smidey

nah, not at all

when doing a clean, i leave the pipes full (turn taps off before disconnecting) & fill the canister with power head off. Then fit powerhead & fill completely through the priming cap. screw the pipes back, turn taps on & plug in. If i clean the pipes, i connect the whole system without any water in it then prime it by sucking the water through the system from the spraybar end of the out pipe until water shows in the start of the out pipe. reconnect the out pipe to spraybar then plug in.

kinda defeats the purpose of it maybe i'll try some hemp around the shaft.

hangon hang on the tank wall, internal are units that suction cup on the inside submersed. external are canister filters, the canister has piping to & from the tank. I have not had any fluval filters but they have a good repretation.

Priming cap, thats what i have decided to call it. Anyway, i just recommended on a post how I had not had any probs with my CF canisters, then 30 minutes later my CF1000 gets an air leak that surges air into the tank via the spraybar. Have located the leak to the before mentioned screw in priming cap on the top of the power head next to the inlet/outlet taps. What is this really called, anyone else had the same problem & what you do to fix it?

that sounds like alot of work, i give mine a rinse every 6 weeks or so.

a mate got 4 large angels & added them into his 300L community with fighters. after a few days the angels started to loose their fins.

IMO you shouldn't change the filter wool every second day. I would suggest once every three weeks or a month. I have noticed that some filter wool will have "loose particals" which may add to the cloudiness. As for the carbon, IMO this should only be used to remove meds or other temp chemicals that you may have added to the water. what it does is absorb things from the water including any fertilisers etc that you want in there. After a period of time, maybe 6-8 weeks it will become full & release what it has absorbed which may be the issue here. i rcommend a 50% water change & make sure your filter is working properly & has the right amonut of flow.

yeah, like 15 to 20 years. my two are over two years old & are 7 to 8 cms. As for the skunks, i had two in a community tank & they were almost never seen & weren't aggressive at all. If they have been in your tank a while you may want to try re-arranging their teritory so they dont have an area to defend.

here's a link to the cichlid forum list of that species, you may wanna browse it for yourself. http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/r ... p?genus=74

lake malawi cichlids.

as far as im aware, turtle tanks use the same filters as fish tanks(i had a snake necked turtle in my community fish tank & he did well). i can recommend aquaone canisters as being very reliable & also one of the cheaper items available if you get them from "pet planet" in onehunga. i have two, a cf1200 & cf1000 & have not had any trouble in two years.

seems to be a common problem for the aquaone tanks. Do you need anything? I am in whangarei too & would be happy to help. i have a spare tank & filter & other stuff.

i got rid of whitespot by increasing temp to 29 & dosing every second day & doing a water change before dosing for 2 weeks with white spot cure. it as not come back since, that was approx 4 -6 months ago. I also bought fish that had the whitespot from my LFS, so they (as great as they are) gave me the white spot cure for free.

i think it looks great & I certainly wouldn't be judgmental about the glass being a little dirty. Reef, You take great pics & have, i guess the best setup i have ever seen but i seems to me that your being a bit hard bout the "overcrowded & dirty tank". Am i mis-understanding your post?

this is exactely right. the catfish drop their own eggs while eating the cichlid eggs. the catfish eggs then hatch inside the cichlids mouth before the fry then eat all the fry that are there. the female then protects the catfish until they are big enough to go it alone. the cichlid scoops them up when there is danger, they do this until the spines that prevent bigger fish from eating the catfish stop them from picking them up.

this is exactely right. the catfish drop their own eggs while eating the cichlid eggs. the catfish eggs then hatch inside the cichlids mouth before the fry then eat all the fry that are there. the female then protects the catfish until they are big enough to go it alone.

you cant see on the pic but his anal fin is a very dark red, almost brown.

welcome from up north, check out this auction number on trademe 129606140. I have had one of these nearly a couple of years & are very good.

Hi all, thought i would share a pic of my Fryeri male. He's almost 3 inches long. Its not the best pic as i cropped it out of a full tank shot.

hi from a fellow northlander

im here regularly & would be keen on a club. Just the location of meetings would be the tough part.

i have never seen any but that doesn't means they aren't here. i would say that people would say they were cobalt/yellow crosses if they were here http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/s ... hp?id=1667

it appears to me that there are a few sceptics out there. Emily has posted about a 10 foot tank, height & depth are larger than normal but it wont be impossible. I thought these days a 4 foot was very common, mine is over 3 foot & its only my second tank. first was an 18 inch tank. i have started making plans & have claimed some materials to make a stand for an 8 foot tank which i dont see as being an "out of this world project". The only real issue i've got is finding the wall space. Im sure there are people here that have 8 foot tanks. A 10 foot may end up costing about the same as a good sized marine setup but its very achievable or have i missed something?