FuglyDragon

I lost my new african rack, only got it set up on Saturday, 500 litres flowing out garage door and fish everywhere. lost one of the kids tanks in his bedroom too. I have tank space available in my fishroom in avonhead if anyone needs it, have power and water here. Called in on John at organism, he is ok but shop is a mess, plant rack disintergrated all over floor, but no fish tank losses. cell is 027 222 3597

Yes finding leaks can be a pain as they often dont occur untill the pressure builds, other thing I forgot to metion is make sure you have a check (non return) valve on the CO2 inlet so water can't be pumped back down the hose and into your regulator if the CO2 pressure drops (usually when the CO2 tank runs empty)

Cool the way they have the weird large red dorsal fin when small that slowly reverts to the same as the adults as they grow, definately coolest looking of all the cats i have raised.

I have only spawned them accidentally several times but its allways been after screwing up a water change in my planted tank and overheating the incoming water to around 29 - 30 celcius.

works best with the co2 entering at bottom not top (through a tube piercing the top but running to the bottom) and a feed back loop to remove excess gas build up helps a lot. I bought one of these, works great but isnt that hard to make one yourself have since made a couple for my fish room plant tubs. CO2 Inlet is the small one on the left, if you look closely there is a black tube running from it down through the clear tube to the bottom of the reactor, means the bubbles 'bubble' up agaisnt the water flow. Middle fitting is the water flow, in at top out at bottom. Right side fitting is the outlet for a bleed valve to bleed off air on filling and excess CO2, you can use a small tap or you can feed it via air line tubing to the intake of the pump provideing water, that way any extra CO2 is smashed up by the pump impeller before being sent back to the reactor.

I paid to join Tom Barrs Website a couple of years back and got some pointers from the man himself... Start up an excel spreadsheet (or a notebook) and record everything, what you added, when (time of day can be important) after a few weeks you get a great idea of whats going on in your tank. CO2 CO2 CO2 CO2 most problems can be fixed by getting the CO2 right, get a decent reactor (I use an AquaMedic 1000) and a drop checker / ph measure. You dont need test kits with EI and most of them are useless anyway unless you have distilled water to calibrate them, spend the money you save on kits of ferts instead. If time is an issue (it is for me) get a large sized pill dispenser that has a compartment for each day of the week, measure your ferts out on whatevfer day you do your water change and add them to the pill dispenser then you can dose the tank easilly each day. :bounce: (Best time saver ever, assumes you are using dry ferts not liquids) Seachem Excel is magic water for planted tanks, it works, but TB recommended I dose much higher than Seachem do, he reckoned 50ml a day (yes a day !!) for a 250 litre tank, i bit the bullet and bought a 2 litre bottle for $200 odd man what a difference but its just too expensive (well for me) to keep up for an extended time, grew a fantastic glosso carpet though and 0 algae problems as well as stocker (hydroponics.co.nz) I have also used http://www.aquariumfertilizer.com/ (US site but reasonable prices) No doubt in my mid that EI works if you are prepared to do a bit or research

I took the plunge and seperated a couple of the larger rhyzomes from my clump of leopards and so far so good, small plantlets developing on each segment, all going to plan i should have a few available in a month or so if anyone wants one.

Sterilising non glass items with strong salt solution. Basically opinions on how much salt to how much water and how long to leave it in ?

I use spirulina powder mixed in water to feed danio fry (and most other fry) you can buy it from most health food shops, just be sure to get powder not tablets. I line the bottom of my spawning tanks (18x9x9) with wire mesh add about 2 inches of water (75% tabk water 25% cold water from tap) add 2 females 3 males and remove them 3 days later, add an airstone and a good dose of methylene blue.

heres the link to that youtube video i mentioned. check out the posters other videos of the tank in action, way cool

Nice river tank stella. Have used a few simialar in my fish room. Have you tried plumbing the intakes for the pumps to the other end of the tank with irrigation tubing, works great but clogs up after a while. There is a great video on YouTube of a guy who made a river tank for his clown loaches by putting a central divider down the middle then setting up pumps to rotate the water around the tank in a race track oval pattern, looks really impressive, have allways wanted to try it for a xingu tank for my plecs... maybe one day... An update on my natives in case anyone is interested. The shrimps in my plant tubs are still all heading down stream each week, each time i do a water change (weekly) i redistribute them all and by next weekend they are all gathered in the down stream tub, numbers have dropped by about half over 4 monthes, been a hot summer here in CHCH. The whitebait and silveries I dropped into my LFS are still going strong in the goldfish tanks, whitebait is staring to take on a less whitebait look. Shrimps in there are doing ok too. I very surprised the silveries are still ok, thought they were difficult to aclimitise / feed but they are doing great. Shrimps in my display tank seem to have dissapeared, i got busy over xmas and lost track of them, might have gotten to hot in the tank in the hot weather. Might try and fit in another collecting trip inbetween trying to catch a few more salmon for the freezer.

mine seem to spend hours grazing on plant leaves, i presume they are eating the algae and little microoganisms there. I dont feed them anything specifically but they may get any left over fish food.

Made another trip to the lake last night, got some more grasiny photos of the small shrimps that are there, believe them to be mysis shrimps ? Biggest of them would be about 15mm, eyes shine bright pink in torch light and most were swimming upstream agaisnt a mild current. Also caught a couple of trout for my efforts http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2 ... bd10fb0122

Ashley river, down by the mouth there is a backwater (on the north side) that was teeming with shrimps and giant bullies 4 weeks or so ago when i was last out there. Wen't out to ellesmere last night and caught some smaller what i think are mysis shrimp ? also caught 1 tiny fish that looked like a mini whitebait maybe 15mm long and clear, but unfortunatley it didnt survive the trip home. Plenty of eels , smelt and bullies about, didnt see any flounder though. Got a couple of nice trout for my efforts so all in all a good night. Really hot day here today and my fishroom was like a sauna, didnt have time to check on the shrimps but ill check on them in the morning and see if they survived the temp increase...

I have regularly found 10 - 15cm bullies in trout caught in lake ellesmere, (have released more than a few by pulling them out of the trouts throat with my forceps before releaseing both bully and trout) these ones were much wider at the head and generally much more bulky. I was planning to go out this evening but its been raining very heavilly here today so rivers will likely be dirty next few days, ill try to get back out later next week and see if i can catch one for a photo.