Rob

I've got a pair of them. Males have a notch in the trailing edge of their anal fin. Adult size is 10 cm, mine aren't quite this large more like 8cm at the moment. While they will eat flake food (especially if it lands on their heads it seems) I feel they'd probably slowly decline without semi-regular live food feedings. Mine get moths and flies that a stupid enough to make their way inside and also mealworms and waxmoth larvae - as soon as food is below the surface they ignore it. They definitely appreciate vegetation at the surface so they can lurk in that - they can be a bit reclusive - just lurking in the vegetation not moving alot but that's their nature - waiting for prey. Probably not safe to keep them with small fish that also hang around the surface - I suspect that they may have grabbed a couple of the smaller hatchet fish (they have good sized mouths on them). Also probably not a good idea to house them with any type of fish known to be fin-nippers as the butterfly fish have nice trailing filaments on their pelvic fins. They have been bred in aquariums before and I've seen a bit of prespawning behaviour from my two. The information I have about spawning them is that the water needs to be warm (28 C), soft and slightly acid (6-6.5 pH), recommended to condition the pair on a varied diet including insects. The eggs float and hatch after about 51 hours (that was at 30C). The fry are supposed to be very difficult to raise - mainly due to feeding requirements - not only size of food but also keeping it at the surface.

The dwarf loaches are available - I know the shop here doesn't stock them as they think the price is too high - works out to be about $20 each retail.

Regarding your tank water pH - I'd expect rain water to have a pH less than seven - aside from things like acid rain, when CO2 dissolves in water there is a drop in pH (forms carbonic acid or something along those lines) and it can pick up the CO2 from the atmosphere. As for the concrete tank - it may still be leaching out some of the lime from the cement and thus giving that slight boost to the pH (since the pH isn't sky high I assume the tank's been in use for a while now). Has as been mentioned Flourish excel isn't a liquid activated carbon. Activated carbon is generally used to absorb bits and pieces out of the water, not to release carbon into the water - to the best of my knowledge activated carbon doesn't dissolve to any great extent. I presume the carbon in flourish excel is in the form of simple organic compounds that plants can metabolise so that the carbon can be used during photosynthesis inplace of CO2. I have no idea why we see this side affect of killing black beard algae.

Sorry Brian - the Sunday night meeting looks like it will be with us for a while. John Clayton's talk ranged over a number of things he deals with as part of his work at NIWA - Aquatic Plant Control team. For example: 1) Sediments from beneath weed beds (eg Hornwort) often don't support plant growth once the hornwort is removed. This is because of a high ammonia content and also various sulphur compounds - inital studies were done just using the sediment to try and grow radishes on (to get an idea of how well it will support growth), studies continue using actual aquatic plants. Hornwort is particularly nasty as it can form dense beds and also is able to grow at greater depths than the assorted 'oxygen weeds'. Like the oxygen weeds can can grow from very small fragments. 2) From a recent survey of aquatic plant growers it was discovered that 27% of the aquatic plant species found weren't actually listed as being present in NZ (please note the John and his team were working on a confidential basis - they just wanted to find out what plants were around - they aren't the plant police) 3) The other types of vallisneria (ie other than gigantea which as be banned for a number of years now) were only focused on because of people intentionally establishing it in locations it hadn't been found in before and people harvesting it from Hornwort infested lakes and shipping it to the South Island - they definitely don't want hornwort estabilished in the South Island lakes and it's damn near impossible to make sure you've removed every bit of it from the vallisneria. At the moment I know that vallisneria is banned in the Waikato region (under an Environment Waikato directive) and there is a question mark of a nationwide ban. Another complicating factor is the difficulty in identifying the different species of vallisneria. 4) NIWA, in conjunction with some aquatic plant growers is developing a list of preferred aquatic plants for the general public - this is a slow process though.

There's a Seachem product Flourish Excel. It's a source of organic carbon for plants (sort of like a liquid form of CO2) which has a side affect of killling black beard algae.

Done

Hi Kim, your welcome to call in next time and have a nosey at my tanks if you wish - had other things on the weekend just been so couldn't make the offer.

If the common name is accurate then it should be Cichlasoma synspilum, though some shops (Jansens Mt Eden springs to mind) have been calling a different cichlid by this common name, the misnamed cichlid was Archocentrus sajica.

Hi Lurch, you could also try Mark at Tropical Blues for bowed glass - I'm not sure if his sets of moulds go up to the size you're wanting though.

The natural tendancy for most aquarium water is to become more acidic (a combination of things - not all of which apply for you - dissolved CO2; humic/tannic acids leaching from wood; and dissolved nitrogen compounds forming nitrous acid - from fish waste products and rotting food). The comment from Dennis about Tauranga water being bad for going acid indicates to me that Tauranga water must be soft (hard water has more dissolved minerals in it, these increase the buffering capacity of the water - buffering capacity is just the ability to resist pH changes). There are a number of things you could do to increase the pH - using the pH up would do it (the cheaper form of pH up is baking soda from the supermarket) - just be aware that it's not a permanent fix - you'll have to keep on using it to keep your pH at the desired level. Alternatively you can had a small amount of limestone or crushed shell to the tank. These will gradually dissolve, as they do they increase the pH (and also water hardness). If using pH up remember that any pH change (if fish are actually in the tank) should be gradual perhaps .1-.2 per day. It's also another reason to do regular water changes - so that the pH gets bumped up again when the new tap water goes in.

