Faran

Use paper towel to cover the holes and keep the flys out. Nothing you can do about the yeast smell, that's one of the joys of microworms

Nice pics! Keep up the good work

You'll have another culture arriving in a couple hours anyways

Actually, the best food for daphnia is animal droppings, particulary chicken cow or horse (but be careful with horse poo as it carries TB or something). I use milk as it goes off quickly and creates a nice bacterial bloom which creates a population explosion a day or two later, but there's a really great article from caudata on feeding, if you want to have a quick read - http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/

Hi Cookies, Welcome to the forums This would get a lot more responses if it was in the Private Trade and Exchange section. I have a good batch of WCMMs growing out from my lot that have spawned in my pond. What size and how many are you after? Pickup available in Upper Hutt so not a huge journey for you, smaps says it's 61km to Masterton.

Because Planaria are flat with visible "eyes" http://images.google.co.nz/images?q=pla ... a=N&tab=wi

Banana skins aren't the best way to generate bacteria and algae. Either way, that's good advice for feeding a culture but not for starting one unless you have a couple months for them to magically appear (which they do!)

How large is your tank? I'll do the figures for an average aquarium of 200L. Initial dosage 25ml Daily dosage of 5ml / 225ml remaining = 45 days (or 90 days with dosing every other day) Pressurized CO2 systems will cost about $3 for 90 days of CO2 at one bubble per second on a 200L aquarium. DIY CO2 would cost about the same for ingredients initially but you'd only be using perhaps 50c worth in a couple of months. Naz - if you're talking about stem plants you can get good growth without any CO2 at all, the fish create enough. My advice is meant for a proper planted tank with slow growing plants that won't reproduce and probably won't even survive without carbon supplements in some way.

Adventure Backpackers dorm from $17 pp Pepper Tree Hostel dorm from $22 pp Grandma's Place shared from $22 pp

Absolutely stunning, Jake. You've had good success breeding fancy plecs in the past, do it again! Would love to see some of these available again some day!

Just drop some decap in front of them. Doesn't take long for them to get sorted!

LOL, isn't there a one account per family rule? Just kidding Soz for calling you Theresa, to be honest I just cut and pasted as I didn't want to do the whole write up about the club again. That's what I get for being lazy! See you around!

Sounds like fun, I'm in. Hopefully by then my garage will have cooled down enough to keep the fish happily after quarantine inside. So where's everyone staying? I'm up for a hostel as they're always fun, pretty inexpensive and good for socializing. If foxglove or anyone else wants to carpool I don't see a problem but not sure if I'll be staying the entire weekend - depends on what's breeding in the fish room as if there's just one pair spawning it's easy to set up auto water changes but more than that and it's gonna take some nutting out

Hi Theresa, Welcome to the forums, loads of info on here and it will be good to have your input and experience to share The Upper Hutt club is nice and local. We meet at the IHC Centre on Goodshed Road (about 400m south of the new Mitre 10 Mega) every second Thursday of the month. Next meeting will be March 13th and we hope to see you there if you can make it!

Agreed TGWH, it happens. Had 2 of 6 ottos do the same over the last few weeks. They're now swimming with the guppies

Yup, that's the stuff. Should be made of polyurethane to prevent CO2 from leaking out and breaking down the plastic in normal air line. Definitely recommend Flourish Excel to get started, then go on to CO2 if you like it. It's expensive stuff though - mainly because it requires daily dosage.

Yup, tubifex worms. There's an article in this months Aquarium World that says they're Planaria but I'm highly dubious as I did a science experiment once in my wee years and they're definitely different.

Hi Theresa, Welcome to the forums, loads of info on here and it will be good to have your input and experience to share As Billaney mentioned the Upper Hutt club is nice and local. We meet at the IHC Centre on Goodshed Road (about 400m south of the new Mitre 10 Mega) every second Thursday of the month. Next meeting will be March 13th and we hope to see you there! So were you the lucky lady that got the breeding pair of Red Ears from Dennis last week? Congrats if you did

I think you need to look again - neither of those auctions actually come with airline. Besides, silicone airline isn't designed for CO2 and should be avoided. There should be someone on TradeMe with CO2 airline for $3/m if memory serves. I recommend the stairway over the ceramic disc as it takes a lot of pressure to get them working and you need some experience with a DIY bottle first. Ultimately your best option is a CO2 reactor, but they run a bit more dear and need to be connected to the output of a filter to work properly. Good luck on the CO2 journey!

Any type of algae eater can develop a "taste" for discus slime and can become a nuisance and may need separation. I've had this happen with Bristlenoses and most recently Ottos. Just keep an eye out and remove the offender when you see it happening. For the record, I've only seen superficial damage that was gone within a day but if this happened to an aquarium where the fish weren't checked on very often it could become serious. There are many fish that are suitable tankmates for discus. The main things you should pay attention to are temperature and speed. You want something that will happily live at 29 degrees and will not move so fat that they disturb or outcompete the discus for food.

Good point, I can use it to warm the Amazon room when it's cold out, and then shift it to cool the cold water section during hot days. Would cost a fortune to cool the front of the garage though - no insulation and a massive rolling door. To keep the room at 30 degrees it uses 6 kilowatts per day. Much less to keep it at 28.

Or breast feeding...

Well, Mythbusters already did it but I'm not complaining. The more publicity this gets, the better. Fish memory theory busted by school boy

Hey beardieguy, I have a spare arcadia light controller in the fish room that I was planning on using, but you probably need it more. Got it off TradeMe for $20 and can courier it over to you if you don't feel like coming out to Upper Hutt.

Not much to say about the aquarium on TradeMe it looks like a good deal. Oh, there’s the catch - you’ll spend $250-300 on the tank then there’s $40 extra for the light filter and heater then another $45 for shipping. The aquarium will possibly be damaged during transit and there’s no shipping insurance on aquariums (from personal experience). The entire thing is “made in china†and will start to look tired very soon (laminate peeling off MDF) and replacement parts for the filter and light will be very close to impossible to source if/when they break. I'd go for the setup on TradeMe that you've bid up to $250 for... the cream one, if there's a few that is