Interfecus

I use two of these suspended over my 60L tank. The plants seem to thrive, but be warned that algae will thrive also! You need a healthy population of plant-friendly snails or you'll be scrubbing the glass with every single water change!

:-? I seriously doubt this. The siamese fighter must've been on its last legs and barely able to swim if the snail managed to catch it. They are opportunistic and will eat dead animals if they smell them, but are not predatory. There is no way a snail can catch a heathy fish. The only live fish these things might eat are still in their eggs.

Guys, colour has nothing to do with snail identification or appetite. Almost all of the species each come in colour morphs ranging from bright yellow to dark brown. As an example, P. bridgesii is often found in yellow form but wil barely harm plants. You need much more than colour to identify them. Try http://www.applesnail.net to find the identification guides there. P.S. The real determining factor on whether or not snails will eat plants is the size of the 'teeth' on the radula. Big teeth = eats plants. Small teeth = can't eat plants.

How big is it? They need to leave the water to lay eggs, but reproduce sexually so if you ony have one this is unlikely. Some species such as P. canaliculata will actively seek food out of the water (Incidentally, this is why they're considered such a pest in rice fields. They eat rice seedlings.) and can escape from any tank without a cover. I wouldn't worry to much about it though .

You could place netting mesh over any holes in the background if you want to seal it off. I would personally consider dividing the cavity behind it in two with a water-tight barrier, making 'caves' in the background, putting in a pump or filter to move water from one side to the other, and filling both sides with filter media. This would provide extra filtration without being visible. I haven't done this myself, but have wanted to make a tank filtered like this for a while now. I would also use a sponge layer behind the background to make cleaning the 'filter' easy.

I wouldn't wipe them out. Worms like this are part of the natural balance in aquatic systems and may actually help to keep your tank healthier. Unless you get huge numbers of them, I'd just look at reducing waste material in the tank.

Hah! their prime calculator is useless It can only handle piddly small ones. It refused to check whether or not six hundred eighteen septillion, nine hundred seventy sextillion, nineteen quintillion, six hundred forty two quadrillion, six hundred ninety trillion, one hundred thirty seven billion, four hundred forty nine million, five hundred sixty two thousand, one hundred eleven (American style wording, represents 618,970,019,642,690,137,449,562,111) was prime. It is, but it reduced the precision then told me it was divisible by two :evil: . Pathetic Otherwise, that's a pretty awesome site! Thanks for the link! P.S. The largest known prime is 2^25964951 - 1. This is 7816230 decimal digits long, a bit excessive to enter into a text field.

I don't know anything about glass working, but perhaps the experts could advise on this idea. Would it be a good idea for people in cases like this to score a couple of rings around the original hole before bonding a new sheet over the whole lot? The idea would be for the rings to terminate any cracks spreading out from the original hole. If it would be effective, would a regular circle, opposing ovals, or a 'crinkled' circle be best? I don't need this now but just had the idea and was wondering how effective it would be. I don't have any spare glass around to test it either.

It worked reasonably well, but the microworms tended to mix the upper layers up. This made it soft again and kind of defeated the point. It worked for a while, but wasn't really worth the extra effort.

Congratulations . Another 9 to go, a few lines painted on the sides of the neck, and a really large tank is all you'll need to get your Homo pseudopiscis breeding certificate .

A fish store will charge you a fortune. As Alan suggested, try to find other local fishkeepers. There's somebody in every region who chucks out plants by the bucket load

A stem cell is simply any cell that is capable of differentiating to become one of several specialised cells. There are two main categories of stem cells. There are embryonic stem cells, which are capable of becoming any type of cell. These are called this because they are only found in the embryo. In adults, we get 'adult' stem cells. These stem cells are already partially differentiated and can only become certain types of cells. As an example, we all carry stem cells in our bone marrow which can differentiate to form any of the different immune system cells but couldn't, for example, form brain cells or toenail secretion cells. By contrast, an embryonic stem cell can eventually form any other type of cell, or an entirely new organism if given the right environment. In the case of coral polyps, this is a bit confusing. Either the polyps must carry stem cells all the time or he must be undifferentiating existing cells, which is a very difficult thing to do properly. He could also be capturing gametes, but that would probably be even harder. It would be interesting to watch this and see how it turns out. High metabolic activity isn't always a good thing, even if it lasts for long. BTW, I suggest people read up a bit on stem cell research. By that I mean _reputable_ reading sources, not poor information dreamed up by political extremists. There are plenty of good, reasoned opinions both supporting and opposing it. There's quite a debate going on about stem cell research ethics and it pays to be informed. I don't know as much as I would like about it, so I'll certainly be reading up on it myself.

mass - I'm not sure whether you're talking about the pressure the pump is pumping against or the pressure the seals can withstand. If you're talking about pumping, the force to lift water upwards is provided by the pressure in the downward pipe as already mentioned by others. Only the difference between inlet and outlet height (or the level of the water they may be immersed in) contributes to the resistance to pumping. The same is true for pipes going up over the rim of the tank (unless they reach a height of more than 10 metres above the water surface, at which point there is a vacuum at the peak which prevents the passage of water ). If you're referring to the pressure the seals can take, see whether they have a pressure rating. Take the distance from the bottom of the canister to the water level of the tank in metres and multiply it by 10. This will be the pressure on the seals in kilopascals. Make sure the seal is rated at at least half as much again as this for safety.

Although the video today wasn't that good . OMG, the nuclei are differentiated! You only said that 10 times already!

It might be an idea to go to the supermarket or pet store and get a "cuttlebone" (used for birds). One of these in the tank (they float and need to be buried or weighted down) will keep the calcium levels high enough and keep the pH alkaline. The snails will be much less likely to break their shell if they have the calcium to keep it strong. Now that you've had one break this is even more important as regenerated shell tends to lose calcium to the water faster than intact shell. The only way to stop this is to keep calcium leves in the water up.

I just volunteered to help out with work around the lab for a researcher here who broke her arm a while ago. She's researching the effect of UV light on zooxanthellae in a species of polyp found around NZ. It's not a coral, but if she doesn't have enough people already it should be a neat thing to do .

Activated carbon can adsorb some chemicals from the water. It can help to keep it a bit cleaner. Mostly it just removes that yellow tint from the water. Sponges only need to be replaced once they start breaking up. Or when your new snails eat the damned thing (I was warned, but still put a sponge filter in with my new Pomacea canaliculata apple snails :lol:) .

I've had a female who built bubble nests. I ended up giving her nests to the males who had no interest in building at all :roll: .

If you find another, let him experiment on it . Apparently if you turn them inside out the cells all start migrating through the body until they're the right way around again .

20MB in 30s That's about 5Mbps! @Bianemone - Cheers I don't think we'll be doubling our bill any time soon though

Who provides 2Mbps ADSL in NZ? How much does it cost? Where is it available? I'm on 256Kbps 'broadband' here, a mere 4 - 5X dialup.

Welcome back

Welcome to the fishroom. I hope you find lots of good info here

You should be fine. A trickle filter will put a lot more oxygen in the water than a turbulent surface. If in doubt, try to find somebody with a DO meter. If you have to transport the water to them, make sure it comes out of the tank and straight into an airtight container without too much disturbance. I don't worry about oxygen much myself. Just make sure you have current all through the tank and there will usually be enough. It's dead spots you have to be careful about.

Thanks for the offer Cees. It seems to have been quite a bit better lately. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and stick there for now. If the site goes nuts again I might take you up on that . The traffic levels can get quite decent on it (76 megs since opening so far, higher traffic anticipated after Waterlog release) so I'll get that from a free provider for as long as possible.