Scuba Sam

Hi guys, time to stop talking about it and give it a go - A few of us have got together and are ready to make an attempt to get the club off the ground. Fingers crossed. If you are interested in forming a club to share fish keeping knowledge and ideas, swap fish and plants, and get to know others as keen on fish as you are, please join us. FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: DATE: Monday 17th March VENUE: 36 Kamo Road, Kensington (look for yellow letter box) TIME: 7pm onwards Tea and coffee provided, please feel free to bring some bikkies or food to share. Hope to see you there, Sam

If she aborts you will see dead curled up babies lying in the breeding trap - if she doesn't eat them first. I haven't had much trouble with guppies aborting from putting them in a breeding trap, just swordtails, so fingers crossed... Sam

We are about to attempt to get a club off the ground up here (Whangarei). We see several benefits... Social - get to mix with other fanatics so our families don't have to listen Advice - sick fish - food, etc Fish - swap fish, plants, food etc Education - we hope to have "guest speakers" in to talk about stuff Nosy - get to look at other people's tanks Its also cheaper to get the FNZAS mag through a club as opposed to as an individual - like way cheaper. Caryl is great with tips etc if you do decide to give it a go!! Sam

Sometimes you can see the eyes of the babies in the female's stomach. Not sure that you see much red though (racks brains to remember last time saw babies inside female). Like humans and cats, it is amazing how young guppies can breed. Good luck!!

Others on here will have a better idea, but I think the temperature might be a bit higher than ideal for neons. My mate kept his at 22 degrees and they still did well - cardinals handle higher temps than neons from what I understand. Good luck with the rest of the fish!!

I was very interested to read your comments. I have a big golden, about five inches long, and he has managed to dispose of any same species tank mates I put in there. I hadn't been very fond of him, until last night!! I am in the process of setting up a new tank, four foot long, and it has grown a rust coloured algae on all the surfaces where light falls. I put him in, and in less than twelve hours he has vacuumed all the algae off!! Not sure how he managed in such a short time, but after an hour there were tracks all through where he had been. This morning all the rocks and gravel are back to normal colour. So I am now his biggest fan!! Here's hoping he doesn't attack the other fish when I put them in, and thanks to your warning I won't add any more. Cheers, Sam

My new background sounds like what you want - eighteen inch height, has black on one side and blue on the other, and is slightly different shades of blue from top to bottom. It is the same sort of thing as the ones with plants on - maybe ring around petshops and see who stocks it. Good luck, Sam

ion (as in chemistry)

All the best for your Dad Caryl

Looks awesome!!

Thanks for your diagram Ira, I will check when I get home, although I can't say I appreciate being called stupid!! I'm pretty sure we had the O ring in the right place - I use O rings with my underwater camera with no problems.

Hmm - I'm a bad example - I have three external canister filters and not one of them is running at the moment. I am using internals and waterfalls. Good luck sorting it out - others swear by them. I just need to sort some free time out to suss it out.

thanks for comments. Basically the clips won't fasten over the O ring - its like it is too fat. We will take it in and try to get a new one. Cheers, Sam

Thanks for the advice Alan - good to have pH changes in perspective. We had the water in the two tanks this gourami swapped between, tested with a laboratory pH meter, and the results were 5.8 and 7.5 - do you think that was enough to cause a blue gourami to go shy and pale? Both tanks have good quality water as concerns nitrates, nitrate, ammonia. Thanks, Sandra

Thanks Caper for your comments. The rocks thing was a bit tricky - they are just resting on each other, with one top one resting against the glass - I'm not sure if that is a suitable thing to do or not - I wondered about resining them together but that seemed too hard - no doubt someone on here will be able to advise me. Next step is to try and get one of my three external filters going so we can put some fish in!!

Hi there, I am struggling with my new filter. Well it is old really. I can't manage to fasten the top down - the O ring seems too big. Any suggestions from Fluval people please?

Thanks Alan, that's pretty much what he said, but a bit easier to understand. The only way I seem to get acid water is by letting my nitrates get high!!

A dive buddy of mine can blow air bubble rings just like those - looks really cool.

i did suggest Africans to my mate in Onerahi - she wasn't too keen. And I did seriously consider it last night for my new tank - they would look alright in it I reckon. My mate with the discus has water at pH 5.6 apparently -so we can use that to even things out perhaps.

Do you like sharks Oscar Boy? I love diving with sharks... I am on msn now.

Thanks for comments Oscar Boy, your wish is my command...

I ended up ringing the district council, and asked for a water technician. He had no idea what pH the water was supposed to be at, but luckily his boss had all the info. Our tap water locally is carefully controlled at a pH of between 7.9 and 8.1. Extra cholorine is used to get it there, which makes it less corrosive for our hot water cylinders. Very interesting. So maybe I'll just have to collect rainwater from now on. And it seems the anomaly was when I measured it at 7.4, not now. Perhaps the test kit was faulty, or maybe I should have been testing with a higher pH test kit. Next step is to test the water I have sitting at home once the chlorine is released by standing. I would still be interested in what other people's town supply water measures - thanks Stella for your post. Caustic Soda and Chlorine are the main things put in our water to get the pH high. Cheers, Sam

We got the idea for the coloured gravel from a clever person on this forum. I used Daltons Aquatic mix for the base layer, then Dalton's propogating sand, followed off by the two colours of stones. We had great debate about the patterns of the sand - I turned down the idea of zebra stripes. We settled on the shark fin pattern. I didn't want too much white coz of my school of 11 albino cories. The rock cave structure was a team effort - George did the actual work sorting out the order of the stones on the kitchen bench (I don't actually use my kitchen for food, just for fish stuff).

Note that George is just reaching into the tank - I am about eight inches shorter than him so can't reach as well even with a chair!! Thanks Dixon - I have finally got it sussed!! And thanks Caryl and Oscar for their tips too.

those plastic chairs can be quite vicious can't they George!! I still can't imbed my pictures correctly - advice please??