Stella

hehe nice pics! What on earth is the second fish? I can't decide if it is an upland or bluegill, and they are really different looking fish! Am leaning towards upland, but it is pretty slender.

Good on you myfishybusiness, and everyone else who enjoys school. For those who don't enjoy school due to 'social' reasons (read: bullying, harassment, popular groups etc). Have a look into the It Gets Better Project www.itgetsbetterproject.com It is mostly aimed at GLBT teens who are struggling at school, but the sentiment is broadly valid: School is a crazy time, the other kids can be vicious, but stick with it as the moment you graduate you leave the bullies behind and it really truly does get better. Whoever came up with the idea that school is the best years of your life was an idiot. Realising that those bullies are now life's losers and that there are communities of people just like you out there in the real world is an amazing feeling.

That is officially the nicest compliment ever :happy1: Am officially braindead tonight and not of much help.

In that case people can register themselves and the cat as breeders. The problems caused by feral cats and the despicable acts of cruelty by owners are terrible, and I think there should be compulsory desexing (except for registered breeders) and registering for both cats and dogs. ............and people

Good on you! People like that disgust me. Desexing should be compulsory. :an!gry

Nice I used to have a GN250. I sold it a year ago when I got the car. Car is handy for four points of contact and a roof, but man I miss the feel of the wind and the road. P44, the guy in your photo is doing exactly what he should be doing - not landing!

yeah, just like that! It looks great in the corner Can holes be put in the other end of the hood....?

WOOD ENVY!! :sick: I think it looks great either way up, but possibly better in the top photo. One of the key things with making a tank look natural (assuming that is what you are going for) is to avoid patterns. Avoid pairs (stick to odd numbers) and avoid putting anything focus in the centre of the tank. One of the best ways to create a good composition is to divide the 'frame' into thirds, be it vertically or horizontally. Try angling the stump (lying down as per photo 2) into the back left corner of the tank so the knot of roots largely fills one corner then trails off towards the centre of the tank. I think that way the centre-underside of the stump where the roots are densest, will probably fall 1/3rd of the way across the tank. The reason for angling the stump in the centre is that the root mass is quite flat (ie photo 2). By angling it it will lead your eye deeper into the tank (bear with me: imagine a butler leading you into a room with the sweep of his hand) as well as giving a greater impression of depth. make sure the parts of the wood that touch the substrate get partly buried by it, and a good way to make that look less contrived (after digging it in) is to sprinkle gravel over top so it gets naturally buried. Urgh, SO hard to describe visual composition in words!

Now that is a seriously bizarre question! :facepalm: I think Ira's original post could be taken a number of ways, one way is very negative towards women, and the other is fairly positive. Unfortunately the written word is not good at conveying tone.

Good sized tank congratulations! Just make sure that you have a go at taking the filter apart and putting it back together (or at least see the shop person do it). Some filters are blissfully easy (eheim) and some are :evil:

I am a pacifist and I can't understand why anyone would want to join the army, but I really admire their determination and drive to do what they felt passionately about despite their culture, religion, and legal system telling them that they couldn't do it.

yes it just lurks in the water. Every has it. Just like there is probably various cold viruses currently lurking in your nose - you are not getting sick because your immune system is robust. The heat could have caused the second bout of columnaris in your guppies (IF the heat is more than guppies like, I don't know anything about exotics) and/or any other stresses going on at the time, usually poor maintenance. Bikbok, if your new guppies all died and your older ones (in the same tank?) didn't, then the new ones were stressed and weak and your old ones were not (congratulations Of course fish diseases can be extremely hard to diagnose, there are many things that look like many other things. Either way, most diseases are either fish-carried (they HAVE to be in/on the fish to survive) or opportunistic things that are in the environment anyway waiting for the fish to get stressed and weak. Both options make sterilising a tank pretty pointless. Quarantine is vital for new fish - both to catch new diseases AND if the fish gets an opportunistic infection then the established fish are safe from the higher pathogen load. If an established aquarium gets sick, it then gets treated like a quarantine tank, i.e. nothing gets moved from this tank to anything other tank, including maintenance equip and wet hands, until several weeks after the illness has passed.

things like that make me feel proud to be a woman.

