jolliolli

Well i've taken the plunge and have decided to buy a marine tank setup which means i need to reduce some of my freshwater tanks and fish. Currently i have a Juwel Rio 300 (4ft/300L) community tank and an Aqua One Regal 80 (80cm/180L) which houses my discus. I will be getting rid of the aqua one tank and keeping the rio 300. I need some advice on which fish i will be able to keep together in the rio 300. Currently i have Rio 300 (ph approx 7, temp 26 degrees) 6 Black Mollies, 5 Golden Barbs, 3 Rosy Barbs, 2 Ruby Barbs, 2 Snakeskin Gourami's, 1 Honey Gourami, 4 SAEs, 2 Pearl Danios, 1 Zebra Danio, 4 Sterbai Corys, 2 Blue Rams, 10 Cardinals, 10 Neons. Regal 80 (ph 7, temp approx 27degrees) 3 Discus (2 x 10cm, 1 x 8cm excluding tail) 1 Siamese Fighter, 1 baby guppy, 2 BNs I also have 2 dwarf gouramis in quarantine which will need to ge integrated in to the new setup The Rio 300 is planted with swords, some driftwood, indian stargrass and will be running the internal filter system (1000l/ph) and also an Aqua One CF1200 external filter. I was thinking of putting the following fish together Rio 300 3 x Discus 2 x Blue Rams, 10 x cardinals 1 x fighter 4 x corys 3 x dwarf gouramis, 2 x Ruby Barbs 1 or 2 BN ( i like the fact they eat algae, don't like the fact they eat my swords!) 2 x SAE and possibly the 2 Snakeskin Gouramis though they are quite flighty and might be scared by the larger discus. Anyway long ramble, can ppl give me their thoughts on this type of setup. I'll probably start listing my other gear this week

woohoo, :bounce: well looks like its confirmed and i'll be picking up the tank next weekend so that gives me a week to get organised. Ill need to store 200Litres of salt water if i'm to keep half the tank water. Does anyone know where i can buy a container that can hold this volume. Does the container need to be food grade? i've heard that term thrown in regards to storing tank water. How would i identify a food grade container? is something like this useable or is it a no-go due to it being "reconditioned" http://www.trademe.co.nz/Business-farmi ... 95.htm?p=3 secondly would anyone be able to look after my livestock for a few days while i set up the tank (bats her eyelashes). ill be picking up a couple of clownfish, tang, blenny, mandarin fish, 2 x cleaner shrimp and clam, if anyone is able to offer a temporary home that would be fantastic. can't wait

Hey candy, i'm looking at probably doing the exact same thing as you in the next couple of weeks (fingers crossed). Ive been having a read of transporting tanks and found this good article about how to make a move go with the least amount of problems http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/sal ... ving1.html http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/sal ... ving2.html Does anyone have any suggestions for where to get 'fish-safe' large foodgrade containers from that won't cost a bomb? Also some of your questions may be answered in my thread http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/newbie ... 23185.html

So sorry for your loss, you had a beautiful setup, and it makes me so mad scum like that do sick things like kill animals for their sick pleasure.

Thanks everyone thats exactly the sort of info I was after. I will try to transport as much of the existing water as possible, is there a minimum amount I should aim for? Obviously i will need to mix up some replacement water for the tank. Should i try and make the water identical in chemistry to the existing water, or should i try and make the water the 'ideal' parameters. If so is there a list somewhere of the values i should i aim for in terms of calcium, magnesium, pH etc

picked up some good books form the library on setup etc, one called the marine aquarium problem solver and one called the questions and answers manual of marine aquariums. I'm going to study them now

Hey guys thanks for the advice, at the moment its still only a possibility, depends mainly on price etc.. but its very tempting . Went i and picked john's brains at organism today as well and he was extremely helpful (as always). well i'll probably know by the end of next week if its a go

Hey guys, Well i've been browsing the salty section for a couple of months now and am thinking about buying a marine setup and need lots of advice as i'll be completely new to the saltwater side of things. Currently i have two freshwater tanks, a Juwel Rio 300 4ft Community tank and a Aqua One 180 Discus tank. i'm looking at buying an existing marine reef setup (400L) which has been running for around 2 1/2 years and comes with all the appropriate gear (skimmer, pumps, lights ,sump, corals and fish). My biggest question is how will I go about transporting the livestock etc. Ideally i'd like to clean the tank up prior to setup and also change the coarse coral sand over to a finer sand, but i'm worried about what i would do with the corals, fish and livestock during this time. Would i be ok to put the liverock and corals in to a large bin of saltwater temporarily. Do I need any sort of pumps/circulation running on it and how long would i be ok to keep the liverock like this. Then there are the fish... what to do with them there are a couple of clowns, clam, tang. I have spare small tanks with built-in filtration, could i fill this up with existing salt water run it as a bare-bottom tank and put the fish in there short-term? I'm going to the library today to try and find any helpful books on setup but if anyone has any advice that would be great . At the moment its still only a possibility but if i do decide to take the plunge i want to be prepared!

i have some neons with small white perfectly circular dots on their eyes. They have always had them since i got them and i think they are very old. a knowledgeable fish person suggested to me they might be cataracts, they have never been disturbed by them and are otherwise healthy.

are they old? it could be cataracts?

