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I'm now the proud owner of ten very happy little Lionhead Cichlids They're hanging out with some baby platties in my GBA breeding tank. They're so much fun to watch and have completely settled in to their new environment I can see I'm going to love these guys.

I'd rather buy a brand new AquaOne CF1200. Holds more, over twice the water flow, comes with new pipes so you can set everything up just how you like it. Buying the 'best brand' generally means paying the highest price. At $130 you really just want value for money I'm affraid. CF1200 has nothing but praises (so far I've seen) on these forums. (Edit - except for that tap seal issue, which I'm told has been resolved now) The Eheim does have the self-priming head, but you should only need to prime an external once, and I think the CF1200 has a control to help prime anyway. I've got a Jebo 819 which is fantastic but there are no extra features. It just silently does its job. ECCO's are designed to be more efficent, compact and convinent to use. Professionals are more aimed at getting the best water quality.

Thats them They look great! If you have some for sale let me know! If anyone else has some for sale whose parents look like the fish in the picture above, definately give me a buzz pwetty pwease Happy to grow them out, and I pay cash.

Oh that's awesome to hear they're a lot more available than I thought. The group I saw yesterday looked fantastic and their movement was amazing. Well I liked'm anywho I'll have to do more research on them but I'd be very keen to dedicate a tank to these guys. What's the gene pool like in NZ? Guys I saw were solid black with bright blue eyes, but I see a lot that are brown, and sort of striped? or do they change to that colour when stressed? What do yours look like mystic?

Whoops, yeah sorry I should have said its a colony with a breeding pair in it These guys were a lot more beautiful than those pics illustrate, rich black with bright blue eyes, but definately Steatocranus casuarius. More like this: http://www.fishroom.org/article/PIC/img011/13.jpg Are you breeding them at the moment?

The black guys with the blue eyes. I know of a local breeding colony, wondering if anyone else has some?

Moved to cichlid section by yours truly. Big cichlids are awesome. I'm considering a breeding pair of Green Terrors, going to check them out in the weekend Selling my Jaguar Cichlid too I think. I haven't seen a Wolf Cichlid before, I'll keep an eye out though, sounds interesting enough.

Yep, and your plants could use that nutrient too, often fertiliser etc just ends up in the carbon. Waste of time in my opinion. If you're after crystal clear water, look towards the Seachem range of products rather than carbon. I pull it out of my filters when new.

6500K daylight tubes can be had at your local electrical wholesaler for $7ish Where available I do *prefer* to go with Powerglo because it has lovely spectrum spikes at the right points, but thats more like $20-30 rather than 7. I've had trouble with red plants too. I'd be more inclined to look at possible a metal halide fixture if I wanted to do more reds (at least to give it a go).

umm I wouldn't think of Tonic Salt as a complete waste of money. It does have its uses. Defiantely agree not to add it to the tank on a regular basis. Otherwise you effectively ween the fish on to salt, so they get a bigger shock after water changes or if you sell them. Quite often I see normally hardy fish go in to shock because the previous keeper used salt to keep them healthy. They should be healthy on there own. But as a medication its good, thing is with the so called 'Tonic Salt' is that it doesn't have any of the possibly harmful additives (or so I'm lead to beleive), so its safer for the treatment of fish. I used to use Rock Salt as an alternative from the supermarket but that is known to contain impurities.

Angels are known to carry worms/disease that may result in the death of your Discus. Angels can be quite aggressive when spawning, and at the 30 degrees temp that the discus should have, you'll have randy angels if they are or become a breeding pair. Also having only 2 discus is a bad idea on its own unless they are a breeding pair due to aggressiveness, I think 5 is the magic number? So it can definately be done, but isn't recommend (by me at least).

sick - lid Took me a while to work that out myself. I'd say 'cha-child' or shick-lid when I first started. I dont like tetras either, except maybe Cardinal Tetras for their colour. My Jag likes them though.

I found that mine liked algae tabs and courgette but thought flake was the best thing ever, little gbas always got all excited when flake went in, well mine did, they might just be fruitcakes. I use a slice of courgette weighted down, can stay in there for 1-2 days and means they have continous food. Normally $1.50ish for a pack of 3, at your local supermarket, which should last a while.

haha, yeah only males get the big bristles, but some females can have short little bristles around the edges. My largest gba female has some little spikey bits. Yes, but I'd wager if she has bigger female black BN, they'd get first pick. If they did I'd expect 100% black off spring, and if crossed with each other, their offspring would be 75% black 25% golden etc etc usual weak gene scenario.

