alanmin4304

S. microfolia is one of the few carpeting plants that does not require strong light. Most of the rest will struggle to get enough light in a 600mm high tank. If you want to take the risk you could try: Hairgrass (a number of varieties about); E. tenellus tenellus, tenellus parvula, tenellus latifolius; Hemianthus umbrosum; glossostigma.

Someone quoted the rules of life for a frog earlier. "If you can't mate with it then eat it."

As a bit of an aside: The people who I would realy trust advice from are the older generation who have spent years importing and quarantining fish. There are a few around down here. One of the difficulties is that the medications they use are often not the ones that are available from your local pet shop but are prescription only medications. The regime has more recently changed and now an importer cannot treat fish with medications of their choice when the think there is a problem. They have to treat as prescribed by Maf (by which time the fish are all dead). It is often cheaper and easier to destroy the fish than go through the required rituals.

I have enquired from Maf who put me on to Ministry of fisheries and a very friendly fishing officer is going to look into it and get back to me. (Don't hold your breath).

No link. I seem to remember that you can catch them for yourself but not sell them, but not sure where I got that from.

I think it may be one of the peculiarities of our quota system.

Well said. Tropical fish are perishable goods and I think we should all strive to find out what fish are compatable and what is a healthy looking fish. The pet shops around here are struggling at the moment and I would therefore expect them to sell you whatever you ask for. I accept that if I ask a shop assistant. "What plant is that?" I will get the answer. "$3.50 a bunch." so I don't ask. I think Jennifer is correct---the staff are not vets and most vets would be one page ahead of you in the same book anyway, so learn all you can and don't expect vetinary advice from a shop assistant.

The southerns will end up bigger even if they start at the same size. Goldens will eat each other at the same size so I would think something will get eaten. I would keep them seperate.

I see someone is selling freshwater shrimps on trademe as turtle food. Would it not be ilegal to sell these?

My advice would be to learn as much about the fish you are interested in buying before you buy. Are they top, middle or bottom swimmers, are they shoalers, are they flicking, have faded colouration or not behaving properly. These are some of the signs that importers look for in order to try and diagnose problems and get a good guess at a treatment. There are many other signs as well but if they are not "acting normally" don't buy.

Welcome indeed

Excessive phosphates are the main cause of algae problems.

It looks like it may have been grown submersed from wild caught emersed and so will not be able to be grown emersed straight off.

Plants use Fe11 (ferrous iron ion) as Fe 111 (ferric iron ion) is virtually insoluble. The problem is that ferrous is not very stable and is easily oxidized to ferric. Ferrous is green and ferric is brown so if you solution turns brown your iron is not much use. Some commercial products either stabilise ferrous or make ferric available be reduction to ferrous.

The blue is probably meth blue. possibly with malachite and maybe acraflavine. They would be the most common ingredients used. Sometimes quinine or mepacrine are also used. copper is very effective but risky even when chelated with citric acid. No info on the label?

I wonder how many people eat them these days. Probably prefer the introduced, four legged chicken with spines, rolled in mud and cooked in the hot ashes.

If it is a native it will be used to our temperatures but mosses generally like to be in very moist conditions. Plenty of water and cool conditions I would think.

Probably best to grow some emersed as a pot plant to keep as backup. It will probably propagate a lot quicker emersed as well.

Who's a lucky boy then.

Kiore were baught to NZ by maori and not because they were warm and cuddly.

Great stuff, well done to you all.

What is the minimum reading of phosphate your test kit registers?

Last time I was there I saw a big box of the cylinders for sale at the recycling depot associated with the refuse collection. Try your local.

Never a good situation to have two pairs of breeding angels in the same tank. They are very protective and and if one or both pairs decide to breed murder will get done. I used to breed heaps of them with one pair only in a 600x300x300 tank. They are worse if they have been on their own and breeding.

A lot of algae problems are caused by too much phosphate in relation to nitrate. The phosphate is usually from the food. See if you can get food which will produce low phoshate. The nitrate is from the nitrogen cycle and will increase natually from waste from your fish. You could add a small quantity of a soluble nitrate but better to decrease the phosphate I think.