curtur

Female neons look quite fat when next a male, and the blue stripe on them tends to be kinked as well.

Have you got any way of raising your lights above the tank. Are they sitting on top of the glass? I have just got standard t8 lights and I have resorted to putting blocks of polystyrene under the ends to raise them up 3-4cms and it seems to help a lot. I would leave the water change for a day or two to give the algaefix time to do its job, as otherwise you will just dilute its concentration below what it needs to work. If you have added lots of plants it will stiil take a little while for the plants to use up the available/excess nutrients.

Females are supposed to be fatter when viewed from above, but I've never been able to tell with any accuracy. Seeing as you have eight, you are quite likely to have a female in there. Also, how old are they?

Did you find it on a beach or in the forest? If it was the beach it will need a lot of soaking to get rid of the accumulated salt. Other than that, I can't see there being a problem if it is well soaked.

Both pairs of my dwarf flag acaras (laetacara curviceps) have spawned today, but I am unsure as to whether I should keep doing my weekly water changes or not. Would it be detrimental to the health of the eggs and fry? I usually change 15-20% every week.

Most of what I've seen about these fish suggest they need a quite decent size tank (3-4 foot) with cooler water (as the name suggests, they come from streams in the hills) with a high flow rate. Keeping a 20ltr tank cool enough could be an issue for them.

A few dwarf cichlids and various tetras would be ideal. I have got glass bloodfins and penguin tetras, they are slighter larger than some tetras and both species are quite active in the upper levels of the tank.

I know our lfs had some birchirs for about $120 each, how do the yanks get them so cheap? Is it because they are closer to importers etc?

Thanks for the tips Stella, not sure if I'm going to be confident catching it yet, it can move rather fast when startled.

cool, thanks guys. All I need to do is to train the little fella to roll over for me so I have a look!

I never used to to see mine eating except when I had put bloodworm in the tank, they loved that.

Is there an easy way to tell whether a koura is a male or female? I have just got one from my lfs, he/she is approx 13cm long (not including pincers). I have not been able to find anything about how to tell the difference. Picture is not the best as had to use cell phone camera.

Definately go for the black neons - way hardier! I have had no luck with neons lately, they all seem to get sick very easy these days, as mentioned above mostly because they are so inbred now.

Does anyone know where I may be able to find some Nannacaras? In particular males. I have a female that I got from my lfs, but they don't look like they will get any more of these fish in. Female is in a 90cm/130 lty heavily planted tank with various tetras (glass bloodfins, penquins and head & tail lights) Any info would be welcome.

When I did a re-do on my tank and got a canister filter I put some of the old filter sponges from my hang on filter into the canister to help kick start it and it seemed to work very well in getting it seeded with bacteria, although I still waited a week or so before putting my fishies back in.

I think with sand as a substrate you do have to stir it up a bit from time to time as you can otherwise get pockets of anaerobic bacteria which are not a good thing to have in the tank.

The battery trick works best with copper wires, as the electricity causes copper ions from the wire to end up in the water (don't ask me the tech stuff of this, I'm not smart enough to explain it properly). Obviously copper is not good for any inverterbrate, so remove all snails, shrimps etc. Doing a water change next day will lower the dissolved copper level in the water.

Nice little tank -although you may want to get a few more Cardinals, as they tend to do better with at least 6-10 to shoal together.

could it be a tape worm of some description?

It looks like they have been de-listed on trademe, can't find them anywhere. Just as well. People should check the legality of selling any native animal.

Cory is a Corydoras Schwartzi. Apparently they are wild caught and have not yet been captive bred - nice find. My two bolivian rams started off looking like yours above, big eyes and all, but have grown a bit and have coloured up very nicely. In a week or two and with some live/frozen food they will get some good colours in them.

I think you may get some aggression there - siamese fighters are sometimes not very picky about who they fight with, and even dwarf cichlids get be a bit tetchy at times.

Testing your friends water could be a good idea - as caryl has said above, concrete can raise the ph of the water. How new/old is the concrete tank you got the water from? the newer the concrete, the more likely it is to raise the ph.

My 2 bolivian rams have got definate differences between them. The 'male' seems to have slightly more pointed dorsal fin and extensions on the top and bottom rays of the caudal fin, which the 'female' doesn't have.

Its the winterless north because we tend to only have a rainy season! As for fish etc - I have a 90cm (130ltr) tank with neons, glass bloodfins, penguin tetras, 2 x bolivian rams and peppered corys. Am running an external canister filter.