Warren

Hi Dennis, Give me a call, you're welcome to stop by and see my setup. I'll be moving soon but just about everything will still be here then. My number is 06 843 1401 or 025 410 479. Warren

I used rainwater for about 2 years. It worked really well for Discus and planted tanks. Needed a little buffering to keep the pH up but not much. Was really good at keeping the algae down. Before that, my plants would not grow and algae was always dominant. It didn't help that the tap water had 6-8ppm phosphate! Have now changed to RO since I'm in Hawkes Bay where it is mostly sunny. I old have 2000L of storage and it was not enough to get me through summer. RO solved that.

Just a small suggestion, - when you want holes in plastic, you should drill them; do not use your soldering iron. In fact, you shouldn't use a soldering iron to melt plastic at all. The volatile's in the plastic react with the special coating on the copper tip of the soldering iron. It causes the coating to be eaten away. Then the tip of the iron starts to disintegrate as the copper reacts with the solder flux when actually used as a soldering iron. Iron tips are *$%#@!** (very) expensive. I hope this help all you people who wonder why your soldering iron tip slowly gets eaten away.

Back to the thread topic.... I guess I'll be going too. If wine will be there then I'll go since its my one of my good friends. Oops, have to go anyway don't I??!!

Ok, here goes: 3 x 225mm x 150mm x 180mm - Mini Planted Tanks 6 x 300mm x 150mm x 150mm Killifish Tanks 6 x 300mm (25L) Cube Breeding Tanks - Tetras / Discus Growout 2 x 500mm (120L) Discus Breeding Cubes 2 x 600mm x 300mm x 300mm (55L) - Mini Planted Tanks 6 x 1200mm x 500mm x 500mm (250L) - Growout Tanks - Tetras / Discus 1 x 1820mm x 600mm x 680mm (680L) - Display Tank - Cichlids 1 x 900mm Dia x 1000mm (550L) - Display Tank - Borneo Tiger 1 x 2400mm x 810mm x 650mm (1200L) - Planted Discus Tank 2 x 1000L Drum Coldwater Tanks - Goldfish 1 x 3000mm x 1000mm x 1200mm (3150L) - Empty Tank (Sold) I'm currently scaling everthing down. I'm moving (well starting to move) in about 2 weeks. It's going to take about a month to move everything, but while I'm at it I'm going to reluctantly cut back to about a dozen tanks total.

If you want to put a school of Tigers together then you'll need a much bigger tank. Have I got the tank for you! Its 3m x 1m x 1.2m. It would be good for about 6-8 Tigers.

I have 2, one is 250mm and about 7 years old (I've had it for 3 years) and the other is about 9 months old and is about 100mm long and growing fast. They are in 2 different tanks at the moment, but as soon as the smaller one gets to about 150mm I'll move it in with the larger one. I have finally got the larger one to eat dead and frozen food. The smaller one will still only eat live food.

Look in the stream to see if there is lots of aquatic life. If there is there will be no problem. I have fed my fish live foods caught from local streams for over 8 years. I've never had a disease introduced yet. I've also collected many logs or rocks from rivers and beaches and put them in tanks after only a rinse to clean off the worst of the dirt / cobwebs etc. If the stream or river looks healthy and has plenty of life in it then it is generally ok in NZ. In other countries it may not be.

In reply to John's Post: It takes 2-3 months for a filter to fully mature (if it has high surface area bio media in it) but will start being effective immediately. The bigger the filter the longer it will take. After 2-3 months the filter will have reached a stage where it is stable. 10 times an hour is ok, I have several tanks running this turnover. 2-6 times is all you really need depending on how mucky the fish are (2x for fish that don't make much mess and 6x or greater for the messy ones). The flow through an undergravel depends on many factors. How much air is bubbling up the tube, how far down the tube the bubbler is and how long the tube is. It will also depend on the drag from the undergravel plates and gravel and how much the outlet restricts the flow. Bill is right, all surfaces in an aquarium are places bacteria can and do colonise. They may not however thrive on all those surfaces. An undergravel filter has a relatively small area but it is still larger than the walls, ornaments, rocks, wood and plants in the rest of the tank. People spend $500+ on good filters because they are better than undergravel filters. The bio media has a much greater surface area, is easier to clean and usually has compartments for chemical filtration. Try reading the articles I wrote some time ago specifically about filtration and general tank-keeping. Hopefully they will help. Here are the links: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/aquarium-conditions.0.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/filtration.0.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/filtration-2.0.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/filtration-3.0.html

I hope everyone has a great, safe and relaxing Christmas! Best Regards to All Warren

Cool! I'm glad people are finding it usefull.

