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.

actually the flow in the tubs goes the other way, so they were moving downstream as it were. And it is a strong flow so yes they could be 'migrating' in 1 direction or the other. The temperature in the tubs should be fairly constant due to the flow. The layout is basically 6 x 55 litre fish bins linked together in a circle. 4 ->5-> 6 ^ | 3<- 2<- 1 heater is in tub 6, and a pump pumps from 6 to 1, tubs are at different heights so water depth varies from tub to tub. Shrimps were spread randomly about all tubs and after a few days I noticed most of them were in tub 6. I have also noticed that in my plec display tank which is 4 foot by 18 inch by 18 inch the shrimps seem to stay together in a loose group. Maybe as a defensive measure to all the 'large' fish swimming about ? Anyways they seem to be able to sense / identify the other shrimps and stay together Its way cool watching them pluck away at the algae and general detritus

Yep L190, the lack of a pale band on the tail tells were it comes from, check out planetcatfish for details

Just how big do bullies get ? Saw some in the Ashley river (close to the coast) that were allmost as long as my adult hand, definatly bully shaped and hugging the bottom, and in fresh (but tidal) water, but way bigger than any other bullies I have ever seen. I tried to catch one for a photo but water was too deep and too swift.

I caught a few freshwater shrimp about 3 weeks ago (about 50 or so), added them to my plant tubs, my plec show tank and my discus tank and gave a few to the LFS. Just used a large sized net and a strong torch to see/ confuse them and scopped em up several at a time. Discus Tank @ approx 28 celcius all were dead by next morning Plec show tank approx 24 celcius they are still doing well 3 weeks later, have darkened up considerably and have made a noteable difference to algae on the crypts in the tank. Plant tubs @ approx 20 celcius they are doing fine, strangely they seem to keep migrateing through the tubs to the warmest one, i scoop out a few each day and redistribute them through the tubs. I have been feeding them a sprinkle of spirulina powder every 3 or 4 days LFS Goldfish Tanks @ approx 20 celcius they are doing fine, havent been eaten by goldfish as yet.

Went out to the selwyn river the other night to fish, massive numbers of smelt (cuccumber fish) shoaling in the river, presume they are spawning, must have been 10's of thousands of them. Got some pretty average pics with my cell phone and torch. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2 ... a26c4f9408 Lots of bullies in places too, the larger grey and black ones, and massive numbers of eels feeding on both the smelt and bullies.

Yes single females will on occasion lay eggs, i seperate males from females to encourage spawning when I join them back together and occasionally a female will lay eggs before i get the males back into the tank. As you say they will be infertile and will fungus quickly.

light level seems to effect leaf size too, more light = larger leaves

That small bit of golden nana came from me if you got it from John, and its not petitie just small if that makes sense. The golden variety i have seems to be slower growing than plain old green nana. Im stuck in the middle of accounting software issues at work today, doubt Ill have time to get over to Organism but Ill drop you off some minima tommorow.

The system you are looking at is basically a DIY system but you are buying it instead of making it yourself (although you could save a few dollars and make it, its not hard.) The grey container is where the CO2 is made, you add their 'special stabiliser' (baking soda) their 'special activator' (powdered yeast) and sugar and water... when the packets run out you can just use normal bakers yeast and sugar its much cheaper than buying refills. Alternatively most people get a 2 or 3 litre coke bottle, poke a small hole in the lid and run some airhose through it and make their own CO2 generator (Coke bottle is perfect because its designed to hold pressured sugar water mix ) The clear plastic 'ladder' is just a way of dissolving the CO2 gas produced inot the water in your tank, the bubble starts at the bottom and slowly slides up the ladder, dissolving as it goes (untill it hits a snail shell at least), alternatviely you can just feed the CO2 bubble to an airstone (not very efficient b ut it works) or inot the outflow of a filter... lots of ways to make your own diffuser, do a google search for DIY CO2.

Basically CO2 system goes something like this... CO2 GAS ----> (Bubble Counter / Needle Valve) -----> (Diffuser / Reactor / Mixer) CO2 Gas = Someway of createing CO2 be it a pressurised bottle or DIY Sugar and yeast. Bubble Counter = A small container that the CO2 bubbles through to allow you to know how much is going into your tank (how many bubbles per second) Needle Valve = a fine valve to control the amount of gas coming from a pressurised bottle (not needed if you go DIY) Diffuser / Reactor / Mixer = Mixing the CO2 gas with the water in your tank, there are lots of ways to do this, some work very well some not so well. Additionally you may use a solenoid valve which is just a valve controlled by a timer to turn the CO2 flow on and off (again dont need for CO2)