Warren

Yeah, the cichlids might give the knife fish a bit of a hard time, at least until it bites them in half. A big knife fish can and will take a pretty big fish for dinner and they can be quite agressive. Remember the rule for nearly all fish, - if it will fit in another fishes mouth then thats exactly where it will end up! A fully grown knife fish can easily get to 450-500mm long and should have at least a 6 foot tank (500+ Litres).

Carbon filters don't actually remove much from the water. They remove most gases (like chlorine) and some hydrocarbon products but very little else. It will hardly make any difference to pH or hardness. The cheapest way is still to put tap water into a drum and put an airstone in the drum for a day or so. Once the smell of chlorine is gone it's ready. If the pH and/or hardness is an issue, do as Alan says, collect rainwater. Even rainwater isn't all that reliable due to industrial waste getting into the rain. The cheapest solution for medium quantities of fairly pure water is reverse osmosis. Even this has problems, - the water is too pure to use directly. It has no salts or gases in it (no buffering capacity) and the pH is likely to change wildly. Addition of some readily available salts and acids will buffer the water sufficiently to use. I get about 90000 litres of water out of my RO unit for about $140 in membranes and filters. That's enough for about 2 years of water changes. It's by far the cheapest water purifier you can get.

I'm all better now, - I bounce back quickly... A tank 1200 x 400 x 400 will be ok with only 6mm glass as it will have a safety factor of about 2.9 - not quite the 3.8 recommended but close enough. I don't think I need to add much, it's all been said pretty much. The glass thickness article fairly clearly explains about safety factors. It's really up to you what you chose to go with. Anything under the recommended safety factor is your risk... One of the first statements in the article says the glass is supported on all four sides (edges), so it definitely means it has top bracing... I've had a look at the GARF site. I'm currently working with them to verify the method we've both used to base our calculations. I'll let you know the outcome... As Cees said, don't think, use the calculator. I've had Pilkington Glass look at the glass thickness calculator and they've certainly not reported any problem with it. Toughened glass costs about twice as much as standard float glass.

I have turned off the download page for the 2004 National Fish Show. It's no longer needed. If anyone now needs any of the technical documents, send me an email and I'll send one back with them as attachments. We may be doing this again next year. If so, I'll reenable the page then... 8)

Good news indeed! Should we contact MAF anyway to see if they are planning doing anything about stopping bloodworm imports? It's best to pre-empt these things and maybe we'll even have a chance to do something about it if they are planning anything...

Thanks to the judges from me as well. It appears I overdid it a bit, burning the candle at too many ends. On Monday morning I woke up with the Bot and have pretty much slept solidly since. That'll teach me to be better organised for next year. It was an excellent event, but only because of the participation of the Exhibitors, the Judges, Clubs, Sponsors and the public. A great effort was also put in by the Hawkes Bay Aquarium Society. It usually falls to a few to do just about everything and my thanks go out to those who spent their entire weekend helping out. The judges did an awesome job. I had no idea it would take so much effort to get everything done. Having never been involved in that side of the show before I didn't know what to expect. Next time we'll be much better prepared. Thanks also to the Marlborough club who turned up without being asked at closing time and volunteered to help pack the show up. Finally, thanks to the Seahorse Farm for donating us the venue.

We did nothing to the water. It is spring fed and has no chlorine. The pH is about 8.0 when it comes out of the tap and it drops to about 7.5 after a couple of days. Most of the tanks were filled up 3 days before the show. As Rob said there was only one fatality and it's because the fish jumped out. Another fish jumped out 4 times as well but it was picked up and put back into it's tank before there was a problem... It was an excellent weekend for all. The worries I had leading up to the show disappeared by 10am on Saturday morning as the carpark overflowed. We had about 2200 visitors to the show and the Seahorse Farm had about 1100 (5 x their previous record). We are considering holding another show next year but need to discuss it a bit first... 8) 8)

Why get a dechlorinator. If you stick the water in a big container and bubble air through it for a couple of days there will be no chlorine left in it...

Go Cat, - as long as any person who wants to enter fish is a member by Wednesday they can enter fish.

At this stage since there seems to be some difficulty in using the .pdf entry form, I'll take entries by email provided all the details are in a similar format to the entry form and all the details are there.

