Stella

erm..... physics? :lol:

Sometimes plotting future tank stuff can really help with feeling positive about the hobby again after a serious blow like this. Certainly after my disastrous kokopu issue recently, I found thinking about what to do next helped. INstead of the tank looking horribly empty, I can now imagine it bouncing around with bullies and the one big kokopu can lurk in there for much longer alone than with four friends.... That will be realised on Tuesday when I move the tanks into my new home.... still feeling nervous about the whole thing - such a big job! Phoenix, glad things are beginning to settle and you can see the positives. Nasty looking disease

:lol: Thankfully fish create their own lubricant.

I assume you are thinking of the old line that "more fish die from overfeeding than underfeeding"? That is not really about too much food making the fish obese, but too much food either not getting eaten, or getting pooed out and not enough waterchanges to keep the water quality high. Assuming your water quality is fine, sounds like you probably have a trio of very happy healthy fish Why don't you think boatmen have much nutritional value? (personally I find bloodworms aren't great nutritionally, at least not for fast-growing fish) My mudfish still haven't eaten their boatmen. Slackers. The boatwomen are even laying eggs all over the tank now!

Awesome Romeo! What about one of those electric bug zappers? Would wind up with quite a collection I imagine, just tip the proceeds into the tank without risk of filling your house with mosquitos etc. Apparently when inanga take large moths and similar, they try to grab them by the abdomen, then go down and bash off the head and thorax thus getting rid of the wings while eating the fattest bit. I haven't seen this myself, but I haven't fed them decent moths either. There is a fairly commonly reproduced photo of an inanga with a moth in its mouth. Amazingly it is in prefect focus, and I imagine you are now quite aware of what an inanga does when it has a moth in its mouth - zooms all over the tank with its prize! Part of me wonders if the bashing off of the head and thorax was actually a side effect of careless zooming... I might try getting some moths tonight, they gather around my outside light.

and no re-dosing? odd. I am still a bit annoyed at Wetpets (and it was someone who should have known better) for not realising there is a BIG difference in treating whitespot in tropical vs coldwater aquaria. Caused endless re-infections until someone put me right. For you it is three days, for me it is at least three weeks.

Just needing to know how you are supposed to treat. I know it is one drop of each per litre. What I just got confused about is the next step. Wait a few days, do a water change and add either one drop per litre of REPLACED water or TOTAL tank volume (ie initial dose again)? THanks

Nah, the fish are USELESS! They are mudfish, barely noticed the boatmen and women zipping all over the tank :roll: I normally feed them oxheart directly from my fingers. Half the time they give my fingers a good chomp and ignore the piece of food! They are not the brightest sparks. Presumably the boatmen chirp to attract the boatwomen. Personally it just gave me a fright

oh ok, they are goldfish then There is a 'sticky' at the top of the freshwater forum that tells you how to upload photos. You need to put them onto a website like photobucket first, slightly convoluted.

in Chch???? Tis pleasantly warm here, but not hot. Looks like it will be overcast all day. One of the rare occasions where my fingers are actually warm. Toes still a little cold though. I swear I am a tuatara! Barely functional when it gets cold, and also barely functional when it gets too warm!

Hi Max, The 'oxygen supply' is a little misunderstood. Water movement and bubbles do not directly add oxygen to the water. That happens at the surface of the water. Moving the water around means more water gets near the surface for gas exchange. A tank with no movement will still have oxygen, just a little less than if the water is being moved. Probably what you have done to the spraybar is fine, but those who know the setup better will know exactly what you have done. Can you describe the fish?

Alan, are you drawing attention to my appalling sentence? Yes apparently the male boatmen chirp. This implies that there are boatwomen also! :lol: Apparently they have complex little ears. Some aquatic invertebrates make a noise only to deter predators, these bugs don't need to hear it and therefore don't have ears! You learn something new and useless every day 8)

Thanks Aaron! A search turned up this short audio of a different species chirping: http://www.microcosmos.nl/div/cx.mp3 Mine sound slower, more hesitant and more 'questioning' with the sound raising up slightly at the end (nz accent? ) Apparently it is the males making the noise.

My mudfish tank started chirping last night. Hesitantly. Very briefly. Like it is just learning how. It is a raspy chirp, similar but less musical than a cricket. I put a couple of water beetles and a bunch of boatmen and backswimmers in last night. Could it be the water beetles?

