Fenriswolf

Hey Cam, Thanks for the compliment. Definitely not adding a male as that's what precipitated the issue (girls got eggbound, 1 died, 2 got bloat with weeks of each other after that) but yeah, I think you're right about the plants - looking at getting better lighting to that end then some more different heights of plants. Yeah, I know it's pretty hit and miss with the gourami/betta but there's never been even the slightest posturing and contrary to everything I've read my dwarf gourami is extremely healthy and active so that's pretty much a non-issue. Yes, I expect them to be aggressive toward each other. Overstocking is most certainly not an issue right now as I have a small pleco, dwarf gourami and 5 female bettas in 200 litres. What I'm asking is if having a lot of female bettas with lots of hiding spots (a la mbuna tanks) would be better than having less of them with nothing to distract them from each other. Thanks

Mmm... I just added 8 black neons to my 70 litre cube with my short-finned male betta and dwarf gourami and I'm really glad I went with the black neons rather than, um, neon neons? They are so cool and active! I'm probably going to have a wee school of glowlights too, even though I was originally going to just go for neons or cardinals, because apparently they school nicely with black neons. But yeah, I'm stocked with my wee black fellas, so that's my vote

This is my tank by the way - obviously it's a work in progress

OK. I just wrote a huuuuge post, but you don't really need all the details. Basically, I HAD 10 female bettas and 1 male dwarf gourami who got on well. Since the older 3 females died (1 egg bound, seriously seemed to explode , 2 reabsorbed their eggs but got bloat a couple of weeks later) the young ones seem to be stressed: 2 more have died of bloat and 2 of the remaining 5 have shredded tails (it's been about 3-4 months). Arg! So with two things in mind: the advice that you could maybe add more females if you do introductions in a separate, territory-free tank and some little research into cichlids that said you're best to over-filter and over-stock (yes with lots of water changes) to minimise aggression I thought maybe getting more would help? That and some... whaddaya call it, shoaling fish to distract them? Help!

Haha! I'll get back to you

Well there is that... Don't really want to spend a couple of hundred on something that may be useless but if it works it'll be awesome! :lol:

Sorry yeah, that's what I meant :oops: The whole lights thing drives me nuts... I understand about deg K, watts etc but in practice I just get really confused. Basically my hood sits so the top is about 20cm from the lid, do you think attaching it so it hangs around half way would be good for the plants/not get too hot? Feel like a dumbass. *sigh*

Hey hey. I've got a 150 litre planted tank that is 70 cm deep - the plants are doing pretty well considering no CO2 injection and how deep it is (not exactly sure what my fluoros are off the top of my head as they were given to me... for plants but probably not strong enough for my deep tank), but I'd really like to get something better. (I'm using PMDD and Flourish FYI) So anyway, if I screwed small 150w electronic ballasts into my hood would that overheat really badly? The back of the hood is open so it's somewhat ventilated. Any suggestions? Thanks! :bounce:

Oo, snap! Definitely Snatch, especially if you watching Lock Stock and Snatch together. Awesome. Fight Club and American Beauty would be runners up; good stuff.

Ha, our guppies are $8 and while it seems wrong we're basically making nothing on it. Sucks :lol:

Arh, cute but annoying! Our clown loaches do OK, they just eat flake if they have to, but I'm just hoping our shy pleco is getting some! I don't usually feed them, our fish person's away. It's too entertaining to pass up feeding them

Yeah, I was feeding the one at work today (he's about 5-6") and he's pretty hard case. Sooo painful to try and get bottom feeder tabs to the bottom feeders though! Mr parrot cichlid seems to like them more than any other food! :lol:

The ice cream container will float naturally so long as you don't overfill it, and the tonic has instructions on the back It's something like a drop a litre, dose 2 days then do a water change then dose for 2 more days or something. If you do get any in your tank it'll stain the silicone blue too

Well this very useful site said 42 gal (~160 litres) as bare minimum, but OK for 2 or 3... I personally think they'd benefit from a good 300 litres but that's just me

Ahh, that's screwy since with the common name for zebra-horse hybrids is the sire's prefix first, ie: hebra's are horse over zebra. Not that that indicates anything when it comes to scientific nomenclature but still

Are there not specific rules about which fish gets to be the pre-fix and which the suffix in the genus? Say, sire is the first half? (Ha, patriachy! :lol:) Thanks anyway

That is a cooool picture

Why yes, indeed we are. Don't know what the hell you call them scientifically, they will have a scientific name but because they're hybrids it's not all over the sites I've looked at and I'm laazy :lol:

Oo, cool, I hope she comes back. Now I'm getting excited about the idea... No no no, no parrots for me...

True. It's so painful, you have to ring around vet clinics... I work for one and everyone was so "meh, I don't know who you order that from" when my fish got pop eye that I never even got the ones I was looking for and he died

Awesome, thanks. I saw the bit about being man-made and it's a bit sad really, breeding fish that have non-functional mouths (yeah, they can eat but still) and in some cases no tail! Yeah, I pretty much pulled 400 out of my arse but she was pretty happy with that so bigger is better IMO! I'll say 3-400. Would Oscars be good with them? I just read they tend to get picked on a bit Thanks for the tip about Port Nicholson Glass, will put her onto it if she comes in again (who knows, maybe it'll be a passing fancy)

OK... maybe not other cichlids... edit: OK, never mind, found a site with great info. Still interested in opinions though

Ah! Now, I work for a vet that also sells fish. A majority of our fish clients think 70 litres is huuge, and we spend a lot of time explaining that "your fish died because you've got 3 comets in 10 litres. No really, there is no way around that, and yes it costs money" I just had someone come in and say they thought the parrot cichlid we have in our display tank is the coolest fish ever and can we get her a 400 litre tank (um, my guess as to a good tank size?) and what can they live with? Money appears to be no object I'm having a look on the mighty internets but really, what would be an ideal set up for a parrot cichlid? I wouldn't have a clue beyond other cichlids... ha, and no live plants. Thanks!

Wunder Tonic is the generalised fungal/bacterial infection treatment, but you'll be using a lot in a big tank. Stresscoat isn't going to do anything once they've got a full blown infection sorry Methylene blue is good but not as good as the tonic, which has methylene blue and malachite green (methylene blue just increases oxygen uptake in the water or something, malachite green pretty much kills everything, works similarly to formalin I believe).

Sorry dude. Though I thought you got the info you were after hence wasn't too concerned about derailing