Rob

From what I'm aware of, the only one that is blanket banned (i.e. is on the National Plant Pest Accord - linked in the first post of this thread) is V. gigantea. However other species are getting controlled/banned through district councils (so people may be correct saying such and such species is or isn't banned - in THEIR REGION). For example Environment Waikato has ALL vallisneria species as potential plant pests. For those questioning my saying all val species (remember - just in EW jurisdiction) the link is here: http://www.ew.govt.nz/policyandplans/rp ... ive5.4.htm Scroll down to find Freshwater eelgrass, also remember that sp. is used for a single species and spp. is species, plural.

My money would be on the clown loaches - it's why I no longer keep them with broad leaved plants - ended up with holes in the leaves (often with a slight horse-shoe shape to the holes). Also probably why you don't catch the culprit at it - since clown loaches are often quite active at night (trying to winkle out those snails).

Don't go overboard with the shells - they'll slowly disslove and increase the pH and hardness of the water in the tank.

Don't know about the South Island but Lobelia cardinalis "Queen Victoria" is available up here (deep red/bronze foliage, scarlet flowers borne on quite a tall spike). Got mine from Bunnings - just part of their random mix of perenials.

What I do for all of my tanks is get a piece of polystyrene the same size as the back of the tank, paint that black and then tape it in place. Has the benefits of you being able to slide it in behind the tank even if the tank is already in place and you get a bit of insulation on the back of the tank. Also, if at some stage in the future you want to change the colour of the background you don't have to scrape a whole lot of paint off the back of the tank. Just remember to use a water based paint (the other type will probably dissolve the polystyrene).

Cabomba has a reputation for having high iron requirements - so possibly consider a trace element fertiliser that includes iron.

Farewell, My fellow fish friend, It’s time to rest, Though ‘tis too soon. Mentor they name you, You’ve inspired, informed and taught, From shore to shore, The passion’s spread. Master breeder I name you, You’ve competed, strived, and caught, The final score, they ask? One-two-eight, my count. A conference goer, Wearing the hat of another, One who’d gone before, Sometimes stirring, always smiling. A killi keeper, That strange breed apart, Small tanks, peat stains, Ephemeral jewels contained. You’ve hung your nets, The mops are dry, I bid you rest, I say goodbye.

I'd suggest that if you're going for CO2 that you spring for another twin batton light too so that the plants can actually get the benefit of the CO2.

Of these two mentioned - I consider Flourish to be the better general choice for planted tanks. I use Flourish regularly in my planted tanks, I personally only use Flourish Excel when I want to get rid of black beard algae.

I agree that there are some very informative websites out there (I particularly like planetcatfish.com) that can often have new information that older versions of books may not have. As Caryl pointed out not all websites are created equal - some are highly respected, others are full of errors (same could be said of books but I feel this is less of a problem). The reasons that I still like the Baensch books: - I can take them with me when I go on fish 'safari' looking for new and interesting fish (I don't have a laptop with wireless internet connection and don't want to have to find the nearest internet cafe to get the info) - if I come across a weird and wonderful fish I haven't seen before it's going to be easier (for me anyway) to flick thru my set of fish bibles and find it, rather than possible fruitless internet searching (internet searching can be very productive if you know the latin name - but how many shops put up, or even know, the latin name of the fish they sell). Of course the problem with this comment is it's entirely dependent on the books you've got and your proficiency with internet searching. There are some books out there that are 'all gravy and no meat' ie lots of glossy pictures but bugger all good solid information - that probably deserve to sold at 1/2 price. However, I have found the Baensch books to be a good balance of quality pictures backed up with solid info - shame I don't see LFS's regularly stocking them though.

I'd second Caryl's vote for Baensch - though I'm not sure if the photo index would be my first choice out of the series. There are 5 volumes of Baensch atlas (+ the photo index for all 5) for freshwater fish (I think only volumes 1, 2, 3 and photo index are in english so far), they are an excellent resource (that's why Caryl, the FNZAS editor has them). The photo index is a similar format to the Axelrod book (ie pictures and symbols), though I have a strong suspicion that the Baensch photo index has many more species covered. If I was to choose only a single book on freshwater fishkeeping it would be the Baensch vol 1 - it has a good section on the aquarium basics (water chem, lighting etc) a reasonable section on plants and a good section on the common and many uncommon fish types. Each species presented with a nice picture and a quite detailed half page text entry (covering habitat, keeping, breeding etc). The reason I like the Baensch atlases so much is the amount of information you get - rather than just a set of symbols. Hope this helps.