The thing to remember with the assorted cures for white spot is that their (usually) only killing the water-born stage of the organism. This is one reason that you often get told to increase the temperature when dealing with whitespot - that speeds up the life-cycle so that it becomes the water-born phase more quickly where you can actually kill it. I've always worked on the: do a 50% water change (reduces the numbers of disease organisms), increase the temperature and treat with whitespot cure as per the bottles instructions scheme.

Well Alan hasn't got too bad a case of ol'timers disease today. Meeting time and place as already mentioned. The speaker for the August meeting will be John Clayton from NIWA - he's part of the Aquatic pest plants section. Things that he's likely to cover are Aquatic pest plants and their control, NZ native plants suitable for aquaria (though it's mainly unheated aquaria) and (hopefully) what's the story with vallisneria in the Waikato. Yes the club is triping over to Tauranga to visit shops and others on Saturday 17th July. Contact Dave for more details.

I haven't had any trouble getting hold of SAE's, though they're always labelled as black line flying foxes. I've tried the bleach or boiling water treatment (obviously not on plants) and that went well - mainly because the bristlenoses loved it after these treatments (yeah I was lazy - just took the wood out the tank, treated and then put it back in the tank - no scrubbing). The Seachem product Flourish Excel has a side effect of killing BBA (a gradual process not instant) For a tank where BBA is already established I'd go for a two pronged approach of bleaching wood/rocks, removing worst affected plant leaves and getting SAE's - SAE's seem to keep it in check quite nicely (if there isn't much in the tank to start with) but I haven't found them as effective at putting a significant dent in a well established meadow.

Because of the noise generated (Alan's comment) I have mine just below the surface where it still causes a ripple on the surface but no actual noise.

The snails dying and poisoning the tank is just the same as a fish dying and being left in the tank - it's not so much poisoning as it is polluting. Regarding Apple snails - if you haven't got the tank covered then the snails may crawl out (usually when they're looking for a place to lay their eggs). The yellow ones will definitely clear fell plants - the brown ones are more plant friendly and will usually only attack plants when there has been no other food for them (turns out that the two colours are actually different species rather than colour forms of the same species).

Without a photo it's hard to say what species you have has there are a number of fish that get sold under this name. Go to www.loaches.com and look at the info on hillstream loaches and pictures of Gastromyzon or Pseudogastromyzon (the two most common genera of hillstream loaches).

One good place to find out synonyms is fishbase.org For any given fish species listed there is synonyms link, which lists every scientific name the fish has been known by.

Jordinella is on the allowed list. Many of the others it may be a case of using an older name eg Simpsonichthys constanciae (the one simpsonichthys I've seen in NZ) could get bought in using it's old name Cynolebias constanciae (as all Cynolebias are allowed). The allowed list isn't kept up-to-date with the taxanomic revisions so fish under their currently valid name may not show on the list but if you look at some of the synonyms for the fish one of these may appear on the list.

I'd completely forgotten about the assorted fancy goldfish - there's a type that has arrived on the seen recently that have been breed so that they are missing their gill plates (ie gills are now exposed) - in any other type of fish these would be culls. As for the giant gourami - it's just large and pink. I admit that I do go in and watch it - but it's the same kind of morbid facination that the female heavy-weight bulgarian weight lifters generate during the olympics.

I can't believe how much you Aucklanders have to pay for Java Fern either - at the LFS here an average sized piece is about $5. As for some of the amazon swords - I guess part of it is how easy or hard the particular type is to propagate and also how large is the particular specimen. I suspect there is also an element of higher prices in Auckland.

Ugliest I've seen in real life - albino anything (even those euphamistically labelled 'golden'), especially full size albino giant gourami's (one of the local shops has one). Ugliest seen in pictures - long-fin neon tetras. Personally I didn't think the short-nose elephant noses were too bad - didn't have a movable trunk but still did have an elongated snout - flicking through the book I couldn't pin it down to a particular species - some of the possibilities get 50-60cm long.

Hi Joel - surprisingly enough it's NZD here in NZ As for heater - I'd probably opt for the 150W for that size tank. As has been pointed out there are pros and cons for both opinions. Personally I opt for a heater of _slightly_ higher wattage than required. That way it should easily keep the temperature at the set value, but if it does stick on it wont cook your fish as quickly as going overboard with the wattage. As Doc has mentioned going overboard with the wattage means that you also get some temperature extremes when heating.

Female dwarfs are still the pale grey ones. They are not as commonly seen for sale since many people are only interested in the colourful males and are not even contemplating breeding the fish.

Are you on town supply water, bore water, roof collection?

Now they tell me, all this time I've been mis-pronouncing celery, certificate, celebrate, cellar etc. I always thought the letter C was a useless letter - it's role can be equally filled by the use of S or K.