alanmin4304

My turtles don't hang around in it, they eat it --big time.

When they are young they look like baby neons.

I have slates here with stainless steel straps that I used when I was breeding angels. You can have a couple if you want to come and pick them up. PM me if you do.

After taking another look at the cabinet it doesn't look like there is a great deal of support for a tank of that size. It might pay to look at getting more support for the tank at this stage.

I built one about that size (for turtles) for about $200 and made the basking area just a ledge full of gravel so they can swim under it as well. I change the water by siphoning the water onto the garden then connecting up to the faucet and filling with warm water.

It looks like Elodea canadensis which is permitted. It looks stringy because they have hooked out a whole heap and the base of the plants has been starved of light. They normally cut the top 300mm for sale as oxygen weed in the shops and what is left will regrow for harvesting in a few weeks.

There are a number of types (I have 3). Pupuke (and plantman I think) have the fine one tenellus tenellus which propagates pretty readily.

You could scrape them off with a razor blade and hatch them but chances are the fungus will spread and kill the rest. They should go again in a couple of weeks by which time you could be better set up.

A "square" tank would normally be cheaper and would be OK to clean with the RTV in the corners. I have made square tanks and they are fine to clean. I have never had drains and just siphon out for water changes. Someone with drains would know if it is an advantage. Turtles are messy so good filtration and frequent water changes works for me.

I think it is around but I haven't seen it for a while. There have been people on here looking for it and I am not sure if they have had any success. There is a fine tenellus about which looks similar (Pupuke Aquariums have it)

I would think it is Philippine Java fern (Microsorum pteropus " Philippine") rather than the narrow leafed one. Both are nice plants.

Most of the hairgrass available is quite long. You can also use Echinodrus tenellus, Sagittaria microfolia, Hydrocotyle verticulata or glossostigma elatinoides.

If you hang a piece of slate near the water surface they will normally spawn on that and you can remove them and hatch them without them being eaten. The white eggs are infertile and generally fungus and that spreads to the fertile eggs and kills them also. The parents remove the infertile eggs but if you add a drop of methylene blue to the water with the removed eggs it will slow up the spread of fungus. If you feed them well (particularly with live food) they will go again in a couple of weeks.

Generally speaking one med at a time is the go. Sometimes you can get a synergistic reaction where the combination of two meds has a greater effect than the sum of the two ingredients individually. The antibiotic amoxyl is an example. The main thing is to know what you are treating and not throw a whole heap of meds at it and hope it does something (particularly with antibiotics). Combinations with meth blue, malachite and acriflavine are common for us old fellas. Quinine is effective and was an old cure for white spot but has been superceeded now by mepacrine and probably again now (was used to kill the malaria parasite)

I leave a calcium block and cuttlefish block in the water permanently as turtles feed in the water.

Meth blue is the fungicide (used to be the cure for athletes foot---would be pretty obvious what you had wrong with your foot). Qinine used to be used for white spot and other external parasites and the other two have a bacteriocidal effect. You would need to watch the malachite on fish that are sensitive to it like killies, but overall a good combination.

fungus is usually an oportunistic infection of a wound which is bacterially infected so you probably want something to combat bacteria and fungi. See what your pet shop has.

By the side of the base I meant the edge of the base. As in any good design, the cabinet looks to have sufficient flange to hide the bottom of the tank anyway so I guess it wouldn't matter which way the tank was made. Like most things there is more than one way to do things and I was and still am curious about other ways to do things. As an aside I also like to see the top of the cabinet opening come down far enough to cover the water leval and for the tank to be low enough such that you are not looking up into the lights. It should be a great tank when finished. I wish you luck.

All of those barbs are reasonably easy to breed and can be bred the same way. The biggest problem I found was that they are generally a bit nippy and can be not that easy to sell in great numbers.

Is it fungus or mouth fungus? Mouth fungus is a bacteria and should be treated with a bacteriacide and fungus with a fungicide.

Pegasus, my apologies if you feel insulted, it was certainly not my intention. I have made many tanks and because of that generally have a good look at the way other people make them and have never yet seen a tank around here with an obvious gap between the glass. It may well be that I have been in the Chathams and have eaten too much crayfish. My intention was to find out if there was a reason why people left a gap and I had assumed that it was for the reason you gave. My problem I guess is that in a previous life I worked as a rubber technician where I learned that adhesives and fillers are not necessarily the same thing and I was curious as to wether the advantage of the added flexibility was outwayed by any weakness through having a greater thickness of RTV. You would know that RTV sets in contact with the air and I believe that too much RTV will not cure properly in the middle.

I don't normally make tanks with the front glass glued to the side of the base but when I have I do a light sanding of the area in contact with the base to get a better bond and also add straps around the inside to double the bond area. You will need to make sure the glass cutting is more accurate this way (placing the front,back and sides on the base is more forgiving). Using a spacer must be a north island thing as I have built hundreds of tanks and seen the work of many others on the mainland and have never seen a tank built that way. RTV is an adhesive not a filler and I have always glued glass to glass. There may be a sound reason for doing it that way or it may just be something in the water up there.

It is a bit like the pinapple chunk add on TV. God created Christchurch and gave it artesian water and greywacke gravel for fish keepers. All that was left was traffic jams and wind. Dunedin must have come later.

I agree with reef, it is just a matter of how much. Since all living thinks contain protein and that is a string of phosphates with various amino acids hanging off it I can't see how plants can grow without phosphate. What is not desirable is more than the plants can use.

I think paprika is used to manufacture red canaries and may be used to enhance the red in fish.