ryanjury

I have never tried them with the dems but I suspect they would be ok if they were of a good size when they were added and there are was plenty of space, have seen them with yellows plenty of times

Good luck It is relatively easy to cover costs but very hard to make money and (IMO) would kind of ruin my hobby for me if I was hell bent on making money out of it.. I run 50 odd airstones off an air compressor they are big and noisy but cheap and seems to work out well for me, whatever you buy I would make sure you have 2 on hand in case one fails, it is guaranteed that it will fail on the Sunday of a long weekend and the shops will be closed then when they open there will be nothing big enough and all your fish will suffer.. As for wiring I have no idea what it would cost to do legally but as stated already copper isn't cheap.. You could probably do it cheaper by doing some research into the legal requirements and seeing if you can source the cable and run it all yourself and then just get a sparky in to hook it into a CB on the meterbox and sign it all off. Go on trademe and hunt around for a portable heatpump, I picked one up for $120 for my fishroom you just have to have a vent going outside, I have found that I don't need mine to heat I need it to cool because the 1 compressor and double fluoro I run overheat the room and cook the fish. Plenty of breeders down those ways, maybe join the club and hunt around the forums and I am sure that they will help out. It can sometimes take a while to get in touch with descent fish worth breeding, and if you start pumping out rubbish people wont deal with you for long. If you are serious about african cichlids then you will need big tanks and you will need to only run 1-2 species per tank to avoid producing hybrids.. If you were going to do a colony of electric yellows then initially you could get away with a large 3ft (150Lish) but ideally in a 200L+ 4ft tank. No idea on the loaches, I know that clowns haven't been done. Dimensions of tanks depends on what you are breeding, how you are going to breed them, how often you are going to do water changes, what sort of filtration you are going to use and most importantly what you want to do and what works for you.. It is a bit hard to give generalisations because it depends on too many variables. My advice for you would be to start off small and start breeding a few species you like and get some experience and just build up slowly as you figure out the best ways to do things and what fish/methods work well for you, and also get some appreciation for the work involved.. If you are doing a breeding room then sometimes it is best to hunt around for people breaking down their breeding setups and buy standard sized tanks and racks, ie racks of 2fts or 4fts etc.. If you want to go for all new tanks you either have to have good sources to buy glass from and get good at cutting it and making tanks or spend a fortune. Good luck Oh and regarding the water change system I have a dripper system installed in my room, it is rough as guts and cheap but works well. Just has 17mm (I think would have to check) holes drilled in each tank, then has 13mm irrigation elbows siliconed into each tank with netting on each intake to stop fry going down, all these goto a drain, and then I have used 13mm irrigation stuff with droppers to run line into each tank, just plug the hose in and the water gets changed, I only do small water changes often with it but it seems to work well, because I am only running clean water into the tanks and each tank has its own drain there is no risk of disease transfer.

Lots of theories about how OB peacocks are developed, the general theory is that it is a peacock crossed with a OB type mbuna (there are no OB peacocks in the lake that I am aware of) and then line bred over many generations to get the peacock shape back. And yes they are hybrids, but an "accepted" one (if you can go that far) and no doubting what it is or mistaking it for a pure species a few generations down the track.

It was awesome to meet you and Sam too will hopefully see you and those that forgot next month

What a nice fish, where did you get him from? I have a tank of nice girls is he for sale?

A bit of late notice but there is an Auckland fish keepers meeting tonight at the green bay community centre at 7.30.. Send me a message if you need more details otherwise show up and say hi

Yeah I have had them in a similar setup.. I probably wouldn't recommend brichardi because brichardi are dammed nasty when spawning and you would end up with heaps of scraps between the 2. How big is the tank they are going to use? Because that would have a huge impact on what would be suitable. Assuming a reasonable sized 4ft tank I would recommend some altos and tropheus if they wanted to stay with tangs. If they didn't really mind using malawis then they could use some yellows and maybe Dems and/or peacocks. Just watch out for any haps that will get big enough to eat the shellies.

Are you sure they aren't leopard fish that you saw? http://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/in ... 754AA4BwKy

Aqua world is worth a visit it's on target rd, if u go down 20 to the airport then mt roskill is close..

If you were just going to have a pair or 2 I see no reason why you can't run the tank with 2 sponge filters indefinitely especially if it is bare bottomed and you did a water change every week or twice a week.

Have you tried prazi yet? Levamisole is a wormer but only treats a few different types of worm and as I suggested metro wouldn't be much use in this case, metro is usually used in cases where the fish is pooing white and they usually go off their food etc. My first suggestion would be praziquental, I would move one (or both but one in a breeding net so they don't fight) affected fish into the 70L tank so you can treat them and see improvement and not bomb out your big tank with drugs that might not work. If prazi doesn't work then you could also try fenbendazole. Biggest problem with these sorts of things is there are tons of different worms and stuff that can cause the symptoms but drugs are only effective against certain worms. I suggested the levamisole because its easy and mild but now you have to try the other options, some people suggest that you can collect some poo and get it examined and identify the worms from that but you would have to find someone with sufficient experience to do that.

Do you have matching males and females? I habe a nice colony of these I have on the to breed list too . And yeah I agree looks cobue to me too.

I would vent sex them. Sometimes when you have a colony of females the most dominant one can resemble a male but obviously things wont be very successful come breeding time (although they boys may like watching).

I can't really help with what killed your shellies but I have always found them to be very tough and even from fry have done 20% water changes from the hose on their tanks with no losses..

If you don't mind noise then you can get a compressor, aqua world usually have them cheap on trademe. If you mind noise then the aqua one pond one range are quite good but allot more expensive than conpressors. You can usually hook the outlet from the pump into 13mm garden irrigation piping and use droppers to route the air into gang valves. Bunnings is the best place for the irrigation stuff.

Lol sometimes the fine print is so vague one doesn't know what it means

Sorry Joe, I should really get motivated (or get some time) and go out and see them again its been a while.. He said that they are all going well unfortuately around 8 months off breeding still but going well..

Well done, he is a pretty cool fish He was the star of the show (well if you discounted the africans which will always be the stars) at the pet expo last year for the fish club. I always get a buzz out of getting something cool/rare and breeding and spreading good examples so others get a chance to own/enjoy them.

Lol no comment on the pitchers But try Andrew http://www.andrewcoffeyphotos.net/ he is a fellow fisho and a bloody nice guy too

What this really needs is a youtube video

Probably cheaper/easier to borrow a vehicle and drive up and grab it its a pretty short drive and a van/station wagon or even a 2 door hatch back with fold down back seats would easily fit that tank in it.

And some lights to get down :thup: And come to think of it some to get up from Tauranga too

I think you would make more sense if you inserted problem after swim bladder ie "Frontosa with swim bladder problem".. Anyway I can't help much because I have never seen or heard of this in NZ, it is more common in the wild caught frontosa and as the frontosa we have are like F1000 our fish seem to have adapted to eating off the surface etc.. However it is called float and you can find tons of information by googling "frontosa with float" I could go and read it all and transcribe it here but I am sure you will find an answer http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&safe=off&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=frontosa+with+float&oq=frontosa+with+float&aq=f&aqi=g-j1&aql=&gs_nf=1&gs_l=hp.3..0i18.1892.4171.0.4351.19.10.0.4.4.0.313.1123.2-3j1.5.0.txAA01_tfak&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=afd736ab52182da5. Make sure you post back and let us know how you get on.

It should be fine.. I brought some adult africans once that were being kept with adult female guppies and even the big adult zebras didn't eat them.. Guppies aren't that predatory so won't snack out on the peacocks.