alanmin4304

It would depend how well insulated your container was and how long in transit.

I had striatum years ago and the ones I had had very little colour and even then had to be kept in low light and peaty water to even have that small amount of colour. Are the ones you have now a different fish?

Many moons ago when I was keeping cold water marines we used to store the sea water for 4-6 weeks before use in black containers to remove the light. It does not give sterilization but sanitization because you usually get a bacterial bloom when the filter feeders are removed from the equation. If you have filter feeders in your aquarium it may be a good source of food. I was keeping mainly fish. In the end I found it better to pass it slowly through a home made UV sanitizer.

I hope you have an endless supply of plant as you will probably need it with oscars.

I have three large breeding turtles and a plecostomus together and they are fine. Ihad the small pleco and male turtle together from quite small for 8 years and then added 2 females later. It probably depends on the turtles as they can be pretty rough on each other at times.

Java fern will get by in low light but prefers good light and also does best in soft water. It will be OK at that temperature.

I think I recall that imported fish are packed with one seventh of the volume of the bag as water and the rest as oxygen. That way the fish are usually OK for 36 hours.

People sometimes forget that the lights need to reasonably cover the whole tank and that the amount of light required is a factor of the area and depth of water. If a certain amount of light grows plants well at a depth of 300mm then 600mm may require 10 times the light not 2x. At this stage you are probably getting too much light at the top so like most things with aquariums life is a compromise and you need to experiment and see what works for you. The hours the lights are on is also a big factor and will vary depending on how much plant you have and how vigorously it is growing. CO2 injection will also make a difference to the amount of light required. Basically you want as much light as you can get without causing problems with algae growth.

I used to breed thousands of angels and I had 8-10 pairs, each in a 12 gallon (24" x 12") tank and they did fine, but you wouldn't want to put anything else in there. They will bully anything when breeding, it doesn't have to fit in their mouth. That is normal cichlid behaviour. they want to protect their eggs.

Someone may have a better idea but mine were 40-50mm.

If they are adding copper to the water supply in Palmy I would be asking them how much and why. It is toxic to fish and humans.

Assuming you have a pair and they are old enough, they are relatively easy to breed. Seperate the male and female and condition them with lots of good food until the female is obviously gravid, then place them in a tank on their own. Do a good water change with fresh water from the tap and let it drop the temperature a few degrees ( I used to do this at night) and allow the temperature to come back to normal by itself. There is usually eggs next morning. I used to breed them in a bare tank prior to raring other fry like angels. They are great for cleaning up excess food when raring other fish and are better looking and more saleable than snails. The eggs are encased a bit like snails eggs and you can cut them off the glass with a razerblade and hatch them remotely if you wish. Feed on microworm and brine shrimp when free swimming. Don't raise them with sharp sand or gravel as they can ware off their barbels.

With adequate lighting Ambulia grows with the whorls closer together so that each strand is more dense. You could increase the hours the lights are on or add more lights.

The plants will do better with as much light as you can give them because those type of plants are usually grown emersed and will need to adjust to being submersed.

How many hours a day do you have the lights on?

Could it be that it is above the lower tank?

Look on the sera fert label and see if it is designed to produce nitrate. Most nitrates are pretty soluble and will leach into the water. Ammonia and nitrite are toxic to fish but nitrate is needed by your plants, you just have more than they are using and I suspect it is from your added fertilizer. Water changes and use by plants will get rid of it. It may pay to reduce the light until you sort it out or you could get a massive algae bloom.

Nitrates are anions (negatively charged ions) and are neither acid or alkali. Acidity is caused by the hydrogen ion concentration being elevated (lowers pH)

Aqua: I like to have a pilot light on my planted tank so the fish don't get a fright when the main lights come on in the morning. I built it before the new flouro bulbs became available and they won't fit in it so I use a pair of 15 watt incandescent bulbs on dimmers. With growlux, daylight and incandescent I think it gives a good range of light frequencies. The plants are growing pretty well so something must be right. You can get an 8 watt flouro bulb which would have similar frequency to incandescent and cooler to run, but I don't think you can use a dimmer on them, so you may get algae problems with them running continuously.

It is handy if your husband was German and you speak German. They have some good contacts there but they are usually not cheap. We will just have to keep a look out. I'll just have to get serious with what I have in the meantime. Thanks

What are fluke tabs, and where do you get them from?

It was petworld I was meaning--- Karla is thinking of getting some in from Germany. The imported one does't look as good as the one I got from shiu so it may remain a batchelor.

We have an importer down here who has imported chocolate and gold on a number of occasions and is thinking of doing so again, so there will be different genes about. Out of curiosity what do you get if you cross them---brown split to gold?

Thanks for the info. I have them in seperate containers in seperate tanks in case of accidents. How long before these fry will be big enough to breed. I have a gold male from livebearer breeder via shiu but I assume they are all pretty related. Also have a male gold imported, but at the moment it doesn't look too flash. It has a distended belley.

I am quite happy to keep them seperate at this stage. I will see what they look like when they are mature. I like to seperate the females to allow them to develop a bit before breeding them. At the moment they are in small floating containers to get them closer to the food.