Ianab

As you started out with some cycled media, have done water changes and only have small fish in the tank, the nitrite and ammonia spikes may be barely detectable. Make sure the levels stay at zero, and it should be fine to add a few more fish. The filter will only be cycled to match the number of fish you have in the tank, so build them up gradually. What you have noticed is the advantage of cycling with established media or pre-cycling the filter. You have some working biomedia in the tank right away, and may only notices some minor bumps in levels as the tank settles down. Cheers Ian

Mankey Most plecos love veges like that. You just weigh down a chunk and leave it overnight. They will attack it and rasp off the flesh. Just take out the leftovers next day so it cant pollute the water. I would eat the sweet part myself though and give them the skin, they will still go crazy over that. Ian

This is the eel I was talking about. As for it eating small fish.. well as you can see in the video .. the cat was concerned Ian

You would be surprised what lives in even a fairly small stream, even in an urban area. The stream at the bottom of my garden is one you can step across without getting your feet wet, but there is a 3ft eel living in there, crays and probably other fish as well. Most natives are very shy and nocturnal, there could hundreds of them in a stream, but you never see them. Cheers Ian

You probably want to get a selection of different sized tanks. You will want small (20l) tanks to keep your livebearers seperated and only mate the ones you want, medium sized tanks (60l) for fish like kribensis and bristlenose, and some bigger tanks (100-200l) to grow out fry and for the bigger fish like Discus. If you have a range of tanks then you can just mix and match the fish to suit. Cheers Ian

Welcome Kathie In the long term you wont regret buying the FX5 filter - it IS WAY better than un undergravel system, especially if you get into keeping the bigger types of fish. It might be more filter than you actually need, but that never does any harm Ian

Melting ice will be close enough to 0 C for calibrating a fish tank thermometer. And if it breaks from measuring the temp of a good cold drink, well it needed replacing anyway. The cheap digital ones dont seem very accurate and their readings can vary with the battery voltage. I guess there is a reason they are cheap. The little glass ones with the plastic scale often aren't much better, I have seen ones where the scale rattles up and down inside the glass - thats REAL accurate. :roll: I test mine against a good lab thermometer that we use for brewing and distilling, but even a cheap one of those will set you back $20 or more. But they are MUCH more accurate. Those cheapies are OK to stick in the tank so you can see at a glance in there is a heater problem, but accuracy isn't theri strong point. Cheers Ian

This time of year there is lots of algae growing and insects falling into the pond. Goldfish can survive 2 weeks with no food, so they will be fine on 'pickings' for that time. I agree that if you want to grow them well, you need to feed them well. But they can usually survive on what they find in a big pool. My friend has a large pond with my old comet goldfsh and a couple of others. They have NEVER been fed and my one is 7 years old. The pond is full of 1" fry as well, so they cant be doing too bad Cheers Ian

Vinson is right. If you pour a few drop of vinegar onto Limestone it will bubble and fizz a bit as the acid reacts with the calcium carbonate. If thats the case it will also react with acid tank water and raise the pH and hardness. Thats fine if you have African Chiclids, but if you are trying to keep low pH and soft water it's a bad thing Ian

If you go with rockpool species they are pretty hardy and more able to handle temp and salinity changes. Put the tank in a cool place, and dont run any lights at hot times will help. I used to have a tank with cushions stars, hermit crabs, catseyes, blennys and a small sucker fish. The sucker fish was neat, if you have never seen one they look like a big slug, about 5-10cm long and their whole belly is a suction pad like a hillstream loach. They live under rocks on surf beaches and cling to the rocks even in heavy surf. They have a big frog-like mouth. Mine got so tame it would suck on the glass at the top and eat bits of fish and wood lice from my hand. DONT get those red rock crabs !!! Unless you want only ONE big red rock crab in your tank. Cheers Ian

If you cant tell the difference with the finger test then it's close enough Ian

A partial water change would do no harm, but if the fish are happy and the nitrite is coming down at the next test, then dont do anything. No more fish untill the ammonia AND nitrite both stay at zero. Cheers Ian

I agree with Ryan, if the tanks are similar temp and pH etc just move them. If they are a bit different then you can allways float them in a plastic icecream container and slowly mix the water before you release them. Ian

For hillstream loaches it would be great - but guppys would have been blown out of the water Cheers Ian

You probably want to circulate the water between 5-10 times per hour. It's not a hard and fast rule How well stocked the tank is determines how much filtering is needed, not just the tank volume. If you have more fish you need better filtering. The amount of media in the filter will also determine how well the filter works. For example example the Ehiem internal filters seem to have low flow rates on paper, but they have much bigger media than the cheapy ones that claim a higher flow rate. They pump less water, but they filter it better. It depends on the fish too, some like high current, but slow moving fish will be swirled around too much if the filter is too big. Plecos and hillstream loaches can practically live in whitewater, Bettas and guppys can be overcome by too much current. In your case the little stingray would be too small and the 1,000 lph might be too big. So look for something that moving 500-1000 litres an hour. Cheers Ian

