KrazyGeoff

I spoke with the guy that bred these. The F1 offspring have also bred, just as an aside. You need to grow them to 28cm minimum. What was possibly not published was the fact that his female was killed during the first mating attempt as the fish collapsed the rock structure. Luckily in Germany you can order a 28cm female, so the breeding adventure was able to continue. If that happens in little ole NZ then you basically have to start again. Barryancistrus are significantly difficult to breed. Having said that, it's still good to have a challenge. BUT, being able to succeed is also a great motivator, and you learn heaps as you go. You learn how to read your fish. Some like current across the mouth of the cave, some like it flowing over the mouth of the cave, some like it directly into the cave, some like it bouncing around, for example. Some like slate caves, some wood, some PVC, some that molded plastic stuff. Some like a rough inside, some like smooth, some like to make their own cave........ Ancistrus sp, Peckoltia sp, hypancistrus sp, panaqualos sp, Panaque sp, Baryancistrus sp is possibly a good list of easy to hard.......... (There are always exceptions of course) Without trying to discourage you in any way at all, bristlenose are kind of like instant noodles, you just add water. Baryancistrus are kind of like a 12 course meal with matching wine. The P.maccus complex are a really cool little fish, and not too difficult to spawn, heaps of personality and you don't need a big tank, but you learn about messy types of fish. There are some nice Peckoltia in NZ, and they are easy to sex and not that difficult either. There are quite a number of Hypans in NZ as well that each have their own challenges, and can be done in 100-200 litre tanks. Sometimes your choice is limited (in NZ) to being able to get both sex's of a fish type rather than deciding on the fish type first. Redwoods gets some pretty cool stuff, so it may pay to see what they have access to. Remember that the size of fish we get imported here, will mean that you may need to buy 8-10 fish and then wait a year to see if there are males and females........ I would go to redwoods and see what they have, see if they have any pairs or trios, and then just go for it. Don't worry about what they are, just make sure they don't get bigger than 15cm. I'm not saying don't do the nuggets, but do something else in the mean time while they grow. I have heard of the big Barry's getting to breeding age in 2 years, but they were getting 2x water changes every day! If you get a list of what you have access to then I (we) would be able to give you some better advice. Cheers

60 ish, tararua tap water

You can use pillow stuffing, I get mine from spotlight. But you can always buy a cheap throw cushion from bunnings :bggrn: Or even a micro fibre towel, or tea towel Place material from side to side on short side, so that one edge of the material is under the water for the whole short side of the tank. Then just work your way to the other end of the tank in a smooth motion. Sort of like netting a fish. Basically you scoop the entire surface of the water with one movement, the water will pass through the material and the oil slick will stick to the fibers. Job done, stink gone, time to cut some kindling (or whatever the next pressing job is) Cheers

Sounds like the beginnings of starting up the club again.... Cheers Geoff

That's a few fish for a 60 litre. I would test out how much water you have left in the 60, by the time you are able to carry it. IMO running a filter with no fish to pollute the water, is worse than just leaving the canister standing still, as you are flushing out the water with bacteria food in it, and replacing it with clean water. A big canister (FX5) or something like that, would most likely not have a saturated amount of bacteria anyway with that number of fish, therefore the risk of it crashing would be greater running the canister with fish less water, than it would be dumping the media into the 60 and adding an air stone. Payless plastics usually have the 200 litre blue drums, that would do the trick though. Cheers

Hi, All the information provided so far is good, but there are some other considerations. How many people are helping you? A 80ltr container that is 3/4 full will weigh at least 60kg. Can you lift this? I found that I could only safely manage 13 - 20kg of water, on my own, per box, all box's were less that 1/2 full. How far are you moving? This goes to what I call "time in box" Let's say you are moving 10 km. If it takes you 1 hour to catch the fish, and 2 hours to break down the tank, and 2 hours to transport to the new destination, and 2 hours to set up the tank, then you are 7 hours "in box". Do you want to keep that water? Also you have 5 hours "in box" plus transit time, so even if you are transiting for 10 minutes, or 10 hours, you will need to factor this minimum time. When I moved it took 7 hours to catch the fish alone...... Do you want to aqua scape the tank? It is quite dissapointing to have to rush this process, so factor the time in. How many fish do you have? How big are they? You may need to consider the biomass of the contents of each box. I used a number of poly box's that were approx 490x400x380 I also had a supply of HOB filters. This enabled me to turn the transport box's into temporary tanks at the destination, and with the HOB filters I was able to use the media from the original filters. This buys the time to set up the new aqua scape and keeps the media alive. Alternately I could have bagged the media, in media bags, and put an air stone in the middle, sort of like a sponge filter with media rather than sponge. (Keeping the media wet at all times as per the previous post) This then enables all fish to go into the new set up immediatly the new set up comes up to temperature. Good luck.

I have put mine inside the fish room because, they are super quiet, the fish room is a stand alone building that I don't really want to drill holes in to run the power and air conducts through, I didn't want to build a waterproof / cat urine proof external structure. Yesterday I needed to add another air pump and if I had needed to drill holes in the wall I would have been "annoyed". If in the future I need air from the outside then I will have to drill the hole in the wall, but I will use it to bring air to the air pumps, rather than bring the air pumps to the outside air.

I have the kindle app on my iPad. It will satisify most of your requirements, except the whole Amazon thing. I find it excellent for reading, and you can set the page colour to sepia, which is the brown shade you mentioned. Additionally you can zoom on all pictures. I really like being able to send PDF format and a few others to it. I have a mate who is a real eReader nut, and from what I have seen, if you have pictures, graphs and other technical diagrams, then the kindle app on a proper tablet is the way to go. (And you can browse the forum at the same time) Cheers

:lar: Most have pictures in this post http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=58774

Sleepy enough :rolfl: In no particular order....... L046 L034 L129 L142 L140 L239 L204 L104 L270 L260 GBA GBA - long fin Bristlenose Bristlenose - long fin Calico Bristlenose Calico Bristlenose - long fin And a few other random things.

