mrshanepaul

It also uses up nitrates! Value added algae. Righto, I am off to go buy me another culture from the local fish store!! (Where I got my BBA from...)

The problem with responding to "how does the universe work" type questions is that the proper answer would take pages. Better to point him to the pages than copy them out yourself. Also, if the above is his question, then he probably does not have enough experience/knowledge of fish to breed them yet. (or at least understand the process from a forum post!) Of course the negative attitude is totally not necessary and will do nothing but annoy people.

It is probably cotton mouth/wool, a bacterial infection. But I am no expert. You could leave it up to fate and the constitution of the fish. If you care a lot about whether the fish dies, you probably want to treat it. Some info: http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disea ... mnaris.htm To try and stop this happening again, you may want to look at the causes such as stress and water quality.

There are a number of algae eaters, one of which is commonly sold and is as described above. Some people will sell them as the good one, but they are not. Check: http://www.thekrib.com/Fish/Algae-Eaters/ The two commonly sold here are the Siamese Algae Eater (the good one) and the Chinese Algae Eater. (the bad one) I have two SAE and they are awesome. They have a neat way of swimming about also. I was told they are the only fish that eat black beard algae.

Man, slap on some blue LEDs, some 15" rims. Maybe a blower.... ...wait, is this still the same forum???

Yes..well...mutually assured distruction is ONE way of killing algae! You could also drain and then napalm the tank...that would do it. I here dropping a large stick of potassium in a fish tank has a similar effect. BlueandKim: Are you 100% sure it was BBA?

God, sorry to hear that!? Yes, the fishstore person said that anything over 3x was poisonous to fish. You have to be very careful. I did double doses daily.

lol. Just out of interest: Would this be a good idea if you were wanting to keep them? I assume that they would be shaken, but not harmed?

I think the important point is whether or not the high copper concentrations will kill the bacteria??? I know copper solutions murder fungus on plants....

err....two?? http://www.thekrib.com/Fish/Algae-Eaters/ Heh, you have to print the diagrams out and look really carefully. They all look so similar, but their personalities are from from it.

That is wierd. You put him in a bucket of the tank water he came from and he came right?? Hope you get it sorted.

I got it also. Came in on plants I bought from fish store AFAIK. :evil: Bought two siamese algae eaters to help with the problem and they do a pretty good job. (they are the only fish that eat algae) The reason, again AFAIK, for people thinking SAE do not do it is: 1) The adults tend not to eat as much algae and very much prefer fish flake. I have seen mine eat shrimp pellet also. Solution: 6 corys that gobble up most flake residue before the SAE can eat too much. 2) Even the small ones cannot eat the large hairs and bad growth, only the spores and fur that occurs initially. Solution: Remove the worst by hand, I would use my fingers to carefully rub the leaves of the plants to remove hair. (they feel oily and disgusting) The toothbrush idea seems a good one, especially around the heater where the rubbish builds up. The fish store guy sold me a bottle of plant fertiliser as a treatment. (flourish excel) Apparently if you give daily doses (2-3 times the recommended amount BUT NO MORE) for about 3-4 weeks it will kill off the algae. I ran a 2 week course (with physical removal) and the algae was well under control with the two SAE also. To be honest, I have not been too worried about it lately since I stopped the fertiliser treatment. Algae help use up the nitrates in the tank and the SAE seem to stop an outburst. I have heavily planted tanks (well I think so) and I have heard that these compete for nutrients witht the algae also. I just checked and I only have a sparse layer of hairs on the back wall of the tank. Can't even see it unless you look. 8) DISCLAIMER: This is just what I have done and been told - I am a newbie. I am sure there are others who know better. Wouldn't want to get ragged on for giving bad advice again... :roll:

oooooohhhh. Group Hug Everyone!?!? :roll:

Well this topic seems done to death, hopefully the result is not losing what some have said is one of the best photographers on this site... As already pointed out, if Cees wants to ban everyone from posting anything apart from 4x4 pixel photos of men wearing woman's undergarments, then he is perfectly entitled to. :roll: His site, final say. But if you are dictorial about it (and he has not been so far from what I have seen) then you are going to lose members. e.g. Anyone who questions the rules is said to be moaning and should just fall into line or leave. Dictatorships always sound easier to run than they are. The irony is that the rule in question was created to try and stop the loss of members... Anyways, discussion has happened and the final say has been given.

