ryanjury

I usually just chuck the intake into the tank and start a syphon using the out pipe from the filter into a bucket, when the water fills up the filter and starts flowing out the out hose then hook it upto the spray bar and plug it in..

If you had alot of hiding places they may live but probably wont be happy, one of the pairs will become dominant and chase all the other fish around stressing them out and causing them to hide all the time (to me theres not much point in spending $ on fish if they are stressed and loose their colour and hide so you cant see or enjoy them) they'll also be more succeptable to disease harder to get food into etc etc. I would say 3 to 4 ft minimum for the 3 pairs and even then there would be some fights and it depends on the fish I have one male cockatoo I wouldn't stick with any other fish I want to keep cuz hes big and nasty. But all my other males are pretty sedate... Best bet would be to buy them individual tanks or buy one bigger one and divide it into 3 sections.

I did successfully breed cockatoo's and rams in a 3ft community tank but that was fully planted and I setup breeding areas at each end so they didn't breed next to each other.. There were some battles but nothing got hurt.. But yeah I agree with the general trend its too small for all of them maybe a 2ft each pair would be good

I would think that for the rams/kribs if you wanted to breed them you would be best to go for just pair I haven't kept kribs but I know the 3rd fish will get bullied with the rams, as for the apisto's I know some of them are harem breeders and the females will fare alot better if you have 2 of them to spread the males attention..

Pic of a female ram is next to my name otherwise I posted bigger pics of my male and female in a previous post under this section on blue rams.. Alot of the fish in the pet shops are pretty small and hard to sex, the easiest way with rams is to spot the pink belly, also my female doesn't have the extentended dorsal fin and is smaller. You could always go for the tried and true grab 6 of differing sizes and let them sort it out its expensive but you increase the odds of getting a viable pair (or even 2) then you can just sell off the extras. A 2 ft tank would be too small for (in my opinion) more than one pair of dwarfs, you may get away with 2 pairs if its well planted with heaps of hiding places but you will most likely only see the dominant fish as the others will hide and probably not be too happy, I also wouldn't recommend buying trios of ram's/kribs as the 3rd will get hassled if the other 2 pair off and to my knowledge rams and kribs aren't harem breeders like some of the apisto's.. But I could be wrong.

Hi, Sorry to hear about your fish it sucks to loose them... From what you describe nothing pops up to me.. I would have thought if internal parasites had got her you would have noticed over the last few days that she just wasn't doing too well.. I have kept and bred cockatoo's and rams in the same community tank and they chased each other around a bit but never did any damage, you male could have been at fault my big male is 3 or 4 times the size of any of my females and he is pretty nasty but the girls always manage to get out of his way when hes in a mood and hide no damage done.. Mind you they get a whole 3 foot tank the themselves now so they have alot of room to avoid him.. Hopefully someone else can help you with what happened to her and also the best way to treat for internal parasites (im also wondering this as I was thinking of doing it just in case)...

I have a tank 600 x 600 x 800 (high) and I use an aqua one cf700 in it.. As far as im concerned its a good filter for the price and it does the job for the community tank that I have at the moment its pretty empty so I get away with water changes and rinsing the media every couple of weeks. I think it could quite easily cope with a larger bio load about the only bad thing about it is the filter intake doesn't reach the bottom of the tank which isn't really a biggie to me.. I think one of the main considerations is the max head height of the filter when doing a tall tank. Also I find the tall tank a pain in the bum to aquascape as im on a chair and upto my arm pits in water to touch the bottom... But it looks good when setup.

If anyone wants one of these TV's I have one sitting in my dads garage in Palmerston North to convert into a tank as well.. But im in Auckland and hes moving its too much hassle to move an old TV so its going to the dump anyway so if anyone wants it PM me and ill put you in contact with my dad.. In regards to the questions about the conversion I just made a normal straight edged fish tank in the last one I did and it looked ok but the moulded lexan should look even better, make sure you post pics when your done Good luck.

A good place to look for pics on pretty much anything is to goto yahoo and type in what you looking for a click in images and you will find pages of pictures.

I had some blue ram babies they all died about 3 days ago mysteriously I think it was because I skipped a days water change and then did a bigger one to make up for it.. Be very careful as they are appear to be very sensitive to changes in the water.

Hey Evil, Did you have any luck with your moonlighting in the end?

To put something different in there with all the tetras etc you could put some form of dwart cichlid in there, ie a blue ram or apisto or a krib or something.. In a 100litre tank provided you only have one pair you could even put a pair in there..

The guy seems to have answered your question I think the resistors will be fine to do as you drew your picture before..

Ive never had nor bred discus but I have heard that artificially raising fry is very hard to do and labour intensive what what I read they really need the food from their parents.. Maybe as previously suggested move the other adults.. Or attempt to move both parents and fry into a smaller tank with 100% water from the other tank I guess?

Yeah always interested in an update mine aren't going too well, I think my male is slightly infertile as im getting alot of fungus issues and only having 2 or 3 eggs hatch out of a batch probably more but the fungused eggs get to them I think..

