SpidersWeb

Running out of CO2 wont normally be a problem. What can be a problem is making sure the CO2 switches off at night when the lights are off, or if your lighting fails. The plants dont use the CO2 when the lights are out, so it builds up to high levels, and the pH crashes down, often in to the 5s. A solenoid on a timer with the lights is normally the solution for this. If you are using a hard water to raise pH, and using CO2 to lower it again, then running out of CO2 would be a problem as the system is reliant on it - but that would happen at night anyway when it all switches off.

Its producing nitrite, and nitrate, so its cycling, just not finished. Everyone has their own point of view, but personally I'd do partial water changes (<40%) until the ammonia is down to about 0.5 at the absolute worst, nirite 0.25 or lower, and add a few danios (cheap, and hardy fish), continue with weekly partial water changes and soon enough you'll have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, then you can slowly add other fish. You can later give the danios away, feed them to other fish, or keep them. My local fish store has them for $3 ea but not all stores are that good with pricing. I dont recommend using neons, they dont seem to like it very much. Remember the rules: - Dont touch the filter unless its clogging up - Rinse filter with old tank water when you have to - Make sure water has surface movement 24 hours (for oxygen) I've also added large fish loads to fresh tanks, but this did require almost daily 50% changes for almost a week to keep the nitrite low while the bacteria built up. Good on you for doing the tests. I recently lost a lot of fish due to being careless about nitrite and ammonia when setting up a new tank.

what temp? how big are your heaters? For a 410 Id have a 300 and a 150 or a pair of 200s. Sounds like they're not powerful enough to keep your water heated or you've set their temp to a lower value than your room is during the day.

I'd say its just the internal thermostat. I'd buy a new heater. Contacts can wear out causing the heater to stay off longer (equiv of turning the heater down).

I'm still a Jebo 819 fanboy myself

To get it going faster you can: keep it warmer add more yeast shake the nut out of it Also the stabiliser will probably be baking soda. I add baking soda to my mixes as it extends their life considerably (stops it from going crazy acidic too quick). Put the diffuser near a filter outlet too, make the most of your CO2 I used a little filter on a timer as my diffuser, got the plants pearling.

As some of you know I recently shifted from Wellington up here to Hamilton. This is one of those times I wish I didn't have fish! Me and Helen have agreed to never move house again until we own it! What people often forget about moving with fish long distance, is the time required to restablish the tanks. After spending one week doing trips up and down, loading trailers, moving fish, moving furniture, we still had to set up the house, and we were exhausted, so fish-time was minimal. We had gone to strong lengths to be sure our filters would stay cycled. We put the noodles in tank water, in a container with an oxy shell, some plecos, some stress zyme and some 'waste control'. Cut a long story short, it didn't work, and I didn't have the energy or time to notice. First off our fish just started getting lethargic and dying, then a huge whitespot outbreak started to take charge. By the time I had this sorted, I found huge ammonia build ups in some tanks, and nitrite had killed all my clown loaches. It was a disaster. Without the energy and time, I lost a lot of great fish, including breeding pairs. Now I'm back on scedule, I'm testing for ammonia and nitrite daily, and watching the tanks closely. White spot is under control now, and there haven't been any deaths lately. It's a very sad time when you're netting that many dead fish out. It was stupid of me not to catch on to it earlier. Here is a RIP list: - Apistogramma Agasezii breeding pair - Gold Severum breeding pair - Gold/Green Severum breeding pair - All of our convicts except for 1 tiny guy - Breeding Pairs of silver and koi angels - Adult platinum white female (still got the male though) - Black Lace Veiltail angel - Some cute random angels we raised from young - All 6 clown loaches, including our big 20cm guy :( - Small Jag cichlid - Firemouth That's pretty shocking considering I knew better. But alas, it is a new day. Funny thing though, our little Jebo 810 was drained, sealed, and shoved in to car. When I rinsed it with a cold hose tubifex worms came out, so I figured if they could live there it can't be too bad. Hooked it up, and despite a 24 hour down time, it's started with a heavy fish load on a 3ft tank, and haven't had a single loss, perfectly cycled filter.

I found PowerGlo '18000K' lights great for plants. If you look at their spectgrum graph you will see very strong spikes at the wavelengths required by Clorophyl etc Standard 6500k do cover the wavelengths required, but they wont have a specific emphasis on the required wavelengths. The advtange here is they cost $7 rather than $20-30. After Tom Gunners thread asking about this, I did some reading too. In the future I'll be using PowerGlo for my planted tanks.

Yes as above, only domestically kept tropical fish that breed like humans do are livebearers.

Most of our fish tend to try to eat the flyng debris that goes up the gravel vac, or ignore it, they'e very used to it. Have recently started having problems with our largest Oscar taking offense to my presence in the tank. They love playing in the hose water and alll of our fish perk up when we add cold fresh water.

