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.

The wifes lappy did something similar a few weeks ago. It turned out one of the HP proprietary 2nd LCD screen drivers set up a conflict with the firewall software. Took me 9 hrs to figure that out though! If you can start it in safe mode, turn off all services etc. loaded at startup, and then reboot. If it works, turn them back on one by one, rebooting each time. Repeating this item by item may tell you what's going on.

In my experience they are stupidly sensitive to copper - after I heavily dose trace elements, the rams horns and tiny brown pond snails rock around the tank as happy as, but the trumpet snails stop feeding and surface. It's an easy way to get rid of them if they bother you - a wee bit of copper sulphate.

What he said. But it bears repeating - be careful with it. Dose a tiny bit and then measure your nitrates after it dissolves and mixes through the tank. If it's still low, dose a teeny bit more, test again a while later. I OD'd the tank the first two or three times, not to the point of having to do a water change, but bad enough. I had to dose and measure until I worked out what level I needed to dose at to maintain 5-10ppm. That will vary from tank to tank depending on feeding, stocking, lighting, planting, etc.

I've had a similar outbreak, caused mainly by zero nitrates and low phosphates. As the cyano can fix it's own nitrogen it can take off. I now dose Potassium Nitrate to maintain my levels - about a quarter tsp in 100L per week. The phosphate comes in via food, and the plants and water changes keep things more or less in balance. This got rid of my cyano with no further intervention.

I got my bits and pieces for fertilisers from Stocker Hydroponics - http://www.hydroponics.co.nz/ Paid by credit card over the net and the box arrived a couple of days later. The only rub is that they sell biggish bags, you may not want to buy 1kg bags of each if it takes you 5 years to get through them.

When I read it I thought it seemed like useful tool presuming of course that the pods etc he describes do eventuate. After some thought I decided that it probably wouldn't be trustworthy on it's own, and that it would be better to run a tank with both skimming and an algae scrubber. Of course, I haven't set up a reef tank yet, I'm still armchair reefkeeping. In your experience, are many people in NZ using them?

I couldn't find any way to buy the bits separately that would work out cheaper than buying a unit from that auction site with the initials TM. The unit had the solenoid, bubble counter, regulator, needle valve, etc etc. The black hose is CO2 proof. Normal silicon airline won't contain the gas as well, you'll lose gas through the walls of the hose. The pressure to force the bubbles down the water column and through the diffuser is about the same pressure required to open leaks in the silicon hose. Diffusers are a popular point to argue over. I made a couple when I first started, then switched to using a line directly into the filter intake so that it diffused via the filter. I'm not sold that there is any significant difference between the two methods. Whilst I'm on my gratuitous advice soapbox, here's a couple of other things I reckon are worth knowing. - Needle valves seem to "work in", in that the flow rate doesn't stablise for the first 24hrs or so of run time. Keep an eye on the bubble rate as the resultant pH crash can really upset your tank. - You'll need to watch your levels of nutrient and fertiliser. I ended up having to dose trace elements, nitrate, magnesium and potassium as the plants were stripping the tank. - High CO2 needs high lighting intensity to get the full advantage.

I'd agree with p44. I have ambulia and cryptocorynes growing in a nursery tank that barely gets any proper light, and they look great. They don't grow as fast as the plants in the lighted tanks though, obviously.

I have 4 different types of snails in my big tank, I enjoy watching them potter around. Seriously, they do a good job cleaning up old dying leaves and any uneaten food. They establish a balance in the tank, and as long as I don't overfeed they don't breed up to big numbers. Many of the fish - rams, gourami, and flying foxes - seem to enjoy eating the baby snails, and are quite adept at deshelling them. Most types seem quite sensitive to copper. If you want to knock them out, that's an easy way to do it. Copper sulphate salts in a bath would probably kill tiny snails and eggs. Trumpet snails seem especially sensitive, I've had them curl up in a 100L tank from putting to much trace element fertiliser in.

And a bit of discussion. The green dot algae more or less stopped expanding as soon as the phosphate levels were raised. A few colonies grew after a fashion for a short time, but nothing like what they were doing previously. The existing colonies were damaged by snails and bristlenose cats and declined over time. The area I cleared never grew any more green dot, which suggests that the elevated phosphate level stopped it dead - I can't comment on the methodology of that. Maybe stopped it sporulating? Or the growth was limited by higher phosphates? The glass at the back of the tank cleared very quickly compared to the front. The back gets more light than the front in this setup, as the plants are pushed away by the flow from the spray bar. The other plants grew very rapidly during this test. This makes me think that the phosphate level was effectively limiting all plant growth in the tank. This supports the theory that very low phosphate conditions are more suitable for green dot algae. It would be interesting to ramp up the levels higher than I did, but I didn't want to complicate things. I just replaced 1/4 of my tank change water (approx 10L) with high-phosphate tap water. There was no sign of any other algae in the tank during this test, even though the tank has had BBA, staghorn, cyano, and green water before. Conclusion - green dot algae grows best in very low phosphate conditions in a planted tank, and can be inhibited, but not killed, but marginally elevating the phosphate level. The overall level in the tank never measured on a phosphate test kit.