alanmin4304

You can buy very good reflectors from the petshop that clip on to the tube.

Can you post a picture of what you bought?

Southern bells are more tolerant to a range of temperatures and warming them up will speed up their metabolism. I would think they would need to get a bit of condition on before brumation in order to survie that.

If you have the right conditions to grow it you will have the right conditions to convert it from emersed to submersed. If not it is going to have problems anyway. It is not one of the easiest plants to grow.

My sister who lived in Samoa for many years said that it was all through their lawn. Would make it easy to cut the lawns---just have to give it a fright.

I use chicken livers for bait. The frogs will be brumating soon so you will not need to worry for a while.

Everyone has their own ideas but there is a pretty foolproof way to avoid trouble which most people don't seem interested in. If you heavily plant a tank and get them estacblished then gradually introduce only a few fish you will not need a filter or airstone. If you add a filter and airstone as a bonus and only feed the minimum of good quality food that is low in phosphate so you don't have excess left you will probably have little trouble with algae. Most people want only a few plants and lots of fish but if you make an underwater garden and enjoy a few fish whern they show up you could be away laughing. Most algae problems are caused by an excess of phoshate. All proteins are a string of phosphates with amino acids hanging off them so if you leave food uneaten it will provide an excess of phosphates. Some sites suggest adding nitrate to cure algae problems but this will only work if you have the other nutrients, carbon and light to get the plants growing better and starve the algae. Overstocking and overfeeding are usually the main culprits.

Blow flies are better than houseflies but variety is better than both. Just stay away from the brightly coloured poisonous stuff. The old sayingis true I think. If you can't mate with it then eat it (problem is if you can mate with it and it will fit in your mouth all options are open)

You can see that the peaks are quite specific and do not exactly relate to the types of tubes generally available (not quite cool white or daylight). There are countries where plants have been grown a lot under artificial light and some of these have developed lights producing the best frequencies. One problem is that these lights are generally developed for emersed growth and red light does not penetratrate water as well as blue. These lights are normally used to encourage plants to flower or fruit so they are not entirely what we might be after. So it is not just about blue and red light. I can say without a shadow of doubt that the best lights for you are the ones that work for you and the only way to sort that out is to experiment (don't forget to report back with pics)

The flourish excel is an available form of carbon for your plants and helps with plant growth. This helps to reduce the nutrient available to the algae and starves it. It also has an algaecidal effect which they don't advertise. At normal doses it is usually safe particularly if you increase it slowly. Most algae thrives on an imbalance of phosphate over nitrate and the phospate usually becomes excessive through overfeeding.

Where is the greeny in ya? Get a pushbike.

I have both and I would suggest that to keep a beardie healthy you need to have a good supply of live food. To buy this would be way more expensive than feeding fish but breeding them yourself is not hard (they still need to be heated though). I would also think that a beardie might cost more to heat because the temperatures are probably higher and there would be a lot more heat loss.

There is a guy in Christchurch that sells a few different types of fly traps on Trademe and they work pretty well. I use two different ones for my frogs.

Non structural would be OK next day.

On the plantgeek site they call torta---V. americana v. " Biwaensis, and contortionist is Vallisneria sp. "Contortionist"

Another way would be to just put the tubes and reflectors into the lid and and wire the rest up remotely. Takes a lot of weight out of the lid and a lot of mains wiring away from the water.

I get my lights and tubes from Lamp specialists but they only do retail for cash. You can buy cheap but good reflectors from most pet shops that clip on to the flouro tube.

One thing I prefer but many do not take into account is the height of the tank. I think it should be slightly below eye level when sitting down so you are not looking up into the lights.

I got an Email from Ecan (Canterbury Regional Council) the other day confirming that all straight Vallisnerias are prohibited nation wide but twisted ones are not (yet?). The twisted ones usually go under a number of names. Torta (aka tortafolia) is the shorter, wider variety with not much twist and brittle leaves. Contortionist is the taller variety with more twist and is the one in the picture. Spiralis refers to the flower stem and is one of the banned straight leafed varieties.

Probably similar to a chicken plucker.

You can get them in different wattages but the only thing that varies I think is the wattage of the bulb. I use one to heat a cabinet I made but I wanted the heat at the bottom and the light at the top so I took the bulb out and ran the fan continuously over a heat emitter on a thermostat and put another light in the top. To get the bulb within about 300mm you are going to have a wind tunnel in my view so I don't use them as intended. I don't think the UV output is that high either.

Reptaprobe are the ones I use and are pretty good. Available on trademe for $65. I have used the straight dimmers as well but not as useful.

Not sure what they tried but I know it was a reed that was used. The bacteria were atracted to the root zone and retained so it was a side reaction to the nutrient stripping. It was done at Lincoln university some years ago. I will see if anyone involved is still about.

If your household water supply is that casual I would check to see that it is not connected to the farm watering troughs without back flow prevention I have seen a number of farms where the farming families were at risk of being treated with bloat control drugs because the system was not set up properly.

Never had anything to do with a sump but have been invoved with using reed beds to clean up septic tank effluent before discharge and the plants that were effective were limited. I think the plant of choice was a noxious weed which requires the consent of Maf. This was being done to strip nutrient but it also brings about a massive reduction in bacteria. The bacteria are trapped in the root zone and if you cultured the right bacteria it might do what you want.