Ianab

If you have enough bacteria they will process the ammonia and nitrite almost instantly, hours anyway. The ammonia wouldn't have been released in one burst, it would have been over hours as the algae died and and was broken down by other bacteria in the tank. The only reason you would see an ammonia buildup is if you dont have enough filter bacteria, or they have been killed off by the treatment. The best move now is several large partial water changes to bring the nitrate level down to something safe. A couple of 50% changes should do it, and you can do those as often as you need. It's also likely that other toxins were released when the algae was killed off, and that would help kill off your fish as well. Ian

Clown loaches are slow growers, but they can live a LONG time. In ideal conditions they might sprint to 7cm in the first year, after that it's 2 or 3 cm a year, Max. So those monster ones are 10years + old. Big tank, good water conditions, lots of sinking food and they will grow. Make sure you have a decent group, one or two on their own will be shy and maybe not feed as well as they should. A big group is more active and will come out and mob the food more. 200l tank, you dont want them growing too fast, they are going to get too big eventually. Ian

Big Tank - thats all I can say really Bala sharks are a schooling fish, they get to about a foot long and a fast movers. 6ft tank stuff The silver dollars aren't as big, but are schoolers too Gourami - well if you have a tank big enough for the others, you can fit a couple of gourami in there too. Ian

They are seldom agressive or predatory, although I do have one that has a taste for guppies. :-? My big fellas are in a tank with kribensis cichlids and tiger barbs, no problems. Only potential problems are really small fish, or large slow movers like Discus or Birchirs - or REALLY agressive fish that might attack the pleco. They are live and let live with most tankmates. Ian

They can eat a lot. Best option I think it to stick with a couple of tablets each day, and then drop in a big chunk of vege every couple of days. Basically you cant overfeed them them on the veges, drop in a big piece, let them gnaw on it overnight, and take out the leftovers next day. If there are leftovers, then it's had all it can eat. If there is nothing left, put in a bigger piece next time. They also like some meatier treats occasionally, I give mine a whole cooked shrimp or some sinking catfish pellets occasionally. Veges for most of their diet, but they are omnivores and like meatier stuff too. And get the gravel vac ready.. what goes in must come out. :-? Ian

If it feeds to the sea then many natives will find it (Eels, bullies and galaxids anyway) without you doing anything. It's likely you have eels in there already, getting fat on the gambusia? But I can see how it's hard to make a business case for spending $$. But as a PR move, setting up a native fish reserve might work? Ian

Mine lives in a little 5gal tank buy itself, no tankmates, safer that way. But other people do keep them with fish. The Koura will try and stalk small fish, but they aren't very good hunters. The tank needs a normal level of filtering, they dont need or like high flow. Just a normal small power filter will be fine. Keep them as cool as possible. Depending on how warm the room is you may have problems in summer with them getting too hot. The tank cant get too cold, unless it starts to freeze. I suggest you just set up a small tank and just get one to start with, they are fascinating to keep and watch. Make sure your tank has a good lid. Stella may be able to give you better advice on tankmates as long as you have a big enough tank. Mine just gets fed sinking catfish tablets and bits of the plecos algae tabs. I've had it about 6 months and it's just molted so it must be growing. They are very slow growing, maybe only 1/4" per year. Even a 1" baby could be 4 years old, and actually big enough to breed. Ian

For sure 8) I'm re-organising my tanks so I have some space for a few bullies. I'm not sure what species are in the local river (Patea river at Stratford), but I've seen dozens of small ones flitting around in the shallows down at the local park so a netting mission will be on once things warm up a bit more. I see From the NIWA site that Torrent Fish are here in Taranaki, looks like the smaller streams around the coast, not right up here above the hydro dam. The farm I grew up on had Giant Kokopu in the small streams too, likely they are still there, but a bigger tank is a must before I get any of those. Ian

Dixon is on the rigth sort of track. But how much the heaters run is an unknown, and really depends on the temp of your room + the tank size and how insulated it is. Hard to guess, and as it's the main power draw it will throw the numbers out a lot. The Warehouse has cheap plug in power meters, ($20). You set the tank up to run through that and it will measure the actual power draw over 24 hours and tell you exactly how many kW/hr have been used. Multiply that by your local power cost and 30 days in a month. I suspect the actual number will be less that the $27 per month, unless your room is really cold. And remember in the winter the heat that is put into the tank ends up in the room anyway, so it's not really 'wasted'. If you had enough tanks it would keep your room nice and warm wiht no extra heating Ian

Yeah.. A high end game machine will draw over 200w, but you can run the program as a background task and only draw about 30 watts more than idle. You dont have to run the machine 24/7 But my box with no monitor draws 50watts idle and 80watts running at 100%, so thats not so bad. That box will do 4 average work units in about an hour and has a RAC of 2,710 and still climbing. It was built to run the SETI task, but I use it as my daily PC too. But most sane people dont put new Q6600 CPUs in a basic system :-? Ian

What the folks above have said. You have moved some cycle bacteria in with the filter media, but unless you supply them some ammonia they wont multiply, and will in fact gradually die off. One option is to get some 'crash test dummy' fish in there. A couple of goldfish, a bunch of danios or guppies. Something cheap and hardy. Because the tank is big, and the cycle has been jumpstarted they will survive. But by being there they will provide the system with some ammonia to keep things ticking over untill you get your permanant fish organised. Ian

It takes about 20 days for your average credit to even out. A P4 2ghz machine running 24/7 will settle out about 300 credits. My Quad core should run about 3,000, but there are single PCs running over 8,000. But any credit you generate is helping the project. Be warned, you will be sucked into the vortex. :-? Ian Edit: look on the message boards for the optimised applications. You have to do some messing about to install them, but they will usually double the amount you can process.

