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He climbed up halfway out of the water. I dunno if that was enough to reduce the suction or if he was dying and not gripping as hard. But it was enough that I could slide him up the side of the bucket and off then put him in the tank.

I intend to pick up a hydrometer tomorrow if Wet Pets has some. I'm pretty sure I've seen them there, but it's been a few months. I also need an ammonia test kit. I thought the one I had would work for saltwater but it doesn't look like it. It's just an aquarium pharmaceuticals test kit. I think I am taking it slowly. At the moment I really don't have any plans for the tank except to sit back and see what happens for the next 3-4 months. For now I'm happy with what I've got, I just need to keep a close eye out for deaths. Next time I'm going into Wellington I'll pick up some live sand off you. Not sure when that'll be though. Woohoo! I just got the chiton out of the bucket! I think he's almost dead, though, so I'll check if he's alive in the morning.

Reef, I don't think the 3°-4° from what the tank is sitting at now is going to make much of a difference to the cycle. I'm hoping the tank will settle in a range warm enough that I WILL be able to just bump the temp up a few degrees for tropicals but low enough that the locals will be able to handle it. Jack, I'd imagine it helps a LOT having a marine fishstore nearby. But the nearest I know of would probably be in Auckland. Tomorrow I am going to one that has a few bits and pieces though, but it's about a 2 hour drive away. I need to resist the urge to feed them a tiny bit of brineshrimp every day, I think. Though, I doubt there's much in the tank for the inhabitants to graze on. And I'll have to yank out the seaweed in a few days. Though, none of it is showing signs of degrading it's only been 2 days, I expect it will before too long.

Nope, I don't intend to buy any fish(Or anything except hardware) for it for a long time. Eventually it will be a tropical tank, maybe a reef tank, but for now it's just coldwater to get it cycled and because I blew up my heater. I don't intend to buy any fish until at the very least I get a skimmer and probably will be at least 3-6 months for it to cycle and get all settled. I don't consider it really set up yet, I think of it as being just a step or two above throwing rock and stuff in a bucket to cycle it. I dunno if coldwater would be accurate though, because the temp is staying around 23-24°C. Too early to say how the inhabitants are going to handle it. Pies didn't have much luck with them with a slightly warmer temp.

Where do you get the nori at? I don't expect to need it anytime soon, though. I'll definitely go near high tide next time. Never going back to te awhiti again.

Haha, Yeah, that's a point, interfecus. Pies, do you just carry water up from the beach? I've got to find someplace at least that I can get the car closer to the water. I've never seen the point of leaving a tank sitting empty. Once the tank is at the right temp and any significant amount of clouding from sand or whatever has settled I've always just put the fish in. There doesn't seem to be any real point to just letting the tank sit empty. There won't be any cycling without a source of ammonia, which in a tank full of dead rock and a little bit of sand(Thanks for it, looks great BTW) there won't be any. I just tried a small piece of brine shrimp. The blennies love it. They dart out, grab a bit and back to their rock. Bridget wants to go to Wet Pets saturday. So I'll grab some food and see what other bits they've got that I need.

Chiton is STILL stuck to the bucket. If it was one of my cheap buckets I'd consider just cutting the bottom out and putting it in the tank. But it's my...Well, actually, this bucket was only $.50 along with a bunch of stuff at an auction...But it's my GOOD bucket. As far as I can tell everyone is still alive.

One of the smaller fish had a feast on the whiteworms and I caught a glass shrimp nibbling on a piece of bloodworm. So that's promising. The closest ID of the fish is a "Variable Triplefin" going by the labeling of this picture...(oops, big picture) Just noticed the same shrimp I caught in the background too. And I still can't get that d*mn chiton off the bottom of my bucket!

If I had the supply I'd feed them every day, I've been rationing them though. But, if there are only a few fruitflies or none wandering around the tank, dump some more in. If there are a handful or more wandering around, don't put anymore in. That's one advantage of live food like that, it just wanders around until it gets eaten.

Hmmm, I've read they're supposed to be vegetarian only when tadpoles. But that may just be some specific species. I guess if they're eating it then no harm feeding it to them? If it kills them you'll know and won't have much trouble getting more. I don't think any aeration or filtration is necessary. I didn't have any for mine. In fact, the first try I DID have it and they all died. But that could have been from many different causes. I'd say just give them a good sized tank with a reasonable amount of surface area and that should be good.

The guppies will definitely breed in that tank, but like sue says most will be eaten. I suspect guppies would probably in a big fish's stomach if swallowed hole...