Thats pretty normal, you have just disloged the gunk and it is floating loose inside your filter. When you turn it on it just gets spewed out, nothing to worry about

Hey jn, yeah its a bit of a tricky one different ppl have different opinions on the dose rate. The actual instructions on the back of my prazi pro bottle are to do a single treatment at 1tsp per 20 Gallons (2.5mg/L) and then retreat in 3 - 5 days. Other ppl recommend more frequent treatments. I treated as above for around 2 weeks. Prazi-pro is quite safe, not sure on the drontal i have read of ppl killing their fish with it but others have used it quite safely ( i think alanmin04 has used it with no problems)

Its hard to tell by those photos but the females usually have a slightly pinker belly, are more rounded, have blue metallic flecks around the top of the black spot. Males tend to be slimmer, the dot is often more elongated and don't have the metallic blue flecks around the dot. I think the top photo may be a female and the bottom a male, but you owuld need clearer photos

i would suspect your driftwood, especially if it was recently added and is leaching tannins. I had a new piece of driftwood in my one of my tanks and found the pH would drop from around 7.1 to 6.0 over the period of a week, once i removed the wood my ph stabilised to 7.0

Hi there I thought i should probably post an update regarding the tank, no further signs of illness and no deaths since the gourami died so i think the furan may have taken care of the illness which i think was hemorrhagic septicemia. To answer your questions above shell, the tank is around 6 months old, and has received prazi and furan treatments. The water was cloudy due to the too much fine plant material which the internal filter system didn't seem to be able to handle, i added an additional canister filter and now the water is crystal clear. Both prazi and furan are supposedly harmless to your biological filter so bacteria should be ok in the filter. I haven't had any problems fingers crossed for the last couple of weeks so fingers crossed the problem is sorted, if i have any further problems i'll post here

I think there are some floating around on another thread but here they are again. Once i find a suitable tank i'd like to get possibly a red melon, maybe a leopard but there aren't many discus breeders here in chch , and my boys need some girls!

beautiful fish candy, what varieties are they both? Currently trying to find a 4ft or 5ft tank to upgrade my discus to

Hi guys thanks for all the input and discussion, my original idea was to set up hte tank with filtration running and keep a couple of tetras in there to cycle the tank and remove as necessary when new fish arrive. The main purpose of this tank is to quarantine new fish for a couple of weeks prior to introduction to the new tank and also as tank for treating disease/illness. I would have thought that if i didn't have any filtration running in the tank during the quarantine period the fish would not survive?

thanks guys, have spare gravel here so will use that. I assume the ug filter in a small tank will be fine for just a quarantine tank?

hey guys, Went down to the animates fun day and bought an AR320 (28 Litre) tank with undgergravel filter, powerhead etc in their half price sale. Im going to use this replace my existing quarantine tank which is a little large for what i want ( AR380 38 Litre). My AR380 has the standard built in filtration, the new tank has the undergravel filtration which I haven't used before. As its going to be for quarantining i want to leave the tank bare, is it ok to leave the undergravel filter exposed without a substrate on top?

slowly increasing the temp would be fine, just increase it over by a degree or two over several days to around 25 - 26 if you want to add tropicals. i have a couple of rubys and several rosy barbs in a community tank at around 26 degrees

think he means 15% water change

It happens, i had TWO faulty thermometers about a month ago. One hailea digital which gave readings which was 5 degrees warmer than the actual temp and one mercury which had a small hole in it causing the temp read out to be about 5 degrees warmer than it actually is. i now run at least two thermometers in each tank to make sure the readings are accurate

yes have still been treating with prazi. I have just added carbon to remove the green furan colour to thte tank and then intend to add more prazi.

Hmm thought i had perhaps finally seen the end of the fish death.... it had been a week with no signs of illness or death, but alas last night one of my two remaining honey gouramis started clamping his fins and displaying small jerky movements. This morning woke up to find him dead. Again all other fish appear fine, so i;m hoping perahps he transmitted septicemia prior to dosing with furan and this is the final fish death but only time will tell..