sharn

perhaps places like bunnings might have something like that? i know they stock shade cloth etc...

perhaps Athena is a crowntail (do they look like that?) and thats why hes (if its a he) got the shorter fins?

hydra for sure, theyre quite cool little creatures when theyre not eating your fry! :lol: larger fish LOVE to eat them

if both ammonia and nitrate are at 0 then its theoretically cycled. nitrate is the end product so a w/c will reduce them and 80ppm is normal for a tank thats just finished the cycle. slowly add your fish in so you dont get a 'mini cycle'

i think they normally live 2-3 years?

if furan 2 can go in salt water id reccomend that, it recently cured my apisto who had the beginning stages of popeye.

during a cycle with fish in the tank you will need to do water changes of 30% or so every 2-3 days depending on your readings. you will need ammonia, nitrite and nitrate kits, the first two are particularly harmful and can accumulate in high levels during a cycle, they are pretty much the main reason for doing the water changes. of course doing the water changes during the cycle will slow it down but it will make your fish alot happier, the effects of ammonia and nitrite can be fatal. if someone from the club can give you a hunk of media that will help to seed your tank and will speed up the cycle. make sure you feed sparingly during this time so the fish arent producing massive amounts of waste, once a day should suffice.

perhaps a salt bath might help them? probably quite hard to catch them all in a planted tank if theyre all small fish though :lol:

the apistogrammas are really neat but are a bit more agro than rams, especially if you have a male with a group of females. the orange flash and cockatoos are quite common, the males are really stunning.

not sure if it would work but perhaps up the temp to 30C and keep dosing with the whitespot cure for two weeks? im not sure what role snails would play in whitespot, or if they could get it?

lol, hey Kapo! fancy seeing you here :lol: dont get onto axie.org much these days sadly

HAHA! no but your top fish room could be a good example :lol:

some of their lights are multiple 250W etc each so that would up the cost a bit id imagine. your average filter only uses around 20W, and your heater isnt on all the time so its not using too much. most of the freshwater stuff is very low wattage and unless youve got multiple set ups you wont often notice an increase unless you have the tank in a really cold place and the heater is on all the time. its pretty easy to work out how much your tank would be costing you, just find out how much your charged per kilowatt (i think thats it) and then work out how much power your using and how long each piece is on for. can be a bit tricky for heaters though. im running about 900L worth of tropical tanks at the mo, its quite a lot of equipment but only seems to cost me around 30 bucks in winter for the lot. i would estimate the total watts of my equip to be around the 1500 mark

alot of americans are larger (round 30cm) so they might not be a good choice if you wanted a tank with quite a few fish. jack dempsies are neat, they get around 20-25cm and are really stunning. you would be able to have more fish in the tank if you went with malawis i think.

caryl's right, i wouldnt house a bala in anything under 300L or so, i would consider my 360L too small for one. they do grow big, around 12-14" is pretty average for them when kept in adequate housing and because they are so fast they require lots of swimming room. i say its a great excuse for a 400L :lol:

welcome, i am also into discus. check out 'your discus pics' thread in the cichlids forum, theres a few of us who have put some pics up on there

furan is fine for plecos, you can double dose with no ill effects (as advised by some cat experts). i recently used furan on one of my wild apistos as he started to develop it (pop eye) and it cleared it up, it is a safe med- those warnings are scary though. i got a mouthful of furan water which i was worried about but im told it really wont do that much. i am unsure what to treat it with other than something else that is a broad range anti biotic

ive seen tanks running nearly 20x per hour with no problems. as long as your fish and plants arent straining to swim or stay rooted then it shouldnt be a prob.

dont think those tropical ones are legal, and the ones out in the ocean would grow too big and probably be highly illegal to keep unless you're kelly tarltons :lol:

sadly 100L is too small for any of the larger cichlids over 15cm or so. some really cute cichlids are the apistogramma species, they have alot of flair for their small size. rams are also neat but are quite touchy. you can always buy a new tank for a few/one :lol: welcome aboard

kh is carbonate hardness and is basically the measure of the buffers in your water. this is what keeps your ph from swinging or crashing. if your kh is too low and you are using co2 it can cause your ph to crash and swing rapidly as c02 causes both to drop, if its not high enough to drop a little safely then you could end up with some problems. a kh above 5? degrees is considered a good level to safe guard you against the above. i know of people using co2 in water with 0dkh but i would consider that highly risky. gh is general hardness, which is also what people talk about when they say dH i think? i am unsure of its role in ph and co2 usage. i have the aquarium pharm test kit. it has the gh and kh in the kit and cost me 21 something which is quite reasonable. welcome aboard and i hope you have fun here

yeah, furan 2 is the most common one sold, the outside of the capsuels are bright orange. its really good stuff, helps with a broad range of things, not just the ones mentioned. i recently used it on a fish that had the beginnnings of popeye, did the full treatment and it was gone! it is also a very gentle med, you can double dose on plecos with no ill effects.

heres a pic of my two dorks caring for their eggs, this is the second time theyve done it and ive had them 2? weeks. i must be the only person who didnt die of excitement when i found eggs (im not really into breeding fish, just like to keep em). the parents wont be removed to spawn and raise babies cause its too much work :lol:

double dosing often hurts the more sensitive fish like BN, discus (few people had them die when double dosing), clown loaches etc.

right on aquarium dude. ive read alot of reviews on using the double dose, some are fine but some end up with lots of dead precious fish :-? id rather not risk that. generally a normal dose will slowly kill the BBA algae anyway from what ive read on the whole double dosing thing. also if you were to double dose you would want to slowly increase it and be able to have someone watching your tank all the time during the double dose just to make sure someone was there to do a water change if something went wrong. the dose smidey is talking about in the normal dose on the bottle, and it obviously worked for him/her