jimbob

its a madagascar rainbow fish http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm ... 1&aid=2523 very nice fish - mind you i hade mine in with fish twice their size

Cant really say I had any one person help me out more than anyone else. I read through alot of stuff on this (and the other) site and got alot of good advice from alot of good people. group effort id say 8) What got me into it: a few years of admiring the saltwater fish on the way to getting the freshwater fish i could actually afford

hey conch - saw a frogfish in rotovegas (wonderworld) on sunday. dont remember any more details than that - ugly looking fish that didnt seem to do anything while i looked at it other than stay still

apparently insurance wont cover the fish. My condolences. sucks to lose your fish. i lost all my marine fish 3 weeks ago and i was completely gutted - nowhere near the number you lost though. take care.

yeah, that will be sweet as. ps, that setup looks like it has pretty sweet potential if its just for a few days you'd be fine without the skimmers - but if you have them lying around, why not 8) enjoy marine keeping - but beware, it is a black hole for money im just a newb myself and have alright spent far more than my student budget allows...

small tip from my bad experience - if you are setting up a temp tank keep the fish seperate from any soft corals. only because i had my temp tank crash overnight when a pulsing xenia died and polluted the water

awesome, you guys are keen. I want to get back into mountain biking. I am crap, but i need to get fit again - at least i have fun 8) My new flatmate is an awesome downhill rider - i think hes riding in pro class events this year. his new bike was 5.2k - and that only because he bought it at cost through his sponsor he doesn't trust our flat enough to bring it in until he gets insurance on it

ooohhh - that would be an awesome end to the migration story of the ctenopoma

i was the last year to do bursary. although even bursary was a bit bs - an a bursary covered the range 300 - 480 / 500 (the sum of your %s for the top 5 subjects, most only did 5 tho) you could not get 100% in bursary. scaled to out of 96, unless you were top in the country, and significantly better / more eloquent than the 2nd in the country, in which case you could get 97. ah well, i got my A

ha, the first lot i got from the garden i scrubbed then boiled the second lot i scrubbed the third lot i rinsed, and my dad just picked them out of the garden, placed them in the tank. (no ferts/pest killers or anything else used in the garden in at least 2 yrs) no ill effects any time, but a good scrubbing should be fine

my little borneo tiger moving his eyes around looks so cool it comes up right in front of you and stares at you. coolest little fish, although my clown fish have now taken its place as my most personable fish

jn: sounds familiar - i used to have the tank much heavier planted, but didnt have too much luck, so removed most of the plants to keept easy low light ones when i get around to it i do have 2 types of fertilizer i add (one for carbon and a general one) cant remember the names off hand, will check when i go home. i have a dark green hairy algae which definitely grows, but not at an alarming rate. i would assume that with all the frozens im currently putting in the tank i do have too much nutrients, although i havent bothered to check - will definitely post the results when i do yeah, i know they are slow growing, that doesnt bother me, just that the big anubias slowly (took 6 months or so) got covered in hairy algae. remove the worst affected leaves when i can. i used to keep ambulia - but it grew at a ridiculous rate and got so messy... had to prune almost 2 inches off it weekly and then it just got too stringy looking also i saw a picture of my 3 ft tank when it was heavily planetd and it looks awesome, just thought it would be cool if i could have a little 2 ft tank looking cool all planted up, and serving the double purpose of removing nutrients. will definitely look at different kinds of low light faster growing plants, planning a minor reaquascape at the mo. not worth it if its just gonna get covered in algae too...

