alanmin4304

Malachite green is a dye and is good for curing parasites like white spot. I understand that malifix is teatree oil and is good for oiling teatrees. You should pick the most apropriate treatment and use that on its own. If you mix treatments you can end up with a toxic soup. The usual treatments for white spot would be malachite green, copper ion (chelated copper sulphate), quinine, mepacrine. Some fish are not tolerant of the first 2, and the last 2 don't knock the plant about. Others are used as well. Wunder tonic contains a mixture of some of the above but best not to mix unless you know what you are doing. Others will nno doubt have there own favourites.

Crinum tiainum, natans or calamustrum. They are of the lilly family. They may be around but I cannot recall seeing them. Might be available from a nursery. It may be a bit like Lobelia cardinalis---plenty of Lobelia in the nursery but not that one.

JC been dead longer than thought by some?

It is a matter of personal preference how you set up the heating. I have worked in a number of fishhouses and they each have different characteristics but the most important thing to get right is very good insulation if you want to keep your running costs down. Some examples: Basement in Dunedin. Heavily insulated walls but none on ceiling. Used for growing plants. No fan and heated with lots of lights only---worked well and excess heat warmed lounge above. Plant growing room with natural and artificial lighting to keep emersed plants through the winter. Walls of polystyrene sandwich but hard to well insulate ceiling and get good natural light. No fan but works well. Quarantine fish room built from poly filled concrete block and heated with electric cable in the floor. No fan. Not easy to work in as head and feat get very hot and uncomfortable. My own fishhouse worked well and was comfortable to work in. Heavily insulated with 1 kW heater and fan running continuously. Tanks on floor and three rows on stands above. Temperature variation about 3 deg between top and bottom. Mainly used for fish but some plant and lighting as well. Set up for quarantine so 50 odd tanks with a light above each but only used during maf inspections. Each tank also had 12 volt pilot light to feed young at night when main lights off and used for breeding. A lot of people get a fishhouse and lots of tanks them give it all away when they get the power bills because they didn't get it insulated well enough in the begining.

Electric one bar (1 kW). You can buy heaters with a fan but you want a continuous rated one and wire it so it goes all the time. The heater is best at the bottom by the leaky door.

I heated a fish house 12ft x 8ft with a one bar heater and fan. You need a fan rated to run continuously and you wire the heater up to the thermostat. The better insulated the room is, the less time the heater will be on and the more water you have in there the better the heat sink you will have. By that I mean that when you walk in the hot air will escape but the heat will be in the water and it will not take much energy to reheat the air.

The smaller the container the closer the food is.

I think those tanks come out with a grolux type tube and a cool white so I would stick with that combo if you can.

He has come out of the closet

Does some clever person want to explain how to work out when it is Chinese new year?

Did he get the date right this year?

Are you doing water changes with cold water only?

It is not mouses ear. If it was it would have a half chance of survival. It is a pot plant and will look quite nice on your window sill once reconverted to emersed growth. The pet shop spotted you and your wallet up the road.

I kept cold water marines for a number of years and only saw people have success with cooling units.

I used to seperate males and females for a few weeks and feed the hell out of them to get them into good condition. Add them to a bare tank and do a 40% water change with cold water. They will normally spawn next day and remove them when they have. You can remove the eggs with a razor blade but I used to do better removing the parents

Could be tubifex. I get them in the turtle tanks from feeding plants from the river and live food.

I think growlux is around 10000k and cool white is around 4000k. Have sent you a PM.

30 odd years ago us old fellas were right up there with the latest up to date info from Germany. This was that a combination of growlux and cool white with 1/10 of the wattage in incandescent was the go. I built a tank in a cabinet about then which has 2 x 3 foot tubes and 2 x 15 watt bulbs on dimmers that run 24/7. The tubes go for 17 hours/day. If I was doing it again today I would use 4 x 3ft tubes (4ft wont fit). I tried daylight (6500k) for a year but have reverted to the old set up. If you put a growlux in the front it enhances the red and blue colours of fish. You pays your money and takes your pick.

Plants are just as confusing if using common names. When selling I try to use both.

Your aquarium is a balanced living system if you keep it right. Everthing plays a part in the balance including the fish waste. If you want a spotessly clean sterile system you should wash and boil every thing and then get plastic fish and plants., If you want a balanced living system you will need to feed your plants so vacuuming all the fertilizer up once a week will starve them of food. Just remove the excess from on top when it builds up.

Congrats-----time for another tank.

Once they are free swimming you can siphon them out and rear them in another tank where you can feed them more intensely and get them to grow a lot faster (and remove the risk of them being eaten)

It is a difficult subject alright. Having grown plants in aquariums with artificial light, in a glasshouse with natural light and emersed with artificial light I can confirm that plants certainly respond differently in each situation so the type of light is difficult enough without trying to work out how much and for how long.

I was asked many years ago to go to Ausie with a group of guys, buy a boat and sail back to NZ with a boat load of cockatoos etc. I declined but I am sure there would be no shortage of people to take my place. The deal was that if the boat was aproached by customs or maf they all went overboard or were released. This is no doubt where the wild colonies came from. In those days they could be bought in Ausie for $5 and sold a dozen at a time to the USA for over $1000 and that is a pretty good profit. Not so easy now with DNA testing.

Or a black zebra lace veil tail like I have seen at your place