in? Good choice as far as the welfare of the discus but sad to see you part with fish that you enjoy due to it. The wife wasn't too impressed when I decided it was time to set up a 3 foot tank in the bedroom the last time I did the same (removed quick fish for the betterment of the blue turq that just passed). Thanks for the condolences, it's been a long fight (and expensive one) but at this point I'm just glad that it's over. I'll be calling on a Marine Biology student friend of mine to do a proper necropsy/dissection to figure out the underlying cause of the trouble, because he was parasite/infection-free and still didn't make it... But enough about my loss. I hope your 4 discii become social as soon as they get over the netting of the danios (not always an easy task). You can probably check behind the plants while you're in there to try and find the 4th that went missing. You must have a well planted tank to "lose" a fish in there!

Funny, I was just looking at my "pond" - a large green water tank that I just added water lilly and WCMMs into - yesterday and saw one of them in there for the first time as well. Didn't bother trying to fish it out as the tank is quite green and full of creepy crawlies, but that's what the WCMMs are for. Suprisingly easy to raise your own live foods, but yeah, would take a LOT of tanks and harvesting just to equal one frozen block of food.

Looking at the date of the first post it's been almost 10 days and if your discus are still hiding I would get rid of the danios. Lost an adult Blue Turq tonight after a long battle with illness and an unsuccesful recovery. Gonna miss him, but I hope he's enjoying the big fishbowl in the sky.

That's truly a shame as you're pretty much the best fish photographer around these days. And I'm not just saying that for brownie points (you know I don't throw out undeserved compliments) I think anyone that looks at the covers and articles in the last years worth of Aquarium World can see that. Sorry if you got growled at. Can I recommend just making an album in photobucket and linking people to it? That way they can only complain out of sheer silliness... Just lost 3ig 3luE. Sad night fo the discus tank.

I've grown to dislike ramshorns over time. They put out too much waste and it just makes a tank filthy. S'okay if you have an aqua one tank with the filter intake at gravel level (though they seem to get stuck to it and die quite often) but in other tanks they litter the floor with the green droppings much worse than any other snails I've ever had. My personal new winner for "best snail" is brown 'mystery' snails. Rather cool egg sacs, as well...

PJ - are the snakeskins the offspring of the one I sent down to you via Caserole?

Thanks Bill, least I could do after all the help that you and the others on here have given me and continue to do so FS - I forgot to cover the cloudy water part of your last post. Algae Bloom, a part of the start-up cycle of a new tank. Now you mentioned that you have/had another tank. If you still do, use some of the old filter medium and place it on top of the filter medium for the new tank. This will allow the bacteria from the old filter to "seed" the new filter and greatly accelerate the cycle process in the new tank. Adding ammonia to the water will help as well, either by putting in a few fish and feeding them or - here's some tips for "fishless" cycling. Take care and let us know how it goes!

Hi PJ, I REALLY recommend buying eggs from one of the NZKA members rather than getting them from the LFS. Now, I'm a strong supporter of the LFS these days and buy as much from them as possible... not fish, but all the equipment... but you should really do it right and have a bag of peat with some eggs (of a type you've chosen) posted down to you. Then you can hatch them out and raise them from scratch. Of course, they're your fishies and you get to do what you want, but just a thought

3 days? I let silicone cure for a week... ah well, seems that Pegasus has given you all the info you need. Good luck with fixing it!

LOL, there you go. Now that it's running you can see why I was a bit suprised when you said there was just a dribble. Easy as - now that you look back on it. Your main problems in the future will most likely be trying to keep it quiet (see above advice about filter wool) and keeping that darn filter intake free of snails and debris in a few months when you notice that the filter flow just isn't what it used to be... Aside from that, welcome to the forums and we'll try and help any way we can!