smidey

no, cattle will drink up to 80L, sheep won't drink anywhere near that. Then there are things like broken water lines to troughs, does the land have fenced paddocks and troughs?

buying drench can be expensive and butchering costs can be a bit if you aren't they type to kill, gut and skin the sheep. from memory it cost me $30 per sheep to be cut and bagged and that was through a mate that owns a home kill. I took the animals to the home kill ready for butchering so might be another $30 per animal to get them prepared. I don't have the gear to prepare my beasts for butchering so it is going to cost around $800 to have one done. Sure i do get a lot of meat from that, probably a third of the cost of buying it from the supermarket but you still have to stump up the cash in one hit. I didn't have to buy drench for the cattle as my uncle owns a dairy farm so just borrowed his but if i did i think it would have cost around $150 plus the gun so it's not as great as some think.

so sheep. they are easier to handle than cattle but more labour intensive. I had 8 sheep. they need shearing once a year, drenching a couple times in winter and if your fences are not in perfect condition they will often constantly escape. My fences weren't in perfect condition, they were pretty good but one of teh sheep was a real athlete and started to jump them and then call it's mates until they tried. Half of them would sort of hit the top wire and fall over the fence, the other half would just bleet until they others were returned to the property. I ended up getting so frustrated with them i killed all of them which was a tasty end to my sheep farming days. There are other things like fencing, water supply and supplement feed responsibilities that need to be considered. Over the summer we had a bad drought and water was an issue being on tank water. I have two angus two year olds. They can drink as much as 80L of water per day each. When you have near empty house water tanks, the land water supply, in my case it's a pond has also dried up stress levels rise & bank accounts subside as water is trucked in because the stream has dried up to a trickle as well. Also you run out of grass so have to buy meal or similar to keep them going if they aren't big enough to send to the home kill yet. other than that it is great fun haha

sounds great in theory by what your actually getting is a part time job if you run animals. I have 5 acres and it does take some time, depends on which animals you run. any farming experience?

welcome

Again I'm well aware of the cycle and the benefit of doing water changes. I simply think, based on many years of keeping africans heavily stocked and over feeding them that doing changes of more than around 30% is not necessary but again how you run your setup is up to you.

nice boat, that yours?

what does your temp drop to when you do a 50% change? that's what i would be concerned about particularly on a regular basis, 3 times a week is almost every second day. Must go through a lot of water additive to?

i realise all that and 30% is still plenty to achieve all that with 2200lph of filtration on a 400L tank with around 40 adult fish in it. i always over feed and always have done and my tanks are quite clean so doing any more than that is just wasting time and water i think but if you want to do that it's your choice. I can't waste water as i am on tank storage, no luxury of having town supply here unfortunately.

Why so much? I do 30% weekly and that is plenty in my experience

looking good, must be stoked with the outcome of all your effort

nice colouring. that bottom one looks thin or is it just the angle?

make sure the holes are always clear, they can block up and reduce flow. I have a 80L+- grow out tank and run one or two bubble filters, that's plenty and a setup like that is very cheap to set up and doesn't take much space either.

Iirc a few people have lost fish double dosing. I dosed as directed and successfully got rid of it so wouldn't run the risk of loosing fish by over dosing.

if you have them in a net or floating tank just make sure they get enough flow and only feed the minimum. give them one fleck of food each, they do eat food while their sack is still showing.

I recommend the aqua one canisters, have had a great run with them for years with Africans. I'd go for a CF 1200 just make sure you have enough space in the cabinet

i aim to strip around day 17 to 20 and they are free swimming then. I just feed what i feed the adults, JBL Novo rift is excellent food for adults and fry, if you use that just throw a few sticks in with the fry. they will nibble at it, no need to crush it up.

it doesn't really matter what you use to create hiding places, as long as smaller or less dominant fish can seek refuge. I have seen PVC pipes and terracota pots used. Just think about what, if any effects they have on water quality or parameters.

you have good sized tank to start with. I aim for 5 to 6 times the tank volume per hour of filtration for africans so your 450 should have 2250 to 2700lph and you will do fine heavily stocked, heavily fed with a 30% water change weekly. Provide plenty of hiding places with things like rockwork as africans can be very aggressive at breeding or asserting dominance. As a start off, i would recommend species like electric blue fryeri, electric yellow, peacocks, red empress and even had no trouble keeping red zebra and cobalt blues. See what you like of what is available and reply on this thread for advice whether they are a good idea or not, i think you'll find there will be people that have good and bad experiences with the same species of fish so often it comes down to being lucky with the specific character of specific fish but there are ways to give yourself the best chance of success. I would recommend starting with juvenile fish, i have found when they grow up as a group there are usually very few aggro issues. When you try to add an adult to an existing group more often than not it goes pretty bad pretty quickly.

i use the 10L ones from para rubber/plastic box.

i kept red zebras, cobalt blues, e yellows, peacocks and red empress with fryeri. No dramas there, just make sure you have plenty of filtration and feed plenty of good food. NLS, Sera granugreen, Sera granured, JBL novo rift, shelled peas, sushi wrap all did me well.

give it a go, might be ok. mine doesn't get totally destroyed, just the majority at times then it comes back.

just val. it's one of these, Sunsun JVP 102B http://www.trademe.co.nz/pets-animals/f ... 008283.htm

maybe my 5000lph is pushing more than rated, even aimed the way it is it is creating a skimmer action on the far end of the tank (2.0m) and is leaving food particles on the glass just above the water line as the ripples lap against it.

i'd rather not get girly plants thanks, tempting but no thanks. the tropheus destroy most plants.