smidey

are you a professional photographer? 8)

It'll be fine even if you had of turned off the hood filter. the bacteria also grows in the tank.

we had a Best of the 60's mix cd playing at the warm up because it was reasonably neutral & everyone knew the songs generally. it can be pretty hard to play music for a mixed group like a wedding party & keep them happy. my sister walked up the isle to Its a beautiful day, U2.

hmm, you have rescued it & now may have a hard time re-homing it. it hate it when kind actions blow up i my face. :-?

ah, roosters. i had to get rid of mine when they became adolescents as they attacked my little girl she was just two & one got behind her down the driveway & kept stabbing her in the back. he got her about 6 times before i could get to her.

will this be her first brood?

what breed of hen is it? i won't hard to get down, gravity is a powerful thing. if she is persistant about that position i may be best to keep her there, how about putting a box or something to make it a smaller drop or add a pile of shredded paper where they will land when it comes time to hatch to soften the landing. birds often nest in stupid places but in most cases the chicks survive.

haha that great. its funny how different kids behave differently to videos etc. my son when he was a toddler just sat & watch that sort of thing, never talked to the tv or anything like that as if he knew it wasn't real but my two daughters both danced to the tv, followed instructions on tv & replied when the presenters asked questions.

fantastic fish you have there. it appears by the cleanliness of your tanks, especially the reef tank you spend a huge amount of time maintaining them.

what do you guys think of the anal fin shape theory? it is 100% correct with my fish except i cannot know if it works for the tropheus as i have not vented them yet.

many years ago (10) i bought a sheet of 8mm clear perspex, it was around $900 for a 2400x1200 sheet so its not a cheap way to do things if paying market rate.

i have 8 female red empresses & they "dance" trying to spawn so that doesn't mean you have a pair. the only true way to tell with fish that females colour the same as males is by venting or having fertile eggs.

none of my 3 have any spots but having them is common. i have found that a square tipped anal fin is consistant with male & rounded tip female. of course this is no gaurantee but i have found it to be correct in all cases so far.

I perceived line breeding as breeding from one "family" whether it be male/female then offspring with offspring or parents & offspring breeding if that makes sense. Whether you start with a pure fish or hybrid it is still line breeding if a pair from one family is used to create the offspring.

I didn't intend it to be a "this is how you must do it" or "this is how to do your job", so sorry about that. I have missed a few "IMO's"

its how you go about it. if they want a still camera this is the range, if they want a video camera this is the range. if they won't both in one you need to convince them that there is no such thing & that there are options either way. "there are video cameras that take low quality stills or still cameras that take ok quality videos. which one would you prefer mrs jones?" "I won't to be able to do both" she replies "OK, then you will need one of each to achieve want you want to do". you need to assess their needs & give them the option of what is available. Once she has decided or accepted that she needs both sell her on the features of each. people will have a priority, if the have an fixed amount to spend that is their range & what they will shop on but someone with $ will start to see features & their benefits. i found it's mostly about gaining their confidence, if i were selling the video player i would explain exactely what its capable of especially if the customer is asking for it to do something it isn't really designed to do. To do that i would first need to find out every detail about it which IMO is where most cowboy salesman fall down. they just say "yeah it will do that" either not knowing if it will or knowing full well it won't do it just to make the sale. this IMO is driven by the commission only setup which forces people to sell or simply earn nothing so they are desperate to get the $ which becomes the priority rather than settingthe client up with want they want/need. when you combine the confidence with turning the clients wants into needs selling becomes very easy. up until january this year i had been selling kitchens for the last 8 years & in the last year i sold almost $1.3m which was around 180 kitchens & this is what i had done to be sucessful.

a good salesman would have found out that they wanted it to take stills like a still camera & explained how badly a video camera takes stills then sold them a video camera & a still camera.

here's the pic, this was a 5 inch fish.

i have seen a picture of a fully grown yellow bitten clean in half by a frontosa, keep an eye on stock numbers.

i don't have an issue with prices at all & i'm sure i haven't stated that in this thread, if it seems that's what i am getting at its not how i intended it at all. i spend alot at my lfs, i generally don't shop on price. i could get things cheaper but choose to support my lfs so they will hopefully still be there in years to come. I prefer to buy from stores that can give advice as well as that is more important IMO. for my chainsaw & line trimmer i went to the local mower store which sells stihl, i buy tyres from a locally owned store & my stock feed is made locally & sold through a locally owned store. its not so much the protectionism that concerns me or drives my choice, its the fact that inexperienced people in chain stores have given me terrible advice on a range of different items that i have bought in the past & that has cost me alot of $ unnecessarily when if i had of got the correct advice in the first place i would have been far better off. i have found that when the person selling you something is the person that takes the profit generally they want you to return so are sensible about what they do. & yes there are always exceptions to this.

& if all stores in a chain had someone like you Phoenix then they would be alot more sucessful & we would all be alot happier about them but they simply don't have that knowledge, experience or passion. they are there to earn their wage & leave.

the demand won't drop, that will mean that the little guys can get a bit bigger or more little guys can open & be sucessful. i am genuinely interested how many of your work mates can you learn something from? if you started working at my LFS you may learn alot from them as the owners have had all pets they sell for at least 15 years, the marine tank in the shop has been established for over 12 i beleive so there is history & experience that cannot be bought.

that's possibly the little good they do providing they are using the suppliers & not importing direct themselves the big corps do business so differently to small operations. I am a quantity serveyor & do work for building merchants, they are putting such small margins on the low buy price they already demand with volume buying that the small guys cannot buy items for what they are selling them for. case i point, a paslode nail gun. i was at a merchants trade dept last week & a builder came in & bought 5 nail guns @ $742 each if i remember exactely. I said to the rep, "That must be a good earn for a mornings work". He replied, "Nah, not at al. We only make $7 per gun". in reality they would ahve made more due to kickbacks etc from the supplier but at a 1% markup on the cheapest buy price no one small is going to be able to compete & it will eventually take the bulk of the "knowledge of old" from the trade. It is the same in our hobby, if stores are only offering minimum wage to employees then quality advice will be lost & so to will the quality of fish etc & the standard will drop across the range. of course there are exceptions to all rules/opinions etc but trades in all areas are loosing their knowledge which simply can't be a good thing.

i can lend you a camera, when do you need it?

the stores are important but to me its the small operations are the important ones as they are hands on, chain stores do the hobby little good IMO. IME the chain stores employ minimum wage people who have little knowledge (there are exceptions to this of corse) & don't care about the quality of the fish etc, they are simply interested in how many sell. my lfs is a husband/wife team & they are great, you can talk to them about what you are needing & they work with you as they see the importance of you coming back as if no one spends $ in their shop they don't eat. i am unsure what places like animates are like about buying fish off their customers but i sell 90% of my fry to my lfs so its a two way street which helps both of us. its the same as buying a line trimmer from bunnings as apposed to a stihl shop. ask the person at bunnings to service your engine.... it won't happen. ask them how to use it or what the best model for a particular job is. the smart ones may know but the odds are slim. I bought a line trimmer recently, i got it from stihl shop as the knowledge & in-store servicing etc was more important than the $40 i would save buying one from bunnings.