Use the entry form to register the fish before Wednesday 22nd Sept. You can courier the fish to us any time from Wednesday 22nd onwards or bring them with you on Friday. Judging starts 7:00am Saturday morning. Go to the National Fish Show page listed under the FNZAS homepage for information. The entry form is available for download on this page.

Good one! 8)

Just like when you normally ship fish. Bring them bagged and in a chilly bin. They will be fine as long as there aren't too many per bag. Bring them with you when you come to the dinner and we'll add them to the auction. It's best to bag them in the auction lot sizes you plan to sell. Then you don't need to rebag them later.

I've used standard non-mineralised animal drench a couple of times in the past. The stuff I've used has always mixed up well with water.

No, never heard of it Alan. Cure-Ex (Masterpet) work pretty well also. It comes in a 50ml bottle and has good directions. It takes a lot longer to work (2-3 days) but it still gets the job done. I would have told you about it earlier but I forgot what it was called and had to go look it up...

Yes, you can enter any type of fish (including coldwater). There are also many other sections too, miniature tanks, medium tanks, planted tanks, novelty tanks. The show is at the Seahorse Farm in Napier. You don't have to go to the dinner to be at the auction. The auction starts at 7:00pm. You have to be a FNZAS member to attend the auction however. Thanks for helping with the fish ID's Rob. I'm not the best at identifying fish, - not enough decent books. Please remember, fish entered in the show, either being judged or not still need to be registered on the entry form by Wednesday the 22nd Sept. This is so we can organise the 200+ entries into groups by class etc. It's certainly not a matter of just turning up with fish... Remember too, entering fish is free. The exhibitor of any fish gets into the show for free too (but only the exhibitor). Here's the link again... http://www.fnzas.org.nz/496.0.html

Many optical levle sensors are quite light sensitive. If it is in the dark you can get away with a cheap switch. If there is a lot of light at certain times you may need the non-light sensitive version. The non-light sensitive version cost about 4x as much...

Try me! Is the sump in the dark?

You don't. Prime kills the chlorine used to regenerate Purigen. It is a one way chemical reaction. Once prime is used to kill the chlorine you throw it out...

Sounds like the FNZAS Fish Committee better do something about this! Duh, that's me (and Rob and Kevin). What do you think Rob and Kevin, should we draft up a letter and have our say in the matter. MAF may just ignore us but at least they may try to explain why...

Best check it's not a noxious plant first though...

If it's high ammonia, try ammo-lock. It gives almost instant ammonia relief. You'll still need to do water changes.

You need something better than meth blue. You need Levamisole (cattle and sheep drench). You can get small containers at places like farmlands for a few dollars. Make sure it is unmineralised. Use enough to get about 15ppm concentration in your tank. Within 12 hours of adding it the worms will be all gone. It kills any worms inside or outside the fish and breaks the breading cycle so usually only one treatment is necessary. After 3 days, do a 50% water change and add carbon to the filter. It doesn't kill your biological filter either (unlike Meth Blue).

The problem with putting multiple LED's in parallel is not all LED's are made the same. Each LED will have it's own threshold voltage and dynamic impedance. If the LED's are all paralleled there will be a different current in each one and therefore a different brightness. In most cases the LED's will be similar enough, but in some cases one or more may be dimmer than the rest. Ira, your LED may not be faulty, it may just have a higher threshold voltage and therefore less current through it. The best way to get even brightness is stated in the earlier article; put as many LED's in series that your voltage source will allow. Off 12V, 3 in series is ok as there is still about 3V left over to drop across the resistor (worst case). In reality, most LED's have between 1.6 and 3V as a voltage drop depending on their colour. Blue and White LED's have the highest voltage drops. Make multiple strings of LED's all with their own current limiting resistor or pot. Connect all the strings to one voltage source. Make sure all the LED's are of the same type, colour and efficiency in each string (ie; all red, 6mcd @20mA...). Calculate your resistor off the remaining voltage. If you want to know what it will be because you aren't sure what the voltage drop is, start with a high value like 2K2. As long as the LED is glowing a bit it is pretty much at it's forward bias voltage. You can measure the voltage across the resistor and use this to calculate the resistor value to get the mA you want.

I still only have 17 fish entered. At least there are 2 fish in a couple of classes but most fish entered so far will win by default. Please get thise entries in soon or we'll have 283 empty tanks to look at. Remember, next Wednesday (22/9/2004) is the deadline. I may accept late entries but don't count on it!