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Adrienne

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Everything posted by Adrienne

  1. Personally I wouldn't. Rainbow sharks are fast and nippy and my one decided that the mucus coating on the side of my discus was tasty. Discus like peaceful and sharks are not as they like to zoom along the length of the tank.
  2. You should be fine with that stocking in the tank. You have a good stock selection
  3. Try HFF Albany as they had a range of plecs listed in their shop yesterday.
  4. I can't access it anymore but take a look on google drive. I scanned everything I had and put it up on there
  5. Update: As of yesterday my readings on the tank had settled. A 10% waterchange was done using NSW and a largish leather mushroom with galaxy star polyps growing on the lower stem was added. This morning two blue chromis were added to the tank. Now I sit and wait
  6. If you continue to do regular largish water changes ie 40-50% your cycle will still be going and that will be why you have zero nitrates. You are correct 'now with the nitrite spike I wonder if the cycle is not complete'. Nitrate tests are a precise thing, if you do not follow the instructions exactly (and I am not suggesting you are not, but the lfs may not be) then you will not get an accurate reading. Bristlenose are the biggest waste producers ever and your tank is a bit small for even one - they will keep your cycling going. Unfortunately nitrite, as you know is toxic to fish, prime will help lock it into a non toxic form but you will still get readings. Your driftwood will help lower your pH. Fish can adapt to higher pH readings, but are less likely to breed. Swinging pH is far more damaging than pH that is stable but not where your fish prefer it. My recommendations: Try changing 10% daily or every couple of days, continue with prime and nitrozorb (it does work) and do as you are doing, keep an eye on your tank readings. Don't add any more fish or plants until it is sorted. It takes several weeks for a tank to complete a cycle (depending on how you do it).
  7. I have to agree with Livingart. NZ backup and a good price as well.
  8. Looks great. Just one suggestion - put some diagonal bracing along the back. You have plenty of bracing back - front but not a lot to stop sideways movement.
  9. Salmon19 is trade me not this forum. Caserole hasn't activated his membership on this site.
  10. Reading the feedback above if you want them to pack together you have two options. Either provide them with good light so they produce the leaves close together and space them out, or not worry about the lighting so much and plant together. Either way 10cm is not far apart for spacing out big swords. My osiris stem was around 20cm from one side to the other - root length was over 1 metre. If it was me I would go around 15cm apart. After experiencing amazon swords I would only plant around 5 in a 1500cmL tank ! Be prepared to have to feed them continually.
  11. I would go sump over cannisters because they are much easier maintenance and do a great job besides being able to hide your heaters etc in them. Trelize on here has a cichlid tank which he sumped and the write up on it is in one of the AW magazines which I think you should be able to see - accessed from the toolbar.
  12. Awesome tank. That piece of wood has handled it very very well!
  13. No mine is not on TM. Not yet. Therefore I would look at offers as I wont have to pay TM fees if it sells privately.
  14. I know you say the 980 is a bit too big but mine is on the market - 18 months old, in new conditon with jager heater. $250 ono. Light tubes all changed in the last six months. I had it planted with angelfish and corys in it. Brilliant tank.
  15. Bristlenose will handle 28 degrees just fine - its if the tank gets over that that the bigger/mature ones struggle. You will know as you will see them coming right up to the surface for oxygen, even sticking the tips of their heads out of the water. My personal opinion on quarantine tanks is that they are just that - keep them clear of any objects or plants as should a disease or parasite be present they will need to be sterilised and therefore emptied. You can keep a few healthy guppies in the tank to keep the filter mature. If the fish you get are from tanks that share filtration then there is no reason they can not be quarantined together. Rather than ask your pet store for new water you can easily sort your own out, unless there is some reason you can't use your own supply. Smart start is a good reliable product to use when starting off a new tank, despite debate about how is it possible that adding that product aids cycling, I have used it many times and added stock straight away with no issues. Just stock slowly and monitor the tank readings. Your biggest problem with plants will be snails and algae. You can dip most plants to get rid of problems but they don't really need to go into a quarantine tank. As above, if you choose carefully and select healthy fish and plants the chances are things will go fine. Whitespot is the most likely outcome even after fish have been quarantined and that often comes down to fish being stressed so it is important to keep hands out of the tanks once fish are added. Fiddling around with the scape, lighting and peering constantly at how the fish are doing all adds to the stress levels so best to resist the urge to check up every few minutes That is easier said than done.
