Ira

Feeding them heaps of live food is going to be a bit of a problem. My new whiteworm culture has been going for about 3 months and is...Well...Pathetic, not enough to feed anything. But I've got daphnia and heaps of frozen food. Oh, wait, I've got some confused flour beetles, could feed them those.

Is there a definite way to tell which sex is which? I've got 4 and I think 2 are female, but I have a hard time telling. Two of them seem to have more yellow(Male?) and two of them seem to be a bit rounder, but they're very similar. I guess throwing them all in the tank would work as long as there's at least 1 female?

Can anyone give me some advice on breeding zebra danios? Specifically longfin zebra danios, if it matters. I'm thinking that when I get back from Christchurch I'll throw my zebra danios into a spare tank and try to get them to breed. Would just a bare bottom with pegasus's mesh net thing work?

Haha, The tank I was changing the water in actually did have a big clump of fur floating around in it.

Everyone's had water spills while changing their tank's water. Most have probably had fish spills when a fish jumps out of the water and you have to scoop it up quick and throw it back in the tank. Well...I just had a confused flour beetle culture spill. Knocked the plastic container full of flour and beetles off the table. *PPPPPPOOOOOOFFFFF* ALL over the dining room floor. I scooped most of it back into the container...Hope the beetles don't mind a bit(A lot) of dog, cat and carpet fluff in their flour.

My siphon has about a 15 foot hose on it. I'd say it probably loses about 1/3rd of its suction over that 15 feet. But, it's worth it since I can drain out the door. I don't think cutting holes in the floor would be a good idea here...Concrete floor with underfloor heating coils.

The newer fluvals have the ribbed hoses. Probably has no real effect on the flow through the hoses.

I'm on rainwater and the only problems I've found is a bit of trouble keeping the PH up on a tank that's heavily stocked, but I've got that sorted out. I HAVE found that using rainwater seems to kick ass for keeping algae down. All 3 of my tanks have essentially no algae and get about 50% water changes weekly. I assume it's because of the rainwater because other people using tapwater with similar stocking and water changes get much more algae.

*Runs off to the tank* Geo. Jurupari don't have a spot!

I'm going down to chch on the 29th. Have to make the rounds too.

I'm not criticizing it, John. I'm just looking at it differently than you are. The way I look at it is that I either feed the fish frozen shrimp, bloodworm, etc for lunch and flake, pellets etc for dinner. OR I replace the frozen shrimp and bloodworms with the homemade stuff to cut the price of feeding them lunch by about 3/4. So, mixing all the frozen foods together just adds an extra step and still misses what I'm going for, to save money.

Hmmm...That recipe kinda defeats the whole purpose of making your own food if you've gotta buy the mysis shrimp, brine shrimp etc. Expensive. You might as well just feed them all alone. With using beefheart and things you have a nice cheap food. I'm sure the fish would love it though.

I'll have to see if I can find one.

What brand and model was it?

Caryl, The only place I've found that has more than just the standard spectrum compacts is a place called Lamp Specialists(Or something like that) they've got the daylight, growlux, etc ones. Just your standard lighting place doesn't seem to have any real kind of selection of them. You may have something similar somewhere near you. I've decided I probably won't bother with grolux lights anymore and just go with full spectrum ones. I don't know if they make much of a difference, but they are a lot dimmer looking.

That's what I've always heard, they look better as tropicals. Whether it's true or not, I dunno...But I'm not gonna set up a coldwater tank just for WCMMs. Actually...I'm tempted to try breeding them, then I would.

You can also get those lights in full spectrum/daylight and I think there are grolux type ones too.

I did notice that when I got my white clouds(From the Hawkes bay club auction in Napier) that when I got them their bodies were silver with a gold stripe, but after a while they turned brown with a gold stripe. Dunno if it's because of the tropical temp, but all the others I've looked closely at seem to be silver with a gold stripe. Ummm...That's not particularly relevant, is it?

The algae and whatever in tanks seems to do a great job of staining things. I'd thought the sponges in my filters were originally red or brown, cause that's what they looked like after a really good cleaning. I was quite amazed when I bought a new set that they were white. After a month of use they were back to red/brown. I've noticed wood seems to get stained brown too, even if it starts out bright white.

Anything done with the mouth or modified mouthparts is a bite, obviously. Like a mosquito's...Needle? What is the correct term for it? Is a modified part of its mouth. But, a bee's stinger is part of its abdomen, definitely not its mouth.

Mosquitoes don't sting, though. And they're painless when they bite. Just itch a bit. You can't even compare the two.

They DO have cycled tank testers, they're little test tubes you put drops of chemicals in. I don't think Cycle actually does anything to cycle the tank. All it really is, is gets rid of chlorine, ammonia and some heavy metals, I think.

I know it was popeye instead of an injury because the eye was bulging out for a few days before it burst. May have been running into something that actually tore open the eye, but it would have been nice and protected if it wasn't bulging out. Discus are a hell of a lot bigger than threadfin rainbows, they're only an inch or two long.

It is a reason, in my opinion, if the eye bursts, Pegasus. As in like a pimple, the iris of the eye flapping around freely with just a large gaping hole behind.

Yesterday I noticed he had popeye, but I didn't do anything about it. There's not too much you can do anyway, is there? Today I checked on him and his eye...Ummm...Had popped. Must have been horrible for the poor little guy, so I threw him in a glass of cold water and put him in the freezer. Down to 3 of them.