There was another thread on these fish wasn't there? I have Siamese Algae Eaters (Crossocheilus siamensis) and was worried that this applied to them also. From what I have read, it is their very similar looking counterparts that are aggressive and not these? Or am I wrong. I have been giving them all sorts of suspicious stares lately and I think I may have been a little unfair. edit: found it - http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/golden ... t7920.html

I am not sure what "checked regularily" means, but I was very suspicious when you said your computer would crash when trying to download large images. This is not normal behaviour. I also assume that this mean you are using IE, since when browsing on a slow connection, IE is perhaps the worst browser. Others load the html first and request the images in separate requests, so at least SOME of the page displays earlier. But seriously, give Opera a go. Free, fast, tabbed browsing, mouse gestures and a really good (fully customisable) interface. Best part is that you never have to worry about IE security holes. Now I sound like a second hand car salesman...

Actually I am not. Being somewhat academically minded I can argue any point, regardless of whether I agree with it or not. I once argued on behalf of Sadam, Osama and had the person I was talking to firmly believe that I was in support of communism, terrorism against the US and dictatorships. When I hear/read something I think is incorrect, I like to challenge the person to find out why they think that. (in the above example he was trying to say that the war on iraq was legal and the UN was wrong to hold back - they deserved everything they got) So I while I respect that there are many valid reasons why a site might want to limit image size, I do not agree that the 5 second rule is one of them. If you had said "I don't want my server being overloaded", I would have agreed. Also, I can see how an artist might be a little less than happy with being forced to reduce the quality of high quality images. It is a subset of HCI, not a separate topic. Web design limits your ability to create GUI interfaces, but this is still a very interactive environment. I also said I studied hypermedia/multimedia. This is a valid point not mentioned before. You are expecting to capture users directly to the photo threads from search queries. Perhaps even google images (something I use a lot) or some such. Assuming that you are sure more than one visitor comes into the site directly to the photos thread, then I concur that this is a good reason. It is a real shame that there is no auto resizer like there is for tradme. (click on the image, get the large version) I totally disagree with this. Everyone browses at different resolutions and has different screen sizes. One should never soley cater to the lowest common denominator. In this case, as you say, they see no difference so it would not make sense to cater to them at all. To be fair, flash intros is perhaps the worst example of flash. (god they are annoying) Second only to entire flash websites with no html alternative. I was mainly refering to flash applications/displays on the site. The user expects a wait and they are happy with this...within reason. I think this is a very good suggestion. There are some free programs available on the web that can auto-resize your photos and make "thumbnails" without too much work. Perhaps it is time to use tucows or some such?? Functionality and design are not seperate topics, one is a subset of the other so don't sell yourself short. This site is easy to navigate and everything appears where you expect it to be. That is good design. Of course you don't have a animated cartoon fish that welcomes the user to the site, but that is art... Anyways, it is saturday morning and I have written too much already. I am glad the people on this forum are capable of spirited debate without resulting in flaming each other into oblivion. Very refreshing. :lol:

Again I am not taking sides, but I fel the need to add my 0.02 cents. Having studied Human Computer Interaction and multimedia/hypermedia design at the postgraduate level (and lectured in similar) at AU, I can say with "some authority" (these things being relative) that this is not correct. In fact, I think this is a classic case of "over applying" general rules of thumb. While what you say is true of WEBSITES in general, it most certainly does NOT apply to areas where the user understands/expects content is being delivered. If this were the case, then you would never have a flash applications used for anything for this very reason. As long as the user is aware that what they are viewing is not a general page, there is no problem. At no stage has this theory been applied to heavy content areas. Certainly no mention is made in reference to forums that I am aware of. Many kudos for applying this to the main pages of this site (I think the design is rather well designed functionally), but to even begin apply this to areas such as the "photos forum" is being somewhat misled by "truisms" of the web world. I cannot envisige a scenario where a user clicks on a photos thread in this forum and leaves the forum permanently because the photo takes longer than 5 seconds to load!?!? Of course, as always on the web, mods have the last say and my advice, as is always the case with my advice, is "take it or leave it". However, if it is truly the fact the only reason for this restriction is the "5 second rule", then don't worry about it in the photos forum. You are doing yourself a disservice.