Ok, went to the ocean today. Caught 2 big shrimp(Glass shrimp?) about 2" long, 2 tiny ones, a big goby thing about 2", about 2 tiny ones, 2 big snails, a handful of medium snails and a handful of small snails. Oh, and a small crab and some limpet thing that I'm currently trying to figure out how to get detached from the bottom of the bucket. It's fascinating how you can look in a pool, "Hmmm, It's empty." Then look closer and suddenly fish, snails, shrimp, anemones all appear out of nowhere. Anyway, that's where the fun stopped. Someone should have reminded me of a couple things. First, 25L jerry cans are really heavy and that low tied means you have to walk even further through the sand and it's even more of a climb back to the car. I was fu...Err, exhausted after the first load of water and had to do 5! And the tank is only 2/3 full! I'm not exactly in good shape, even worse it was ridiculously hot, which wasn't a problem just wandering around poking around in rocks, but I think I gave myself heatstroke hauling the water about 100 feet and 20 feet up from the ocean. I'm definitely going to have to rethink how to get the water. The powerheads I was going to use for circulation haven't show up yet so for now I'm using a couple of Fluval 2s without the filter part and the tank is unheated for the moment, so it's at just under 23°. Everyone seems ok so far. The gobies are looking around and the glass shrimp, up until a few minutes ago, were swimming back and forth in front of the glass. They're pretty little things. Now I realized I'm not quite sure what to feed them. I think tonight I'll just give them a small pinch of bloodworms, a small pinch of whiteworms and a small pinch of flake and see how it goes.

Hmmm, I suspect you'll have a hard time culturing enough fruit flies for 30 tadpoles.

Yup. Some would probably even say that 3 is a bit too few.

If you're already planning on drilling it, why not use a sump for it too? That's what I'd do instead of using something like four 404s or whatever your preference for a cannister filter is.

Cold water would definitely be more unusual than tropical. Not that even tropicals are common*Mutter* But there are probably even fewer cold water marine tanks around.

Order it NOW. It'll take a week or so to get it, another week or so for the culture to start producing, another 2-3 weeks for the cultures you should set up off that one to start producing. That's a little over a month, the tadpoles might even be frogs by then. I wish I'd done that instead of waiting until they'd grown legs. Now I'm having problems feeding them. Especially since there's been a rainstorm that's knocked all the aphids off the plants everywhere.

Yeah, they're fast reproducing. About 2-3 weeks from laying an egg to hatching and laying new eggs. It only takes about a dozen to set up a new culture, so you could probably seperate out 100 or so and start up 5 new cultures then feed the rest if I like. I dunno how many exactly you'll get because I'm only about 2 weeks into my first try with them and only have worms from my new cultures.

I've been feeding them out since about a week after they became flies. Read the link for instructions for how to make new cultures.

When I got them they were all larvae, but hatched into flies in about a week. I've just left them in their original container, it's NOT easy getting them out into another container. I'm going to try some salsa containers next time for new cultures so I can get the lid off and on easily.

Read this...http://www.fnzas.org.nz/wingless-fruitfly.0.html Has instructions.

Yup, Biosuppliers. http://www.ak.planet.gen.nz/~bio/ I bought the large fruit fly culture. Definitely best to start off with. If I was doing it again I'd start up other cultures as soon as I got the tadpoles so I'd have a few weeks to build them up. And they love them, they jump all over the tank after them.

Sorry, My wingless fruitfly supply is getting low. I've set up 7 small new cultures, but they're producing very slowly. I'm getting worried I might not have enough.

I just had mine in a 2-3 gallon tank with water from my pond and fed them fish flake. Water changes with pond water about every week. They all seemed to do well except one that died at first, probably from not acclimating well.

I've got the tank emptiedand the rock in it. One of the pieces was too big to put in without removing the hood and the way it's sitting it's only about an inch narrower than the tank. hehe. Waiting for my powerheads still, I think the order either never got made or they lost it. Anyway, they've ordered them AGAIN. Going to pick up some sand from Pies tomorrow then hopefully the powerheads will show up soon because I plan on going on a trip to the ocean around new years. I still need to pick up some new flouro tubes, but that can wait. Only concern I have at the moment, I've got the rocks on some UGF plates to spread out any pressure points from the rocks, did the same when it was FW. But if I should only have about 1 cm of sand then that's not even going to cover the plates, they're about 1.5-2cm thick. No huge deal removing them, but I'd be worried about pressure points on the glass.