Welcome Max, I recommend you get reading about 'cycling an aquarium'. It is absolutely critical that any new fish keeper understands this. The tank is probably in need of a partial waterchange now. Basically remove 30-50% of the water and replace it. The spray bar might be able to be rotated towards the nearest wall of the tank or similar to make the current less strong. Even removing it completely might be possible and could lessen the flow. A filter should never be turned off. Do another search for 'biological filtration'. Aquarium 'filtration' is mostly bacterial processing of waste chemicals in the water, rather than mechanical gunk-removal. Although at this early stage the filter will not have established much, so don't worry this time. However all the more need to do a waterchange. I don't know much about the different brands of aquarium, but if you let us know, others on the forum will be able to give you more specific advice about that setup. Also, what fish do you have? Good luck

:lol: I maintain that gravity has a stronger effect on koura the higher they go. They are quite sure-footed lower down but the higher they go they become more inclined to fall off! And he is indeed a boy

My torries have had no current for the last couple of months, owing to the tremendous rise in temperature the pumps cause. They seem to be totally fine without it, but are much more entertaining with it. The biggest thing to remember with torries is that they are one of the more delicate fish, with a high need for oxygen and cool temperatures. Tonight I counted all six of mine. This happens rarely as the tank has sufficient rockery and hiding places for them to be out of sight at most times, and they are nearly impossible for me to tell apart. Good to know they are all still present and correct and non-fluffy! So Romeo, you still toying with the thin-tank idea?

:lol: possibly, but I think you mean rupture.... If it is being fed the same things regularly, it probably understands. If you were to feed non-swelling food normally, then one day give it dried food that swells it might feel decidedly uncomfortable for a while. I find my fish can spit food back up long after they ate it (like one or two days later). So probably not likely to be a problem.

hehehe love the image of a koura with pipe-cleaner antennae! (photos please!) I have had a few koura and they all have different personalities. This shows through in the self-grooming arena. Most are pretty fastidious, but some are a little less careful. When my current one was a wee lad his back was usually slightly green. He seems to have got older and wiser Koura will eat that (if very hungry). Then again, they don't need to eat their dirt, they can just drop it. I have Flourish-Exceled a tank with a koura in it, no harm done, but that is quite different to bathing in the stuff. They can be a bit sensitive to chemicals (I think Dixon found out the hard way that chlorine removers are toxic for them). He probably will remove it if it annoys him, meantime Caryl might be right: perhaps he is already wearing next year's fashions?

Blackadder Back and Forth! Tis almost traditional now. And probably also Blackadder's Xmas Carol, since we forgot at xmastime.

Wilson, there is a couch here if you want to stop in Palmy

On the native fish side of things... They certainly don't need much depth, so that is fine. Good point of Alan's about landscaping. Might be harder constructing caves for the koura. I have found (strangely) that inanga are more likely to make an idiot of themselves and bash their noses into the ends of the tank if it is long. They can get up a lot of speed quickly. In a small tank they tend not to do that so much. But still, they would look awesome zipping up and down! It would have a greater surface*-to-volume ratio than the same volume in a more traditional shorter-fatter tank. Might increase temperature fluctuation issues. (*meaning all the sides of the glass box, not just the water surface) Not sure what your heart is set on, but if you gave it a bit more front-to-back depth, it would be easier to landscape, give both fish and koura a little more groundspace, decrease the surface-to-volume ratio etc. BUT it is probably quite functional, just good to be aware of possible issues to begin with. Oh, another point: the tank is not huge in volume, but it is long. I would be wanting to use thick glass for it. I get nervous with long tanks potentially cracking due to the stand not being completely flat etc.

You did ask for our advice, if you only wanted advice that you wanted to hear you should have specified that :roll: Cleaning the filters once a week would be a hell of a lot more time and effort than siphoning out and replacing an extra bucket of water more often. If you think the filter is clogging up with solid muck, try getting a sponge-filter sponge (around $5 from pet shop) and fitting that over the inlet to the filter. Takes a bit of stretching. Then it acts as a pre-filter trapping all the debris and you can rinse it out easily when you do your waterchanges. It means the actual filter is not getting clogged and should theoretically never need opening and cleaning and it will work better without the disturbance or muck. Of course that depends on the type of filter inlet you have... but you get the idea.

oh that is completely awful! Sorry I have absolutely no idea what might have caused it. Hope it responds soon. My sympathies

Yes. Ideally the filters shouldn't need cleaning out much. It is the bacterial action that is really filtering the water, NOT mechanical gunk removal. If you keep cleaning them out the bacterial will not properly establish. And if you are really struggling to go a day without feeding them, then you are probably still overfeeding them. Fish will ALWAYS act like you are starving them to death, no matter how often you feed them. :roll: Remember the thing that most pet fish are killed from overfeeding rather than underfeeding? It is not that they get obese and develop Type II Diabetes, it is the uneaten food polluting the water, or if the food is all eaten, it is the extra poo decomposing and polluting the water. Moral of the story: If you want to feed heaps, make sure every scrap is eaten and do lots more water changes. How often and how much are you normally waterchanging?