Zev

Ha! No plants! Very nice...

Hi and welcome The next Hawkes Bay Aquarium Society meeting is Wednesday 18 July, 7:30pm at The National Aquarium of New Zealand, Marine Parade, Napier. This month we are also having an auction, you are welcome to come along and visit us.

Try the link without the comma after the .com http://www.bcbetta.com

Phew, getting through that was a mission!

mmmmm salt creep... How conductive is salt, I wonder?

Hi Gills To change the colour, size etc of a piece of text highlight it first by dragging over it with your mouse, then click the type of formatting you want to apply to it. In saying that, I'm quite taken by the coloured html code you managed to insert! Hi Loopy, good luck with your meeting, sounds like it will be fun.

Alan, would he be better off getting sponge filters in the future, rather than box filters? Do Killie fry graze off a sponge filter? The Charcoal probably does nothing after a week or so, anyway. When you have completely changed the water in some of your tanks as you said you had before with no losses, this was probably because the filter was still active, 10% water changes more often are probably preferable, as this is not changing the water parameters greatly. Sudden changes are what upset the fish, they can handle gradual changes better, so if your ammonia is high, swapping out all the water is probably worse for the fish than doing a couple of 40% water changes over a few days. Guppies are hardy little beggars, some of mine are happily swimming around in a cycling high Nitrite tank at the moment, pigging out and the males are still chasing the females!

These! Trichopsis pumila

Can you easily access the back of your tanks? I have used that stick on stuff for lining draws and cupboards from Mitre10 - black of course, not the wood grain or floral pattern one!! Mind you, it depends on how large your tank is, I think it is only about 450mm wide. And you have to make sure you get all the air bubbles out, too..... EDIT... should read your posts properly... If you can't get in behind, try going to an art supply shop and getting some core board. This is used for mounting stuff on, and is black with a dense sponge centre. It is about 6mm thick and comes in sheets about 1m square. You can cut it to size with a stanley knife or similar, and just pop it in behind with some double sided tape. I also use this to sit my tanks on because I don't like the look of polystyrene.

ok, it is known as a box filter. You would have probably been better off putting this in one of your existing tanks for a couple of weeks to get the nitrifying bacteria going first, then putting it into your new tank. Just putting old tank water into a new tank with a new filter will not set the process off automatically. If you don't have any fish in the tank when you do this, it is probably not worth doing the nightly water changes, as this is done to keep the ammonia levels down and keep the fish more comfortable, should you be using some to cycle the tank. Some fish can handle ammonia better than others, and I would hate to think what some of my poor fish have had to put up with at times when I swap tanks around! HTH

Exactly what sort of filtration are you running on this tank? ie, sponge filter, under gravel, cannister, internal?

Glad you all had fun and made it back ok. Nicole said that she liked the tank with the SpongeBob house in it the best! Here is the picture of the Fronnie in the fish shop in Coburg I told African about.

Spoilt tart! I'm sure she thinks the whole setup was just for her benefit... Good luck with the move and stuff.

We have: 54l community tank - 1 female Dwarf Gourami, 1 female Chocolate Gourami, 6+ Sparkling Gourami (breed all the time, but the adults only last just over a year, so they are just maintaining a steady population), 3 Neons, 5 Black Phantom Tetra, 3 Corydoras Veneuzulans, 3 Hillstream Loaches. Probably a squillion snails. Well Planted. 400mm Cube tank - 2 Blue Rams, 3 Otocinclis, 5 False Neons, 6 Pygmy Corydoras. Supposed to be a South American Biotope, but there are also 3 sparkling Gourami that snuck in there with some plants. 70w MH and Co2 plus the Cat tent on top. 30l divided tank - 4 Harlequin Rasbora one side, other side 2 Celestial Pearl Danios, 4 Danios haven't worked out exactly what they are, were sold as Burmese Danio. 31l tank - Asian Biotope with Moss wall, Java Fern, Rotala Wallichii, Cryptocoryne. This is for the Celestial Pearl Danios when the moss wall grows in. 15l Triangle tank - 3 Guppys 54l tank - African Biotope, Anubias and African Fern. Cycling with Guppys at the moment. 54l tank - just resiliconed the bottom on after it began to leak. Growout tank. 105l Tropical Marine - 1 Goldstripe Maroon Clownfish, 1 Sixline Wrasse, 1 Royal Dottyback, 1 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp, 1 Fire Cleaner Shrimp, 1 Maxima Clam, 2 Astrea Snails, quite a few small limpets of some kind, Mushys, Sinularia, Zoanthids, Euphyllia and one tank invading Bubbletip anemone.

Dang, Milet.... Could have sent you some Java Fern with the snails! Anubias can go on driftwood as well.

Be good to meet you and your posse, James. Kids finish netball at ten, so we will be able to join you as you do the rounds.

Blue Rams? Ours are as nosey as, when you go near the tank they come right up to the glass to see what you are going to feed them! You can wipe the glass and they don't shy away, and when you vacuum the tank they hang around the bottom of the vac and chase the stuff going up the tube!

Awwwww.... isn't it cute! Is it an albino Senegalus, or is that just the flash on your camera?

How small, and how much was it?

Dang lousy timing, eh? I would be definately interested in buying them if you are going to sell them.

So is he supposed to snap it off at the plantlet end, leaving the stalk sticking out, rather than at the base of the mother plant?

That's a stunning male, nice even unbroken stripes, the ones I have seen around lately have broken patterns, or not many stripes at all, or very angular heads. I would be very interested in a male if you manage to raise your batch of fry. If you see forty fry, you could possible double that number, I raised a batch that I took out of my community tank and put in 20l tank, and when they had grown to about 10mm, I transfered them to a bigger tank and counted them.... there were 85 or them! Try decapsulated brine shrimp, if you can't be bothered hatching your own. The fry last for quite some time on green water, just be careful with the liquid fry food, it is quite easy to overfeed and pollute the water. Oh, and our male was always chasing everything around the tank, didn't matter what or who, with or without bubble nest, fry, or a nookie several minutes before, didn't seem to matter. We just let the plants get overgrown so that he couldn't see the other fish to chase them!

Sorry Loopy, don't know what they are, but they look very interesting....

Um, since Oliver is only 13 years old, it might be a hard sell to his folks!

If you are thinking of corals, even at a later stage, you are are probably better off buying the best skimmer you can (or in most cases with marine fishkeeping, can't) afford, skimping at the early stages of setup can only lead to water quality problems and can cost you more in the longrun, as you will only have to upgrade later, and unless you buy a well recognised brand, the resale price will be a fraction of what you bought it for. This sounds about right, I have a Deltec MC500, cost me just under $500. It requires hardly any tuning and fiddling around with, and pulls a fair amount of very dark skimate out of our wee tank. Do your sums and research first, take your time in setting this up, it will save you a lot of heartache and money when you finally get it going. Have a look at this thread to get an idea of what planning is involved: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/the-ho ... 22127.html