sharn

can we get gold asians here? watching a male hold his fry would be sooooo stunning to watch, hed be able to fit a fair few in his mouth too :lol: i wonder if anyone in nz has ever managed to breed these beauties?

it may have been them but they didnt look as 'dotty', i didnt have a big look though

haha, small lake is no exageration :lol: very hard to breed, not many people can get them to do it and not many people can afford the tank to house them :lol:

no worries blue 8) while meds are used alot i just dont trust the directions on the packs anymore, had too many mishaps with meds and following directions damaging the plants a bit doesnt worry me, its not like i have a stunning setup :lol: salt (when used properly) is a great natural cure/help for alot of things but its not your plants best friend :lol:

when i had cockatoos a while back my female was a total b*tch, she nailed the angel fish. she was fine when she had a male but when he passed she became a bit evil :lol: if theres a male and a female its possible that the angels are annoying them when they want to spawn. cockatoos will take on large territories when breeding

whats the kh reading?

that article confused me a bit (im not up on technical words lol). i would suggest at least 12mm glass. you will want to make sure the stand is very sturdy as you are looking at around 640L (1kg per L) not including glass weight, substrates etc. a steel stand would be sturdier if made properly IMO. theres many articles on the net about building tank stands but i wouldnt try if you didnt have a fair amount of building knowledge. its alot of water that can end up on ya floor good luck and thats a great size tank for some big clowns

not sure how high guppies can handle temps but if they can 29 would be good to speed up the life cycle once you start treating its up to you whether you use salt or meds, i always like to try natural first if i think i have time. if you choose to use salt its 1tbsp per 40L of water (its normally 1tbsp per 20L but you have BN). only replace what you take out as it does not evaporate. keep that up for a week or two and then slowly w/c it out, you need to keep the treatment up for a while cause any unhatched cysts can infect the tank again real easy. doing very thorough gravel siphons will help get some of the cysts out too. if you go with the meds its probably best to half dose. BN are sensitive to many meds as they are scaleless. if they seem fine and the ws isnt going away you can try increasing it slowly but keep your eye on them. some meds require increased airation etc also. good luck and be persistant :bounce:

isnt vallis illegal?

Frank hates my pleco too :lol: put some more hiding spots in for the pleco, even though theyre 'armoured' a O could make light work out of it if it really really wanted to. what does she do at night time? thats normally when my O fights with my pleco (often get woken up by them two) and just wondered if she also has a go at yours then. you probably wont need another tank for the pleco (im assuming this is the big one?), as long as its got somewhere the O cant get into it should be ok

in the meantime i would suggest a water change of around 30%. once youve got your levels you will know if you need to do more water changes. back when i first got into fish i didnt know about cycling but about a week later i found out and i did 30% water changes every 2 days to keep the levels down. it takes alot longer though because you are limiting the bacterias food supplys in order to keep the tank in liveable conditions. guppys are pretty hardy fish but you will need to do at least twice weekly water changes till things settle down. dont stress too much, most people dont know about cycling and the other 'stuff' when they start out, and at least youve come to get some help :bounce:

i have never made specific efforts to feed the khulis apart from making sure that i get the food around most of the tank (so the other fish have a hard time gobbling the lot and it can fall into the hard to reach places for the K's), i do feed about 5 mins before lights out at night though so they still get their fair share and thats when i feed the BN. ive had mine for about 2 years now and they dont look thin so theyre finding the goodies :lol:

i become frantic and moan and b*tch until it comes back on (longest 2 hours here). i close my window and door, and the tanks smaller than 200L get blankets on them (my room heats up fairly quick) if need be. i am going to be purchasing a few of those emergency blankets used for people because poly is messy :lol:

ive always heard that java fern often works, the leaves taste bitter or something and it isnt planted so the naughty fishies can pull them out :lol: im not sure of any other plants sorry i suppose it also depends on your lighting as to what you can have

i wonder why they are targeting you guys first and not the people that sold them to you?

i havent used it yet, but am going to once i get some facts on it as there is a theory saying that it doesnt work in ph's above 7. im using fenbendazole via food now and no other fish have adults (apart from khulis, not sure on them) so im hoping the fenebndazole knocks anything that was going to start out. i inspected the BN and cory bums and they have nothing (mighty surprised as they have been thru 2 outbreaks now), the khulis are going to be a much different story :lol: its a very gentle med to use, people have overdosed as much as four times with no adverse effects however some people seem to think it can cause the fish to be sterile (if overdosed), its not common in the literature so im not sure about that one the bottle is 50ml, and ill pm you the other details now ronnie

im not sure if its common with jags but it is with a few other cichlids- sometimes the parents will fight over who gets to look after the fry, if this happens you might need to divide the parents up and let the fry pick which side theyre going too :lol: not sure if youve experienced their teeth yet (perhaps now is a good time to put your arm in :lol: ) but they use em good and can rip each other up any chance of some piccies of the eggs (and the tank ones of course lol)?

if your feeding lots of live food its very easy to get in. i have two bottles, there was two on the shelf when i left last week, lukes reserved one so theres one left. i can see if she can get more in but she was telling me that she cant always get it for some reason. if you would like it pm me and ill go down and pick them up on thursday. each bottle can do approx 360L and is pretty cheap

that could be it (the rain)! ive been told not to do water changes for a few days after a rain, they put all sorts of crap in apparently and the silt is really stirred up too (if you fill your bath youll see its browny).

haha! thats the one :lol:

isnt that stuff illegal?

ive always heard baby BN are pretty delicate so my guess is the nitrites were part of it, perhaps the cucumber made the water funny? how long did you leave it in for? we have very low kh here, perhaps its a possibility your ph crashed?

yes, boiling does warp your plastic siphon :lol: :oops:

geez luke, you and your wierd LOL words :lol: ive got a few but theyre all fish abbreviations haha

hello all, recently saw some cories that i hadnt seen before. labelled 'two line cory' and looked exactly like a panda minus the black tail markings but had two very distinct lines running along each side of its body. looking around it seems to be http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/sp ... cies_id=63. are these common? im not going to get them but i just wondered what they were.