ryanjury

I have seen yellows, blue acaras and angels together it is a bit of a mixed bag with what they prefer in water conditions but they all seem to adjust ok, the scissor tails may end up being lunch for someone though.

Are they like electric yellows and blue acaras or do you want to keep blue acaras and electric yellows together with angels and bristlenoses? Also what size are the fish and what size is the tank?

What type of cichlids? You will have to be more specific on that one as cichlids can range from nice little peaceful dwarfs to 60cm predators.. Angels and scissortails and bristlenoses should be ok, I would say that big angels may eat small scissortails but it is probably unlikely as they are pretty quick and can get bigger than neons and the like.

Possible but unlikely, there is always the chance that all mouth brooding african species will cross given the chance the chance is higher when keeping fish of the same family together (ie 2 different zebra or peacock species in the same tank). As both the fish you have mentioned are mbuna then there is a good chance.. Have you managed to find a good source of pure kingsizei? I have purchased a few of them over the years and found them to be random blue zebras coming out all sorts of colour patterns and shapes and also throw random babies.

That is a very well designed hood, lol imagine what you could do with some car gas struts..

Here is freshwests tank build for that tank It may help answer your questions? viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10616 I saw it years ago when it was filled with fronts looked wicked..

If you know a sparky then ask him he will no doubt have access to reflectors.. I would say a strip on each side would be plenty obviously get the right spectrum to achieve what you want and I would say you will grow heaps of algae. Could be expensive to get someone to make up the bits you want, but if you shopped around you may find someone with long thin offcuts that aren't good for much else they may do a cheap job for you. I was meaning making the hood in several pieces that all join together ie 3 766 x 700 pieces that are just sitting on the top then you could just lift or slide them off. A friend of mine has a 8 x 3 x 2 and we had to take the lid off her tank the other tank it is one solid piece and takes 3 people to slide it off the front and sit on the floor so definitely not a practical way to go.

I still think you could have the hood made in a few pieces so it was an easy lift you won't need to get into the tank very often and would most likely be doing that when customers aren't around anyway I would think.. Lighting just buy standard lighting battens from mitre10 or even building recyclers or trademe and stick the right bulbs in them, they wont be T5 but still plenty bright enough if you get some 10k and maybe a blue one, inside your hood you have the room to do 2 banks of them if you want it brighter anyway. You can get an engineering company or maybe someone you know to fold up some ally or something like that to make reflectors for them. Or stick something to the entire underside of your hood, paint it in silver paint or something like that, I have even heard of people using tinfoil but that is probably a little too hori and rough for this job. Building paper might work?

Make the hood in several pieces so you can just (with the help of whoever else you are working with) lift a section out. Also bear in mind you wont need to lift the lid to do water changes and you can get one of those magnetic algae scrapers to take care of any algae. So you would really only need to get in to get fish out and if this is a display tank then I doubt you would be doing that very often.

I would go with option 2 you don't want people to have access to the top of your tank or your lighting, plus you can make the hood go down to the water level so the tank appears to be very deep and it hides those water marks that hard water tanks get around the water line.

Yeah the carpet is a weigh up.. The room is colder without it but it is a real pain when you flood and it stinks. I have carpet and underlay in my room and stuck it all down before the tanks I just cut around the tanks to lift it when it floods. Sometimes I have regretted it but the room is so much warmer than when I had a straight concrete floor. That is a big room Gamefreak how many tanks you planning?

Yup Steel blues, still nice fish and good in a community tank http://www.dwarfcichlid.com/Apistogramm ... l_blue.php Unfortunately I haven't seen any true borellii for ages I spent a fortune when they did come in but lost adults hand over fist and didn't have any luck with their babies either.. http://www.dwarfcichlid.com/Apistogramma_borellii.php

The general guideline is 1W per L so your tank would be 430L, one of those big long 300W jagers would probably do the job well as they seem to heat very efficiently due to the length of the heating element, or 2 x 200W heaters. The theory behind using 2 is if one fails (ie stops working) then the other can keep some heat in the tank keeping the fish alive until you notice. Conversely it works well if one of the heaters sticks on it takes longer for 1 200W heater to cook your fish than 1 400W heater. If your tank is going to be in a really cold area like an unlined garage or somewhere like that you may want more heating and/or insulate the sides and top of the tank like Nav has suggested.

He means close enough in that the tank water level will always be higher than that in the overflow (or HOB filter in this case) in order for the siphon to work, have you ever tried to siphon water uphill? The bigger the size of the U coming out of the tank the less difference there will be. I would also recommend having 2 siphon tubes into your HOB filter just in case one gets some air bubbles in it or something happens and it stops working. The rating of the motor in the filter means nothing the max flow rate will be governed by the size of the pipe to the sump and the size of the pipes out of the tank.

Yeah alot of them are but you can guarantee that all africans regardless of what they normally eat will munch down any fish that will fit in their mouths and they can catch I feed mine white worms occasionally and used to go and catch those shrimp when I lived in Auckland and knew where to get them from.. But live/meaty foods are fed to mine in moderation most of the time they get standard commercial fish food.

Congrats and good luck I know nothing about discus but I know that alot of fish are triggered by the same thing and sometimes one fish breeding in a tank releases hormones which gets everything else breeding at the same time. I have heard of people taking water from tanks with fish breeding in them and sticking them in tanks with fish they want to breed to try and encourage them..

What about something like an infinity gas heating system with adjustable thermostat? You would have to plumb it in so that the solar worked first and if the water was already warm enough the infinity wouldn't turn on. I think you can get pretty efficient swimming pool heaters that are heat pump based too which may work? The key would be fully insulating the side that isn't inside to prevent losses.

I was just feeding some nasty cheap as food off trademe.. The fish loved it and did really well on it I just had lime green water so didn't buy it again once it ran out

Id say patience If you have only had the females a few weeks then just let them settle and the male figure out what to do as he has only been with boys his whole life (doesn't that sound wrong? lol). Good food and water changes and just see what happens.. Bristlenoses are one of those fish that some people have luck with and can breed thousands but then all of a sudden they stop for some unknown reason and start again later.

Did 3 weeks of contracting in Aussie and did big days for that 6 days a week, I found I was pretty shattered for the first week but got used to it somewhere in the middle. Staying awake at work was ok as there was heaps to keep busy with but as soon as I got back to the hotel it was straight to bed.. I agree with all the others just keep busy and you will be fine, unless it is something really boring and then it might be a struggle. I would avoid taking too many of those no-doze or energy drinks too early in the peace as you may need them later and you will have to take or drink more and more to actually stay awake.

Id say the tank is probably too small for them and they would probably be happier with a few more of their own kind to cruise around with.. BTW how big do you consider "full grown" silver dollars because they can actually get quite big which is what I am thinking of as adults..

No worries man if you need anything else let me know And good luck with the Icey blues I hope they don't get too agro for you before you get the big tank up and running

There is a good article here http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/w ... mistry.php Have you added the CO2 yet? And what is your KH at the moment?

lol I am sure it is all arranged I was just nothing to do with it so have no idea yet I am sure the details will be posted here soon there have been emails so I wonder if you have been somehow dropped off the list or your email thing is blocking it as spam?

Ok there have been quite a few emails about it all so something is going wrong there? Maybe PM Simon or Sandra I have no idea where it is first.. Assuming maybe Phills place