John Rimbauer

I can't say I endorse it, but a chap I work with claims he has kept borneo suckers for the past year in an outdoor pond in pakuranga. It's a pretty unlikely claim, but this guy is very truthful and I can't see why he'd be fibbing about it.

It should work fine, although you'd want to put a compact fluorescent bulb in there a "cool daylight" or 6500K bulb if you want to start growing plants. A warm white light (4700K) is too yellow for plants, and quite yellow compared to daylight.

The water in the jar would get toxic with ammonia etc. very quickly. I had one in a large breeding trap for a while when it was getting hassled by a gourami, but it wasn't happy in there. Maybe make some kind of a divider for the tank out of a mesh if you're determined to keep two?

Have another conflicting opinion! My frog eats the beetles with no hesitation, not that I generally feed them to him though... Maybe it depends on the temperament of the animal.

Excellent to hear you've cracked the cyano issue.

There's a south auckland aquarium society, can't recall seeing any posts about a meeting though. The details are in the clubs and societies page of the FNZAS site. It's a bit odd, in that I know quite a few people in the Franklin area with nice tanks who don't seem all that club minded.

If the fish have white spot - the little things that look exactly like grains of salt stuck to the fish - then best you treat them quick smart. I lost 6 lemon tetras to white spot over one weekend, it's not an experience I'd wish on anyone else. Can't comment on the other things sorry.

Filtration can be a bit of a rort for pet stores. As Caryl said, from a biological point of view, the more dirty and gunged up the filter media is, the more bacteria are growing in there, and the better the removal of ammonia and nitrite is. This holds true up to the point where the gunge is impeding the flow of water. There will also be a reasonable percentage of biological activity happening in the gravel or substrate in the bottom of the tank. Given water changes of 20% each week, I'd say it will be cycled for the current number of fish within 4 weeks, 6 at tops. If you add a mass of new fish, there may be another cycle as the bacteria grow in numbers to match the new food source. A friend of mine was told at the local fish store that she had to replace the white filter wool each week to keep the filter working. (Shame on you, nameless fish store!) This is untrue of course. For my tanks, I clean the filter only when the flow gets too low. As I have planted tanks, with gravel etc, I cheerfully rinse the canister filters out under the tap and make no effort to use tank water. This hasn't caused any grief for me, but I attribute that to the fact I don't vacuum the gravel and clean the filter at the same time. I've also lost filtration from power cuts for up to 12 hrs at a time with no measurable change in the chemistry of the tank water. A lot of the guidelines mentioned for fish keeping have wiggle room in them, but if you stick to the info imparted by wiser heads such as Caryl you should have no problems.

How long it takes to see an increase will depend on your tank's circulation, but I would expect pretty quickly - say under 15 min. You're in a odd position in that you know nitrogen is a limiting factor in the tank at the moment. In theory, the plants will absorb and sequester the nitrate as quickly as they can to use it in protein synthesis and new growth. This will change once they have sufficient nitrogen. Nitrate doesn't seem to cause any issues til about 20ppm, so if you're in a mad rush you could cut out all other ferts, and just dose nitrate. If you've got no response on 1/4 tsp, you could consider adding a whole tsp and testing thereafter. It shouldn't mess up any adult fish, but any babies could be affected. If you over shoot 20ppm, then it's time for a water change - and from there it's kitchen math time. If it's 30ppm, a 50% waterchange will bring you down to 15ppm, which should be fine given the plants will be using it. As to how long it takes to see an effect, I recall that I was cleaning out cyano every day and it was growing back fast enough to just about see it spreading. The first thing I noticed in the subsequent couple of days was that it stopped spreading as the plants took up the slack. As far as I recall that was within a couple of days. The caveat on that is that I was running lots of light and injected CO2 at that point, so the plants were going nuts. You may need to double (or more) the time frame depending on your lighting and stocking level. If you've got a quick growing plant such as Ambulia in there, use it as a bellwether. With adequate light and no CO2, just ferts, it should be growing a couple of cm a week with good green colour, and possibly reddish tips when it gets nearer the lights. It should also be spreading via sideways stems and need pruning frequently. The prunings you take out will remove some of the excess phosphate. If it slows down and stops spreading, you know you're developing a deficiency. Echinodorus osiris works this way too - if the new leaves aren't tinged red, then the plant is starving for something. It's a bigger plant though.

I used to mix them, and eventually moved to dumping them straight in. I found the premixed product would get various things forming a precipitate in the bottom of the container. If the products are pretty pure, they'll dissolve and dissipate very quickly. Just treat it like salting your dinner, shake it on rather than dump in and you should be golden. Some of my fish seem to find the epsom salt crystals drifting through the tank fascinating. They pick at them as they sink and dissolve, but I've never noticed even the slightest hint of an adverse reaction. The trace elements, KNO3, and KSO4 dissolve too quick for them to pick at.

The reason is much more prosaic and sad sorry. With the siphon out the window, and the gravel vac in the tank, it breaks siphon at 50% empty. Hence the 50%. Hose in the other direction when I'm done to fill it back up. The only time the fish mind is if its a) very cold outside, and b) I run the water in quick. It upset the corys I had quite a bit. Now if it's very cold I turn the filter and heater back on, and run the water in over 20 mins or so. I think the thermal stratifcation of the coldest water at the bottom is what annoyed them, so the filter running helps stir the water. If you keep the fertiliser proportions about the same it seems to work, based on nitrate readings. Once you hit 5-10ppm you've got your level. I use this method on the 3ft at work, and that's a high light, injected CO2 job that only gets 20% water changes a week.

Hmmm, I'm at around a 1/4 tsp dry powder each week in 100L with about 50% water changes weekly. If you're already testing at zero nitrates, I'd suggest you use that rate, and measure the drop in level over the next couple of days. The rate of drop might change suddenly if you run low on another nutrient - say iron, or magnesium, or whatever. My current regime (heh, now I sound pretentious ) is about the same amount of potassium sulphate, potassium nitrate, trace elements mix, and 1/2 a tsp of MgSO4- epsom salts. Dosing that level keeps phosphate as the growth limiting factor for the plants and algae in my tank.

I'm out on a limb here, so treat this as advise, not gospel. I've noticed that my tanks seem to use more potassium than usual every so often. I notice this when adding the potassium sulphate causes the plants to go nuts with pearling for the next few days. It may be worth upping the potassium level in your fert regime for 1 week and seeing if it has a positive impact?

If you're ever over in Waiuku, I can give you some Potassium Nitrate. A cupful should go a fair way. When I first started having deficiencies in my tanks, I tried garden products. The purity of them - in terms of byproducts and contaminants - is shocking. That's why I ended up going to hydroponic ferts. If you absolutely have to, and there is no choice, you can dose ammonium compounds. In theory the plants will absorb them preferentially to nitrate, and will do so before they can harm the fish. The line between fertilising the plants and annihilating your fish is pretty fine though. I did it once, very carefully, and it was enough to upset some of the fish. No fatalities, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

They seem to be sold as such though. The last set I got were clearly labeled on the tank as black line flying foxes, even though they definitely weren't. This was a reputable fish shop too. If anyone's planning on buying some I'd recommend you swot up on spotting a true SAE in a tank - barbels, black line, fins, etc.