JoandWilly

I just got 6 of these from hollywoods in albany, does anyone know how to sex them and at what age do they start pairing? Oh and hollywoods still has 5 left if anyone was wondering.

i would personally use Seachems Florite or laterlite, as both of them never need to be replaced. Bonus with florite is that if you overdose iron, rather than the iron staying in the water fuelling algae growth, the florite will absorb the excess and slowly realease it as iron as the iron in the water is used up.

Just wondering what would be good plants to add to our pond, we already have lillies which grow well, but since it's a 3 leveled pond so 2 ponds have a water fall going into them the lillies dont like the surface movement to much, looking for something that doesnt nessacarily need to be planted.

All the stores around auckland should have them in stock by the end of the week.

Seen some at hollywood fish farm along with a few other things like albino peacocks that i havent seen them stock for a while.

dont bother adding carbon to the filter you, you wont see a difference, the best thing to use is a Bio Chem Zorb pouch, will clear up the tanins in 24hours and you can leave it in the filter for up to 6 months and have crystal clear water teh whole time.

Fish waste is dissolved ammonia. When the pH is above 7, there is a very low concentration oh H+ ions so only a small percent of the ammonia will be ammonium and more ammonia. As the pH drops below 7, theres a higher concentration of H+ ions, which means more of the ammonia is converted to ammonium. Even in a pH below 7 you are still going to get ammonia but its going to me a small percentage compared to ammonium. Thats why all the ammonia test kits measure the amount of NH3 and NH4+ combined.

when the pH is below 7 you don't have ammonia you have ammonium which is the more harmless form, so as long as your not raising the pH and just doing small water changes every day, the tank should start coming right. Also cut your feeding right back to a small amount every day

if you dont want to buy UV light or another filter, buy a product called magic clear, and use in conjuction with filter wool in your filter, treat majic clear every 3 days, and after every second dose, do a 30% water change and change the filter wool, but dont stop doing it once you think its all gone, cause if you leave even 1 spore it'll come back, keep doing it for about a week after you cant see it any more.

please dont tell me you are going to go to the north shore.

When we moved from hamilton to auckland at the end of last year with 12 tanks this is what we done...... Collected up heaps of coke bottles for water storage, poly boxs and bags for fish storage and buckets for gravel. We were lucky and moved a coupel of tanks over a few weekends so didnt have to do them all in one day. For each tank this is what we done. 2 days before moving the tank gave it a good gravel vac and water change to get rid of as much gunk and nitrates as possible, also cleaned out the filters in tank water. Did not feed the fish from the time we gave the water change till after we moved the tank. On the day of the move, we caught all the fish and bagged them (individualy for larger ones and a few to a bag for smaller ones) and put them all in poly boxes. Take the filter media out of the filters and bag it the same way you would a fish(1/3 water, 2/3 air). Then filled as many cleaned coke bottles as we could we tank water, trying to get atleast half the volume of the tank. Emptyed the rest of the tank and then bucketed the gravel. Loaded everything up into the van and drove to aucks (2 hour drive). Once we got to our new house we put the tank in place. Put the gravel back in the tank(didnt wash it or anything). Filled the tank up with the coke bottles, then brought it up to temp using tap water and topped the tank up to just below where we would normally have it, set the heaters up, then unbagged the filter media and set the filters up. Would leave the tank running for an hour or so while we'd eat dinner, while the fish were still poly boxed. Then would do the usual realeasing of the fish, putting small amounts of water in the bag every 15mins for about an hour. Dont feed the fish the same day you move, and when you do feed them feed them lightly for a few days, the tank will still have some benefical bacteria but you dont want to overload the tank with food and that in the first week just incase. Doing this and moving 12 tanks, we didnt loose a single fish, and that included fry that weren't even a month old. And you dont have to use coke bottles for water storage, we used to drink a lot of stuff and would go through 6+ 2.25L bottles a week so saved up for about 2 months. I dont even drink 1 2.25L bottle a month now, cant stand the taste of coke.

they all mbuna, and have always feed them pellets which float.....

Hollywoods can order them in, might pay to give them a call to see what price's you'd be looking at.

I feed all our africans, duckweed, they love it and clean up a hand full in a couple of mins, even have some in the fry tanks and although they to small to eat the big bits, it never speads so they must be eating all the little plantlets that grow, i try feed them as much vegetable matter as i can, just made up some last night that just had carrot, zuchhini, peas and a touch of garlic, and a couple of prawns, plended up and they go absolutly crazy over it, diffently will be doing that more often than trying to feed them processed foods 3 times a day. If anyone wants some duckweed just send me a pm, it's growing out of my ears.

yeah my tank is all sand and rocks aswell, and mine doesnt seem to stress or anything. Spends most of its day sitting on a rock basking in the light and competes for food just as much as the malawi's

We have a port hoplo in our malawi tank and he's great as a clean up crew, we are wanting to get him/her a friend but worryed about putting smaller ones in there.

Hollywoods North shore can order them in for you, but they are rather pricie.... they are next on my list of fish to buy.

lol you got in first

Here is teh extract from cichlid-forum Whole aritcle can be read at http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/feeding_mbuna.php

yeha spirulina is the best for them but it does give them the spotness, have witnessed it myself when we changed there food to spirulina pellets once... dots appeared and then switched them back cause we couldnt afford it again and they disappeared. i think cichlid-forum.com has an aritcle on it.

A high spirulina diet can cause black spotiness, could be bruising from fighting........

add salt to the water, we had our giraffe do that, meth blue can work to catch him if you can and apply a drop to his eye, we done the meth blue on the first day and then salted the water and cleared up in a few days

cyanobacteria means you have high phosphates and probably high nitrates aswell, to get rid of it without buying a prescription med, cut down the amount of food your feeding, or switch to a low phosphate food (we found swapping our brand of fish food got rid of it in days), also do a few xtra water changes to try lower the phosphate already in the tank. Keeping the lights off for a few days and covering the tank when its in direct sunlight will help

I stripped them and put them in a breeding net in one of our fry tanks, sometimes if you leave them in the parents tank or tank with larger fish the larger fish will try eat them through the net. I stripped at the 2 week mark.

here's the best pic's i could get, it sucks cause its a nocternal bloomer.