Ira

It's something way before my time, I think. Comes from H R Puff n stuff. Wifey came up with it.

I think we've thought up names for them. They're going to be H and R. They pigged out on some frozen bloodworms, enough to get swelled bellies, that's a relief because they didn't really seem to eat anything yesterday when I gave them brine shrimp and daphnia.

Rob, judging from the few picks of the psitaccus, you'd have to be an absolute idiot to confuse the two. They look nothing alike to me, the psitaccus pics I've seen the fish looks like it swallowed a beach ball and only has a few very pale stripes. My guys look almost exactly like the pics of asellus.

Wish I could take credit for that pic. Credit goes to some unknown internet photographer...Man, I need a new digital camera.

Nope, only gets up to about 5 inches. I think 5-6" is a nice size of fish.

Looks like the species is "Colomesus asellus" Here's a good adult(I assume) pic. I'm kinda concerned about them apparently not eating flakes or pellets since my white worm culture croaked. As long as they'll eat frozen food, that should be ok, though. Hmmm, Don't think I've ever seen a scat or Mono. Not really sure what they are.

Well, despite the total lack of any replies on the two boards I posted that question on. I just picked up my puffers today. They're quite cute looking little guys...But I guess I can forgive them for that. Most fish seem to have pretty much fixed eyes, but these guys definitely look around all over the place.

Actually, Pegasus, none of my fish prefer over 7.5. I'm just saying that unless she puts a huge amount of shells in the tank, a handful of them would likely only raise the PH by .1-.2PH...Which even discus could handle. If she put the same weight of crushed shells, that would be different because of the greater surface area.

If they become available, I WILL buy them to support genetic engineering.

Hahaha, I'm not sure if that post was full of sarcasm or not, John.

Unlike everyone else, I'm going to say, as long as they're cleaned well, go ahead and put them in. I'm assuming you're not going to be putting massive amounts, just a handful of shells? That wouldn't have a noticable effect on the PH. And anyway, not all fish like acidic water.

Is it bad to use a dirty coffee grinder? I'd think it'd help the fry eat the food faster...Or would that be counteracted by them being too jittery to eat?

Hehe, Speaking of being slack with water changes...I've got 3 tanks that need changing. Better get to work on them.

If you feed the brine shrimp they should keep most of their nutrition, shouldn't they? I don't remember exactly how you feed them, I think it was just put a tiny bit of brewers yeast in the water was one method. Definitely better off feeding them instead of wasting a lot of them if you can't use all the BBS in one day.

I've never heard of pool salt. What is it?

If I remember right, animates was selling what I assume was their small white worms culture for about $10. You're probably much better off getting it direct from the source.

My 200L is a 4 foot, but has 2X3 foot tubes. Most bought tanks seem to be significantly underpowered as far as light goes for plants.

It looks like I'll be getting 2 brazilian puffers. From what information I can find they're pretty much strictly freshwater and don't much like to eat flakes and normal fishfood. The like snails, live food, frozen, etc. Not particularly nippy. Their tankmates will be 3 silver sharks, 3 stuftifino rainbows, a common pleco and a hand full of stray tetras. The rainbows and sharks won't be there for long, though, they're going to be up for auction at the next UHAS meeting. Anyone know anything important that I should know, or concerns? Oh, they'll be going into a 200L tank.

I don't remember if you said or not if you have many plants. But, I prefer to have half daylight tubes and half grolux tubes. Maybe Grolux is what you were told? You're in Wellington, right? I get my tubes from a place in Petone called Lamp Specialists or something like that. They should be able to get you the right ones and they seem a good bit cheaper than from a pet store.

I bought 4 long fin danios, 2 bags of white cloud mountain minnows(About 25ish total), 4 baby jewel cichlids(grabbed 2 small and two really small ones) That's it as far as fish. Other than that I got 2 bags of cabomba and some crypt thing.

I'd be skeptical that the PH down killed the fish. I'd be inclined to say it either had no effect or just added enough stress to kill off already sick fish. First thing you should do though is, since you've already tested the PH, test the ammonia, nitrite and nitrates. Since the tank is probably not cycled if all you transfered is water, I'm thinking you've got really high levels of ammonia or nitrite.

I keep meaning to ask this but never get around to it, soooo... My Silver mystus has turned a dark green/brown color. Is this normal? I'm guessing it's age related if it is normal.

Don't smoke near your tank. The second hand smoke will give your fish gill cancer. hehehe.

I agree, unless your tank is basically using just about all the available area, including tank gravel, every possible surface as substrate for bacteria and has just barely enough...Then the decrease in area through the clogging of the media might become a problem. However, I tend to think that anything except an extremely heavily stocked tank would have many times the capacity it needs. So you really only need to replace the media when you feel like it. Nature is, I think, much more lightly stocked than most people's tanks. I'd make a guess that nature's stocking rate would be something like a single neon per 10 gallons, or less. It's a much more self sustaining system.

You're also not going to be able to rinse all the debris off, so microscopic garbage will slowly clog the pores and decrease the amount of surface area.