The thing about SETI and UFOs is a slim connection. UFO = Unidentified Flying Object. Cricketman has seen an object, in the sky (so it was flying) and couldnt identify it. Hence it's a UFO. That doesn't mean ET was riding in it, but again.. who knows. I sure dont, and he's not sure. If we KNEW it was a MODEL 37 Flying Saucer.. then it wouldn't be Unidentified any more would it What SETI does is analyse Radio Telescope signals for anomolous signals. It's real science, maybe nothing will be found, but at least we looked. The amazing thing about the project is it's the biggest computer project ever, about a million CPUs working together from all over the world Cheers Ian

Overkill? Probably. Going to harm your Koura? No way. It will cost you about 7 cents a day to run, about $2 a month. If your current filter is 7watts, then thats only one dollar a month more. If you fitted a spray bar it would break up the flow and slow it down a bit, and you could get a nice gentle current from one end of the tank to the other. Koura are happy to live in fairly fast slowing streams, so a bit of current wont bother them. Ian

As the filter is already cycled you should have no issues just adding some fish and letting things find their natural balance, especially in a tank that big. I suggest you just drop in the Danios, and if everything is fine after a week, add a few more of whatever. Neons last is a good idea though, let the tank get established and stable before you add those. But really I dont think it will make a big difference what group you add first. Good luck Ian

Like the others have said, tank isn't big enough for a Kinfe fish, long term anyway. But loaches, yes you have some options. But look for the smaller species, as they do need to live in a group, I would say 4 minimum. Look for Zebra, Dwarf Chain or Kuhlis. They all stay small and a group of any of those will be fine in a 70-80l tank. They can live fine with any other small community fish that you want as well. Cheers Ian

Anyone else here contributing to the SETI program? It's a Berkley Uni program to search radio telescope signals for interesting radio frequency signals. Nothing conclusive found yet, but there are about a million PCs working on it. We may never find a conclusive signal, but it would be silly not to check for new messagaes in the inbox. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/index.php Ian PS.. 5,400 cr / day.. 8)

Looked in the little Koura tank this morning :-? Whew, just a moulted shell, Crawly is still fine and hiding under a log. I've had him about 6 months now and this is the first moult, pretty cool I think 8) Note the gravel in the tank, it was a level layer. Now one side is bare bottom and the other is 3" deep. It's moved all that gravel over time. They can certainly dig if they want to. Ian

The Ice was probably the best way to pack them. A bit of cold wont harm them and it slows down their metabolism so they survive the trip better. Once you get them up to room temp and in some fresh water they would come back to normal pretty quick. Good luck 8) Ian

I think I posted this video a while back. It's in my back garden. But today I found out this is the baby of the ones that lives there. We were checking out the bottom garden and there was a huge splash, then some more random splashing. Looked in and there was an Eel about 4 ft long and 5" wide swimming up through the shallows under the foodbridge. It was 1/2 out of the shallow water, only 2-3" deep, hence the splashing. It checked out the lamb chop bones the neighbour had dropped in for them, grabbed the one with the most meat left, and splashed back down the stream to it's hiding place. I will take the camera next time for sure and try to get some more video, but what I really want is to build a feeding platform as I'm sure you could get them to hand feed. 8) Ian

Felt it here in Stratford, only gentle, but enough to rock the tanks. Went for while so I guess it was big someplace. Nothing on Geonet yet, but they usually have the details there pretty quick. http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html Ian

Excellent 8) You get a much better idea of a fishes habits seeing it swimming rather than still pictures. The night time one is cool too. I bet during the day there was nothing happening in there. Ian

Yeah.. it aint really cold unless the condensation on the inside of the windows freezes Seriously the watt / hour calculation will give you absolute maximum power that the heater could draw. But because it's on a thermostat it will only run part of the time, and in a small tank like that it wont be very much. A 50w can keep a 60l up to temp if needed. So in a tank that size it may only run 25% of the time. But you are right about the temperature, if it drops below about 10C then goldfish go into a semi-hibernation winter mode and become less active. Keeping the tank at ~16C will be fine. Ian

Think Rockpool. The species you find living in a rockpool are much hardier than the general marine species. They get fluctuating temps and salinity etc. Things that I had good luck with years ago was cushion stars, hermit crabs, and those weird marine sucker fish. They live on rocky surf beaches and look like a cross between a frog and a slug. Mine got very tame and would swim up and cling to the top of the glass and wait to be fed slaters or bits of fish. Shrimps and blennys are other options. Just one caution, dont catch one of those red rock crabs, unless you only want ONE of them left in the tank. They will eat anything else. Ian

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