shroo

was thinking demasoni. what sort of fish?

Post already in Freshwater Section. Please don't double post. Mod Bill.

Hi All. I'm looking at setting up a big cichlid tank. We're on tank water (concrete) and it is reall soft (2º DH) and very alkaline (8.8 pH). Ideally I want an easy / cheap way to raise the hardness, but not the pH. Everything I've found on the net so far seems to raise both... May also consider setting up the tank for fish species that get on well with soft / high pH and not have to modify before water changes.. Any ideas? Would be interested to here any advice. Thanks.

Thanks, now let's see if I can accidentally spawn some red line torpedo barbs!! That would be good.

Above picture credits - barb from aquahobby.com, rasbora from fishbase.org

It all makes sense now - ROFLMAO... thanks I just looked up 'red line rasboras' on the net and they are similar, but definitely different to the 'red line torpedo barb'. I do like the look of them them though and maybe they would have been cheaper, if available in NZ. Below is a picture of each - rasbora on top and barb below. The barb was responsible for my fetish, which is now quenched (for now)

Hi all, thanks for your comments. Not sure what ROFLMO means, but then it did take me about a month to figure out what an LFS was! Have considered listing the poos on trademe but am not sure I could achieve consistent supply... It is "puntius denisonii" aka 'red line torpedo barbs'. Never heard them refered to as rasboras yet, but why not. I think they should be called "bleeding eyes" which is a literal translation from the native name for these fish.

