Ira

Trumpet snails are livebearers. No eggs. Ramshorns lay in jelly blob clusters And Guppies are also livebearers so no eggs. I'd also expect eggs to be a much more uniform size. So... :dunno: Iunno.

I think they're bubbles. Very good picture of them though.

Grand Harp...Oh.

Kribs would be compatible with bristlenose, apistos, various rams. Most of the dwarf cichlids would be good.

Give them a week. They can go weeks without eating. Fish are stupid, sometimes they don't realize new foods are food.

Seems none of the "Reputable" companies make inline heaters, but I haven't looked at them in a while. A single 300w heater probably will be enough for a 500L. If it's not, get another, it's not a big deal if the temp sags a few degrees overnight for a week or two until you get a new one.

I'm confused. You say you want interesting cichlids then you list boring african cichlids, I don't see a single interesting South/Central american cichlid in the list. :slfg:

ahh...All the fish in my list were cichlids.

An 1800X600X600 tank with a handful of severums and surinamensis. Oh, and one blue dempsey.

It's been (At that point) 3 hours, they have no fish, and no mention of a fishless cycle. So I'm going to say no it's not cycled.

Only thing you've done wrong is not waited long enough. Closer to 3 days than 3 hours. Yup. Nope.

Given Animates are generally one of the better fish stores in the Wellington region...There's nothing that comes to mind as great. But Animalz in Petone(I think they changed their name?) has a fair selection, Hutt Pet Center in Lower Hutt too. I don't know any places over around Porirua. And I don't think there's anything actually in Wellington.

Yeah, that's the way closed loops are usually done, but the pumps for them are more high pressure low flow pumps vs most powerheads are low pressure, high flow pumps. If you use some BIG hoses, like say two 100mm hoses you might be able to keep the head they'd be working against almost nothing. In this situation the head they'd be working against is the difference in height from the source partition and the main tank.

The water will circulate, if you put the out and inlet on opposite ends. Unless you have two filters that's what you'll definitely want to do anyway. Just you're going to need a LOT more flow than an FX5 provides to create a noticable tankwide current. Hmmm, wonder if a couple WP40s or similar would work if you added a partition to one end of the tank, have the WP40s outlets poking through so they're drawing from the partitioned off area into the main tank. Then big hoses from the far side of the tank recirculating water back to the partition. Hope that makes sense without a diagram. That way you have a handful of really high flow, low power draw powerheads providing the movement. But the water is circulating the whole way through the tank rather than simply swirling around at one end like if you used them normally.

Let's see...Specs are 3500 LPH, call it 3000 full of media and once it's been running a little while. That's only about 3.75X turnover per hour. Pretty low. And used to make a stream type tank that would give you a current of about 8.8 meters per hour or .002 meters per second. So to get a good current you'd probably need Hmmm...100 FX6s, that should get you about .2 meters per second average. And that would cost about $714,000. Assuming no bulk discount. I think maybe that's looking a bit impractical.

That long and narrow I'd probably try putting the filter intakes on one end and outlets on the other. Get a good current going for a river tank. Might need to set up a closed loop pump too, though, I'm not sure an FX-6 has enough flow to get a good stream going.

Month or two. Not long. And other than a couple guppies and maybe 1-2 bristlenoses, I think he's the smallest in the tank. Smaller than the danios even.

So, he's grown about a cm/month? That's a pretty good growth rate. Faster than most of my fish ever do lately. Mine I was a bit concerned that he might be a little timid, and when I got him he wasn't eating much. Yeah...That's kind of reversed now that he's settled in and he spends the day hovering out in the open chasing away any fish that come to his half of the tank.

That's normal for low power or large(Physically not output) heaters. Water absorbs the heat produced by the heating coils inside that the outside only gets slightly warm.

Sounds like high nitrates or ammonia. 25% every 2 weeks is nowhere near enough.

You clearly haven't priced marine equipment and livestock. I haven't checked prices lately, but before I shut mine down $50 would be a deposit on a fish.

Good, so it clearly isn't much if it was that cheap. No. None of that will have any effect on the copper.

That one looks really good.

And based on your obvious neglect of the previous tank I'm guessing you probably weren't feeding them very often either. So that would help.

I think that one is available in a freshwater version with white instead of the blue leds. Might be worth trying to get that instead. Even that one though, when I was looking and comparing specs, was producing less light per watt than a fluoro a fraction of the price.