ryanjury

Hard to tell how that one works, looks like there is a drain positioned towards the bottom of the tank which you would open a valve and drain some water out with, then looks like freshwater is plumbed into each tank. I setup an overflow type system on a bunch of tanks before I moved that worked quite well and did it on the cheap I drilled 15mm holes in each tank, siliconed 13mm elbows into each tank had 13mm tubing running down to a 19mm drain line I run these at the surface of the water as overflows. Then just run 13mm irrigation tubing to airline into each tank, just turn on the hose and overflow each tank for 10mins or so and your water change is done.

Then you already know the main problem with intentionally and knowingly adding more hybrids to the pool in NZ

What other fish do you have in the tank?

A PH of 6.6 is fine for jewel cichlids Most of the rift lake africans prefer a PH above 7 but most are pretty hardy as yours are not rift lake fish I wouldn't worry about doing anything to your PH as long as it is stable and the fish are happy and doing well.

I got a pallet load of fireproof stuff free from a polystyrene place in Palmy just ring around and see what they have lying around.. They had been given the stuff I got to recycle but because it was fireproof they couldn't melt it down and reuse it so it would just cost them to dump. That is another consideration with normal poly it is pretty flammable so might not be a good thing to enclose a whole heap of water and electrical stuff..

I am pretty sure I gave you 2 pairs plus a few random extras so I hope you have pairs Wait until they grow up and colour up they are amazing

They are amazing fish Well done! The males have alot of pink in the belly which would make it difficult with sexing them early, finage/tail colour should give you a good indication though.

Awesome fish, I am glad they are going well for you There will be more for sale in the next few months if anyone else wants any I have mine in with tropheus, azuzures, peacocks, columbian tetras and bristlenoses at the moment and there are no issues, the shellies tend to be aggressive around their shells and the other fish like to inhabit other areas of the water so it works out well. I think the major issue with tank mates and mixing them with malawis is choosing something that wont eat them..

This is bad advice with camallanus because by the time you see it and it starts affecting the fish it is already very advanced and likely all fish already have it to some degree..

Yep aviverm is the ticket for that it is pretty nasty, you can google them if you want they are called camallanus worms. Make sure you treat all the fish in the tank and all others that it has come into contact with. Also make sure you treat once do a massive vac out 24 hours later, then treat again in a week to break the cycle. The first treatment may make the fish improve straight away but the worms only get paralysed and then passed to be ingested again and start causing issues later (which is why you vac them up). Also the treatment doesn't kill eggs so you need to treat again in a week to ensure you get anymore that have hatched. Dosage is 1ml of 23% levamisole per 115L (you can overdose upto 1ml/L so don't stress too much if you do put a bit too much in). Good luck and let us know how you get on.

It is painful when stuff is mislabelled but in the case of these guys it doesn't take long to figure out what they really are, and I can fully understand why a shop would leave them as they brought them for accounting purposes and you can't really expect them to research and re-id every fish they get into the shop although it would be nice

Borelliis in the store are steel blues there is no doubt about it, the wholesalers/exporters call them borellii so the shops continue the name on alot of them not knowing or caring that they are steel blues not borellii.. Yeah I had been waiting for ages for borellii to come in so jumped on them when they did to try and get them breed them and keep them but just had terrible luck with them unfortunately

Yeah the borellii in the stores are steel blues unfortunately.. Yellow check apistos did come in and were the true borellii they were in terrible condition in petshops but I got a few pairs and managed to get them to settle in and start colouring up they were awesome and had alot of potential.. Unfortunately they were really weak fish and despite buying 6 of them I only managed to get one spawn (which I lost) and lost all the parents seems that noone else had any luck with them either because they have disappeared again.

lol I didn't mean flush her I meant get rid of her I usually bounce fish on the concrete quite and painless (for the fish) but however you choose to do it works either way I don't think you would have much chance of her surviving.. Pretty gutting, do you only have a pair and is there more females where you got these guys from?

Yep looks like it, sorry to say my advice would be to flush her. I have tried all sorts and never cured anything like this successfully.

Alot of fish will survive and even do well down to around 20C but anywhere below that they usually start to suffer..

As above you need a bigger tank for the fish you already have and a much bigger tank for angel fish, plus an angel will happily eat your neons and probably your platties when they get bigger

Keep an eye out at wetpets or ask around they aren't that hard to find anymore

Do you want to buy some or find some in the wild? Wetpets sometimes stock them, I had some but moved them to Auckland with me, I did give Simon some before I left though so hopefully in the future he will be breeding them again..

Sounds like a good meeting its a shame I wont be able to make it

lol I had permission to buy that tank and room in the container but they didn't relist it so someone else must have brought it

The whole hybrid thing can go round and round and get nowhere, you have an interesting opinion. Can you give examples of the fish that have been cross bred to give fish we enjoy today? I will give you parrot fish and a few african peacocks but what others are there that aren't descended direct from the wild? Sure they might be different colour morphs but most are line bred not cross bred to get these colours, there is a huge difference.. How would you like to go into a petshop and find all the fish in there were unlabelled just random fish that nobody knew what they were, how they were to behave and what colour they would be, how big they would grow etc? How would you like to pay good money for a "pure" fish with a name to find it go a different colour or behave differently later on because someone somewhere had crossed it with something and then someone else had decided it was pure and demanded good money for it? They do cause issues in the hobby especially with such a small fish keeping community and lower quality of imported stock. There is some discussion on it here http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/ob_peacock.php At the end of the day my opinion is to keep what you like breed what you like but when you end up passing it on inevitably it may cause issues down the line.

IMO breeding 2 different species of fish together should be bad no matter what fish you keep But that is just my opinion.. I guess it would depend on what the smudge spots were? Are they the same scientific name as the pandas?

Technically they would only be hybrids line bred to look like your smudge ones this is only really a last resort for if you are going to loose a species even then you aren't going to get it back by cross breeding.. I would keep and enjoy the fry and never pass them on, you don't really want people getting them renaming them and breeding them passing them on as pure to be bred with other stock and mucking up other lines.

I don't think you will be able to get them, maybe pass on the details I will happily pick them up for you Mind you already did my mission across Auckland with a trailer today getting 2 5x2x2ft tanks..