paekakboyz

chur Blue! its any odd kind of crack as it doesn't fully penetrate the panel but you can see the light refracting off it within the panel (hmm if that makes sense!). not worried about the appearance of the tank itself but just don't want to end up having to pull it down to sort out a leak!

Picked up a tank and have noticed that one corner has a small horizontal fracture in the base of one of the side panels. It's one of the Aqua-one tanks (approx 70 litres) and I'm wondering how i might strengthen it as the glass is only 4-5mm thick. my plan was to get a small square section of glass (about 5cm by 5cm and maybe 1cm thick) and silicon it flat in the corner so that it would support the entire corner and fuller cover the fracture. ideas/advice etc would be much appreciated

good stuff dixon, I'm going to go and have a look at a new tank tomorrow as I want to have a crack at breeding cardinals as well! I was pretty much going to follow the article on the site and see how things went. I'll post updates as I try it out.

a small school of cardinals would look good if the tank was planted... it might be too small for a pair of rams or kribs? not sure on that...

got both of them from Animates in town early last year - they were about 2-3cm long then and are around 6-7cm now. both Males tho : (

Finally got some pics taken of the tank - more to follow but here is one of my 2 blue rams...

Jebo 819 are pretty cheap (less than $200) and would handle that tank no problems at all. I've had two Jebo's for several years now and they've been reliable and easy to maintain. The more expensive brands tend to have more readily available parts etc for repairs though...

personally I'd recommend dropping either the penguin tetras or the emperor tetras and getting more cardinals. I have a shoal of cardinals in a 4 footer and I used to have about 8-10 penguin's as well. I found that as they occupied the same layer the cardinals would be pretty shy around the larger more active penguins... Rams go so well with cardinals - really complimentary colours!

I'd say you need to start a new tank with this stuff. It is essentially a clay mix and when disturbed in the water it makes a real mess. I got a 10kg bag from Bunnings for less that $15 dollars (for a 350litre tank 120*50*60). I laid about 1cm of gravel at the bottom (for the larger plants to grab into) then 2-3cm of the aquatic mix followed by 5-6cm of gravel. You need to make sure it is well covered by gravel. Usual process of being careful not to disturb the gravel etc when filling the tank! you can easily siphon away any clay dust once it settles on top of the gravel again but its better to avoid it if possible! I've found it works really well - you need to be gentle moving plants with large roots (swords etc) as that will disturb the mix as well but otherwise its been really good. My tank is pretty heavily planted and that's using only aquatic mix as the fert and lightining (no CO2 etc). It was easy to setup but if I do decide to make any major changes I'd have to start over (remove and wash gravel - get 'fresh' aquatic mix etc). good luck!

so the more trades you've made the more you know about the rules of TM? aren't the terms & conditions available to anyone to check out? This person is within their rights to have peace of mind that their fish are going to someone who can look after them properly. There is no chance for confusion as they are clear that this is a condition of the auction. I'd imagine that anyone thinking of bidding (unless they are taking the proverbial) has a setup that will meet the needs of the fish.

fair enough IMO. They are cool looking fish and newbs with an interest and money might purchase them only to try and keep them in the wrong sort of conditions. re getting blacklisted - seems a lot of people trawl through the site making comments (about conditions, the trader, the prices etc) when they don't actually intend to participate in the auction so sellers have little patience with them... a bit stink they lumped you in with that lot but perhaps they got a bit miffed by your comment.

thanks all, riccia might be a good one to have a look at - there aren't any really light hungry plants in the tank (glosso etc) and I'd only look to have about 20-30% surface coverage... enough to give a bit of shade and a nice effect.

Hi All, I've got a pretty well planted tank and I'm thinking of adding some floating plants... I was wondering if people might be able to suggest some of their personal favs! thanks!

yep sometimes having only a little info or exp can make you really dangerous!! especially if you are the sort of person that others look too! if those staff members are being led by that person that's not a great situation!!

I've got a school of 25 @ 28c, 7pH, WC 20-30% weekly - mixed feeding (flakes, frozen bloodworms etc) and they are happy as. As Blue pointed out if you've got a healthy bunch and good lighting their colours look awesome! My Fav fish by quite a margin

In fairness to one of those LFS (a franchise one in wgtn) they do have Q tanks (tank is covered up and fish not for sale) and they do have a couple of staff members who take an interest in helping people get set up correctly. However those two are both into fish themselves so your point about the majority of employees lacking knowledge of fish etc is totally valid! These shops even have a startup handout for customers (about cycling etc) yet they don't seem to inform their own staff! I think you've got to be careful abotut 'educating' employees, especially in front of their workmates or even worse the customer!!

perhaps quotes in US currency makes it easier for overseas customers to convert to their local currency? shipping products overseas even in wholesale amounts adds to the cost - look at how many people on the forum will accept a lower local price for fish to avoid the need to ship them... thats an awful lot of people that you are considering untrustworthy... ('generally' and a population well over a billion!!). any online purchase either within NZ or from overseas has potential risk - I don't know the extent to which you can predict the quality of the person or business from their language skills...

sounds like all the filtration happens in the sump - both the intake and output are in the sump itself... I've seen a couple of sumps setup with internals in them for additional filtration which seemed like a good idea. Henward - If you've got the sump partitioned where/how do you place the filters etc? pics would be awesome too!

did you have your spraybar angled so that the water was breaking the surface or at least creating a current you could see on the surface? if not it's likely that it wasn't doing much aeration... How heavily stocked is your tank? if your stocking levels are high enough that you require additional aeration (either from an airstone or the spraybar) you might be overstocked.... Red and inflamed gills are an indication of an ammonia spike (and perhaps stress from lack of oxygen as well). Now that they have stopped gasping give them a few days and see if the redness/pinkness goes away - its much more likely to be related to the lack of oxygen in the water than flukes (unless you've already had an identified case of that?)

tiger barbs have a rep as being nippy esp if kept individually or in really small numbers... you might get away with 7 though, that could be enough to keep them amused player with each other rather than bugging the angels. Not sure if the size of the angels would have any impact either - maybe they wouldn't chase more mature fish?

I'm about to add some lemon tetras to my planted tank that has about 25 cardinals at the moment... should be a nice contrast in colour and body shape - the lemon's can look awesome when their colours come out.

neons are notorious for dying off - seems they are breed in such large numbers that they are less robust these days... You could move to cardinals if you are looking for a tougher yet similar (better IMHO!) fish - you'd just need to wait until the tank has been runnning a few months.

sorry to hear about your loss - always sucks to loose a fish (or two!) But if you are after another one I've got a 8-10cm chinese algae eater (I think it's a golden one) that I want to get rid of... pm me if you're interested

"measured how much water went into the tank to the mid point of the recommended range" have you been advised not to fill it to within a centimetre of the top? unless there is a structural issue (lack of bracing etc) you should be fine to top it up further.

that's a good suggestion from Ira - you could always go for a bigger unit that is spec'd to handle a tank that size but if it breaks you are left without any filtration. Having two units running can give you a heap of filtration (say you get two units spec'd at 300L or so each) and redundancy if one breaks down. Big units might include the Fx5 or something from near the top of the range from Ehiem or Fluvall... I run a Jebo 819 on a 360 litre tank although it's not too heavily stocked and I also have a smaller internal filter running as back up and in case I need to set up another tank in a hurry.