  16. it is possible, particularly if the tank is not dead flat, that there is a crack on the bottom under the gravel. Just remember that small leaks can develop in to large ones if the tank lets go under pressure. Best to empty it completely, check the bottom of it, place it somewhere where a wet floor doesn't matter, refill and watch carefully.
  17. I think you are right about the passion. There is money here but those with a lot of it pay maintenance companies to maintain their tanks. English - well I would think that a large number of aquatic workers in retail shops have English as a second language but I might be biased being based in the part of the country that I am.
  18. Welcome A good rule of thumb with discus is one mature discus per 50 litres. That is for a species only tank. Less than 5 discus can be risky though as generally the odd one out will be picked on by the other two. More so when they are mature and if you have a pairing up of two of them. Discus, if you haven't kept them before are best purchased over 6cm in size, which should be around six months old - if they have been well raised and are healthy. Younger and smaller than this they are a lot of work and don't do well in a planted tank. There is a lot of rubbish discus out there so make sure you choose fish which are good colour, good round shape, not hiding at the back of the tank and ask to see them eating. If they spit the food out I recommend you walk away from the whole tank lot. Cardinals look spectacular in a discus tank particularly in numbers - I recommend a minimum 10. They also handle the higher tank temps which are needed to keep your discus healthy. You have clearly done some research - when I looked at the list the Kribs were really the ones that stuck out as potential problems if they pair up to breed as they can be highly territorial and often only one parents raises the fry, having given the other parent a beating. I don't really know enough about elephant nose fish to comment. Longfin BN are spectacular - my personal observations are that adult BN tend to struggle if tanks get over about 28 degrees. I kept them in my discus tank, the fins did tend to get a bit torn on the driftwood. Try and get two males rather than a pair as males are pretty rough on the females once they mature. If they do breed you would likely have to remove the young as the discus will pick them off. Filtration is a good topic. a minimum of 4 x the turnover would see you requiring around 1200lph minimum. It is important to keep the airation/water movement up in any tank and more so at higher temperatures. With a heavily driftwood/planted tank 4 x is unlikely to get through and around the wood/plants giving dead spots which is where waste will accumulate. Options would be to get a larger single filter - I would recommend around the 2000lph or a second fluval filter. My discus tank was 450 litres and I ran an FN5 plus a Sunsun 1400lph filter on it and 2 powerheads to keep the flow circulating. UV - anything over 24 watts is a steriliser, under is a purifier. A slower water movement through the UV sleeve is needed for proper sterilisation as the water has more contact time with the UV light. Regarding disease - you are best to quarantine all new additions for at least four weeks. Less time and some diseases won't show themselves. Four weeks and they should. Would love to see photos of your set up when you get started, progress reports with pics are always welcome.
  19. The Walt Smith rock has been added and two trips made to the Takapuna Boat Ramp to collect NSW which I then pumped through a 1 micron filter to prevent parasites etc getting in to the tank. The tank was filled on 27 January. NB the small piece of rock centre front won't be staying there. left side right side On 4th February the skimmer was turned on and a small piece of live rock added (from my other tank). Since then a bag of coral rubble has been added to the sump and a prawn (dead) put in to the tank to start the cycle. No readings so far.
  20. What are the measurements of it and are you looking at coldwater or tropical fish?
  21. Very sorry to hear. Pets are precious.
  22. I guess there is the potential for some rainbows to crossbreed but wouldn't think it would be a common thing. You might have already looked at the article I wrote for the August 2014 AW magazine on rainbows. The only time I saw fry in my tank was three weeks after I removed the last fish from my tank ie rainbows and tetras. There was always a lot of spawning activity but never saw any eggs dropped, but certainly saw fry when nothing was around to eat them. Boesmani are great, big males are stunning. They are relatively easy to sex when smaller as the males will develop a brown stripe running down the centre of their face when females are present. Alpha male will stand out a mile.
  23. What you have read might be exaggerated. I kept mine in pebbly gravel in a small - 20 litre maybe less - tank, with a heater turned on low, and an airline. When I remembered I chucked cat biscuits in and when there looked to be heaps I pulled them out and fed them to the fish. Water changed when the level of the tank started to drop. Kept them for around 3-4 years. Whiteworms - if you get stuck ask HFF to order in off bio-suppliers.
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