alanmin4304

Yes

It is hard to know unless you know how they were frozen and then stored. On the safe side 3-4 months would be best. Might be alright for longer---depends how lucky you are feeling. They are not for human consumption so those standards do not apply. The same principles do though.

General Foods store your frozen peas at minus 30 something degrees and they are snap frozen. What you are proposing would give a food technologist a migraine if you were talking about food for human consumption. All living things have a built in self destruct mechanism or we would be wading over large piles of dead things that were once living. Freezing only slows this process. I would bet a dollar to a proverbial that what you will end up with is a product without much food value and a high posibility of it being toxic. If food is not prepared and stored properly bacteria multiply, enzymic reactions and oxidation are sped up and the product becomes vitually useless as food if not toxic from containing pathagenic bacteria and even the toxins which some of them produce as they multiply. These are fish food but also very good bacterial food. A domestic freezer is not adequate for the storage of products like this except in the short term.

Yes

If you get a strawberry and freeze it in liquid nitrogen when it thaws out it is pretty much like a strawberry. If you freeze a strawberry in you domestic freezer at minus 10 degrees when it thaws out it will be strawberry mush. This is because the slower that it freezes, the bigger the ice crystals that are formed and they pierce the cell walls. Fish will keep in a domestic freezer for about 3 months at minus 10 degrees and in a commercial freezer below minus 18 for 6 months (9-12 months in some realy cold commercial facilities). If food is snap frozen (very rapidly) then stored at a very low temperature, the quality will be the best. If your frozen bloodworms thaw in transit and are then refrozen slowly and stored in a domestic freezer their quality will be as bad as it gets. It is not food for human consumption, but if it was it would be required to be snap frozen and maintained at a constant temperature at or below minus 18 degrees C prior to sale. A domestic freezer will not do this. You then need to get it to your customers while maintaining a temperature of less than minus 18 degrees. For the above reasons please do not include me on your list of customers.

Have you covered up the plantlets while vacuuming the media? It would pay to uncover them. They must be happy if they are propagating.

I saw Bob's one today (again)--nice fish.

Carrots contain vitamins D & E, both of which are fat soluble and processed by the liver and therefore excessive amounts are not easily excreted as are water soluble vitamins like Vitamin C. A little is good and a lot is toxic. That is why we don't feed a lot of carrot to our reptiles. Treat yourself at least as well as you would your bearded dragon. Waits for pointy stick.

The bishop was out of town.

I was given M. umbrosum by someone who bought it as M. callitricoides and realised when it arrived that it was not that so be careful what it is that you are buying. It will normally be grown emersed when sold as well.

I thought of that after the rubbish truck left.

I have just lost my male albino frog to impaction and suspect it has swallowed gravel or more likely too much chitin from mealworms, even though the other 20 seem to be OK.

Yes. I used to waste the CO2 though. I am sure you could find an older family member to take over the disposal of leftovers.

If you use wine yeast and yeast nutrient along with a heat pad (all available from the home brew shops) you will find that the CO2 production is greater and and lasts a lot longer. Wine yeasts will ferment in much greater concentrations of alcohol than beer or bakers yeasts. In addition 2.5lbs of sugar to the gallon and some fruit will give you a medium wine when finished. Yeasts multiply in the presence of air and produce equal volumes of ethanol and CO2 when air is excluded. The trick therefore is to make up a solution of yeast with sugar and nutrient , keep it warm and aerated ,allow it to multiply than add it to the main airlocked jar. Dacron in the top of the bottle will keep out the foreign creebies while it multiplies. Try not to drink all the wine at once and fruit wines generally need to be left for at least 2 years to be any good. Win/win.

You have it planted too deep, the crown should be at the surface so that only the roots are covered. It looks like you have low light, a tall tank or would be better off with a different type of light. Sag. grows OK in one of my tanks which is 500mm high and only two 3ft T8s on a 4ft tank. I have had it grow successfully with lumiflor and cool white, growlux and cool white and presently growlux and daylight. What sort of light are you using? Height of tank, age of lights, type of lights, K rating of lights and hours on? There are a number of Echinodorus sp. that look similar wether grown submersed or emersed. Each plant can also vary depending on the light conditions. I have been growing them in natural light emersed in the glasshouse over summer and have just brought them inside under artificial light and the leaf structure is now completely different. Some are easy to identify like ozelot, uraguayensis etc but there are a number that have pinkish new growth that turns green, particularly if it is not strong light.

First looks like S. subulata (struggling a bit) Second is E. bleheri Third is an Echinodorus sp. but there are a number that look like that. as suggested, could be red special or a number of others.

Enjoy.

Enjoy your stay

I use chicken livers.

I think the native cockroaches have a weird diet---feed on fungi in leaf litter or something. That is why they don't invade the house. Their are a number of natives I think.

Your English is better than many on here and is perfectly understandable. My apologies for the Kiwi sense of humour on the French (lost in translation?)

All the straight vals are unwanted organisms. V. gigantea, amaricana and spiralis (the leaves are relatively straight but the flower stem spirals). I understand from contacts at the Regional Council that the powers that be would also like to ban the other Vals along with Sagitaria subulata. I think there is a lake up north that has been invaded by S. subulata I am not sure about all plants but understand that Java Fern requires more light in harder water.

Any chance of getting some aromatica sent down with someone coming to the conference. Will have plants available to swap this end, if not now will later.

Barrie has posted a number of times here with the info. Try the search function.

I have a 30 year old rena that controls the lights, turns the air off when feeding and feeds the fish a number of times a day and has recently decided to retire from working. It was very good when working.