G'day everyone. I've trolled through many of the posts on FNZAS over the past 6 months and would like to thank this great community for the tips and advice I've gleaned. Also thought I should introduce myself and share my story of how I got into "the hobby". It all began with regular visits to the pet shop to buy cat food and looking at the puppies, rabbits & fish.... I particularly liked the fish and I eventually figured I could get a small tank and a few fish for home... A few weeks later I had my first tank. Much bigger than I imagined, but following the "easier to maintain a big one" philosophy I found a ready to go 160 ltr tank with 6 x Tiger Barbs, 2 x pearl gouramis, a load of neon tetra and all the bits & pieces. Moving it was a military operation and involved moving most of the water as well so it could be set up again straight away. This tank was great, I added some zebra danios and I was very content... ...until I went to the pet shop again and saw some red line torpedo barbs! I developed an instant fetish (of sorts) and had to have some of these fish. I didn't see the price of these guys till later. So I needed a bigger tank, some $$$ and alot of patience as I was to find out. Trademe was used to generate funds and then look for a suitable tank. I eventually found a 4 ft aqua one seemless 285 ltr that would do the job and which no one else seemed to want. Lucky me I thought and scored the bargain of the century, or so I thought. This tank was running when I bought it and contained, 3 x large clown loach, 1 X large black ghost knife, 3 X large angel fish, 1 x large moonlight gourami, 1 x large gold gourami, some rummy nose & cardinal tetras. I also got a load of books, and bits and pieces with this tank. Moving this, most of the water and all the inhabitants was a mission. The tank had not been very well looked after. OK, totally neglected really. I.E. chronic overfeeding and very few, if any, water changes. The levels were all over the place and it was amazing that the fish were surviving. Then I saw the first worm. "What the @!#* is that?", I thought. To cut a long story short - nematodes and loads of them. They had been there all along but I hadn't noticed. After some sweating, followed by intense research I realised they weren't going to kill the fish and could be bought under controll / erradicated with correct maintenace and care. So after a few water changes in a short space of time and cleaning the filters (you had to see & smell how filthy they were to believe it) I was starting to get things under control... Meanwhile the noise of the pump was driving me nuts. My other tank was a silent wonder. Eheim internal filter and Millenium HOB working together made no noise at all and this is what I was expecting from the aqua one. NO chance! I bought a new impeller - no joy. I bought a new pump - no joy. I wedged everyhting and put dampers here & there to try and reduce the noise but nothing would stop it. The LFS took back the pump and gave me a refund which was pretty cool of them. Anyway, the worms weren't disappearing quick enough for my red line master plan and combined with the infuriating noise I then decided I could break down the tank, dose it with industrial worm killer, connect an external (hopefully silent) canister and start it all from scratch. So I did. The big fish were sold and the tetras were relocated to my other tank. It was a shame to get rid of the big fish but they got me some $$ to pay for the new gear etc. and all went to good homes. All the books and other bits I didn't want were also sold on trademe. Once everything was cleared out of the tank I dosed it with a load of Cure-Ex. This was included with the various chemicals that were included when I bought the tank. This should have rang some alarm bells but I didn't even look at all the bottles of chemicals that I had "inherited". I left the tank for 2 weeks with this incredibly strong dose of wormer in it and then set about flushing it out and getting it set up again. Meanwhile I had scored a JBL crystalprofi 500 canister filter and was running it on my other tank to get the bacteria started. It was way quieter than the aqua one overhead filter but still way noisier than my existing tank. So I also made a sound proof enclosure for the JBL within the cabinet under the new tank. This involved scoring some boat engine room sound insulating material from a friend of mine and lining every surface of the cabinet. It works!! I mentioned that I got into this because of having to buy cat food. My cat is quite into fish too, and would go fishing whenever she could. I guess most cats do this? As the new tank was being setup I decided to put in new gravel and it happened that the new gravel went in one night and ended up being left for a few days before any water was put in. One morning I noticed a load of footprints in the gravel - cat footprints! The reason I am mentioning this will become apparent later... So the water goes into my new tank and I see light at the end of the tunnel - I will soon have my red lines at last. To kick off the ecosystem I did a water change on my other tank and dumped in all the gravel vacuum debris along with 40 ltr of tank water. Added another 40 ltr of water and put my existing eheim internal filter in to keep it circulating oxygenated. A few days passed and I didn't get round to adding any more water or even look in the tank. Then on about the third or fourth day I started adding more water one morning before going to work. Out the corner of my eye I saw something move on the glass. Not a @!#*ing worm I thought - surely not. I peered closer and it wasn't a worm, at least not like the other ones, but I didn't know what it was. There were about 15 of them in fact, about 5mm long, all around the same place on the glass and some free swimming. More research followed and what do you know I had spawned some fish. Far out! So my plans for the red lines were put on hold again... What, how, why???? I didn't know what species they were or what to do but found some good advice on feeding etc (thanks FNZAS). However, I only got so far as reading egg yolk before I had to go to work. So in went a few drops of raw egg yolk and instructions were left at home to add more egg yolk throughout the day till I got home. When I got home I found out the egg was meant to be cooked!!! I mentioned the cat foot prints? Well my cat did me a favour I think, but you'd have to check what the text books say about this! While I was trying to figure out what to feed the fry I noticed a kind of white cloudy jelly mould patch thing growing about 2 inches semisphere in the middle of the gravel. The fry were eating it. I had my suspicions about what it might be, but seeing as the fry were eating it and not dying I figured I'd leave it. My worst fears were confirmed a few weeks later when I got the gravel vac in there and syphoned out a semi-decomposed cat turd that had been deposited in there by yours truly. Do you think I might be onto something here? I augmented this turd mould with cooked egg yolk and eventually succumbed to the LFS and bought some fry food! At one point I was convinced my new fish were neons because they had a neon stripe and red bellies!! I hear some of you laughing... To cut a long story short, or at least the ending, I managed to raise 7 zebra danios. Another 4 weeks or so passed while I grew these fish up to bigger than snack size and then I topped up the water, changed the filters over, planted it out and stocked a few bristle noses. Followed this with more dannios, then the rummy noses & cardinals that used to live in the tank all those months ago. I gave it another month to ensure everything was settled down and sold the rest of my clutter to raise some funds last weekend I got my red lines! Nice to get that off my chest!!!!!!!