Faran

Melanie, lollipop9 has HEAPS of females! Great colours, too. The females I got from boxersrus were all plain-janes but lollipop has females with reds, yellows, blues - you name it. I was really impressed today when I went and got some and I know you will be too. Just watch out for that pesky duckweed!

Have to say, great pics - 'specially with a web cam! I was chasing my guppies around for a good 10 minutes (even after having the lights off for an hour) and didn't get good pics of the guys I wanted to shoot. I'll put up a few pics though... This is a nice delta male I got from boxersrus - not necessarily a strain but the metallic blue/green on the body with the snakeskin tail is a NICE combo. Tail is small, but I hope to breed better ones. Yellow King Cobra/Snakeskin - body usually has more black patterning, lights were off This is a brand new delta male and he was a present from lollipop9 - has a yellow/orange tail with a few lines and dots; but the body has a white leopard pattern, really nice. Bad picture, he wouldn't hold still. That's it for now. Could show off with some half black red veiltails, but didn't get any decent shots.

Haven't seen that in NZ but if they're around someone here will tell you (CatBrat and a few others are pleco experts). You'd have more informed answers if you posted this in the Catfish forum section. As for Gold Nuggets you can try Hollywood Fish Farm or TradeMe. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 157841.htm http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 157964.htm

My best guess with only those symptoms described would be "gill flukes" which should be treated with "Fluke tabs" or "Furan-2". Good luck with that!

I'll put a beer on it being the Great Barrier Reef. I've seen similar patches while diving in Palau and the Cayman Islands during unusually low tides, but that reef just goes on foooorrrrrreeeeevvvvveeeerrrrrrr....

Hey bro, I would have bought that tank but had one made for me by Chris Downs instead. Only cost $XX but it was less than that (but you have a stand). I didn't like the lid on it, either. Ah well, I'm sure it'll look good with some paint and a light. I'm still busy over here trying to get the congo tetras to spawn properly. Devised yet ANOTHER spawning mesh and the holes are too big, so the tetras were swimming through and some got stuck, so I put another layer on top but still a bit of a mess, may have to devise something else. So yeah, we're about even. We have.... 5 tanks and a hospital tank. One is just a 10Gallon Aqua One job (solitary confinement for an agro lyretail - can only have snails in with it), but we have the discus tank as well. Lost my favourite fish last week. Need to be more careful about fish getting stuck... Sounds like you need to be more careful yourself! Lower leg - car accident? Something with a motor, I'm sure. That light fixture really needs to be mounted on a ceiling. You'd be better getting reading lamps and attaching them to the wall rather than slap that together. You might end up in a bidding war with Mystic and I over this one - http://www.trademe.co.nz/structure/auct ... d=33303467 but I hope not!

Bad idea. The entire light assembly is a bad bad idea. The way those light fittings work is to allow power to run through the metal bars and then the bulbs just draw power from them. It would be rather like having the wires that the electric buses run on hanging in your light hood. One quick question.... how many tanks are you up to now? Damn.... every time I see anything of interest on TradeMe you guys are buying it

Hiya Caper, sorry to hear about your loss. Just a FYI if your fish are feeling weak and get "stuck" in the plants, sometimes it's better to leave them be to give them a rest. Swimming takes a lot out of fish when they're fighting disease or parasites. A hospital tank (even a little $8 cheapy) is a great idea, and you don't even need a filter if you change 10% a day. I have a little 10g tank with a sponge filter that I use for hospital/quarantine/temp home/baby grow out. I have an advantage of being able to use a UV sterilizer on the tank between occupants, but if you're careful that doesn't even matter. Anyways, if I see a fish that's looking sickly, I immediately test the water, do a water change and pop the sickly fish into another tank to treat them or just give them a good rest. Good luck next time!

Good luck! If he's anything like our guppies it'll be near impossible...

Really? All yellow and white, no red or black? Wicked! Save me the $7 I was about to spend on him if the other breeder didn't have any. I found out the guppy I'm after is called a red mosiac and that one is a yellow golden king cobra (pic above). So yeah, hopefully I get some more blues so we can do a trade!