Think the main problem you're going to have is insufficient light - a single tube probably isn't enough. I'd have at least a double tube fitting, preferably two double fittings (a total of 4 tubes). I personally wouldn't get the tubes from the lfs (you pay through the nose for them) - you can get tubes from the likes of Bunnings that are just as effective and cost a lot less (you want to get tubes with the codes of either: 86, 865 or 96 (though these are harder to find). Also remember that the tubes should be replaced every 6-9 months. Without sufficient light the plants wont be able to make much use of any fertilisers. If you keep to a single tube then I doubt you'll get a pygmy chain sword to do much. Plants that can generally handle lower light are Java fern, assorted crypts, vallisneria perhaps, plus a few others (though the fern and crypts are mainly asian rather than south american).

Just to contradict Luke's comment - most fish you see for sale as julii are in fact trilineatus. As Luke says - the head patterning is the main thing you'd look at spots for julii and an scribbled lines for trilineatus. The trilineatus part of the name actually refers to the body stripes rather than the head stripes.

I would guess the most likely reason is inadequate/unsuitable lighting. (plants wont be able to make use of CO2 or fertiliser very well if they aren't getting the light they require). I'm assuming your tank dimensions of 700x380x600 are Length x breadth x water depth. 15W fluoro tubes are roughly 18 inches long, your tank would be better suited to a fitting taking 18w tubes (roughly 24 inches long) - that way you'd have a greater length of the tank lit. Also penetrating that depth of water is going to mean less light getting to the plants compared to a shallower tank. All of my planted tanks have a similar depth to yours and I run 4 tubes on them (2 twin fittings) and get acceptable plants growth (without CO2 but with occasional liquid fertiliser). As already suggested I'd replace the 15,000K tube with a 6,500K tube. Also how old are the tubes - the quality of light they put out deteriorates with time so they should be replaced every 6-9months (expensive if you're buying from petshop but tubes with the codes 86 or 865 (or 96 if you can get them) are a good substitute and can be bought cheaply from electrical supply houses etc).

Water hardness is to do with the amount of dissolved minerals present in water. A lot of (certain) dissolved minerals means hard water, very few means soft water. There are a couple of types of hardness: temporary hardness (also called carbonate hardness), called temporary because if you boiled the water the hardness would be removed; permanent hardness is a measure of how many calcium ions and magnesium ions are in the water; there is also general (or total) hardness which is a measure of both temporary and permanent (but I'm prepared to be corrected on that). There are a range of units used to measure hardness, two common ones are ppm (parts per million) and dGH (can't remember if it's degrees general hardness or degress German hardness) both of them start at zero and head on up, with zero being extremely soft. Caryl mentioned about pH - while the hardness of the water will often influence pH they are not the same thing. pH is how acid or alkaline the water is. It is measured on a scale of 0-14, where 0 is extremely acidic and 14 is extremely alkaline, with 7 right in the middle being neutral. In general, hard water will be alkaline and soft water acidic but you can get screwy situations where you end up with hard acidic water etc. Cichlids from the African Rift lakes (like Lakes' Malawi, Tanganika, Victoria) prefer hard alkaline water, most cichlids from South America and African RIVERS prefer softer more acidic water and I have a feeling that Central American cichlids prefer something in the middle (but again I'm happy to be corrected). Making water harder is easy - trying to soften it is more troublesome, because of this people who have hard tap water are often more restricted in what fish they can easily keep. Also it is more difficult to adjust the pH of hard water (it has more buffering capacity - just means it resists changes in pH more than soft water does). There are a range of things you can do to make water harder: add baking soda (this will boost the carbonate hardness, but will also bost the pH), add empson salts (will boost permanent hardness by increasing the amount of magnesium ions but have little affect on pH), add shells, oyster grit, limestone to the tank/filter (will boost both permanent and carbonate hardness and also pH) - adding to the filter is probably better because it's easier to remove it if you over do it. To soften hard water you could filter it through peat, get a water softening 'pillow' (contains an ion exchange resin that can be regenerated and reused) or mix the tap water with rain/reverse osmosis/distilled water. (note - wasn't my intent to to walk over Bilbo's reply - he posted while I was trying to write this essay )

Wingless fruitflies can be cultured using a medium similar to that used for microworms (ie a porridge type mix from rolled oats and cornmeal in about a 2:1 ratio - cornmeal seems keep it smelling OK for a greater length of time; sprinkle on yeast and a little sugar, add fruitflies - keep someplace warm (hot water cupboard) - cultures will start to smell pretty foul after a while so you should be regularly starting new ones. Waxmoths can also be cultured - their food is a bit more complicated - most successful recipe I've tried so far is mix of honey, bees wax, glycerine, skim milk powder, wheatgerm, flour and brewers yeast (PM if you want exact recipe). They are voracious beasts though and munch through the food quite quickly. Also need to be in quite a sturdy container - they ate there way through an icecream container and the fabric mesh I used the first time - I now use a thicker plastic container and stainless steel mesh. Keep in warm place to get best results. Mostly feeding out the larvae but adult moths also get fed to fish - adults can fly - so need to be careful opening container so they don't get too disturbed.