It is here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/glassthickness.0.html

I think its just an upset guts too. If it was cammalanus, there would be multiple red worms hanging out the fishes butt, all just a bit fatter that hairs. Just for your information, the most effective treatment for cammalanus worms is with levamisole. It is the active ingredient in cattle drench. I have used this before. I got a 1 litre bottle of non-mineralised cattle drench and dosed the tank at 15ppm levamisole. Within 1 hour, worms were dropping out of the fishes butts like crazy. 24 hours later, worms all gone. After a 50% water change and lots of activated carbon in the filter, the levamisole was pretty much gone. There was no recurrence of the worms either so it must have killed any eggs (if there were any). Levamisole is quite hard on the fish, but the treatment is short (only 24 hours). You can tell when there is levamisole in your tank as it has quite a distingtive and strong smell. You can also tell when the carbon has done its job, yeah, you got it - no smell.

Best stick with easy ones until I have more experience with them.

Don't worry, I'm not cutting back that much. I'll still have all the Killies!

If the place thats looking at buying it at the moment comes thru, it will be going to a very good home.

No worries, we all make little blunders from time-to-time. At least I got the engineering part right. Maybe I'll make another big'n once I have my own place, - all settled in...

There is good new and bad news with the big tank. The good news is it still ok, - no breaks or leaks. The bad news is that I'm probably not going to keep it. It's just a bit too big. I think I've bitten off just a little bit more tha I can chew. Plus I'll have virtually no lounge left! There are a whole bunch of reasons for selling it, but the main reason is financial. I've spent $1825.00 to date building it. However, there is approx $900 of lighting, $700 of filtration, $200 for plumbing + lots of dollars to stock it left to go. Well over $2000.00 to get it up and running. It will also cost nearly $150.00 a month to run it (power + food + filter media etc). Sure I could do it but, I'm still renting and need to get into my own place oneday. I'd rather thats sooner than later, so something has to go. So, anyone want a big tank? I'll probably scale down my fishroom a bit as well. I live mostly at my partner's place and only spent 1-2 nights a week at my place to do the fish maintenance. Both our places are too small for either of us to move to one. Even though I'm just about never there, I still use $250.00+ of power each month. Cutting back the fishroom to 10-12 tanks should help heaps with the power bill (was $70-80 before the fishroom). So, sorry to all who were anxiously awaiting the pictures of the new setup, but it rather looks like it won't happen. There is a large local business who seems to be very interested in buying the tank. It would be a very good new home for it.

Still holding. Looks like it might be ok. Have organise the crane to come in on Tuesday next week, - tank inside for Chrismas, cool! Hopefully between now and then there is no

I have a container above the aquarium with an airline attached. I fill it with water and salts and the bubbles dissolve it. I also trickles very slowly over about 1 hour into the tank. Its an old Coke bottle (plenty of those around here) turned upside down with its bottom removed (now the top). Simply drill 2 holes in the cap (now the bottom) and connect 2 airlines. Put 1 airline to the air supply and set a slow flow. Put the other one into the tank with a plastic valve on it to slow the flow. Start off using just water until the flow is about right (30-60 minutes to empty), then you can add the salt. Now you have an automatic doser (well semi-automatic). All you have to do is fill it up and dump in some salt. Then you can walk away and leave it to do its thing. If you want, you could even munch some more choc's!!

You should always disolve the salt in a seperate container first. It should be added a little at a time over 30-60 minutes so there is no osmotic shock to the fish.

Yip, 0.2 is a problem. I'd do about a 50% water change. Nitrite makes fish go mental (or appear to). It will eventually kill a fish if left too long at this level. 0.2 is not too bad, but it is a danger sign and does irritate the fish. It also means your filter is working ok however as the ammonia is being converted. Ammonia and Nitrite are more toxic in higher pH water. Since goldfish like harder water (with a corresponding higher pH) you have to keep an eye on Ammonia and Nitrite. Do not change the pH however, just do a water change. After doing the water change you can sit back and enjoy watching your fish. They should be immediately happier. While doing this you can munch some yummy choc's.

Will have to wait until next week to talk to the glass company. Have just measured the deflection in the glass. Its 0.5mm over the 3000mm width. Not bad at all. I'd calculated 1.1mm from the glass thickness calculator so 0.5 is good. It also means I've got glass that is on the upper end of the tensile strength limit rather than the lower. It just means the safety margin is higher. The glass thickness calculator uses the minimum tensile values for all its calculations just in case you get some weak glass.

But its the best way to see if your tank is gonna bust!

Its still ok. No leaks or cracks over night. When I first filled it up, the glass seemed to have a lots of stress in it. When the glass was hit about 1/3 of the way up, it was very hard and made a high pitched knocking noise (as if there was heaps of surface stress). After sitting over night, the noise is now softer, as if the stress has been releaved. Not sure what is going on here, but will talk to the glass company to see if they can shed some light on it.