The fact that your machine crashes is somewhat suspicious. Have you installed a decent firewall like kiero? (I will assume you have virus protection) Perhaps you need to swap to another browser also? You don't use Internet Explorer do you?? If so, have you upgraded to the latest patches?? Usually for dialup people they don't because "it takes too long". Then their computer gets virused for africa. (and possibly BY africa also! ) The average time for an unprotected/patched computer to get infected is about 20 minutes on the net. I have always used Opera, which is 100% free now BTW, and it is the best browser by a long shot IMHO. Mozilla don't cut it. Anyone using IE nowadays (who knows better) deserves everything they get. There are faaarrr too many mature alternatives now that are completely free. When someone complains about connections and crashing, the first stop is always spyware and worms. I have had 3 friends now come to me to fix this very problem, none of them thought it could possibly be trojans or viruses. All had horribly infected computers (1000's of infections) and the symptoms were very varied, intermittent and strange. All included performance problems and crashing. On another note: The "smaller" the image, the less quality it has. I think you are mistaking resizing and clipping. Clipping removes part of the photo, resizing reduces the quality of the image. Compressing a 640x480 image to 50kb reduces the quality a lot in some cases. (depends on image) It also takes time. Of course I am not siding with anyone, just pointing out one side of the argument.

This is a most unfortunate discussion. Interestingly this sort of thing is common on forums I have seen, but is almost exclusively because the server admins are worried about bandwidth for their server, rather than for dial up customers. Perhaps a tag could be voluntarily added to subject lines to warn dial up people that large images are contained within? e.g. *big images* Alternatively, there is external linking if you don't want to sacrifice quality. There are many sites that have free web hosting and you can link them from there. It is implied that you are somewhat of a professional photographer? Or perhaps a published amateur? Either way, I can understand you being upset. As a muscian, I would be less than pleased if the same request was made of me to have MP3's at only 128kb instead of a 192 bitrate. Of course, as it always with these things, the person hosting has the final say. Your only recourse is to leave, as you have stated, if you cannot resolve these issues. My advice, such as it is, is to take deep breath and see if a compromise can't be reached.

High protein foods don't have as much waste as vege foods, so you may be onto something. I assume that ALL food makers would add SOME roughage to everything however for obvious reasons. (although the talk of fish consitipation suggests not enough??) I used to hate shrimp pellets for feeding my corys. Once they saturate with water they become all fluffy and very messy. My danios would pick up pieces and then swim the length of the tank spewing a trail of shrimp!?!? Sometimes they would grab a mouthful, move away from the feeding area and "puff" it out all over the tank. They would do the same with the flake, although not as bad. Made me wonder if danios taste like sardines... Then i tried to find solutions: First I placed them inside or on top of half a sunken ship feature. Danios still got in. Although they are surface feeders, they can angle their bodies to pick it up. I laid glass coasters under where I fed them flake and used a home made feeding ring. This caught much of the flake and bits and pieces, but hurt the ambiance of the tank. I thought about this for ages and then went to the $2 shop. Found some glass candle holders that had a very good shape. They are only 2 inches or so high. _ _ \ / | | - (the best i could do) Anyways, it has two levels of glass with the base level being a candle sized hole. This meant that the danios could not angle up enought to get at the shrimp! Only corys and the algae eating twins could. They look kinda stylish also. I was very pleased with myself after that. Was almost tempted to post it as a suggestion, but thought other probably have better solutions...

Maybe I will go into business then.... You can't seem to win with snails...

I seen some saltwater puffers in hollywood and drooled. I would absolutely love to have a marine tank, but there is absolutely no way the wifey is going to agree to that!

Assuming you have the right fish and a large tank to hold!? I will have trumpet snails by the end of today, much nicer. I did not think you chose to breed them, they sort of organised their own "breeding program".

Of course, and I am sure some will have a use. I was just imagining a newbie (like I was) reading this and seeding their tank with a water rat. He says that some feed them to their reptiles and so forth. One man's rat is another man's snake food!