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I'd scoop it up with a net, if it's not too much trouble. Save you cleaning the filters a bit and a little bit of extra garbage in the tank.

Make sure the heater isn't touching the plastic. You'd probably be ok if it was, my heaters seem to only get a bit warm when running. But you might get a hot spot and over time it might distort the plastic a bit like warren said.

If it doesn't say on it, then there really isn't any way to tell...I suppose you could throw it in a bucket of water, turn it up really high and try to calculate it from the rate of increase in the water temp...But, it should say on the heater somewhere.

Throw a handful of bird grit in some pantyhose into the filter. Works well in my tanks.

Nah, bioballs are totally different than biowheels. I don't remember seeing any biowheels. Waste of money and extra complexity, imo, but I know a lot of people love them.

Yup, should be perfectly fine.

I doubt they're off by more than a few percent. It's not like exact accuracy with regards to anything in a fishtank is particularly important. And everything I've read says the dry tab nitrate tests are more accurate.

My ammonia test kit is just a single bottle. Much better than two bottles. Having to use 2 bottles for anything is annoying.

Animates in Wellington has a set of a bunch, I don't remember how many 6-10, in a gray case. It's kinda expensive though, I think it was $120. But that's less than buying them all and you get a nice convenient case to hold them in.

Depends on how often you test your tanks, I guess. Is $2 + 15 minutes to drive there, 15 minutes waiting around for them to do the test, 15 minutes driving home every week worth to you? More than a $15 test kit that costs about $.50 or less per test and is done in a minute instead of an hour? I've thought about getting Animates to test my water, but I don't know what they test for, if it's nothing more than PH, nitrates, ammonia.

For the nitrate kits, get the ones that use little tablets instead of drops. Shaking the bottles for a minute, then put one in, shake, put the second in, shake for a minute...Gets a bit...Ummm...Annoying. Seems to give wildly varying results depending on how much you shake too.

Smaller mesh net and empty the tank? Or just use a siphon and suck them out into a bucket.

Would help if you did freshwater fish too. Maybe just do some of the less common types. Never hurts to widen your customer base.

Wet pets in Palmy has a Johanni, but I'm not too sure on whether the tank it is in is a display tank or the fish in it are actually for sale. Any fish store should be able to get you socolofi, I think, they seem pretty common.

I use a mix of trace elements, iron and mag sulphate from a garden center mixed up in a squeeze drink bottle. I add a squirt once a day. Overkill, I'm sure, but it's cheap.

My silver sharks made a loud clicking noise when eating. Probably similar idea to the discus. Most irritating fish sound was from my pictus when I got his whisker caught in a net. I was trying to get him loose and he made a really high pitched ZZZZTT that I could feel because I was touching him. Almost like getting a shock.

Wet pets had some the weekend before last. No idea about male or female though.

I've got two Geo Surinams, Sheila. My favorite fish. Mine aren't that big though, they're less than a year old, about 6 inches and 5 I'd guesstimate. My two before that both had unfortunate incidents getting themselves stuck in the rocks within about 2 weeks of each other.

There are also bunch of different ways other than the points system. Umm...I forget the right word for them. There's ones for family, rare skills, things like that. Could just do what I did, marry a Kiwi.

Yeah, you definitely need a bigger tank! Geo Surinamensis! //Best fish ever! (Ok, so people here are going to be confused by that last line,hehe)

I took them out the day I noticed the eggs. The must have laid them overnight. I'm assuming they'd also have been fertilized at the same time, hopefully I didn't interrupt that. But! Good news! I've got a fry! Just one little teeny one that's hiding under one of the filters. Don't know if any more of the possibly viable eggs will hatch. Hope so.

Sounds like my results are almost the same as yours, Kriber. Almost all of the eggs started off as kind of an arc of white inside them, but a few eggs were clear with maybe a slight brownish tinge. All of the white ones fungused, and I'd thought the clear ones would too, but I noticed today that at least 1 of the clear ones is actually alive. Something wiggled in it anyway. So the clearish ones must be the viable eggs. So, that means I've got at most 5 or so eggs left out of about a bazillion.

I've always wondered, a lot of marine tanks INTENTIONALLY use really deep sand beds so it does go anaerobic. The anaerobic bacteria eats nitrates in the water. Why would it work significantly differently in freshwater?

I'm planning on trying just the fry food for egg layers in the little toothpaste tube. Should that be ok? Seemed fine for my danios. Might try to get some infusoria too, though, bought some spinach today, that should work.

I'm pretty sure I've got a male and a female, so hopefully some of them will be fertilized, there's at least a hundred of them scattered all over the breeding tank. On the plants, on the filters, on the rocks, on the bottom of the tank. I also put a bit of...Ummm...Blue stuff in it to hopefully keep them from fungusing. I'm not sure what is in it, it doesn't have a list of the ingredients I just grabbed it because it says it's for treating fungus. I put in about 1/5th of a dose, it wanted 1 drop/liter and it's a 100 liter tank, was getting pretty blue after 20 drops so I stopped. I've also got a couple in tank filters blowing across the bottom of the tank where most of the eggs are to give them some circulation.