ryanjury

How big is your tank? Leleupi are known for being particularly nasty when they grow up if anything I would recommend a bigger than for them than yellows, especially if you have 2 of them and they aren't a pair or compatible they can be quite agro. IMO just waiting to see if your shellie gets mauled by one is probably not a good idea especially when it is known to be an issue, but each to their own I guess.

Here is a pic of my female cockatoo click to make it bigger she is in breeding colours.

Yeah google is your friend.. But I have fed my shellies on a mainly vege based diet because they live with tropheus but think they are naturally a predator so you could stick some different foods in there, I would probably use NLS cichlid or grow on them. Also have you done any research on their compatibility? It is usually recommended not to keep leleupi and shellies together because the leleupi are known for ripping the shellies out of their shells and killing them so you might need another tank.. You probably should have been told about this when you brought the fish.. I will help you out with a few links.. http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... hp?id=1671 http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/n_leleupi.php http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... hp?id=1753 http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/l_ocellatus.php

Each to their own I guess I think they are both nice fish.. If we all agreed on what fish we liked then we would all keep the same fish and the same tanks and it would be boring..

Just make sure you do finish the course of levamisole (2 treatments min a week apart) vacuum the gravel and all that good stuff you don't want to start getting drug resistances popping up.. If they are eating fine then I wouldn't stress too much about it, levamisole is supposed to be quite gentle and I have even read articles suggested it is an immune system booster too so it wont hurt. Prazi is also relatively harmless but I would probably want to make sure there was something wrong before treating with anything else..

That fish is 100% a male, colour and pointed top/bottom edges to tail and no doubt raised dorsal fin extensions if it was shown in the pic.

They are usually skinny from the stores and can take some time to fatten up feeding good food always helps, but they might have works. Before you start dosing them up with everything under the sun have you finished the full levamisole treatment? And did the dose you have already given them make any difference? Are they eating well?

Good females can get some colour on them, on their tails or dorsal fin. Usually as Simon has said the first few rays of the dorsal fin are longer in males (even sleeper males) but it can be very hard to tell especially if the fish are younger, I have purchased quite a few "pairs" of young apistos over the years and got 2 males I could tell pretty much in the bags but based on size and lack of colour can easily see how the mistake was made.

When the female is nice and fat then stick them back together, did you leave any fry with her at all?

2nds are $20-30 per square m so would probably cost thousands rather than hundreds to do it.. As with everything though if you know someone who has a pile of it in their back yard or see a building getting demolished with a cool room you might get some free or cheap just have to find the stuff Before I wanted some I found out one chiller room got bulldozed and saw a whole pile of panels goto the dump.

Yeah the poly panels are good but quite expensive unless you can score some cheap from someone you know or spot it lying around being unused..

Hard to get jokes when they are written and especially when they are carried on.. We have $2-350 power bills for our entire household and 4x tanks so would estimate the tanks being around $100ish a month too.

Yep it will be fine, alot of people have silica sand or similar in tanks with no issues

Probably not good to brag about it on a public forum either it is very easy to find out who you are and various agencies do monitor forums. Also not a good idea to make people curious in case they do go and poke around in their meter boxes and electrocute themselves or end up getting done for it.. Not to mention as Phoenix has that you could potentially loose your job of it if your job or someone who knows you reads this and takes offence. I have found the floor a biggie for heat losses, I had a room with standard concrete floor that was always cold and the room was cold, when I stuck carpet and underlay in it make a huge difference to room temp. Yes I know hot air rises and cold air sinks so it shouldn't make much difference but I found it did. Carpet sucks though because it stinks when it gets wet and if it gets really wet you have to lift it dry it. I have seen rubber flooring used, poly with ply overtop, foam exercise mats and even artificial grass used in other peoples rooms. Roof is another biggie it needs to be pretty well insulated and draft proof. Moisture I found pretty easy to keep at bay by running a dehumidifier set to about mid range, they are around 200W and mine ran half the time so it did use a little power but the advantage of having a nice dry mould free room was worth it to me. Plus they always say dry air is cheaper to heat so it might save you money in heating too. Ventilation (is this what you were talking about with aeration?) is another difficult one, you don't want to pump cold air inside and cost more heating it but you don't want stagnant old stinky air in there. I find most people just leave their fishroom doors open on a sunny day but would be interested in any other solutions you might offer. If you get sick of insulating your garage and trying to work it all out I just brought an ex refrigerated shipping container for a fishroom in Auckland it is all insulated and ready to go

Sorry to say I have to agree with bilbo if she is already bent in half and not eating/swimming then it is already too late for her.. In saying that I have had no luck treating just about anything on dwarf cichlids so couldn't help even if she was better

All of the males in these photos come from the moliwe strain which I have since had confirmed they are not moliwe anyway but still taeniatus none the same. How are they going for you Caryl? Glad to hear they survived all the issues your tank had recently..

Depends on what cichlids and what you like or can get hold of cheap/free As smidey said just weigh the wood down until it soaks up enough water to sink.

Have posted tons of pics before but here they are.. Unfortunately this forum doesn't allow me to post them full size so click to make them bigger. I really need to get them into a nice planted tank and get some descent pics that do them justice. These ones are when they were younger. Unfortunately I lost this male who was one of the only ones I had with a red check stripe but have some fry growing out with it

Stability is probably another one of those untested products that is supposed to make your tank magically cycle but is more than likely just a waste of money I am not a fan of these things and it sounds like you have done everything you can just build up slowly and it should be fine.

You are right PH doesn't matter provided it is in the normal sort of range, but PH fluctuations are bad and can cause stress on the fish and future issues.

Yep phoenix is onto it, early in the cycle process if you do things wrong you would be changing out ammonia. It is hard to know but I reckon that 99% of the "good" bacteria lives in the filters so you can safely do very large (even up 99%) water changes on your fish. The major thing here is to make sure you can water with no chlorine, same temp and parameters so you don't stress your fish. When I move fish I move them in about 20% of their water and filter and then slowly top the tank upto full.

I would say you should be fine then, you have a fairly big tank fairly light stocking plants and started off with a cycled filter..

How big is the tank, how are you cycling and are their plants etc in there?

At least the possibility of them coming back is there No matter how many channels you would have to go through or how much it would cost at least there is a chance.. I will agree seeing any of them (or their offspring) back in NZ at any stage would be near to impossible

Some of the moliwe I got direct from you had the red check stripe too, so that is very variable too.. But from research that is fairly common