alanmin4304

I use river sand from the local nursery and I would think any inert rounded (not sharp like crusher dust) sand would be OK.

Put up a picture of each fish taken from the side and someone will be able to sex them for you.

It depends on what type of filter, how good it is and wether it has filled up with nasties. To filter bacteria you need about a one micron filter which means you probably need two different prefilters to stop the one micron from getting blocked up in 5 minutes. Carbon filters will remove some stuff but how do you know when it is full and no longer working. Ion exchange filters take some things out and replace them with something else---usually remove calcium/magnesium ions and replace with sodium ions. Most filters sold for domestic purposes are very small and stop working very quickly and commercial ones are not cheap. Domestic reverse osmosis will treat only small amounts of water and slowly. The local authority water supply is required by law to meet the NZ drinking water standards and the only problem for fish is chlorine which can be easily removed and relatively cheaply with additives that usually contain sodium thiosulphate (some also remove the ammonia which can be a biproduct but is probably way less than that produced by your fish).

Great work by all those involved.

Back in the day it was males that were hard to get. I reared 10 from tadpoles and only got one male and one female with a diformed spine. Things seem to have changed.

Ya gotta luvem. Men usually reckon they want boys but get spoilt rotten by their daughters.

The leaves are very soft and easily damaged. If the leaves go black it is usually through lack of light and if they disappear it is usually through being eaten.

Gays beware?

Always ready to learn. How does salt buffer?

GH is a German word for hardness that for some reason aquarists cling to. Anything that adds calcium ions or magnesium ions will increase the hardness. Common salt will make it salty.

Long plastics are at 10 March Place Belfast. Go down past the palms and keep trucking towards the Main North Rd, go over the bridge and turn at the first on the left (Belfast Rd), go over the railway line and first on the left is March place. They are down there on the right. Go in the front door and there are polyboxes displayed on your left. I get the smallest and second smallest for lizards. Ask for seconds of the size you want but if they don't have them you have to buy in bulk and I think that was 16 small I bought last time. They are about $6 each I think. They bought the outfit out that used to be down Waterloo Rd and make sheet poly and special shapes as well.

Air NZ have a special freight service for pets. I have sent reptiles and turtles etc and have seen others sending cats and dogs. It cost me $185 to go airport to airport from Auckland to Christchurch. Redwoods could send by overnight courier but I don't know what they charge. Certainly less than air nz.

Basically if you ask the airlines about transporting fish they will put you through the hoops but if you don't then the security people don't worry. Even a half sane security person can usually work out that the chances of fish swimming in a bag of nitroglycerine are not great.

Welcome and enjoy your time here.

When you quarantine fish you put them in a seperate tank and watch them carefully to see any observable signs of disease. I have always thought you could do the same thing by carefully watching the fish before you buy them. If they don't show signs of disease in the shop or in the quarantine tank you can still introduce a disease if they are carrying a disease asymptomatically. The joys of keeping fish.

I used to make large v traps in large tanks so I could put a lot of gravid females in when required and leave them for a while after birthing to condition up again.

Albino is a recessive gene for lack of melanin and melanin comes from the greek word for black. With two genes it can be gold (still lack of black) and a red eye because of lack of melanin in the eye. Leucistic is for lack of colour and can be complete or partial. You can have a black bird with some white feathers or all white feathers and you can have a white/gold frog with some green patches but they will have a black eye. It can be very complicated as those trying to breed albino frogs have discovered I have bred albino/albino kribensis and always had a few normals in the fry which you would not expect.

Doesn't look like velvet to me.

Manuka honey is another thing I would not use but nothing personal. I think there are treatments out there that are more specific so I tend to stick to cures that I know. Burnig could be caused by ammonia. The fighters are packed in very little water when imported.

Could be columnaris but doesn't really quite look right for that either. What are you water parameters? Could it be irritated and producing excess slime? To be honest I am a bit lost. Furan should kill most bacterial diseases,wunder tonic with quinine should kill most parasites.

Just having a moan. We are one of the lucky ones, the house has just finished being repaired but we are surounded by people still waiting. One of the worst aspects is some of the landlords are greedy as and are puting pressure on people renting so they will leave and they can put the rent up to some of the excessive amounts that are happening. Our neighbour is a solo parent who is likely to be moving to more affordable accomodation where he cannot look after his daughter as well. These are the people I feel for.

We feel for you all but hang in there the aftershocks slow up after about 15000 and EQC should have some of it sorted in about 3 years. The man is here today fixing our front fence and gate after the February shake. Hasn't finished yet---back in a few days.

We felt it in Christchurch but it was very mild here. I knew it was going to be a big one because of the time it went on for.

Typical Echinodorus flower. The only thing that varies is the size and number of stamins.

I have never used or likely to use pimafix. It sounds like something other than velvet. A picture might help.