alanmin4304

If you wipe it off it should drop to the bottom. Walk more quietly next time the pet shop saw you coming. Some people use this stuff--I prefer to leave it in the shop.

I am no sure if the kribs are albino as it is usually a recessive gene and will give all splits looking normal on the first cross. I haven't tried but I have heard a few say you will get some albino on the first cross. Unless most of the normals are splits

A few of us got together and started a killi club in Christchurch and brought some fish down from the north island. It died after a few years through lack of support about 25 years ago

Years ago I killed about 400 N. guentheri by treating with copper starting at about 1/8 th max dose. They were dead in minutes. They don't like copper, even cheelated. Alan is correct about what is getting bumped off.

Hole in the head is a parasite. If it is not there you can't get it regardless of water conditions. Bad water may encourage infection along with other diseases, but it has to be there.

I would't install CO2 or more fish till it settles. CO2 will alter the eqution and make another factor to worry about. I have never used CO2 but I would think for it to be of any use you should have no aeration or you will drive the CO2 out of solution. You would therefore have lower numbers of fish.

My advice would be to take the eggs out as soon as they spawn if you would like to get heaps. The biggest spawning I ever raised was over 1200. The are just as capable of eating eggs as fry.

Sounds like the normals would be a better looking fish. The young fry are quite attractive and look a bit like baby neons.

In a previous life we used to use quinine sulphate because it doesn't knock the plant around. that got replaced by mepacrine hydrachloride. I have used cheelated copper sulphate also but it is pretty rough on some fish including killies. A realy old fella (like 100 not out) told me they used to put pennies in the tank and leave them till the snails crawled out of the water in the good old days.

Your fry must look like porridge. I have never seen that.

You have probably figured from my previous posts that I think plant is pretty useful in the cycling phase. To work best it needs to be true aquatic (like ambulia) which is mainly feeding off the water, or grown submersed. Emersed plants take longer to adjust to the new conditions before they realy start doing any good. I have bred thousands of angels and have never seen one with hole in the head. It is a parasite and is either there or not.

Your tank is nicely laid out. Looks a bit cloudy still and will take a while to settle down. Some of your plants look as though they have been growm emersed and will take a while to adjust. I think you have taken a risk putting discus into such a fresh tank but it is done now. I would not add any more fish untill it settles. More plant should be ok. Good luck.

I think the commercial additives you buy are actually "dried" not "dry" clay. They give a supply of trace elements for your plant. The clay from down the back garden makes problems (I found out the hard way) and so can too much peat (also found out the hard way) but a little may be good.

Brooklands treatment contains 3 ingredients which work on there own so it should be pretty good. The quinine was used for malaria and should give the wee blighters a good fright (does't hurt your plant either)

The white spots you see on the fish are a cyst and are not killed by the treatment, it is the next stage in the life cycle that can be treated hence the advice to wind the temperature up. This speeds up the life cycle and makes available the vulnerable free swimming stage to be killed. The fish is cured when all the spots have dropped off and been killed. There are a number of treatments available that work including malachite green/ acraflavine, copper sulphate, Furan 2 or many others available from the pet shop. Go by the instructions and treat until clear of spots. I find the best way is to observe the fish in the dark with a torch.

My females remained pretty fat because they do not dump all their eggs like most fish, they seem to lay a few each day.

artemia nuplii have a high food value because they are still feeding on an egg sack. When that has been used up the food value is probaly similar, except that daphnia (from the wild) probably has a higher plant content because of what they are feeding on.

Your goldfish will love it.

In most references I have seen where they advise using clay they always use dried clay (I think it can start getting too anaerobic and producing methane) and when using peat they say a little and boiled. I have not used clay but I have used river silt and found that good, and peat and found for me it did not seem to make a lot of difference. In the end what works for you is good.

White clouds have been a prohibited import for as many years as long as I can remember (maybe 40) but they have been like axylotls and go in and out of popularity with MaF. What are these gold morphs like, might be worth getting some. I just gave my normals to a friend to keep the mossies down in his half wine barrel lilley ponds today. I was at a meeting many years ago when a rep from MaF was lecturing about all the nasty fish that had been smuggled into the country including white clouds and an old guy down the back (looked about 100 not out) started waving a bit of paper he claimed was a letter of approval from way back to import them. I did't follow it up but it always makes me wonder.

They have been around for many years and are the rabbits of the fish world. That is why we thought it such a joke when the MaF declared you could keep them but you couldn't import or breed them. I understand they were imported in the 1930s

When breeding egg layers I used to feed them up until the females were almost bursting with eggs in the belief that it was no harder to bring up 1000 fry than 100. I have tried this with white clouds and they still spawn almost continuously over a period of days rather than drop the lot. They are very small and I used to feed infusoria for a while then microworm then brine shrimp. MaF get their nickers in a twist over them periodically but I do believe they were legally imported many years ago.

Urea is urea (first organic compound synthesised by man) If you use urea from your local garden centre you will know it is only urea as your nitrogen source and your experiment is not being influenced by something else.

I would stay away from adding clay as it can cause problems. I think unwashed river sand and a bit of commercial additive would be the safest.

I had no luck with whiteworms in a plastic box, they just crawled all over the place. I found an icecream container in a wooden box was ok. I now use wooden boxes and line the part in contact with the compost with plastic sheeting and it works well