Ira

Hmmm, Boiled spinach...I'll give that a try.

Yeah, I've had a look at that website. But it has absolutely nothing about what to do with them when they're tadpoles.

They're whistling tree frog tadpoles, got them from animates. What should I do with them? Right now they're in a little 5 gallon plastic container with some gravel and a small heater and filter for circulation. I've got it set around 24°. I assume I can just treat them like fish for now? The woman at animates said they'll eat flake, how about frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp? Once they're frogs I'll have to rearrange everything and what do I feed them then? Wifey's mad at me now for insisting that they're better off with a little circulation and the temperature kept the same as they were at the store. She thinks they're best off just being thrown in the tank without heat or circulation and she's made me put them in a room that I'll almost never see them.

I doubt they'd stuff themselves until it kills them, just give them some time to digest it.

Could be due to the new water being very well airated. But even that wouldn't be an excessive about of O2, there's not much oxygen in the air, and would only last for a little while.

Heh, I've found the same thing happens if I feed my fish bloodworms, in the process getting it on my fingers. Then if I happen to rub my eye it starts to itch, which makes me rub it more making it worse. I get a little bubble on it and my eye waters like mad. Solution? Either wash your hands afterwards or don't rub your eye.

I don't think it's possible to have too much O2 in the water...I suppose if you get into it being supersaturated so that it bubbles like coke does, but otherwise... I think most likely they just like it there and haven't discovered it until now. Khuli loaches usually like hiding in leaves and plants.

It's a waste of time for the most part. I figure that's a suggestion from the dark ages about 20 years ago before anyone knew anything about chlorine in tap water and water conditioners had been invented. Just get a good water conditioner if you're worried about it. I think Prime is generally considered one of the best? I don't use them. Just put whatever dosage the bottle says into the water before you put it in the tank and you're done. Takes care of chlorine, chloramine and heavy metals of which chlorine is the only one that "aging" the water will help with and if it's sealed then it basically cuts back on the amount of chlorine that will outgas from the water.

Definitely has to have at least 2 severums. Maybe one green and one gold.

They're just commonly kept mollies that people have let loose in the wild, they're not an NZ native molly or anything like that.

You can't find anything on mollies? You sure you're even looking? Try googling for "Molly fish" Comes up with 179,000 results of which it looks like at least the first page every single thing has to do with mollies.

One net to block the fish in the area you want, one to scoop it up.

I haven't had any luck breeding them either. Lost a few months ago my mature female who had bred once with a huge male I lost ages ago and along with her I lost two other males. 2-3 months ago I bought 14 babies and they're dropping dead all over the place. I think I'm just bad luck for bristlenoses. I think I've gone through a grand total of about 15.

For mosquito larvae they'll swim down to the bottom if you disturb the water or move so your shadow crosses it but after 30 seconds or so they'll come back up to the surface. So you scoop a bunch, wait for the rest to come back up, scoop, wait, scoop, wait...

Basically, disconnect the cannister, carry it to the sink, pop the top off, yank out the sponges and squeeze them under the tap(Warmish water) until the water coming out is only slightly brown then rinse the media while shaking until the water coming out is only slightly brown, reassemble, lug the MUCH lighter cannister back to the tank, reattach it and then I'm done.

My cannisters I usually clean out every 2 months on average. Usually I clean them whenever I notice one has slowed down a bit, so I only do one of my 4 every 2-3 weeks.

It's not really that sunlight makes algae grow and flourescent doesn't, it's more that sunlight is a LOT brighter than the tank lights for the most part, not getting into things like different light spectrums and stuff. I haven't been able to find out what kind of lighting would be needed to match it, other than some idiot insisting that the sun is 10,000 times brighter than a 250 watt metal halide so you'd need 2,500,000 watts of flourescent lighting to match it...Ooops, tangent. Anyway, the sun is just a lot brighter than the tank lights so you end up with the algae outcompeting the plants sometimes. If you had good plants and constant sunlight though the same things to combat algae would work as with lower light.

If that's the auction I'm thinking of it also comes with a bag of Instant Ocean, some test kits and bits. Still, asking FAR too much like many auctions are. Like the ones with a starting bid near the new price for a half empty year old container of fish food.

Is it a dual light? So you've got 20 watts on about a 100 liter tank. That's quite low light, but is ok for low light plants. But they won't grow very fast.

I just had a thought. How about trying planting the plant in a small pot and wrapping some mesh of somekind, like the windbreak mesh or something around the whole pot and the base of the plant with just a rubber band around the base of the plant to hold it. It wouldn't be attractive, but the fish shouldn't be able to get to the gravel and the rubber band should expand enough to keep from strangling the plant.

You're turning the light off when you're not there? That's definitely one part of your problem. Get a timer and set it to keep the lights on for about 12 hours. Also, what lighting do you have?

I've got 2 Jurupari and 2 Surinamensis. I've tried zip tieing rocks to the plant's roots. That works ok, but then you end up with a rock tied to the roots sitting in a hole. I've tried surrounding the plant with rocks and that works ok for a little while until they undermine the rocks. I've tried plastic pieces cut from an ice cream container with a hole around the plant, they fairly quickly cleared the top of it and then started digging under. Recently I've tried wrapping the roots with a piece of windbreak material plus a couple pebbles for weight and using a zip tie around the plant to hold it together. That seems to be working fairly well so far, but I'm still ending up with the green windbreak mesh visible and they're slowly working the plant out of it. Best would probably be a combination of things. If you can get the plastic with a hole in it to work, does it really matter much if the plant eventually is stunted because the hole is too small? Otherwise it wouldn't grow at all being dug up constantly.

Oh, yeah, that's right. The diagram makes sense, so gimme fishy!

I think I'd go for the eheim despite being used. If I remember right they're about 1900 liters/hour which is a hell of a lot more than a 404. They're in the $700+ range new though, which is why I prefer 404s

I'm still waiting for the long finned redspot cardinal guppy hybrid.