alanmin4304

You must have been bad as a child to be sent to live in purgatory like that.

From a previous post. What you read on the internet about chloramine being a combination of chlorine and ammonia is because that is how it is manufactured in countries where it is added to the water supply as monochloramine and used as a disinfectant rather than chlorine. It is used because chlorine is a strong oxidizing agent and reacts with other compounds in the water supply to form nasties which monochloramine does not. It is used in about 25% of the USA. It is a requirement of the Department of Health in NZ that chlorine is used as it is a better disinfectant than mono chloramine. All proteins are a double helix of phosphates with various amino acids hanging off them and all living things contain proteins. Chlorine reacts with amino acids and other nitrogen compounds to form monochloramine, then dichloramine and then trichloramine. This is called the chlorine demand when chlorinating water supplies and there will be no free available chlorine until this demand is satisfied. As the chlorine dissapates the equilibrium changes and the chloramines move back to monochloramine and this is the compound that irritates your eyes in a swimming pool and the compound that people think they are smelling as chlorine. The way to fix that problem is to add more chlorine and push the chloramines up to the trichloramine state and this is not so irritating. It is always the case therefore that chlorinated water supplies contain chloramines and they will not be removed by storage, heating or aeration, but will be moved to the monochloramine state which is the one that is most dangerous to your fish. The only way to remove the monochloramine is with chemicals such as sodium thiosulphate which is the active ingredient in treatments available from the pet shop. And according to Rodney Conrad: Sodium thiosulfate instantly takes care of the chlorine in chloramine, as well as straight chlorine. The reaction to get rid of the chlorine with either chloramine or chlorine is instantaneous on mixing of the sodium thiosulfate and the chlorine or chloramine. The reaction of sodium thiosulfate with chloramine produces ammonia. Assume you are doing a 20% water change and there is 1 PPM chloramine in the water. 1 PPM chloramine neutralized with sodium thiosulfate becomes 0.2 (20% water exchange) times 17/51.5 (molecular weight of ammonia divided by molecular weight chloramine) = 0.06 PPM ammonia level in the pond. 0.06 PPM is too low to even measure, and is safe for the fish anyway! My point is that it is perfectly safe to dechlorinate with sodium thiosulfate unless you are doing a 100 % water change and there is a huge 5 PPM chloramine concentration in the makeup water. Only then can the ammonia from the chloramine reaction with sodium thiosulfate get up to a 1.5 PPM ammonia level to give a possible real fish problem. Even then, please remember koi shipped in bags normally arrive at their destination in water that is 5 to 10 PPM ammonia level by measurement, and that is done all the time by the koi handlers without giving it a second thought. Yes, that level can do damage to the fish if you allow it to continue, no argument about that. So all those warnings about using sodium thiosulfate to dechlorinate water containing chloramines is just so much hype from folks making a profit selling the ammonia binding products to my way of thinking about the actual technology in action. _________________ Alan NZKA 56

I have a soft spot for Alexandrines---I used to breed them in a previous life.

Most fish spawn a few hours after the sun comes up. Use a small bare bottom tank with a s/s mesh a few mm off the bottom. Soft water treated with peat is good. Cover the tanks with newspaper. Add a drop of acriflavine. You will see the eggs with a small torch.

What is NZ culture? It is a mixture of a whole range of cultures and always has been. Even the original imigrants to NZ brought with them bits of all the cultures they came in contact with as they gradually migrated here from where they originated from in Asia. The European cultures including those from eastern Europe may have been here for many generations since they came here for kauri gum or the Asians for gold. All these cultures try to retain their culture as we would if we went to their country. NZ culture is therefore a blend of a whole range of cultures including Asian culture but these people are so thick that they think we are all flag waving poms.

Welcome and enjoy your time here.

Part of a quote in another post. ".....Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Martin Luther King Jr. There are people out there who hate...get used to it. This person has been the leader of a number of different hate clubs in the past and this is just his latest one.

I assume you want to post them. I place them in a plastic bag with a teaspoon of water and a little air then another bag to avoid any leaks. Send fastpost so you need to place that in a carton that complies with the measurements (70mm thick).

The water needs to be acid otherwise it is pretty well insoluble.

Well don't keep us guessing. What proof?

When a plant is described as needing medium to low light it means that is the minimum.

Looking good.

You might have more luck if you did the converse. Find out what plants are here and legal and what of them suits your purpose.

:smot: Please try to keep on the subject of the original question.

Male mice usually fight and look tatty so no one wants to buy them unless they are kept in seperate cages so they tend to have a lot more females.

I have some also but they are not very good at producing Vitamin K at the moment.

Numma trennysix---steak and black beans

I use 2/3 vermiculite and 1/3 peat and keep it moist every day.

Energy savers are no good for reptiles as they don't give out much heat or UV.

Air NZ have been contacted by SPCA re the bad packaging of turtles in the past so they are very sensitive about it. I had some real dramas sending some frogs airport to airport a while ago and they went and looked up their directives.

They are saying now that he was not armed but he resisted so they shot him in the head. I wonder how he resisted. Poked out his toungue or threw his shoe? Too tricky to imprison I fear.

Some well or spring water supplies have a large storage tank and could be called "tank supplies." It is mainly done to give a gravity water supply in case of fire for when the pole fuses get pulled. However you are right, It usually refers to rainwater supplies and as KP says your biggest problem is likely to be buying all the tanks to store the fish that have been bred.

No food means no food. What temperature are they at?

He was just a figurehead. Did the USA go away when JFK was assasinated? There would bne too many things that could be said at a trial that would make Assange look like a saint. They had no intention of taking him as a prisoner and he had no intention of being taken prisoner. Why would he want to miss out on 20 virgins?

Brumation is similar to but not the same as hibernation. They slow up their metabolic rate and virtually have an extended sleep for a few months. Since they are reptiles and not warm blooded they rely on the temperature (usually from basking ) to digest their food. They normally brumate in winter when there is not much food about. If you feed them and the temperature is not high enough, the food will just rot in their gut. Since they are not feeding they do not need to produce vitamin D3 to assist with the absorption of calcium as they are not absorbing calcium because they are not eating.