Tanksman

Do you have a small isolation tank or net breeder type setup where she could go? Net her carefully and leave her in there for a day or two. If you have some stress coat squirt a bit of that in with her. And keep an eye on it over the next couple of days.

Sounds like a nightmare. How often do you need to change 30% water. Is your facility located by the sea. That would be the best place by the sounds as 30% of 40000 litres is 12000 litres. Don't think you'd quite fit that in the boot of the civic :-?

Good idea to have the valve so you can stop the drips when you want to clean it. I still reckon you are all very brave - I wouldn't be able to go out for months if I had 3300lph pumping through a box hanging on the side of the tank. A drilled tank is the permanent solution.

These are neat little fellas and cheap as chips http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 419265.htm Theres some albino ones on TM from time to time too.

I would think sand will clog any filter plates or simply fall though and take out the void underneath rendering it useless. I am reserved on the piping idea but I think it would be a pain in the ... to maintain as it would need cleaning out probly monthly or else the hoses and holes would get clogged with the same gunk in your canister hoses. I'd try and find a long vaccuum with a very large diameter say 100mm or so. This might allow sand vaccuuming depending on the size and type (heavy or light) of your sand. Maybe it might be best to suck heaps of sand out from time to time and clean it in a bucket and put it back. Sounds like a really fun job I am using gravel in my African tanks but I want to put sand in there soon. So I will be interested to hear about this to.

I think that is supposed to say you don't want any restriction on your intake. Having restrictions like a ball valve on your return line is fine.

It depends how deep the sand is. If its too deep it will remain cool at lower levels as there is no warm water flowing though it too keep it warm. Also if too deep it will get smelly and is likely to bind up like concrete if it is not vacuumed (which with sand is quite hard to do without it getting sucked out) I would say much over 5 cm is getting too deep.

What are the rules regarding overflows and quarantine tanks. Can you drain water to waste without treatment? I would have thought not - defies the hole point of quarantine if the system puts water into the local enviroment that could have the diseases the country is trying to keep out. Where does it go tho - has to be water changes or it won't work.

The syphon break hole needs to be located in the return line from your submersible. It needs to be close to the water surface. When you have a power cut water will syphon out of the tank and back down into the sump through the submersible pump. If the syphon break hole is not present it will overflow your sump. As you have a spray bar setup in your diagram it will only "backsyphon" until the waterlevel drops to the first hole from the top in the spray bar.

Go KK Looks like a good setup you have there with a tonne of spawns happening. How do you mean hatched with tweezers? Do you mean you helped them out with the tweezers? I find the jars don't keep them from settling on the bottom tho and they end up fungusing. If I increase the airflow the turbidity is too high. This idea looks like it would be awesome solving those problems. http://www.sydneycichlid.com/diy/diytumbler.html

Sounds like a Horrible way to die over 120minutes. Also 45 drops per gallon is only 10 drops per imperial litre or less than 12 drops per litre if US gallon. Not 25 drops per litre. Doesn't sound like a lot of scientific credibility IMHO.

Neat photos. You'd think it would be too hot for the cat. :roll:

It doesn't sound too humane to me. I like Alans idea of throwing them hard onto concrete better. Sticking a spike or knife into the head is nice and fast to.

It would have to be someone you know who keeps or aspires to keep fish. They must have known it was there.

Overstocking in an African tank is commonly used to minimise aggression as usually no fish can establish a territory and breeding is almost out of the question. With a tank filtration of 20 plus times per hour turnover this is definitely an option - it depends on what Dartzman wants to acheive - a pair or harem of spawning africans or an eye pleasing display of lots of coulourful fish. Do you have a reference for that assertion? I'm not saying I know for sure however I have never heard of that level of filtration being used in the cycling process before - usually 7 times an hour is not acheived. My understanding of the reproductive behaviour of bacteria is along the lines of... So with that growth each stage of cycling would be complete very suddenly. I don't disagree that under normal conditions (water filtration turnover 3 -7 times an hour) a natural level of bacteria easily increases in number or decreases without problem. I'm raising a point for discussion of whether you can have too much filter media at certain times in your setup.

Excessive CO2 build up will occur if your aquarium is overstocked regardless of what our esteemed colleague thinks on the issue. It is important to eliminate excess CO2 in an African tank because if not then there is a danger that your Ph level will drop especially if there is not enough buffering in the water. Wether your filtration will help remove it from the water depends on how it is setup and whether the water surface is being sufficiently agitated. You will never have more food available to your denitrifying Bacteria than during the cycling process. If too large a Bacterial colony builds up during this process it is only natural that alot of it will die off due to starvation once cycling is complete. I would recommend you culture one filter in that tank and add the others when you are happy the tank has cycled. Better still get another tank and use some of that good gear in it. Just because this is the beginners area doesn't mean we should confuse the issue by calling discus discus and cichlids cichlids. That sounds like something out of the beehive. Maybe its a wellingtonian thing!

Rubbish. Discus are cichlids! Some cichlids are OK with high water movement some are not. DO some research.

There are far more experienced rift lake lovers on this forum. They can answer that for you. You might want to check out these sites tho. http://www.tropheus.info/riftlakes/index.html http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/aq ... abido.html http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/man ... ater1.html

With fish that size and the above filtration I'd say around 15 even 20. The trick will be to get rid of the excess CO2 using an airstone.

I also believe that you can have too much filtration when setting up the tank. You need to provide enough food (ammonia and then nitrite) for the developing bacteria to build up on. This is easy to do when cycling. If the level of food subsequently drops off once a large amount of bacteria has established accross many filters, once cycling is complete you could end up with a whole lot of dead bacteria and a toxic tank that will need to be cycled again.

Gee thats not crowded for that level of filtration. Its 35 times an hour before media and flow loss - gotta be 25 times an hour plus. Thats serious overkill. You need more tanks for some of that equipment regardless of my opinion on fluvals.

Great tank Caryl and that cabinet and surrounds looks superb. Lots of dust around my tanks to. My excuse is that dustmites are great livefood

Yeah I was going to say water change as well but your onto it and its all up to date no doubt. I had a look at your other (one of) thread. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/1-vt11 ... sc&start=0 You have a neat tank and it looks like everything should be thriving. Did you end up getting an air pump? I noticed that there is no mention of water hardness results. Do you test for this? Are you using peat in your canister to help lower the ph and soften the water? I don't know alot about chemistry but maybe there is something in your tank that is releasing toxins into the water that the tests you use are not showing. Maybe in the substrate or filter media?

If your on a tight budget you can't go past aquaone CF canisters. For $120 its great value, silent and brand new. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 026860.htm There are other traders on trademe peddling them as well. IMHO you should also have another filter like a HOB or internal power filter. If you intend to use an airpump to bubble off CO2 then you could use a sponge filter instead but a HOB and a canister is what I like to use. The canister will get you going until you can afford a backup option but if you are going to delay it for long you might be better off with the CF1000 or 1200 as malawis are dirty apparently.

Hey Geetee Are your Kribs still in this tank with these brichardi? My pulcher wouldn't have a bar of that - I had to pull the kribs out but they were smaller. I have new n pulcher 7 of them up to 3 inches. After reading the above I'm wondering whether a few more might stop them being so aggro with each other. They have formed two teams 3 on each side but there is an odd one out who really gets the bash :oops: . Hopefully they have enough room and I have rearranged the tank today to provide more territorys. :-?