sharn

WOW!! thats AMAZING, you get my medal (i only give out one a year so its special lol) for the best aquascaper :lol: what are you using to get your plants so great? CO2? do you have anything under your substrate?

3 is a very bad number for oscars, 2 normally pair up and the third wheel gets nailed. find her a new home or new tank cause i doubt things will work out. your tank is fine for three IMO, with 300 being minimum for two alone. how big are they? if they are hitting the 20cm mark or just over it they would be just hitting adolecence and thats why the fighting would be occuring, all hell can break lose once they get to that age, all they seem to want to do is fight :-? if your 'pair' are not hurting each other it could very well be mating, are they lip locking, shimmying, digging or cleaning rocks? just watch them though because all of those bar the cleaning rocks part means aggression, kinda silly cause fighting and breeding can look the same, youd think theyd be more gentle or something lol

when my goldfish bred in my pond i thought they were going to kill her! i removed her from the pond to find eggs in the bowl she was in (didnt know what they were doing then) but the next time i got some cute little babies out of it. it looks very vicious i must say. not sure how to sex them. aging water manually can take around 24 hours, if you want to be super dooper safe 48s ok. just chuck an airstone in the bin to get rid of the chlorine, do note that this doesnt get rid of chloramines, those take longer or need to have some sort of de-chlorinator added that specifcally removes that.

what are those worms called that come out of the fishs bums? c something wasnt it? and do they look like tiny red things? cause on close inspectin last night i saw several tiny threads that were red coming out of my angel fishes bum. it has to be something alive as they would go back inside her and then come out again... when i find out what these things are i'll start getting onto worming her thanks all

i gave them a good rinse in the bucket before they went into the tank but i saw my damn snails on it last night its definatly not val thats for sure, the pic prob makes it look wierd but the leaves are only 3cm high max, it looks more like the brazillian to me cause the leaves arent as tall as the other one. this weekend i will be re-doing my substrate so hopefully that will whack out a fair lot of them (the snails) and i will rinse all my plants and decorations free of snails in the tank before i empty it cause im really sick of them. guna be a mission and i just have to hope and pray i have enough bacteria left to hold my tank steady while everything catches up.

just cut the broken support off at the silicon with a blade or razor i suppose?

so is it that microsword? and was the dude bullsh**ing me when he told me it was a relatvly easy plant to grow?

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f351/ ... 0_5136.jpg can you guys get to that?

WICKED! congrats on your new babies

i have a pic of it but not sure how to upload them on here as i dont get an attatchment box? thanks for that you two, will remove them today and maybe the oscar can have some new toys to play with (the pots) :lol: got my list for the weekend sorted out, yay! i get to spend money

maybe you have mozzie larvae or dahpnia or something like that in there?

i have my 180L on the floor and its not a hassle at all apart from cleaning time. i have a self starter siphon and you have to suck on the end to get it going and then it takes like five minutes to fill up a 10L bucket lol. i still have polystyrene under my tank too

congrats!!! theyre very cute little things arent they? good work

thankyou so much alan !! saved me a bit of money this week (was going to get two tubes and hood) ill get that new tube and chuck it on the tank and once i need more lighting ill get that double tuber and a new tube and get things up and running. my new plants (the sword and some small, grass looking chain sword) are still in pots. should i leave them in them or take them out when i replant the tank?

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/tanks- ... t6019.html thats gregs info and he makes great tanks for so cheap (i got my 180L for 90 bucks custom!!!)

well the tanks 42cm high and the water is very clear. all these plants will be getting introduced over a period of weeks i suppose. will have quite a few of the 'easier' swords, some grassy looking sword for the foreground, val and any other plants that will grow well with my tank :lol: im not trying too hard to stick to the amazon theme but do want plants that grow well in those conditions. the lights are on from the time i wake up (10am, yeah i know i sleep in lol) till around 11pm... algae doesnt bother me too much as long as its only the green stuff that grows on the glass and can get scrubbed off. wow, all these CRI's and Kelvins etc are pretty confusing hehe so basically i want to not over do it on my lights until my plants have been in for (how long?) and then chuck them on?

thankyou very much, now i know what to base my light buying on hehe, must go out this weekend and get a new tube then, dont want to start kill them as soon as i get them! hopefully i have enough cash to get a nwe tube, the sand (cheap as) and the aquatic mix (if i need it) plus some of the root balls. its going to be one hell of a long weekend thats for sure :lol:

going over the small bits with a razor? what about paint stripper?

the tanks a 230L, standard 4 foot, 38cm wide and 42cm tall. im probably going to end up using the bioballs if i have to keep dosing with flourish because of my water changes, thanks for your reply and ill go do my light search now

hello all getting my a into g on my planting. this weekend coming i will be putting a plant growing substrate (plain old aquatic mix ok for this?) on the bottom covered by sand. i will be getting a double light hood thingie so i can have two tubes running (will need to get the tubes unless the ones i have now are ok) and will be dosing with flourish excel and if i need the plant balls that go near the roots i can get them too. few questions now 1: how often do i dose with flourish? it says on the bottle every day and the man in the shop said i could only do water changes once every few weeks (i would be doing 25% or so every 2-3 days for the discus and rams for their nitrates and clean water). if i cant do my water changes without adding heaps more i wont use it as it would be too costly after a while. 2: whats the best under sand substrate for plants, im not wanting to go spend hundreds on it so is that aquatic mix ok? its nice and cheap too also how thick of each without the sand going off? 3: two lights enough? i have just got a amazon sword today, some small plant (dont know how to upload pics from my puter) and some more val. got camboma and java fern already in there but will be adding more. what specific tubes/brands do you reccomend? the lights i own now are... phillips TLD 36W/84 NEL FL40SSBR/37-HC, Tri phosphor T8, 37W (pretty old) OSRAM 36W/11-860, lumilux plus eco daylight with the system im running what other plants do you reccomend, id prefer something not overly hard :oops: thanks to all in advance, bit nervous about all this plant business so any tips would be appreciated

ive read that even thougha fish may look dead ie gills not moving etc their brain/nerve system can still be working????

ive read that it can cause/help fish get gas bubble disease??? just what i read though and in old books so it could be wrong

if my oscar ever got sick and i had to kill him there would be absolutly no way i would throw him onto the ground- i get very attatched to certain fish and its not an option. it would be quite a mission to cut an oscars head off also with your average kitchen knife!!! its good to know theres other possibilites to put them to sleep nicely and without trauma, most people cant afford to take their fish to the vets to get put down. i hope we see more on this, to see if it is actually a good, easy, and pleasant way. thanks lyndyloo for starting the thread

if you cant find anything on the net about dosing and its effects it dont use it, if its not well documented i wouldnt risk it personally. ive only been told bout the augmentim by a good fish fellow but never seen any more about it so im hesitant to use it.

if you get them in a tank and you dont want them in there theyre very annoying!!! i suppose they do clear up waste but then they MAKE waste and when they die they pollute the water (i do water changes every few days so its not normally a prob). i take all the ones i can see out but theres still alot there for sure!!! the bigger ones like mystery snails and apple snails which need the other sex to breed are cool if you only have one sex, they clean up all your left overs and its cute to watch them eat their peas and cucumber, theyre more like pets than pests