Reference for L1 Glyptoperichthys joselimaianus (you may want to check fishbase.org to figure out which genus name is the currently valid one) Baensch Aquarium Atlas Photo Index, pg 326, ISBN 3-88244-504-1

The brown mystery or apple snails are pretty safe with plants unless they're starving. The golden ones will clear fell your plants though.

Midas: pg 864 Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 2 (1st paperback edition), ISBN 3-88244-509-2 JD's: pg 692 Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 1 (1st paperback edition), ISBN 3-88244-504-1 According to fishbase.org it is Cichlasoma octofasciatum Choc's: pg 686 Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 1 (1st paperback edition), ISBN 3-88244-504-1 According to fishbase.org it is Hypselecara temporalis Uaru: pg 784 Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 1 (1st paperback edition), ISBN 3-88244-504-1 According to fishbase.org it is Uaru amphiacanthoides Lep: pg 238 Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 1 (1st paperback edition), ISBN 3-88244-504-1 Red head: pg 880 Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 2 (1st paperback edition), ISBN 3-88244-509-2

Apistogramma panduro pg 628, Cichlid Atlas Vol 1 (1st english edition), ISBN 3-88244-056-2

Sounds like crypt melt to me. Some crypts will often do this when put into new water conditions. To the best of my knowledge it's not a disease, just a natural survival mechanism of the crypts. The theory is that many crypts come from places where there is seasonal flooding (high water flow), if they kept their leaves during this time the whole plant would probably get ripped out - so when water conditions change (as they'd get when alot of rain is falling) the crypts loose their leaves so the plant isn't ripped out and then regrows later on. Doesn't seem to be linked with particular water conditions - just a change from what it was used to. They should recover though. Not sure if the plec was eating healthy leaves or just cleaning of the melted ones.

My understanding is that the complete list (for download or as the seperate pages at http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fish_study/ ) is a list of every species of aquarium fish in the entire world (including stuff that is not allowed into NZ at the moment) and that we have no photos for any of them - Warren may want to correct me on that though. I know that I've been emphasising weird and wonderful catfish but we need photos of all the fish we keep - so that includes neons, cardinals, tiger barbs etc (please don't assume that because it's a common fish that someone will already have given a photo for it).

@ Kribcrazy Yes take pictures of your fish that aren't on the fish list. There's a 'recommended layout' available for download here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fish_study/file_downloads/ It's a pdf file which makes inserting your electronic photo prior to printing difficult and also doesn't have a clearly marked space for the species name. So I'd probably create something similar in MS word that you could use as a template to insert the digital images into. The photos need to be printouts, signed by the the photographer and the owner (may be one in the same but probably requires two signatures - don't want to get caught out on technicalities). I'm still trying to find out what is meant by the location thing in the recommended layout. A book reference also needs to be provided. The scientific name should be currently valid (but you should also list older synonym names if they are still often used when referring to the fish). A good place for checking on scientific names is www.fishbase.org as they list what is currently valid and also can display/(allow searching) by synonyms. The printouts should be sent to one of the people listed in the 'letter to hobbyists' also available for download here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fish_study/file_downloads/

Hi Stu - no my whiptails are banded (R.eigenmanni), crocodile (R. lanceolata) and columbian (Loricaria sp 'columbia'). If people are needing a book reference for their L-numbered plecs I suggest contacting Caserole or Modern Angl (you may want to use Planetcatfish.com as a common reference so that we all agree on what is being identified) and they can get back to you with book info (ISBN etc and a page number) - hope that's ok with you guys. Also remember that it's not just catfish being reviewed - it's all ornamental fish so if there are other groups of fish you're passionate about sort out photos for them too. Stu - Kelly Rennell probably has a number of photos from previous NZKA meetings that may suit the purpose. Another also - timespan is quite short - needs to be with MAF by mid-October

I'll get photos for: Corydoras axelrodi C. barbatus C. burgessi C. caudimaculatus C. elegans C. melini C. melanistius C. nanus C. napoensis C. pygmeaus C. robineae C. schwartzi C. similis C. sodalis C. sterbai C. trilineatus Dianema longibarbis D. urostriata Hoplosternum littorale Agamyxis pectinifrons Platydoras costatus Panaque maccus Loricaria sp. 'Columbia' Peckoltia brevis Chaetostoma thomsoni Parotocinclus jumbo Rineloricaria eigenmanni Rineloricaria lanceolata Kryptopterus minor K. macrocephalus