sharn

depends how messy your fishies are and how many plants you have. most of mine get a siphon every time i do a w/c though just because its easy to do both at the same time. if your fish arent real messy and you are feeding 'clean' foods then you could probably do it every 2 weeks if you wanted

thats the arm thing! i used to love watching him put it up and he sort of jiggled while he was breathing :lol: if they can survive without leaving the water why would they (Im not saying they cant, just wondering). would it be 'fun' or does it have a purpose (other than breeding)? i guess my Gary (original huh?) loved his mummy too much to eat all my plants in my planted tank :lol: is it unusual for them to not eat plants (he loved his peas, corgette and algae wafers) or do they just start eating them when they are hungry? i dont keep snails (other than ramshorns which i didnt ask for and malaysians for my substrate) but they are pretty interesting critters!

im gonna guess female because of its large spots. how big is the jag, sexing them under 10cm or so can be quite tricky. heres some pics for comparison- taken from-http://www.tropicalresources.net/phpBB2/fish_profiles_managuense.php

if buying two discus for a planted tank make sure they are a friendly pair (dont have to be a mated pair but make good friends will help you) and make sure they are largish- i reccomend over 8cm. discus are cichlids and do show aggression, with only two that arent best buddies one may become the dominant one and the other will take a bit of a beating as theres noone else to pick on. when i had four discus this still happened. theres nothing worse than seeing one of your discus start withering away and becoming a hermit cause hes getting bullied. try to buy the largest discus you can afford, raising discus is very hard work (water changes) and there seems to be an art to it :lol: larger ones are more resistant to problems and then if they do slow in growth you wont be left with colourless pans :lol: i would also reccomend adding your discus once the tank is nice and settled so everything is in balance and your not having to do water changes every 1-3 days for them to keep the water clean. cardinals will be great in a discus tank, cories, bristlenose, ottos, hatchets, rummies (and most other tetras bar neons, they cant handle higher temps) will all be good tank mates. the main problem is fish that can handle the high heat (and i beleive some plants run into that problem too?). i have aquatic mix under my substrate and its really good for the plants that are heavy root feeders, the only problem with it is i have a bristlenose that likes to dig :lol: i paid $3 per 5kg bag at my LFS. there are so many plants to choose from its hard to pick isnt it? i quite like the lotus as its a change from your average green plant. vallis makes a nice space filler too. with MH you could probably do some carpeting with glosso, hair grass, chain sword etc?

so why are they there then? id quite happily have no centre brace on some of my tanks but i thought they were there for a reason so didnt wana mess with them

dont despair whiplash. im sure most of us (including me) have at one time or another wanted to can it all due to problems we just cant seem to fix from sick fish, algae etc etc. you do have a unique set of problems because you are not on tap water, your water has no regulations on how clean its supposed to be etc. i wonder if there are some sort of filters that get all the real tiny stuff out of the water? i know they make UV sterilisers that go somewhere (no idea about fitting them) for people that have tanks as one of my friends has one and his water is great- perhaps its worth looking into that? how far out of town are you?

welcome jim are you sharron and pauls friend that we all met at our meeting?

dunno if it would be safe or not to remove it but its definatly safer with it. it helps stop the middle front/back of the tank from sagging out and i like to use it as a lid rest :lol: all tanks over 3 foot have middle bracing IME so its gotta be there for a reason? perhaps you could take it out and silicon a thinner piece in place so its not so annoying? you learn to live with it after a while :lol:

so is distilled water the same as RO pretty much? if so i wouldnt think many fish would be able to survive in it let alone bacteria colonies etc?

luke- your snails shell would have been weakend by the lack of calcium (and other stuff i dont know about probably) in the water and will soften so much it can be cracked open by fish. found that out myself (didnt die or get eaten tho) so i put it in another tank that had a higher kh and gh and its shell went back to normal

have a look at the newer strains of discus- they are often alot weaker because they have been heavily inbreed to bring out the nicest roundest fish that have the desired colours. another example of inbreeding problems is rams- they are so weak these days especially the golds. inbreeding might not effect killies as much but it effects alot of other species including other animals (dogs etc) in the long run if it is done too much. first generation inbreeding isnt gonna do all that much but when those babies get inbred and then those babies get inbred- well you get the picture :lol: people often purchase stock out of the same tank at the shop which means they often come from the same place and are siblings. i can understand when people that keep rarer fish get really excited about new blood lines coming into the country cause its helping keep the species strong. unless you are line breeding for colours, morphs etc there isnt really any reason to inbreed IMO. sorry fishkeepa for hijacking- your fish are your fish and you are totally entitiled to do with them as you wish

letting them breed is up to you remember inbreeding (even if its only first generation) is weakening that specific line of fish to some degree- this is why alot of the colour strains and morphs are weaker than normal. its not too hard to find a healthy unrelated fish to breed from

or the couch, dining room table, wall unit etc :lol:

mmm, sadly most tga LFS dont have the best reputations among us fishos there are a couple of people that know their stuff and will help you out though so there is hope :lol:

thats not a good thing sadly- when people buy them cause they 'look neat' that means the demand for the proper rams goes down which means they arent stocked which means we dont get plain rams and then thats another mutant which has ruined the demand for the 'normal' fish. i personally dont like them- they look like theyve got big beer guts :lol:

sorry to hear that shadow sounds like it must have been bacterial then and they can move fast when they want to

its just alcohol pretty much i think- we use the same stuff at work but its in dispensers. it sort of evaporates and smells bad :lol: i would not put my hands in a tank after using it but after youve finished would be fine-washing your hands well with soap would do the same thing though id think. i dont beleive there is much you can do to lessen yourself catching bugs (its a very very small chance too) other than buying healthy stock and making sure to quarentine fish before adding them to the existing tank plus your usual personal hygene when dealing with the tank. i dont know much about TB so i dont know how it occurs.

keep in mind genetics also play a role- inbreeding, illnesses while younger etc can all lead to a fish not growing to its potential size. not saying yours is gonna be smaller than usual or anything just something to take into account when it comes to growing speeds

i had a mystery snail once (only one, no idea of sex) but every now and then i would see it out of the water near the top of the lid too. i had no idea why it did it cause it never did anything other than stay up for five minutes then slide back down the glass :lol: alan- i thought they breathed with that little arm like thing they put up to the waters surface?

good on ya shilo dont think many of our LFS here will mention you gotta cycle a tank before you go add massive amounts of fish so was just wondering

sounds like a bacterial infection to me. look into Furan 2, it does a wide range of bacterial problems and is quite gentle so it might be worth a shot? keeping the water extra clean will help too, good on you for putting him in another tank awsell

doesnt distilled water have very very little minerals etc like RO water? like SW said it will be hard to maintain a stable tank using distilled water

lol you should see one of Ants breeding pairs (cant remember the name lol). shes a total monster- the boy hides in the back corner most of the time cause shes always wanting action :lol: i suppose it depends on the fishes personality? heres a bleeding heart http://images.google.co.nz/images?hl=en ... rch+Images

bleeding heart?

no its not- someones just a little money hungry :lol: