Interfecus

All yours, will DM for address & pickup

The extra Java ferns grew too big for my nano. Pick up only, Wellington. May come with little green hydra - only usually a problem for tiny fry. Treat plants if concerned.

Had any luck? Not in Nelson but could mail some from Wellington if you cover postage.

Apparently for Zebra danios people use glass marbles on the bottom of a tank. No personal experience, but throwing that out there

Anyone have hydra in their aquarium? Looking for some for microscopy (not my aquarium!). Happy to pay shipping & any packaging costs if you can catch some (turkey baster?).

Maybe try booking the courier through TradeMe? Don't know regular rate, but you can book for things sold elsewhere, much cheaper than that!

This may not be the direction you want to go, but couldn't you fertilise eggs in vitro? The earliest pregnancy tests consisted of triggering frogs to lay eggs in isolation with the hormones from the woman's urine. Note I'm not suggesting that literally, but you may be able to identify conditions where that happens. Not sure how the male part would work, but if you can get him to mate at all, putting normal eggs in the same water may suffice.

Ever in Wellington? A friend here I believe hasn't managed to give away her females from breeding them (males all went). Only a few but if you were down here anyway could put you in touch.

Any luck finding anyone? I'm also wondering what the current status is, and whether they're still around.

So the last time I was here, and last had fish, was 2005... and I'm finally getting a tank again, just a tiny one. Came on here to find breeders but it looks like the scene might be rather quieter than it used to be...

The non-branching corals sometimes have 'sweeper tentacles'. These are used to kill other corals (mostly branching ones) and clear out space for growth. These sweepers are usually retracted during the day. If those tentacles are sweepers then yes, they will kill the polyps of neighbouring corals. Avoid placing branching corals too close to it. P.S. I don't keep corals, this is just from biology lectures .

Their main defence is camouflage so I sincerely doubt they would also produce toxins (it's not economical). They could make good fish food.

That's not java moss. I would guess it's an encrusting type of algae, but would need to look under a microscrope to get a better idea. It could also be a fungus or myxomycete, but it's probably just an alga.

UV will not be effective. Algae and other gunk will still build up as the UV is not perfect and films can also grow against the direction of flow. If you really want to harvest that heat, you could use a heat exchanger. I doubt it's worth it even in the long run though. You'd be better off keeping the aquaria well away from thousand-dollar electronics!

It is a great shame that such a dedicated president has been forced to resign due to a misjudgement bringing old feuds to the surface. I don't know who will take over the position now, but I do know that there is nobody else in the club who would perform that duty with as much enthusiasm and dedication as Alan has shown. Although there is no doubt that a mistake was made and the whole club should have made a collective decision on this issue, Alan has acknowledged this mistake. It is highly likely that the NZKA as a whole would have reached a similar decision in any case. As long as the breeders who did receive fish donate a decent proportion of the first few batches of offspring, how much would really be lost? In the event of very few fish being available, I know I would prefer a stake in an experienced breeder's fry than a couple of adults of my own. Unfortunately small club politics have forced the resignation of the one person who could actually have improved the club. These undercurrents of conflict have been around for quite some time. This tendency to quarreling was a major part of my decision not to re-join the NZKA earlier this year. Good luck Alan

I use 2 of those 60L plastic storage bins from The Warehouse. I put about 10cm of fertiliser and pesticide free potting mix in and fed them bread. The only thing to be careful of with these is water collecting in the bottom.

Even pure air is carcinogenic. Don't worry too much about fish meds. If you search for "alternafix" on the forum you should find a DIY equivalent of melafix. I put it in the water in the normal dose level for melafix. When 2 litres of it costs about $5 it doesn't hurt to treat the whole tank.

Anaerobic zones will almost inevitably form in a sand substrate as water circulation is extremely poor. This can be reduced by a number of means: 1. Forced circulation of water throught the sediment. This could be done by pumping water into a looser layer underneath the sand. You could, for example, run some of the tubing used for air pumps through a gravel layer, punch small holes in the tubing to evenly distribute the flow, then place the sand on top. Fine mesh on top of the gravel could help to prevent the sand from falling down into the gravel. You then pump oxygenated water into the tubing and it will filter up through the sand bed using a pump optimised for medium to high pressure. The sand layer would have to be quite thin for this to be effective. 2. Use burrowing animals to keep the sediment mixed up. Many snails may do this. 3. Plant lots of plants with good root systems in the sediment. These will oxygenate it a bit. With a thin layer either 1 or both 2 and 3 together would probably be sufficient. With a thick layer all three together might manage it, but if it's too thick dead zones are inevitable.

OK, that's all cool then

I understand that this is only a casual thread, but wanted to make sure people don't actually take all the hype around phi and aesthetics as gospel. Evidence that phi is in some way an ideal or most beautiful ratio is tenuous at best. In fact, it is almost completely unsupported and as far as I am aware has never been formally tested. This _is_ an important number in the solution of many common optimisation problems, but so are several other mathematically interesting numbers. It is really just because of its mathematical properties that it turns up so often.

White spot forms very obvious spots so it won't be that. It looks like what my knife fish had a while ago. I put some melafix-like stuff in and it cleared up in a few days.

Meths has some extra stuff added as well as the ethanol and methanol. It also contains vomiting agents and colouring to prevent people from killing themselves. If you use it, be sure to rinse the whole tank well afterwards.

I fed mine nothing for about two months :lol: . I then went back last week, observed that they were still alive in large numbers and gave them a piece of bread.

There is a lot of hype about it. Most of it is rubbish though. Phi is defined by the mathematical property that phi squared equals phi plus one: Φ² = Φ + 1 This turns out to be significant in the optimal solutions to many naturally occuring problems. As an example, the angle between any two leaves on a stem where the leaves are arranged spirally is usually 1/Φ² revolutions (~138°). This is the optimal solution to the problem of minimising overlap between leaves in the spiral, allowing them to collect as much light as possible. There is no reason to suppose that in any given situation a ratio of phi should be better than any other solution intrinsically. More, it is simply that the key property of phi makes it significant in many solutions like this. I wouldn't, however, leap to the conclusion that this should have anything to do with aquaria until demonstrated!

The best way to prevent problems like this is to introduce another animal to control the algae. This could be an algae-eating fish, some snails, or even more plants that will compete for nutrients and slow the growth of algae. You definitely shouldn't be reducing the light that much just to control the algae. 10 to 12 hours per day is usually fine.