Ira

The 03s are very solid filters.

Only alligator catfish I know of is what they call wild common plecos in florida.

I don't believe mondo grass is aquatic plant, it's a marginal, isn't it?

I haven't actually seen RTCs for sale in shops, but I HAVE seen one in a display tank in Wet Pets in Palmy. So...There are at least some around. Yeah, you're right, black sharks aren't cats, don't know why I was thinking they were. They're vaguely cattish though.

Yeah, I realize noone will be interested, but I'm feeling chatty. I finally found somewhere with the tide tables for Pukerua bay. The tides ARE the opposite of Wellington. I collected about 100 liters and I'm doing a BIG water change(Slowly)since the tank hasn't had one in about 2 months due to crappy weather most of the time and the last chance I had to get water the tide was completely out. When I was there, there was a couple from Palmerston North poking around the one small rockpool that wasn't submerged and they were collecting a few things for a marine tank. Had a short chat with them before I left. I found a really pretty bright red anemone. Probably wouldn't survive in my tank though.

Yes, you can get red tailed cats. You can also get black sharks that get to about 2 feet. I think they're considered catfish. There are also the wild/feral/whatever ones you want to call them in some rivers, I think a lot are around the Taupo area? Not sure on their size or legality of keeping them.

Stray silly thought of the day. Design the wave maker that controls the pumps to use a .wav file for power settings then you could have the pumps playing dueling banjos with their flow... Hehe, Actually, I'm half serious about that, but it'd be by far the hard way to go about it, I think, using the waveform as the cue for the power sent to the pumps.

Ok, here we go. I've added an appropriate and well known celebrity to the picture... I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get that picture to show up for a while...Until I realized you suck at spelling, Pies.

Haha, You've been overruled, Pies.

Pay me $3000 and I'll sit in a box in your office and entertain customers... Of course, I'll escape.

Hmmm, I've never had any noticable leaching problems before. All I do is give them a scrub and pour boiling water from the jug over them.

I'd like to get a goldspot pleco. At least the ones I've seen seem to complement redspots. Similar pattern, just reversed.

Still working on getting my sump set up. Will be on a shelf next to my tank. I'll give the Berlin a try in there so it's set up the way it's intended. It's losing a lot of power from the pump with the longer hose from the tank the way I had it. Seems from what I'm reading the biggest reason people have a problem is not enough flow/pressure. Gotta find a nice shelf to use.

*rereads his previous post* You know...I don't know what the hell I was thinking, Warren. But, in my limited experience, blue rams I think would be fine with 4 in a tank that size. They're pretty small and at least mine didn't seem very territorial towards their own species at all. They were almost schooling.

Gotta agree with that..."You want me to pay HOW much for something that takes water and blows bubbles through it?!?"

You'd probably be best with something around 300-400 liters. Something like a 5 foot tank. Should be good for 2 oscars.

Errr...Oh alright, go ahead. :oops:

Didn't think they'd be aptasia, but some of them look really similar. I suppose practically everything looks like, "Small with tentacles."

Kind of off on a tangent...If you wander around the rock pools locally, there are lots of small anemones. Those wouldn't happen to be a species of aptasia, are they?

I've had tanks with a heavy bioload go 7-8 hours with no problem when they turned back on. Another with a reasonably heavy bioload went about 3 days when I accidentally unplugged it during a water change, started up with no problem. Then I had a filter on a tank with a low bioload go about 2-3 hours and killed off $200 worth of fish when it came back on.

Had a silver shark jump out of the tank and flap around in the lights for a while until I managed to grab him. Another one(Or maybe the same one) landed behind the tank in the massive amount of fluff and was there for a few minutes before I managed to push him far enough to the OTHER side with a grabber thing to reach him and throw him back in. Both were fine.

Little vaseline on the O-rings does wonders.

I wonder...Is an average UPS's batter just a standard 12V? Could you get a cheap UPS for all the electronics and then wire up a handful of extra UPS batteries or something like car batteries if it's cheaper, to increase its backup time?

It's too bad I can't get a stack of 403s. The 404s are a LOT worse to clean, but the 403s seem to run forever. I've been considering buying a couple more VA1300 powerheads to put inline with my 404s that aren't pumping well. That way it doesn't really matter how much water they pump. Though, I THINK, if I were to replace the impeller, shaft and impeller cover that should fix all the problems. Seems to me most of the problems are caused by the little black nipple on the top of the shaft wearing out so everything wobbles. Cause of some of the problems anyway.

Mostly SA cichlids, but I have some Jewels too. Don't like africans for the most part.