Anyone thought of building an artifical 'rapid'. Sort of a long shallow tub with small pools and steps that the water is pumped up and flows down. The whole thing empties onto a small tank at the bottom and get recirculated again. Might be an interesting environment for borneo suckers, small plecos, native bullys and those torrent fish? The water over the little rapids would be quite shallow and fast flowing, not enough to stop the fish getting up them, but lots of spots of fast current for the fish that like that. Thoughts? Ian

Thats correct. Lumens measures how much light a lamp produces, while lux measures the actual amount of light illuminating any specific place. So the closer you are to a lamp the more lux you will have, even though the lumens from the lamp are the same. Cheers Ian

I like the idea of the river tank, but I would ditch the goldfish and go with a smaller tank, with the same length. That way you could actually generate some decent flow with a couple of large pumps and you would have less trouble keeping the water clean. If the flow was only moderate it might work with a big school of White Cloud Minnows ? Cheers Ian

You have found the reason that LEDs aren't used for everyday bright lighting - yet. As far as efficiency goes - it's something like this. Incandescant Lamp - 10 lumen/watt - 1,000 hour life Flouro lamp - 65-90 l/w - 7,000 hrs Metal Halide - 70-90 l/w - 12,000 hrs LED - 20-60 l/w - 50,000 hrs So you can see that LEDs are getting up there with the Flouro lamps for efficiency, but thats only for the flash EXPENSIVE ones, like the Luxeons. The normal cheap white LEDs work fine, but they dont have the high efficiency that the flouros do. Building a LED array that would replace a metal halide or a bank of flouros would indeed cost thousands of $$$ Cheers Ian

Sure would, if you dont need the plant growing intensity you can have a lot less LEDs in your array - so it's much cheaper. Of course a few compact flouro lamps would still be cheaper and dont put out huge amounts of heat. LEDS are easier to dim of course, you can take them from moonlight to full brightness with a very simple circuit. Cheers Ian

Not a big problem, because whatever LEDs you use you are going to use a LOT of them. Maybe 50 -200, so they can just be mounted on a long strip, or whatever shape you want really, and cover the whole tank evenly. It's the number of LEDS thats the issue, each one only costs a few dollars, but when you have to use 100 of them to make a decent lamp it gets pricey. Cheers Ian

And thats why they aren't popular... yet. They are effiecient, cool running, small and reliable... just EXPENSIVE (to get enough light grow aquarium plants anyway) AS a sidetrack.. the Windwand kinetic sculpture in New Plymouth has a LED lamp in it. To get the durablilty with the thing stuck on a 35m flexible pole. Imagine a football covered with ~800 LEDS. They wanted it to last for years as it a MAJOR job to take the pole down and replace the lamp. Cheers Ian

Get an extra filter and run it in your existing tank. Can just be a cheapy internal or HOB etc. Leave it running in the existing tank for at least 2 weeks. Then set up the new tank and it's big fancy filter, give it a couple of days for the water to clean and the temp to stabilise. Then move the first fish AND the pre-cycled spare filter to the new tank at the same time. Then just let the established filter and the new big one run side by side. The new filter will gradually cycle, while the established filter will prevent a dangerous ammonia spike and when things settle down after a couple of weeks you can add more fish. What this does is put at least some working biofiltration into the new tank along with the first fish. Of course the cheapy filter isn't big enough to support a 6 foot tank, but the 6ft tank isn't fully stocked to begin with, so it will be OK. After that, just put the spare filter where you think it will do the most good. Never hurts to have a backup filter in a big tank like that. Cheers Ian

If you are getting fin rot and white spot and deaths it's generally a sign that something is wrong with your water conditions. Those diseases happen when the fish are getting stressed out by something and their natural immunity is low. You can treat the symptoms, but you need to find and fix the underlying cause. Personally I would up the water changes (and hope it's not something in your tap water causing it.) I know big water changes aren't generally recommended, but if your tank water is toxic, then fresh tap water is an improvement. Sometimes you can get toxic bacteria buildup in the gravel if it's deep and not vacumed regularly. If you suspect that be carefull disturbing it, it will release more toxins when you stir it up. What you can do is take out part of the water into buckets, net out the fish and put them and the filters in the buckets. Then clean out the tank, wash the gravel etc. It doesn't have to be steralised or anything, just the nasty crud washed out. Rinse the gravel untill it runs clean and wash anything else in clean water. Refill and put the saved water, fish and filters back in. Really you have only done a 50% water change, you haven't disturbed the filters, and the fish should be fine. Dont be afraid to step up the water changes if your tank is highly stocked. Large water changes after a long time are bad because you will change the water parameters suddenly. But if you change regularly your tank is close to tap water conditions anyway, so the fish dont notice. I do 50% changes each week on my well stocked tanks, and would not hesitate to do more frequent changes if I had to. Cheers Ian

Thats LEDs big advantage - long life, as long as they aren't overdriven to get more than the specced light output. You could resonably expect 10 years + from a properly designed LED lamp. The only reason that we aren't all using them is the cost :roll: But I suggest thats going to come down in the near future, like most mass produced electronics. In 10 years time they will probably be cheap and commonly used, much like compact flouros have just become. The other issue is what the spectrum of the light output is. How suitable is it for plant growth? LEDs usually have weird light output curves. It may be fine.. I dont really know :-? Cheers Ian