Interfecus

I would also suggest a professional but if you must try it yourself for some reason then it should be done submerged in water. It dampens vibrations and reduced risk of cracking. Professionals use proper dampeners for this. I once tried cutting a thin piece of glass after reading that this worked. Using a pair of scissors in a bathroom sink I managed to cut it in half, but created a few side cracks in doing so. 10mm would be alot harder to cut cleanly than a 1mm piece.

Great idea. You should probably have stuck some lead weights into the bottom or something similar to weigh it down. I think that it looks great in shades of grey anyway, I might try building a similar thing if I get another aquarium.

Welcome, hope you find some useful stuff here.

Welcome, hope you find it friendly here, which forum was so unfriendly?

Apparently lead tends to make the lower leaves of the plant wither, although I can't say it for sure as I've removed lead from the start with my plants. They generally seem to stay in the gravel and are easily re-planted if they do come out.

Animates charge rediculous amounts: $30 for a smallish bag!

Firstly, insulate it well and get rid of that draught. The floor should also be insulated, many people miss this and concrete floors conduct heat to the earth very well. This should save alot on heating. Secondly, I would suggest installing solar heating as it can actually generate a lot of heat. Keep a reasonable sized backup heater just in case though.

Welcome, hope to hear from you in the fora.

Welcome, good to see these boards growing in size.

They probably use plastic piping instead of the copper piping in plumbing because copper is an excellent conductor of heat and would therefore lose heat to the air more because of conduction than the black plastic would lose by radiation. White piping would probably be best for a system like this though as it barely radiates and conducts less than metal piping.

I wouldn't recommend those supermarket scouring pads: many cleaning items like that have added antibacterial chemicals which could prevent filter colonisation by spreding toxins all through the filter wool.

John is right about static not happening: As water is conductive, electrons from the negatively charged particles can travel to the positively charged particles (lacking electrons). This doesn't usually occur in air becuase air takes a large voltage to convert it into plasma before it becomes conductive. Plasma trails leading up from the ground can actually be viewed for the miniscule time they exist in lightning storms just before fork lightning strikes. Pegasus, we can harness the power of static. It is simply isolated charges: If you'd connected that curtain to a wire and another wire to the ground then you could have blown up a light bulb . Charges can build up to thousands of volts on things such as this but the current output is too low to actually do much physical damage, except in extreme cases.

I use 2 tsp per 10 gallons, no more than five times that should be used.

I saw the tail end of that program a while ago. The silk will just be filtering bacteria and larger particles of pollution such as clumps of muck and similar. It just does this very well by having a very fine weave with small holes. No biological filtration will be occuring here, just good mechanical filtration.

Firstly, using black plastic piping would probably be a bad idea. Black objects may absorb heat well but they also radiate infrared heat more than other colours too (I think). I would suggest adding solar heating if possible. Black pipes on the roof can be made to absorb sunlight and can also be self-pumping using convection currents. Of course, to have elevated solar heating working by convection you'd need to have a closed pipe system not mixing with the actual heating tray but running through pipes acting as a heat transfer. You should run this counter-current to the pump outlet from the tray leading to the electric heater. After assembly you would have greatly decreased heating costs. (http://www26.brinkster.com/interfec/heat.gif)

If you're hot water cylinder is leaking enough heat to heat a tank then you'd probably save more by insulating the cylinder better and seperately heating the tank.

Hi, hope you can share some DIY tricks with us . Always keen to learn and build stuff for my fish.

Might as well keep it, what type of water heater is it? Cylinder? Instant gas heater? You could convert a hot water cylinder into a heater, but it would be far too big to really be practical. An instant water heater could feed a fish room by having water go through it from the sump back to the sump. On the lowest setting it might work well.

Yes, guppies are easy to breed. I got them to keep (the fry of) with siamese fighter fry to make them grow faster, but I had to set up a spare tank as an overflow . Going to have to find somewhere to sell the excess. Breeding certainly seems to have slowed down since the female fighters killed both female guppies . GOt two spawns though, both from the same fish. The older spawn will be bred in a father-daughter cross to get babies as close as possible to the male I bought (75% related). The younger ones will be bred brother-sister to form slightly more varied fish. I like the male's tail and hope to combine it with other interesting characteristics formed by inbreeding. Warren is right, whip up a breeding trap, stick a female in it, and you get the whole spawn. Stick the female in a heavily planted aquarium or even clean bucket and you should get to keep most.

Welcome, hope to hear from you in later posts.

Thanks, I'll try to separate other fish from them where possible.

My female siamese fighters have gone ballistic, killing two guppies. They've just become ready to breed and hormones must be making them extra agressive. The previously rarely challenged boss is now skirmishing with another female. I just separated them, with one in a breeding trap. Any suggestions for decreasing violence in females if possible? I find it interesting to note that the females fight like this where in most species females have no need to compete for males. It seems to have evolved this way due to the fact that the males are in almost as much demand as females becuase they tend the spawn. It's interesting to look at.

Thanks for this extra advice. I've bought a new bulb to replace the old one but will have more choice in bulbs when I build my new system and can choose the bulb size myself. I've bought a power-glo 20 watt, 24 inch bulb, 18000K, at $28. I'll be setting up the new lighting in a while when I can afford it and would appreciate suggestions for doing this as cheaply as possible while still getting a good result.

Thanks for the advice, I'll look up that petone lighting store and check at the local pet shops. One of those flexible encap things might be useful as well, to allow lighting upgrades with different bulb sizes as well, I'll have a look for them.

My light bulb just stuffed up, emitting very little light. I figure its just due to the fact that the bulb is really old. Please could people suggest places in or very near to Wellington where I could get a replacement bulb. Are they more expensive in pet shops than specialised lighting stores? Also, I'm about to install new lighting underneath some shelves with my fish tanks underneath. Anybody know where I can find flourescent lighting encaps? Normal light fixtures would also be fine to install those flourescent light bulbs that curve around and fit into a normal socket. Any advice would be appreciated.