Microworms Baby Brine Shrimp Decapsulated Brine Shrimp (google it, quite groovy) Also you can buy powdered fry food, not always stocked though. There is liquid fry food for the smaller guys. Greenwater for the even smaller guys!! (Siamese Fighters etc). I'm too lazy too do the baby brine shrimp (although this is best), so I use a combination of microworms and crushed flake. I intentially overfeed, then use an air hose to syphon off the debris regularly (assuming fry are big enough to see). Depending on the species you can vary how regular that is. I've got baby convicts graciously given to me by a local pet store, that get cleaned 2-3 times a week and just got their stripes this week yey Poor buggers are right next to the jag tank ehehe aww going off topic. Naughty. Feed small amounts as often as possible, and I recommend using snails to help clean up the excess, to prevent dead snails I normally add a small bit of lettuce now and then as well. I can't feed very often, hence why I overfeed then clean up later. Gives them something to snack on during the day.

I have lots of aggressive tanks, but have one tank thats reserved for friendly fish. In it I have 5 angels, a few danios, platties, golden bristlenose, a curious fire eel, and the offspring from my last Krib adventure, about 8 or so kribs, at least 3 pairs, eggs have been laid. I have been told my Kribs have the 'poofter' gene, but never had any problems with aggression and kribs. Even with 8 adult kribs, there is a completely unstressed white cloud mountain minnow hanging around. My Jaguar cichlid spends his life alone, simply because he'll kill anything he can get his hands on (except my redspot pleco who he is scared of haha). So I dont think its cruel as such, its often the only way you can have it! I have this natural urge to make my fish want to be happy, and I think they're happier having a girrrrrlfriend, but thats not fact, I just like seeing all the displays. For example, most people will tell you, if you keep convicts, dont put in any females! I couldn't help myself, and now I get to watch the male protect his new precious girlfriend, and get all defensive if anyone goes near her. So cute. Cichlids are awesome. Also danios are faster than kribs, so a breeding pair of kribs wont disturb danios etc really. Neons can't be so sure of. My kribs have proved they can't defend their eggs from bristlenose too :-? PS not to be a smarty-pants, but Arowana isn't a cichlid Oscars are, but they have neon-eating-tendancies.

When I kept clowns I never had a problem with Ich. If stressed and/or in poor water they definately do break out. Out of my seven I only had one who got ich, which he got after I bought him, but within 2 days of being in my established tank he was fine without mediciation or special treatment. They are very sensitive to nitrite though So an established aquarium is very much a must.

L144 Golden Black Eyed Ancistrus sp. or to most people 'golden bristlenose' and to other people 'one of those yellow catfish things'. Pawz' GBA is a female, which is why there isn't any bristles. Nice pics Pawz Impressive male BN you have there.

If I'm not mistaken, its UHAS time again Thursday 13 September 7.30! (Tomorrow night) U-HAS to be there.

Thanks heaps for the replies. I caught him sneaking a cichlid pellet or two when I wasn't looking the other day. Tried feeding shrimp but wasn't interested at all (although the pleco thought it was christmas). Hopefully he'll stop sulking soon and start eating like a proper Jag should. He does eat bloodworms (one worm at a time beleive it or not) but don't want to be spending that much money on food, so hopefully he'll come o ut of it. Will definately try garden worms! I keep forgetting but thats a great idea.

There was a 450 litre tank below that too, but it broke .....while it was half full with water no less :oops:

Hello again, Young jaguar cichlid (~20cm?) has decided he wont eat cichlid pellets any more. He made this decision a few months ago, and as I dont want to stunt his growth I can't really keep starving him to change his mind. He likes bloodworms, loves platties, and if he can see another fish thats small enough to fit in his mouth in a nearby tank he literally gets excited like a puppy dog. Lives with a redspot sailfin pleco that he is scared of, and am considering adding a red devil to his tank. So, I've been recommended frozen shrimp, what other foods should I try and feed him?

The benefit to an external cannister is more about having extra room for bacteria to grow, rather than actually removing debris from the water. While the current might not be huge, what does go in to the filter gets processed a lot better. I'd do the bucket test, see how long it takes to fill a 10L bucket, then post the result I only have one cannister at the moment, Jebo 819, rated at 1200/hr on a 200L tank, and it has been doing a fantastic job of keeping it clean. If you want extra current you might want to get a cheap internal. On the old 650L tank, I had 1200/hr cannister, and 2 x 1200l/hr internals. The cannister did all the filtration work, but the internals helped keep things mixed up and generate flow.

Yeah it's normally only a problem when you buy new loaches, and one of them is already underweight. I lost my loaches a few months ago due to nitrite, have to get some more!!

Side track, you said you were on rainwater, which will explain the 6.2. Rainwater is very pure, meaning low hardness, which means its very very easy to swing the pH. Its a double-edged sword, fish water love the purity of rainwater, but if something does go wrong the pH can swing easily. But your fish sound fine so that doesn't matter Many of us think rainwater is a god send. But that's off topic, for the green water you could try ordering a cheap internal UV filter, just use it whenever the water is green, order from an online setup like trademe or petplanet. This will be the easiest option, and require the least maintenance, but costs are 30-50 I think? Good idea if the problem keeps happening though. The little UV light kills the free floating algae as it goes past.