Hoi Douwe, hoe is it? I've seen the red line toredo barb at a local fish shop (LFS for short) and they're great fish. Retail at an overpriced shop was $50 so we didn't get any, but I'm sure through these forums you could get a better price. I lived in Nijmegen for 2 years, so I know how Dutch can get the best prices for the best products 8) Welcome to the forums and try and fly Malaysian Airlines from NL to NZ. Was an awesome trip. See you around! Doie! Faran and Kim

Soz Mel... hard to hear. You did all you could do, though. Even if you popped them in another tank they still could have passed anyways. When the gills get burned it's a bad story. At least you know what to do for next time, right? For the record minimum time to put fish in a tank is 3 days and then add slowly. If you move over at least the gravel and filter you can pop the fish in right away (with aged water). Hey, I have another guppy breeder in Lower Hutt (lollipop9 on TradeMe) that I'm going to pick up from sometime this week. Let me know if you want some as well.

This is the male guppy I saw at the LFS the other day... http://www.guppies.com/PAGES/guppixpages/gp13.html

Probably not a recognized colouration. You can tell it's black bodied and has quite a variety of colours, but it's basically just a mixed beauty. Here's a website I just found with lots of different colour variations. See if you can spot her anywhere on there. From the research I did the guppies we bought from boxers are mainly wild Florida guppies, with the leopard patterns and such. Maybe not, just what I was reading. http://www.guppies.com/PAGES/photos.html

I have three males and one female. She "couples" up with whoever the most dominant male is for the day (of the two large males) and hasn't shown any signs of spawning yet. Should I take out the other two males and leave just a couple together? Perhaps get more females?

Why not just catch them and let them go after the display?

You buy a micro-worm culture. Pegasus was just selling them on here, but is out of cultures now... *edit* - you can get some brine shrimp eggs and feed them BBS until you get a culture.

I know sword-tails can, and platys are a close relative to swords.... this happens when you have a majority of same-sex in the tank and they switch sexes to enable reproduction. Funny that no one told you this before...

Hi Caper, do you add salt to your livebearer tanks? Might help with skin irritations and LBs like a little salt. Just remembered I should be a little more specific. Salt from your fish store (rock salt)... 1 level teaspoon to each litre of water or one lever tablespoon to each gallon.

Congrats on the happy couple and the spawning! Now, as far as what to do now... Leave them with the male! He'll protect them and raise the young. Here's a website/blog on breeding Blue Rams... http://apisto.bravepages.com/Ram%20article.htm

That is a lyretail cichlid. We originally had three but two passed for no apparent reason and now we have just one in a 10 gallon tank by itself. Just a note of warning- there's a few different kinds of "lyretail cichlid" and some are fine in a community tank.... this isn't one of them. How to tell? The "nice" one has a sideways "T" on the cheek/gill, and the others don't. These ones have two lines that make a "||" and are VERY agressive to smaller fish. Umm... nuff expaining, let me show you pics.... Left - Neolamprologus Brichardi - nice community fish... Right - Our fish - not so nice....

Hiya Caper, thanks. The big gaping hole feeling has passed and now the tank just seems awfully empty! They have a "proper" latin name - Ctenopoma Acutirostre - and are called a variety of "common" names. Spotted Climbing Perch, Leopard Fish, African Leaf Fish, and our name for him - Billy Bob.

Actually, she had the blues in a totally different tank from the ones for sale and grabbed one with a small-ish tail for me from her personal "stash". I was too tired that day to even concentrate on the fish. She grabbed most of them for me and I really wish I'd gotten more reds.... next time! (or perhaps I'll have some bubbas with those colours). Thinking of buying some from lollipop9 on TM...

Like GBAs (Golden Black-Eyed Ancestrus/Bristlenose) you can have a golden version with black eyes. I have a female about ready to pop that has this colouration. Not sure who the poppa is though. Saw a male guppy at LFS today that was basically golden snakeskin. Wanted to take him home but $7 for a guppy and the thought of the strange guppy diseases out there made me walk away... with only some black neons for the Discus tank.

Have any of you ever kept guppers with Discus? I read on Discus Haven website that guppies are good companions and was thinking of throwing in some of my more beautiful males and females in there (a virgin in there at the moment all by herself) but they're just too active and I think they stress out the big guys.... let me know if you have experience....