jn

I have WCMM's and I never add anything to my water. chch tap water has no additives (yet!!) so should be fine as is.

Have you tested the the tap water directly to see what that is? (ie: is the pH rising in your aquarium?)

Would any of you guys going to loopy's have some H. difformis and/or java moss I could buy?

Ahh the thinks we get up to with our mortars and pestles.. I use mine to crush chicken pellets to feed to little 'peeps' Obviously they need to start selling these at pet stores!!!

Okay! Thank you

I lost a WCMM once. I had the tank filled quite high and when the pump was off for feeding the water level was above the top of the pump. My tank has a gap between the pump and the bottom of the filter unit that the pump hangs from and the fish had gotten wedged in there. When I turned the pump back on the water level dropped a little (to the top of the pump)... so I was looking for the missing fish in the water and didn't find if for a couple weeks until I wanted to take the pump off to clean it! The fish had dried up!

Yep. Definitely understood cycled was not the same as mature I'm taking mature to mean well and truly settled into a happy/balanced little ecosystem. 6 months sounds good though... thanks.

Hi all, Just curious. Spotted some aqua one PL tubes for sale. They are 8000k but there's the option of blue/white or just white. These are compact fluorescent and it looks like on the blue/white, one side gives a blue light. Can anyone tell me if there is any difference in this other than the visual effect it may have? (ie: how it shows up the colors of the fish/plants etc)

I've read on several different sites that Jordanellas can handle fairly low temps. Some report down to 8 degrees but most seem to say around 16 (which means that indoors are probably pretty safe without a heater) These fish can be found naturally in some parts of florida, where they can get some decent winter cold spells. They can be found elsewhere as well but I didn't commit those bits to memory :-?

How old are they? How long WCMM's live just for the record?

Caryl, I'm sure this has been asked a zillion times but... What's the average time it takes for a tank to mature? Are we talking 6 months or so? (I'm getting impatient with my brown algae. It really slows down the plant growth especially when the lighting is marginal to begin with! Grrr!)

Hey Loopy, I'm not a member of the fish club but would like to pop in to meet everyone and distribute the fish that will be coming down from Carla. I'm going to have to avoid the shopping too unfortunately. My partner catches me looking at tanks on trade me from time to time and i get the "What are you looking at those for!!" stare :evil: You don't get far with 34L!! That'll teach me for starting off small. Anyway... looking forward to meeting you. PM me if you need any help or would like me to bring anything specific

Too funny wilson :lol: !!! If you're not careful the owner might think he's being stalked... (We need a new acronym for someone addicted to a particular LFS I think!)

Is that feather and fur place in hornby? Never been in there. How is it?

Haven't forgotten the leopardfish We need 8 of them (for Wilson and Milet) And then we need 6-7 Jordanellas. I'll pm you Wilson to make sure you don't feel left out

Good news! We have a kapimana volunteer to bring the first from welly to chch!! Woo hoo!!! He's also added 3 fish to the order so we're full up!!! Milet: I'm sending you a PM to confirm how many jordanellas and what sex you want. Now I hope Carla has that many fish for us have pm'd her as well.

ok... kapimana is the wellington club. That would drop the shipping to about $25 instead of $40 according to Carla's post... but then I guess the fish would be packaged for 2 days. Is that ok?

Yeah I saw that Wilson but I wasn't sure where the kapi-mana club was I supposed I should have asked huh!!! :-? Still, at least we have an 'order' building up and we can work out the details. I'd love to skip shipping costs altogether! At $6/fish I would end up paying double to get them here. I'll send Caryl a pm.

Milet: Do you want male or female jordanellas? I think I'll have 2 females. (although I understand the males are better looking! I don't want any territorial behaviour.. just some algae cleanup!!) Wilson's 5 makes up 1 bag.

PS: Wilson I was told that jordanellas would be fine with my WCMM's and they're good at eating algae too.. that's what I want them for! I'm not concerned about whether they breed or not...if you wanted to increase your chances of breeding them you could always temporarily separate some out when the time was right.

Leopardfish/Jordanella for sale! Carla has some fish for sale in the North islan. ($6 for Jordanella and I think $4 for leopardfish) I'm looking to combine an order to ship to chch to split shipping costs. Anyone out there from chch prepared to place an order please see the link below for details. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewto ... 196#236196

Ok guys. Carla has some Jordanellas and some Leopardfish for sale. (see here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/previo ... sc&start=0) I'm keen on 1-2 jordanellas but at approx $40 for overnight courier I'm only going to buy if I can combine the order with some of you other keen 'Christchurchians' Please post here if you're in. Shipping would be divided on a 'per bag' basis I guess? or part bag if the bag can be shared with another buyer. She can fit 3 bags in a box. A bag can fit 5 leopardfish or a trio of Jordanellas (or maybe 5 smaller ones) First come first served. We can work out the logistics once we have a boxful of fish.

I have minows (WCMM) indoors and goldfish outdoors Ponds are great!! Yaaay for ponds!

Fair enough Discusguru. I do realise that balance takes time but it had gone too far. If it does start to come back I'll get some antibiotic or something and get onto it sooner. The tank doesn't appear to be cycling so with the plants already adjusted to my water conditions, the filter established so no ammonia/nitrite spikes hopefully I can achieve some sort of balance more quickly. When I first set the tank up I had alot of plants but they started getting black/purple algae on them. I started dosing with flourish excel. They started to die off as did some of the algae. My tank also got to some sweltering temperatures which the coldwater plants didn't seem to appreciate too much either. I had a fish disappear in there too which I later found stuck in a crevice between the powerhead and the bottom of the filter unit from a time when the water level was slightly too high when the pump was stopped for feeding! (I'm careful about that now!) I'm not sure if the cyanobacteria started to go crazy once I started the Excel or if it was after the fish died (the fish was mainly out of the water so didn't rot in the water but had dried up and started to go mouldy). Being a primitive organism I can imagine it might have thrived with the extra carbon? Anybody noticed a correlation between Flourish excel and cyanobacteria I'm hoping that with the weather cooling the whole process will get slowed down enough for me to be able to keep on top of it and that the conditions being more stable will help. :oops: Time will tell

Just an update. I didn't want to black out the tank without giving it a good clean first to make sure I reduced the chance of it coming back. (also worried about oxygen levels as masses of the stuff might have been dying away) I stripped the tank and tossed the top layer of gravel out (worst affected). Washed/scrubbed the rest of the gravel in a bucket with a weak bleach solution (advantage of a small tank!). The aim was to get the worst of the BGA out and to make sure phosphate was as close to nil as I could get it. I had to air the house out to get rid of the musty smell!! Cleaned the tank as well as I could and refilled it all. The worst of the plants got a manual clean followed by potassium permangante treatment. The fish got stored overnight in a plastic tub with some tank water and a plant. I let the tank run overnight to 'air it' in case there was any trace of bleach left in the stones (although they got rinsed 5-6 times) since I didn't have any dechlorinator. Fish are back and are 'happy as larry'. I'll test over the next couple of days to see if my tank is going to cycle. If it doesn't cycle I'll do the blackout and hopefully never see the horrible stuff again!!