The way you have layed out would work fine, make sure you calculate the values of the resistors (supply V - voltage drop of led all divided by the led current). I would try and do it with a voltage divider, basically you put 2 resisitors in series making one have the voltage drop you require and just tap your leds straight off the resistor in parallel therefore they would have the right voltage over them.. You would then have less components and therefore less power usage from your small supply.. If you used a 9V supply and made a series circuit and used roughly these values R1 170 R2 380 You will have about 3.3V dropped across R1 and can connect your LED's in parallel to it. You can calculate the voltage drop over the resistors using V = R1 X Vs (supply voltage) R1 + R2 Either way will work but the voltage divider is the way id go for.. Those sites provided have better prices, the main reason I suggested dick smith is its easy and you could possibly ask them to show you how bright the leds are before you decide, I guess you could still do this and buy them off dpt in the end..

I have no idea how many LED's would be required of either type.. I know about circuit design etc but you would have to buy one of each hook it up turn off the lights and see how bright it is. You could do this easily with the 3mm one using a 9V battery and about a 275ohm R. You will have to go either side to get a resistor value 270 should be easy to find. I would probably go for the 3mm one as the 20mm one needs 10.5, and I dont know what voltages other cellphone chargers are at but the ones I have here are at 5 to 6V. However I think the 20mm LED may do a better job as it has a larger viewing angle and is larger. I dont think a 12V adapter would be hard to find just look through the box of adapters at your local cash converters or second hand shop. You would have to see them in comparison to make the decision. I can make it for you but its very easy you just need to decide what one you want to use and how many and let me know ill do the calculations and tell you what to do if you want.. Another option is to go into dick smith and tell them what you want to do and they may have a power supply and show you some LED's so you can decide what ones you like and how many in store..

Also this site for voltages and currents etc http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storef ... SUP1000057

So your planning to connect them all in series? Series is probably no good as the supply voltage will get divided everything in the circuit proportionally to their resistance (V=I x R). And I take it your resistors are for current limiting or dropping the voltage down? Series would work provided you had the right combination of resistors and leds.. If you have too many the voltage wont be enough for them to work if too little the voltage may be too much and fry them.. What LED's are you planning to use? Have a look here and see what you want.. http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.filere ... CTG0000505 I would be more inclined to connect them in parallel using a voltage divider to get the required voltage to run my leds. In doing this the voltages are all the same and you pretty much only need to worry about current, and then its just a case of deciding how many LEDS you want to use and making sure they dont draw more current than what your supply can put out. What output voltage/current is the charger you plan to use? You really need to decide what LED's (and how many) and what power supply you want to use so you can design a good circuit.

That tank would be fine for a couple of WCMM's to breed in. I used to have them in a 3 foot and pretty soon the 5 I started off with turned into alot more. They used to lay in the morning usually when the sun hit the tank.. I had a heap of java moss in there and didn't use a filter just an airstone and I did weekly water changes and they were fine, do you plan to put the fish in and remove the parents after they have spawned or leave the parents in? I just left the parents in and used to get pretty good amounts of fry but im sure if I pulled them out I would have got more..

It looks like it has a small amount of meth blue in it but it doesn't have anything on the label about whats in it well at least mine doesn't. I used this successfully a few months ago the blue does fade quite rapidly after the first day as long as you dont have carbon in your filter its fine. The advice I was given (which I followed and it worked) were: Up your temp (if you fish can handle it). Do 3 doses directly after each other (following the directions for this on the back of the bottle) I did a water change and added the extra meds with the new water I was adding every 3 days. The white spot was gone at the end of the second dose so I guess I could have stopped then but I wanted to be sure I had killed all the white spot spores that were off the fish. As for treating with clown loaches in the tank I know they are very sensitive to some meds so it would pay to ask someone who knows about that..

Nice, I just looked at your albums and saw all the fish and babies so I guess I could have found out for myself if id looked.. Are the photos of the parents of the babies? If you ever want to sell any let me know I might be keen.

If anyone wants a pair of these I was just in hollywoods albany and there was a pair formed in one of there tanks hiding out in a corner by a plant chasing all the other fish away and it looked like the 2 best fish in the tank too $29 a pair from memory.. They also had some nice looking gold rams.

Well I hope that they are just too young to sex and you have a prospective pair in there.. I have read that they are mature (and I assume sexable) at an inch how big are yours? I would be very keen to try and get some different stock to breed with, ive seen some very deformed and ugly blue rams in shops (with a high price tag too) that I can only assume is a result of inbreeding my pair will be inbred but I hope to get some at a later stage to mix it up a bit.. Who knows all the fish in all the shops are probably related so theres probably not much point but we can try.. Maybe your fish #1 is just growing to a stage where its confident on its own and 2 and 3 are still a big young and want to hang out together for safety?

I to have peat in the filter from the research ive done even if they lay in hard water the eggs requrie soft water for development it sounds believable.. "Soft water is critical for proper egg development. Water that is harder has a lower osmotic pressure, compared to the inside of the eggs. Water will not flow into the eggs and properly harden them, causing the eggs to turn white and possibly fungus. I normally hatch out eggs in straight RO water, with hardness around 5-10ppm. " My temp is only at 26C ive found that the general opinion is between 25 and 29 is fine I would have it at 28 but the heaters old and it sticks if I set it to anything above 26 and they've already been to 35 once in the last week... Apart from that if you've got a pair they seem to lay quite easily but as wok said its getting them to raise the babies thats the problem..