Columnaris is an opportunistic bacteria that lives in the water anyway, sterilising will not achieve anything. Infected fish do seem to increase the chances of other fish getting infected, but once the infection is gone in the fish the free-pathogen load should reduce back to normal. Personally I would let the filter run on the q-tank for a few weeks more, make sure both tanks are impeccably well-maintained, then switch over and there shouldn't be any problems.

also annoying when they catch bits of grit and scratch up your glass. Reasons why I stopped using anything that wasn't a flat blade. :evil:

The thing with the Tarndale bullies is that they are so very isolated from anything else, and the altitude plus pond life has probably had selection pressures on them. The argument over what on earth they are is long and curly (try going a google scholar search on the species name!). I met a guy at the Freshwater Sciences conference in October who is doing his thesis on them, I can't remember what his angle was. I think it is pretty much accepted now that they are not Cran's, but whether they are commons, a subspecies of commons, or a new species derived from commons, the argument remains. Very very very sadly, Bob McDowall, the most influential New Zealand native fish scientist and loud arguing voice on this matter, is dying and very unlikely to see the outcome of the next turn of the argument. if anyone is interested, I made a little powerpoint a while back to help me understand the phylogeny (family tree) of the NZ and Australian bullies. There are several unexpected surprises in it. If you want a copy, *email* me and I will send it to you.

er, Firefish, I think that is one of your redfins... hint of diagonal facial stripes and compare the height of the two dorsal fins with the fish in the other photos (actually you can even see the limit of the colour stripe) The height of the first dorsal compared to the second looks kinda common-y to me, but I am not seeing that listed as a trait in McDowall's books.

Saskia, can you clarify what you mean by the green gunge? Do you mean stuff that settles out on the bottom or stuff that is suspended in the water? I think there is a little bit of talking at cross-purposes here and different 'gunges' have different causes and solutions. Bottom gunge: all ponds get it, leafy detritus will add to it Suspended gunge: single-celled algae, often exacerbated by too much direct sun (BTW Caryl, I hadn't seen a pic of the deck at the opposite end of the pond before, very nice design! Looks very practical.)

You are right, but only the males. You have prompted some more thinking... This one has brown speckling right to the edges of the dorsal, so I think it probably female. Some males don't show their colour stripe all the time, in which case the coloured area looks clear, no speckles. So let's settle on it being female. If it was a Cran's female there should be a dent behind the eyes, but there isn't one. If it is a common you expect a tapered head, but it isn't really tapered... I am guessing it is a big fish, maybe around 8-10cm? Maybe the tapering lessens with size, not sure, my big common seems less pointy than a small one I had.... (oooh, sample size of two...) The face looks splotchy like a Cran's, and whiskered like a common. The number of dorsal spines could be either. Damned difficult fish :evil: There is still time 8)

awesome bone-home! The unidentified bully could be either a common or Cran's, a bit hard to call. I can't remember, are Cran's that far south?

Well, it is officially not glandular fever, and just had an x-ray to confirm pneumonia. Back on the antibiotics. I seem to swing from feeling like a total malingering hypochondriac to feeling better then overdo it then feel utterly awful again. Today is one of the utterly awful days. Almost been sick for four weeks now. Some friends have been very good at bringing me food and company, but am pretty stressed out.

nice! I found the first few got eaten, then he seemed to realise what the actual point was and stopped eating them.

Sam wins! :lol:

I love the 'supervisor' in pic 2! :lol: I guess a sand substrate would limit their landscaping somewhat? Could be a handy trick.

Wow, how odd! I have not heard of that before. Torries definitely do change colour to blend in, but slowly over time. That sounds like a quick change like the bullies do when being aggressive. WEIRD. Can you get some photos or film of this? (I was treating a little torrie once in a red bucket, it was there for a few days. When I put it back in the tank it had turned this weird striped apricot colour trying to blend with the bucket! Looked ridiculous)