ryanjury

How well did you wash that silica sand? And what sort of filtration are you running? I would fill your filter with filter wool (it will require more cleaning probably every week or so but monitor flow) and see if it is really fine particles that can be filtered out from the sand not being washed well enough..

Blue rams are notoriously bad parents (google it) it is believed that all the years of inbreeding and being mass produced (probably artificially raised and power fed on god knows what) has pretty much removed the parenting traits from them. You do occasionally luck upon a pair that are good parents, or you can get better quality (true) German blue rams that are more likely to be better parents, there were some of them floating around a few years ago.

Nice fish, I have kept them before too but didn't really like them, the big male I had was agro as and started beating all my other fish up I think I also remember something about them needing water with high oxygen contents so be very careful with them in heavily stocked tanks.. Other than that I would treat them like normal mbuna, vege food probbaly a min of a 4ft tank don't mix with any other mbuna if you want pure fry etc. They are pretty much algae eaters (hence the shape of their mouths to rasp algae off rocks etc..

She said the impeller is spinning before she puts it together, I had the same thing with mine.. If I could remember where my spare impeller is then I could see the part that I was sticking together wrong.. From memory I had to get a mate over and it took us ages to figure it out and there was no info on the net.. It is almost impossible to prime an FX5 incorrectly, just fill it with some water and it will pump some, that's the beauty of having the pump in the bottom.

Did you stick the impeller back together correctly? I have had the same issue with mine and it was binding up against the housing when it was stuck in because the impeller wasn't put together right I just cant for the life of me remember what I did wrong.. It is such a pain pulling it all apart and testing it..

Can you get a splitter and use 2 airstones off your existing air pump?

If you ran a RODI unit on your tank, you would purify all your tank water then you would end up with a whole heap of sick fish (HITH etc) from having no minerals in the water.. Only way to do it would be to be adding trace elements at the same rate and somehow compensating for the amount of water that was going to waste.

Not close to dropping yet.. When they get close they get soo fat that the front of their stomach is almost square yours is still quite rounded.

Find out why and sell it

BAD BAD BAD! I think that's a Malaysian trumpet snail.. Known for their ability to take over the world and be next to impossible to get rid of..

Gavin no longer has Bob and the original colony he went to another guy who pampers him just as much as Gavin did Unfortunately he is getting out of fish so he is looking for a new home.. And while the frontosa are on the allowed list it still comes down to $$'s to decide if they are imported. I know people have contacted wholesalers asking for XYZ fish (that is on the list) offered to deposit a non-refundable deposit and pay top $ only to be turned away. I haven't done this myself so cannot verify how much is true but seems to be quite a common theme.

I forgot to mention that Bob is still alive and breeding too He was actually for sale (only to approved homes) when I saw him last a month or so ago.. Pretty much any frontosa variant can legally be imported now they have been added to the allowed list.. However it comes down to cost! And I don't think any importer is willing to take the risk now that the burandi are everywhere and so cheap..

500W would probably do the job, providing the room wasnt too cold.. Most people like to run 2 smaller heaters because if they fail they tend to jam on and cook fish. If you have 2 smaller ones you get more time to remedy the situation before your fish are cooked.

Thanks Shelly, glad to hear it straight from the horses mouth, jealous of the fish that you can get over there! What ones did you have then Lucid?

I have also used salt for white spot on clown loaches..

Your coral rock should be fine, just setup the tank and get it all running and monitor your ammonia levels in case there is still anything left in there, if there is ammonia it will just help the tank cycle anyway As beets has said there are plenty of dodgy dealers out there And plenty more or have no idea or care what they are doing or breeding/selling so watch out for them.. That is still a nice fish beets, similar to what has been sold (incorrectly) as jacobfrybergi in the past, but the body shape and stuff is all wrong, looks like some form of stuartgranti but who knows what.. Goat if you are interested feel free to come over and have a look at my fish I have a couple of tanks of africans setup that may give you some ideas of what you might like..

lol Yeah we don't miss the lovely yellow dust everywhere that we got in the manawatu It was terrible for peoples asthma too.

Yeah should be fine, as long as its not the yellow snow. And pollen sounds pretty natural and harmless it is probably in your rain water most the time anyway.

Don't bother with the neons, generally they just drop dead for no apparent reason.. And they will do so even more at the higher temps you keep discus at, just spend a bit more and get some cardinals at least they will live for a reasonable length of time and cope better at higher temps. I wouldn't attempt to cycle a tank with either of them though.. Where do you live?

Provided your tank is upto temp and everything is running well you can add a few smaller fish, your tank holds 165L so any ammonia would be well disapated and build up slowly. Providing you don't fill the tank completely with fish straight away, don't overfeed and keep a close eye on things it should be fine. You can also add a bit of cycled media from a petshop or a local fish keeper for a bit of extra insurance. What is your intended stock list?

As the others have said the sump is ideal and the coral rock etc you already have would be good for that too, although it is probably better to sell it off live and get some dead stuff Most of the fish in that mixed african tank are available in NZ so just let us know what colours/shapes/sizes you are interested in and we can give you some suggestions.. Also what part of the country are you in? And yeah no point in RODI water for fresh water, you just need to add minerals back into it (especially for africans) as it is too pure and just causes deficiencies in the fish.. Sounds like you might need to add some stuff to your water anyway if it is only 20-30ppm..

Sometimes the heaters guages aren't very accurate, I am not familar with the fluval heaters but I imagine there would be some way to calibrate it. Have you read the manual?

Bugger mate I ended up kicked onto a mattress on the floor in my daughters room for a week too, interesting how the sick one ends up getting kicked into the spare room or mattress. Maybe it is like Alan suggested and that our better halves want to stay nice and healthy to look after us, they must feel the pain and see how horrible the man flu is.

I feel for you man I have just had it and still have the 100 day cough!

Id say that they only have 1 feedback so don't know how to use trademe properly and they were probably trying to do an autobid and not ticking the box..