ryanjury

Just keep feeding the adults they will break up food some food for the babies, also crush up food and use that liquid fry stuff. If you need to direct it more to the babies then goto the pharmacy and buy a syringe and stick the food and some water in a cup suck it up and squirt it in their direction.

Calibrating the meter is relatively easy, you will get 2-3 solutions to make up fluid with various PH levels you just stick the probe in each of these and adjust a screw to make them all read right (or roughly right).

The PH wont keep increasing as you add more coral rock, it will stabilise at a level so you can add as much as you like it is hard to determine a minimum amount that is needed as it is so dependant on many variables.

Prices will come down, there will only be so many people that can afford the higher prices and people will have to lower price to sell them, plus with more coming onto the market. I am glad to hear they are being bred locally too but I suspect it was stock that was already in the country before the importers imported them recently, who knows though Well someone does. Just for comparison Frontosa started out at $200 a fish at 2-3cm and now they are $10-15.

A PH meter will

lol 15000LPH is alot of flow for a freshwater tank..

I use a bubble wall in my big african tank, it is a good back up for surface movement if the filter fails and looks pretty cool too. Are you just after increased water movement?

You can generally pile the rocks up pretty high as Adrienne mentioned just make sure they can't topple over, build your rock formation without gravel underneath so you know it is stable without the substrate in case they dig under it.

I think that Caryl did a thing at fish club once where they got everyone to dig out the oldest test kits they had and PH was one of the only ones that they got the same (or similar enough) results with regardless of age.. Hopefully she sees this and lets us know what the story is..

Tons of cicadas and crickets up here atm too.. Haven't seen any white butterflies up these ways though, used to be tons growing up down your way Matt so must be limited to certain areas..

Good colour in your male but he looks a little deformed? Bent fins and stumpy body.. That female is amazing though! Awesome colour in her fins..

Awesome, I thought I remembered you say you wanted africans, just be wary of what plants you put in there (if you don't want them eaten of course) because some african cichlids are good plant eaters/destroyers.

Just make sure you are ready to run if the manager starts to drop his pants..

Awesome, what fish are going into it?

Darker substrate looks wicked and brings out the best colours in fish If it is lighter they tend to lighten to blend into it.. It will be interesting to see how they get on in there, I would chuck a shell or 2 down the RHS behind that rock formation so a fish can claim them and use the rock as its boundary.. They are a colony fish but only in a big enough tank..

lol well you are pretty tough smidey.. How many shellies are you planning in this tank Phoenix? I reckon you would be best trying to get a male/female pair and some other fish as targets so they gang up on each other. As I said I tried 3 in a bigger tank and they killed 1 and then the male started smacking the female up.. When I stuck them in a tank with other fish they were sweet as and put their energy into breeding like mad and beating all the other fish up that came near their shells. While there are tons of shells in this setup and tons of places to hide, it is when a bullied fish sticks its head out of the shell that it will get chased so it will get chased away from its hiding place and end up cowering in the top corner of the tank.

I can't remember exactly but there are some non-gm pink danios that were imported there was a thread on it somewhere, but there were still people keeping/breeding the GM ones..

Yeah the sponge/bubble filter are all that are needed for smaller tanks Along with water changes of course...

Yes albany has one, looks really good and tanks are a descent size, I think that Mt Roskill has one just by the entrance to the tropical area too.

Where are you getting the shellies from, have Simon's started to breed yet.. I agree they are agro, and don't really hide in shells well they need a bit of space and broken up space (as already suggested) I started off with 3 in a 120L 75cm tank with tons of cover and 1 still got killed.

Cool tank you might want to add some more hiding places though.. How big is the tank?

Sweet, yeah there are a few people breeding the snow whites in Auckland.. I think you are getting confused I may have showed you socolofi because I have some, but Johannes had heaps of cobalt blues (he may well have had the socolofi as well but I know he wanted cobalts) which were also nice fish.. This is where the confusion comes into it as many people consider powder blues to be socolofi but some consider them cobalts and then common names muddle everyone up lead to more hybrids and more people breeding rubbish.. I also have the cobalts but I am stuck with only males and despite there being plenty on trademe I am very dubious of buying mbuna off them as too many people breed them in mixed tanks and produce rubbish so I am waiting for someone I know to breed me some good ones.. This is what I am referring to. Cobalt http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... php?id=787 Metriaclima callainos Standard socolofi http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... php?id=919 (note different shape/colour on fins etc to cobalt) Albino socolofi http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... hp?id=1786 (which it looks like our "snow whites" on the wholesale list are).

Are you talking about the snow whites or the standard coloured socolofi Phoenix? Black Jack awesome to hear you have good pure ones! How many generation of young have you grown out to verify it?

It can be hard to get pure nice clean socolofi at times (guess it is like most mbuna) but they are around, I have some nice ones in my display tank I should really get around to putting them in a breeding tank sometime and getting some babies out.. Guess I should add them to the list of fish that I need to get around to breeding a few of. There are snow white youngsters on trademe, otherwise you might have to try a petshop for adults.

There are quite a few of us out there with these guys now I quite like them now they are maturing, I have a couple of spawns growing out now. Omar if you want these I am sure that the wholesalers still have them on their lists and any petshop could order them in at a descent size for you?