Delta

Just wondering,.... how did the water crystals as a microworm growing media go??? It sounds like a great idea! Dianna

Hi Everybody, I've had my Guppies for a month now (I think) anyway I've been lucky that both females have given birth twice already, or maybe that is each one has given birth once, but I have 2 lots of fry. Anyway I was showing these fish to some friends and explaining their interesting live birth cycle, and how they mate, and are able to keep the sperm etc.. They(the visitors) were facinated by the goings on in the tank, but were in awe that the males just don't let up, constantly shadowing the females. By the end of a few hours watching the tank (it's in my lounge) the more observant of them had learnt to spot the males modified fin with cries of "He got her!" ..and.. "Gee's that one won't give up, poor girl" interrupting the conversations. It was a funny afternoon with the fish taking center stage. In the end the consensus of opinion was that I should take the males out and give the females a rest. :oops: *Should I remove the males from time to time?? I have 2 females and 3 males in a 2 foot tank, with oodles of fry - that I have been useing for live food. * Do I have too many males per females, and maybe keep some female fry to make up the difference. * Do Guppies have a breeding season or will they always be this virile? cheers, Dianna

Congratulations on your Betta, I mainly only keep Bettas, one has a tank to himself with 6 neons and a bristle nose. This fish has been free swimming since birth/ never jarred and is very active. They are wonderful to see like this. I am convinced that bettas that have been confined do not develop the muscles needed for prolonged swimming. I have pet shop bettas that never do much and I suspect are too old to change (fat and lazy ), but I have seen younger pet shop bettas gradually get fitter with a month or so of live food (this encourages them to move/chase to eat) and go on to be relatively active fish. I put some of the fish I bred into an outdoor kiddy pool and for the first few weeks they hardly moved (I think they were in shock) but now they swim all over the place. I don't keep my jarred bettas in anything less than 4litres, but that had more to do with finding a good supply of 4L containers in the early days than wanting to give them a lot of room, but I now see they do appreciate the extra room and are fitter for it. Bettas are territorial and will claim a spot, so if they feel their territory is threatened by other fish in a community tank they will not move far from their spot. But if they consider the whole tank as theirs they will move around patrolling it in a way. Depends on who came first I guess. I did read somewhere that a Bettas territory was about 30sq cms, but from what I've noticed with the kiddy pool fish I think It might be a bit bigger than that. Or maybe if they can't see other fish, like in the muddy densely planted rice paddy, their range is 30sqcms. cheers, Dianna

Thanks John, I wasn't sure if this forum had a picture thing set up or not, the free public picture album I use is at it's limit unless I pay to upgrade, so I might have to look into something permanent If I want to post more pictures around the place. Thanks for the offer, it's a good thought and I'll keep it in mind. cheers, Di

wow very impressive. I have a question about the drinking straws, You mentioned you are using 1cm lengths.... when they are put in the filter, are they just dropped in higglety pigglety or are they arranged flat??? I'm still on undergravel filters and sponge filters and the like, was a bit nervous to attempt W/D trickles. Didn't really understand how they worked until I read your setup. Thanks Dianna

I have some photos of an in tank BS Hatcher sold in the shops, It looks pretty simple to DIY, If anyone would like me to post the photos here can you give me a hint how????? Mission Accomplished 8) Dianna

:lol: Some more useless facts to jiggle the brain cells :lol: Fond here... http://www.aquariustech.com.au/products11.html Quote from link..." Conductivity... is defined as the ability of a substance to conduct electrical current....... In the chemical water treatment field our interest is in measuring the concuctivity of waters which consist of ionic compounds dissolved in the water. The conductivity is quite easily measured by electronic means and this offers a simple test or control level which can tell much about the quality of the water."...Tech. Bulletin-No88 So it wasn't such a silly idea, although may have no application to Aquarium keeping and Nothing to do with Silk. :lol: cheers, Di

Finally got a bit of time to check out some of the links (thanks for those BTW) and wouldn't you guess, to link above, site temporarily unavailable!!!! :lol: My guppy fry are doing really well, and are having a really good effect on the Betta fry that are with them. I had a really small spawn of around 20 Betta, from eggs that I hatched artificially without the bubblenest. 10 Betta fry are in with umpteen guppy fry, and another 10 are on their own.(I separated some in case the guppy fry ate them, not knowing how fast guppies grow) The ones on their own are tiny, while the ones with the guppies are noticeably larger and way more active. I think the activity of the guppy fry is encouraging these Betta fry to eat more??? The Betta fry are easy to spot as you can see the air bubble of their developing labyrinth, in case anyone was wondering how I could tell which was what amoungst the guppies. cheers, Di

Hi Annie, I don't know what it does to the fish, but I noticed the airline at my dads place was stained brown where it came out of the pump, it had been running for years so I don't know how long it took to build up the stain. We changed the plastic tubing and made it longer and put the pump in the cupboard and it remained clean so it wasn't the pump burning out but must have been the smoke from ciggies. cheers, Di

Oh, :oops: So I think it was Ira that said something like.... "nothing more than simple mechanical filtration" Gee the water must be filthy there, we are soooo lucky and take so much for granted. Thanks Pegasus.... good topic anyway. Cheers, Di

The fish were released into Sydney Harbour early this morning, tagged with satellite tracking devices, by lunchtime they were spotted somewhere around Lord Howe Island. Authorities are still speculating as to their intended destination. Their progress is being monitored closely and can be viewed here Http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDX1299.shtml

