Joe

Yay!!!!! :happy1: :happy2: !drool: Goodness that would last me a lifetime! :happy2:

Yay I've finished :happy1:

Almost finished my homework..... :yaw2:

Yep.

When I was year 9 we got to choose 8 different subjects as well as the five compulsory subjects - health and PE, maths, science, social studies and english.

It's science homework. What's annoying is we get assessed on this particular thing, and what's even more annoying is the various different questions are achieved, merit and excellence I hate any work with these sorts of different questions. What happened to pass or fail? :dunno:

I'm doing some stupid homework right now. I feel depressed as a result of this situation.

Yesssss! :happy1: Neons all the way! At this stage (although my ideas will probably change over time again) I'd like a high tech planted 120x45x60cm tank with a couple of 150w halides, and my two breeding tanks and the 140L tank

You stole my idea!!!!!! :an!gry :slfg:

I made curry for dinner again.

The female I bought from Jen died, and the male I sold to Bilbo died &c:ry Maybe Hollywood Fish Farms might have them? The Albany store has them on their livestock list - http://www.hollywoodfishfarm.co.nz/read/story/526/ Also incase you're interested, the Mt. Roskill store also has "Panda Dwarf" which is probably nijsseni or panduro - http://www.hollywoodfishfarm.co.nz/read/story/527/

Put some peat in a bucket of water and leave it for a week and then put the water in the tank.

Yep they sure do. They also look much neater and more stylish IMO Yes! :happy1:

Another four fry!! That's still good :bounce: I am unable to breed the neons at the moment because I still need breeding traps and a peat filter, so in the mean time I'm going to have a good go at breeding the trifasciata I'll also have brine shrimp this time round

Very well put Sam

These are breeding tanks. And they are both going to be loaded with tannins and the one for the neons is going to be covered because the fry are light-sensitive. Don't think it will be possible to grow anything in these tanks. I will put some oak leaves and wood in the tanks, don't worry. I'm not going to keep the fish in completely bare tanks!

Sheepsnana you're saying pretty much that, for example, keeping 30 neons in a 60L tank is cruel? :facepalm: Like Sam said, it is relative to the size of the fish. Amano has a 30cm cube in his gallery with 20 ember tetras and they are tiny! And they look perfectly happy in the tank. But if he put a pair of Apistos in there then that would be cruel. See what we're getting at?

They're double piece lids.

The edges are also polished... ALL of my tanks and lids have polished and bevelled edges :facepalm: :oops: :slfg:

Here's some of my experience... For newbies, I personally think canister filters are the best to start with for filtration. They are easy to clean and easy to run, and they don't take up any room in the tank. They also have a very large media capacity. I set up another tank and used an internal filter after I set up my first tank with a canister. Seriously, internal filters are more hassle than they are worth. So difficult to clean - when you take them out of the tank, all the muck drains into the water. They also clog up really easily, have a low media capacity, and overly high flow rates. My canister filter was cycled on Caryl's tank, and the same day I bought the fish I went and picked up the cycled filter. This way I could instantly set up everything and there was no waiting process. It worked extremely well. I will note that I stocked the tank very lightly at first; only 16 tetras to begin with. I personally think that fine gravel, about 5-8cm thick, is the best substrate. It looks great, it's easy to grow plants in it, and it is easy to remove if you want to take down the tank. I've found sand is too fine and compacts a lot. It does look cool though. I definitely think it is best to use real plants. The fish seem so much happier, and look a lot healthier, with plants growing in the tank. The nicest fish I've seen in display tanks have always been in planted tanks. For lighting, a couple of T8 tubes are bright enough to grow a wide variety of plants in tanks up to 45cm tall. Anything taller, if you want to grow plants that need more light, you will need to use T5's to penetrate the extra depth. I've never had really tall tanks or plants that need lots of light so I haven't had any need for T5's. This is probably the best setup for a beginner. However, I do not agree with the common saying "you need a big tank to begin with". My first tank was 80L, and that isn't including gravel and wood. I had loads of success with this tank. I even bred fish in it and made a couple of hundred dollars selling the fry. The tank was 90x30x30cm with about 6cm of dark gravel, loads of plants, bogwood, rocks, a few tetras, a pair of flag cichlids, an Aqua One CF-1000 filter and a single 25w Sunlight flourescent T8. A lot of people cannot afford, or do not have the room, to buy a tank that holds 200L or more. For beginners, IMO, anything around 100L would be a good size to begin with.

I've never had any lids break before... :dunno: Hopefully they won't break. If they do, they are pretty cheap to replace - only $18.00 per lid and that's including the bevelled edges :thup:

Haha yeah I had some bits of glass lying around and mum and some curtain netting. A new lid with bevelled edges to match the tank will cost $36.00 so not too expensive, so I will order it once I have some money because I spent everything while I was in Christchurch

It's a makeshift lid incase they jump... I only have 10 neons and if I lost any it would be impossible to replace them because they are not in the shops anymore and very, very few were imported.

The bucket with the sand is just a small sample for testing. My last experience with sand was a disaster. It had bits of clay in it which clouded the water, and it did not clear for a couple of weeks so I removed it and put gravel in. This sample of sand is from another place, and I was going to test it and if it didn't cloud the water after a rinse I was going to go back and get some more but I found that I had a bit of gravel lying around so I used that for the 140L instead. I'm probably going to get some fine gravel for the other tanks from Organism.

Yay I finally have a proper breeding setup! I went to Christchurch a couple of weeks ago, and spent $660.00 on equipment, food and test kits. I also picked up the two new 85L tanks with had already been paid for. I have yet to set upmy brine shrimp hatchery, but I have all the bits needed. Two new tanks, on the right. Both are 50x45x40cm (85L) made from 6mm glass and with internal bases (like ADA tanks), with polished and bevelled edges and 4mm thick double piece lids with the right corners of the back pieces cut out. These will be filtered with Eheim Classic 2213 filters, and heated with Eheim Jager 150w thermostats. The large tank on the left is 65x50x50cm, and is lit with an Aqua Medic Ocean Light 150 with a 150w 6,700K Fish-Street bulb. The heater is an Eheim Jager 300w, and the tank is filtered with an Eheim Classic 2215 filter. It also has an Eheim Classic 2213 filter which will be moved on to the tank on the far right once the 2215 has cycled. Blackworm cultivation tank, filters and other bits... 140L blackwater tank. Underneath the 140L tank. Excuse the bucket of sand - it's a free sample I got from a gardening shop to test the cloudiness. Aqua Medic Ocean Light 150 magnetic ballast on chair. The fish I will be breeding are Paracheirodon simulans, Apistogramma trifasciata and Hyphessobrycon elachys. I need to set up a peat filter and make some breeding traps before I can attempt to breed the tetras. I will also be getting some gravel and sponge filters. The gravel is for the Apistogramma. I also need a proper lid made for the 140L tank. Thanks for looking Joe