thanks for the detailed replies guys nemines: its black hairy algae - it grows a bit on the rocks and driftwood and plants - not on any of the glass though. i wouldnt call it an outbreak as when i do get around to cleaning it off it takes a while (at least a month) to return to a sizeable amount. the back glass has a heap of the green algae that is hard to get off, little bits pop up on the front and side glass but a quick scrub every month or so keeps that looking good enough for me. i get a very small amount of the brown slimy algae that comes off very easily when you wipe whenever i miss a water change (which i obviously try not to do). sorry i dont know the proper names for them. thanks for the tip re the water changes, i thought that a 25% weekly would be heaps. i have read about the rinsing food thing but have been really lazy with it. will try to feed a little less, but bit hard with my fish. 25cm black ghost knife, 2 15-20cm ish bichirs and a little dat. might try weening the black ghost back onto pellets - the bichirs are happy with pellets. I do have a phosphate remover that is supposed to be put inline i have been considering using, problem is its supposed to have a max flow of 1000 l/h with less being better, but my cannisters both output 1200 and have too big tubes... re filter media both have a tray of jbl micromec with fine sponge filter, a tray of the aqua one ceramic rings with fine sponge filter, and the bottom tray has a course sponge and filter wool. once the current filter wool has been in there around 1 month i plan on chucking it out and just using another fine filter pad. I will definitely buy a nitrate test kit sometime soon (will post when i do the test)

Hey guys. I have a 4ft sparsely planted tank http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/jimbobs-community-and-brackish-tank-vt24598.html since then the random big nana plants is gone (gradually smothered by algae til i removed it), and the val has receded quite a bit (bits chopped off due to algae coverage) also i now have it filtered by 2 cf1200's. i'm currently doing a 25 to 30% weekly water change. feed approx 5 cubes of frozen food a day, and a bunch of flakes/pellets. i have a few spare 2fts lying around. just wondering if i plumbed in a 2ft (x1ftx1ft), and had it heavily planted with a twin 2ft t8 light i have spare, would it make a noticeable difference to the nitrates and phosphates of the main community tank? or would it just be extra effort for an insignificant gain? i have never bothered with test kits before - judge the quality of the tank by the way it looks - and the health of the fish. the fish are happy, but there is a fair bit of hairy algae around. otherwise the tank remains quite clean. any feedback / opinions would be appreciated Cheers, Ben.

my 25cm bgk is fine as long as he is fed his 2 cubes of frozen meat every day, skipping 1 day is tolerated, 2 days results in him eating whichever fish is smallest in the tank at that time, the last one was a 5cm bolivian ram. the one before that a 4cm discus... shame, i was trying to offload those fish as i feared that would happen...

Ha, that would be awesome, and id love to see the govt explaining to the americans why they have disallowed any of their nuclear powered ships into nz for the last 30 years or however long its been... but now here we are getting nuclear power plants...

very nice my baby dat is my favourite fish. was almost tempted into getting some bigger guys - and been eyeing your little guys for sale... but alas, all my fish money for the next few months is going into setting up my little reef

haha yeah, the albino birchirs do look like axolotls. not my thing. saw them at the shop but then bought my ornate for only a few $$ more. thats a cool fish... grows too fast though, worried it will take a fancy to my tasty looking little discus...

fyi the 2 s2 starters worked a treat. i now have 2 2fts running on a tank i temorarily set up to hold some fish until my saltwater tank is ready. only prob is i didnt know what tubes to buy from the hardware store, so 1 of the ones i bought is a horrible yellow colour. ha, oh well, its only temporary....

i'm a recently acclimatised westy too (well, slightly west of central? ) still a jandal clad boy from sth auckland at heart tho. welcome!

cool puffer, looks like the one in your link, i dont know much about puffers other than my 2 green spotted puffers sorry. congrats on finding a nice fresh water puffer tho! very similar to http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/ug.php/v/PufferPedia/Freshwater/T_Cochinchinensis/ apparently part of the 'target' group of puffers which look the same and are often sold as the same fish.

ha yeah, i got a twin t5 unit from there for my 3ft brackish tank. if you go into the shop michael is a great source of info too just that i have these three units that i got along with a filter i bought, so thought if i could get them to suffice it saves me spending money on a 2ft light. i am a student after all... in the holidays i will look at wiring one up with a second starter... or instead i could save the hastle and just work a few more hours to pay for a unit... hmmm... thanks for the info everyone

that was what i was concerned about re running one bulb. didnt know what the ballast did, and i was worried about something like that... think i will just hold off on everything til i have more time to investigate... the tank doesnt have anything in it at the mo, was just wanting to be prepared...

for anyone interested this site contains a circuit: http://members.misty.com/don/f-lamp.html#wd9 however i think i should leave this fiddling until after my uni exams which start in a week

thanks guys, i will try and find out what starters i need and look for a circuit online.