:lol: :lol: :lol: I'd like to think there was something more than just mechanical filtering going on with the silk. Rather than the silk chargeing the water molecules, could it be chargeing clay particles or something else in the water?? And then the bacteria gets bonded to the clay statically(or electro magnetically???) As the water sits in the pot waiting to be drunk, this stuff settles out along with the muck, leaving cleaner water. The only reason I'm thinking of this is that apparently "Geo Liquid" works like this (with the static) I've been reading up on Geoliquid so this static thing was in my mind when I read Pegasus's post, and silk reminded me of science static experiments and........ my head hurts. cheers Di

John, I'm in Australia, I just had a new hot water system put in. Previously I said The confusion with the two threads about HWsystems is because I'm trying to see if I need to keep our old 50L disconnected HWsystem for a future fish room. :lol: Di

The suspect remains in custody, despite the extreme torture of not knowing if the fish are being fed she will not talk. A message scrawled on a piece of plastic was intercepted. Authorities are still trying to break the code... ATLED......MOOR.HSIF..ZN...EM..PLEH

Hi John, Yeh you're right, static doesn't work under water, but water is a conductor of electricity so It might not be static exactly but more to do with positive and negative charges???? As the water passes thru the silk it is pos or neg charged, or picks up a charge and then the..........oh I don't know what I'm talknig about :oops: Dianna

I had a look at our new HWsystem and it is connected to black pipe. I asked about this and was told that they only use black piping for all plumbing now, even hot. For sharp bends they use elbows etc, but generally it is bent onto shape. For new houses they run it through the frames before the internal wall cladding goes on. They don't use copper pipe much here if even at all. I can find out exactly what the stuff is called and grill "dear old dad" a bit more if anyone is interested in actual details, I'm sorry that this is a bit vague and very much 'hear say' at the moment. But just in answer to not using it for hot water... seems you can and they do. Had to laugh, in answer to my questions to Dad(the electrician) about using HWsystem to heat tanks he said, "thats why they breed tropical fish in Queensland (tropics) why don't you breed goldfish?" :lol: :lol: :lol: Dianna

Does anyone remember school science classes where the teacher rubbed a carbon rod and a glass rod with a piece of silk to create static electricity. The carbon rod would pick up paper and the glass rod wouldn't, showing that the carbon was an electricity conducter and glass wasn't. Well, talking about silk reminded me of this experiment so I thought there might have been some static electricity type thing happening when the water passed thru the silk, water being a conducter too.... I don't really know, thought it might have been worth mentioning. I often look for the complicated reason and completely miss the simple ones :lol: Dianna

Ahhh, I'm getting lost on these bizarre tangents. I found the possibilites with silk really interesting and found that silk threads or fibres made from the silk moth larvae (Bombyx mori), are made of amino acids, which is basically protein and have a crystalline structure....... Silk worm spit, try this topic at your next dinner party and amaze all your friends. Dianna

Next time I go camping I'll take a silk hanky with me!!! I wonder if it has something to do with the structure of the silk fibres? Being made by silk worm saliva there might be some reaction going on more than just mechanical. On a molecular level like some of the ceramic filters for drinking water or even electrostatic charges??? Just ideas. Dianna

:lol: :lol: payback for the water cascading through my head!!! I will go back to the shop and take a photo of the automatic BBS hatcher, just got a new digital camera! whoo hoo, hope theyre busy... do you think they will mind?? Di 007 undercover on operation BBS -signing out 8)

I have only briefly skimmed this but THANKS this is the one I was looking for. Ok just one thought on this so I can stop it rattling around in my head, In regards to copper pipe, I noticed the plumber when he installed our new ststem used black plastic piping.... could this be useful here? With the pipes running through the water rather than under the tanks? If the HWsystem had a thermostat, or one installed somewhere, the temp could be "set and forget". I think the thermostats or temp regulators are a seperate thing as I remember we had the option to have one installed on our household system to prevent accidental scolds. Also reminds me of how they warm the water for heated pools by circulating water through black pipe or rubber on the roof of the house where it is heated by the sun. Well that was three thoughts, sorry too many ideas and no facts. I don't want a hot room either Pegasus, and I think this hotwater thing is worth running with, if I can scrounge the materials, and it ends up being a flop, then not much harm done, but if it works out....BONUS!!! And I can get more tanks Di

Like that moderator magic!!!....I'm trying to avoid cutting glass, otherwise I could just make tanks to fit the largest boxes, we have those cheap ones too but as yet none are the right size for what I have in mind. Dianna

Thanks for the feedback guys, I thought it must have been one of your ideas Pegasus, I just wasn't sure where I'd seen it either here or Borinia. My HWsystem is electric, It had been sitting for 2 months though so I'm worried it might have gone rusty on the inside by now???? I'll read through the post in a min, but I have no ideas... I wanted you lot to tell me how to do it!! :lol: In my favour my father is a Sparky by trade so no added expense in hooking something up. Thanks again, I'll get in touch Pegasus if I get any added info from dad about this idea. Dianna BTW, had a devil of a time getting my computer to connect to the internet this arvo so if I get cut off for a while it's because the computer has a brick in it.

A long time ago I read about an idea to use a household hotwater system to heat a fishroom. Has anyone here heard of this idea and do you know where to find it?? I have a 50L hotwater system that has been sitting inused for about 2months since. We upgraded the household service so there was nothing wrong with this smaller one when it was disconnected. I'm trying to decide if I will keep it or not as husband is having a major cleanout and I keep dragging thing back from the rubbish pile :lol: Dianna

:oops: sorry the quote ended up backwards. My post is the quoted bit in reply to pegasus's comment about plastic boxes. Oh boy I'm having a good day :lol: Dianna