AlgaeFix is a horrible product. I'll never use it again. Removes oxygen from the water, and even at half dose, I was lucky I had some spare air pumps at hand or I would have lost my fish. Didn't kill my algae either. Flourish Excel worked though.

Filter must be run 24 hours to keep the beneficial bacteria that build up in the filter over time alive. These bacteria are responsibile for converting fish waste (ammonia) in to nitrite and then finally nitrate.

GH - General Hardness (Calcium etc) KH - Carbonate Hardness (Alkalinity/pH Buffer) I'd get a GH/KH kit, or go to your local fish store, most of the bigger ones will do the test for free or a small fee. You'll have to ask if they can do KH and GH though, I think some just test Ammonia,Nitrite,Nitrate,and pH.

They'll definately have something that does 9V DC or 12V DC, might just have to get one of those 'multi adaptors' does like 3V, 5V, 6V, 12V etc etc. But its not terribly important, as long as you have the correct setup of LEDs for your powerpack and it is in DC current (not AC). LEDs use very little current, so you would definately not need 1A, a 200mA unit would be ample. Cold Cathode 1ft tubes seem to only be about 50mA too. If you go with LED, then each LED in series is 3V. So if you had 24V DC power pack, you would run 8 LEDs in a row etc. Another place to find power packs are old christmas lights etc.

I can't give an official answer because I've still been trying to work this out myself. From what I gather there are two causes, internal bacterial infection, or kidney failure. I had a male betta who got it a while ago, so we were treating with Erythromycin (500mg tablets). Doseage rate was 1 tablet per 200L of water, but we were dosing much higher. Anyway his bloating went right down, but his scales stayed pointed outwards, and eventually he just became lethargic and didn't look very good. We then used clove oil to put him to sleep. Also we found epsom salts (Mg Sulphate) helped reduce swelling on a previous dwarf gourami, however we didn't have any anti-biotics available, and were slowly losing the war, so once again, clove oil. If anti-biotics don't work, as far as I know it's curtains for the fish. You'll need a vet medication. Erythromycin is commonly given out because it only costs you $7 (cheap) and it can be dissolved in water although probably better if he ate a tiny bit. If the Jewel is big enough, the vet can give him an injection in the spine of anti-biotics. We've no longer had any dropsy problems since we've stopped feeding frozen bloodworms.

Yep I've seen them here as well, labelled 'American Flag Fish'.

Yeah black spots are normal. Dont put any meds at all in the tank. It's important to remember your LFS staff are essentially sales staff which repeat what they're told by sales reps, and often aren't experts on fish. This is where you will find this messageboard useful. If you've put it in the main tank, likely your tank/filters etc will have to cycle again. If you used a hospital tank then *phew*! Also meth blue (ingredient in 'Tonic') stains everything :roll: and often raising the temp and adding a little salt has a better result.

100L of water is probably on the small side for turtle + convicts. The way it normally works is people put young convicts in as feeder fish, only to find some learn to live with the turtles and grow up and breed etc. I wouldn't intentially set one up though.

Oh and plecos will ruin your plants, oscars will dig them up, and silver dollars LOVE eating plants, so I wouldn't put any plants in the second tank hehe, maybe just a single T8 then

Metal Halide isn't like flouro tubes, they're a small bulb that produces a lot of very intense light. You'd really want to run compressed CO2 etc as well to keep things in balance, as well as a gravel substrate like Daltons Aquatic mix to keep everything in balance (as MH gives off a lot of light). They also need to be suspended above the tank, not just sit on top. Are you planning on wiring everything up yourself? or purchasing lighthoods that you can just sit on top and turn on? I'd just use two T8 daylight tubes for the normal tank, simply because it'll be cheap to setup, and bulbs are a dime a dozen. T5 for the planted will cost a lot more to do, but be worth it IMO. Lighting really depends on how far you want to go. It's all a matter of balance. If you have lots of light you need the ferts and carbon to back it up. T8 is cheap and parts can be obtained easily at any electronics wholesaler or even Mitre10 mega or bunnings. T5 produces more light and is much thinner (almost half) so its more flexible. MH produces a more intense light, and is considered a necessity for tanks deeper than ~600mm but the heat it gives off and the smaller coverage area can make it a PITA.

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/how-to ... 20917.html

NZ Import rules often make it improfitable to import low usage medications for most companies, so we miss out on a lot of the medications seen overseas. Unofficially the easiest way is probably to order a small pack from eBay etc and hope it makes it to you in the mail.

I don't actually know for sure having never kept apple snails, but I do know that if an apple snail was to go in to convict turf, they'd definately at least try to bite it. If they're breeding they'll even bite turtles at times.

Not actually a problem with Gourami etc because they have a labrynth which lets them breath air directly from the surface, pretty neat little guys. Only thing not suggested above would be your tap water, not sure where yours comes from though. If it's rain water you could be having pH swings etc

I had a Dwarf Gourami that had a bad case of dropsy, epsom salts didn't cure it but it certainly did wonders for the swelling.