Hi Michael, I have just moved to the Wairarapa. I have some fish..... Actually I have quite a lot of fish :bggrn: Cheers Geoff

Fight club :bggrn: This is a fairly typical indication of "pushing each other around" There appear to be two causes that I have noticed. One is using the pectoral fins (side fins) to lock the fish into a cave or crevice and then use the tail to defend the cave or crevice. This one usually also comes with rubbing to the flanks of the fish, near the tail. The other is basically a good old fight using the pectoral fins as a weapon, where one fish will side up to the other fish and then use the pectoral fins to try and push the other fish away. Similar to a forearm bit of pushing with a human, but without any further escalation as there are not fists at the ends of the fish forearm! Nothing to really worry about, another bit of drift wood, or some other place to hide will pretty much sort it out. The redness is blood, happens on the brown bristlenose, but much harder to see due to the brown skin pigment. Cheers Geoff

The brown fish in the middle is a very nice, standard bristlenose. Occasionally you get them where the white tips on the tail fin form the white band that is present on this fish. My understanding on the "starlight" term is a variety that looks like is has been sprinkled with salt, ie they have very fine spots. Cheers Geoff

So you have had 4 upgrades, I'll take that to mean aquarium upgrades, which means that you are possibly growing your tank, as your fish grow. That sounds like a responsible thing to do. It would be silly to think that people would start with a tank that would be large enough for the maximum theoretical size for a fish. Crickey if that was the case then common pleco's and loaches etc would be illegal to sell! Or immoral at the least. You know that clown loaches are to a fish tank what the canaries were to miners in the not too distant past. This is because clown loaches will get white spot at the first sign of anything wrong with a tank. Any old irresponsible fishkeeper can stuff their tank with fish and then change the water every 6 months, and wonder why things are not well. A responsible aquarist on the other hand will perform the correct amount of maintenance to keep their aquarium in a healthy state. You are obviously doing something right, since your world is not the toxic cesspit of biological chaos that it potentially could be. I have a tank about that size, and I had 7 clown loaches, about that size in it, and 50 tetras and some bristlenose and some breeding panaqualos. Sure it required some maintenance, but each sort of fish had their water layer and comfort zones, so if it's working for you don't let other peoples ignorance and theoretical experience influence your decisions. Note that I did need to move the loaches out as they were pretty much at the max size for the tank. So....... Something may have happened to change the fishes behaviour. It may be the lack of traffic, or the lack of water change (it might be possible that your filtration system is close to being maxed out, so the extra week with no new water may have had an impact), still there is a bit too much co-incidence for me. It might be time to shift it up a bit and replace some of them fishes. At 12 cm those clown loaches have possibly gotten a little large for that tank? I think you would have no troubles moving the gold fish to the cold water tank, as especially at this time of year, a non heated tank in NZ, is not really that cold. I would do a water change in both tanks, then I would take a bag of water for the warm tank, and put the goldfish in it, then I would take that bag, with the fish in it, and I would put it in the cold tank. After a few hours the water in both the bag and the tank should be the same temperature. I would observe the goldfish and if it looks ok then I would release it into the tank. BUT because goldfish are pooh machines, I would be irresponsible if I did not mention that this fish will have an effect on the bio load of the goldfish tank, and without knowing the existing load on the goldfish tank I would identify this as the potential biggest issue. Now back to the main tank. Give it say, another week, for the filters to adjust to having less load and have already arranged to swap your medium clown loaches for some smaller ones, you might want to start negotiating at 2 little ones for each medium one, and perhaps you will get 3 little ones for your 2 medium ones? At the same time remove the big pleco, and replace it with a bristlenose. In addition I would get at least a total of 5 clown loaches as they do like to be in shoals. And there you have it, that's what I would do. Potentially you could swap the big pleco for a bristlenose before you swap out the clown loaches, but I think that 5 small clown loaches and a bristlenose would make less of an impact in terms of reducing the total bio load than breaking it up further than just removing the goldfish first. Alexyay is right in terms of a clown loach will outgrow most typical home aquariums, but it is still acceptable to grow them to about the size you have in your sized aquarium and then move them on. Now, you may be very attached to all of these fish, and that's ok, but I would ask you this. "If keeping these fish in this aquarium is no longer in the best interest of these fishes welfare, then is moving them on and getting smaller ones to grow out a better thing to do"? Well that's my thought. Interesting that this started out as a hmmmm my fish are behaving differently........ But it might be that your fish have outgrown the tank..... And the extra week of no maintenance has alerted you to this? Cheers

Thats a 170 litre tank which is not too small, except for the big pleco. I would guess that they are scared of something. Have you been away? have they been without the regular foot traffic near the tank? How big are the loaches? There needs to be more loaches though, as they like bigger groups of "friends" Cheers

I would think it would be more of a domance thing. The big one is obviously the domanaint male, so he will keep the others away from food etc, and get more exercise doing it. If you feed in multiple parts of the tank then they all get more food. Also sometimes subdominant males like to stay that way so they don't become a target. Cheers

I couldn't see the hairy lower half of the body, but that is a male thing exclusively with this L number. What I am mainly looking at here is the body shape. Basically they are two triangles, back to back. So one triangle from the tip of the nose to the start of the pectoral fins (and across the body to the opposite pectoral fin and back to the nose), then another elongated triangle from the start of the pectoral fin down to the tail. If it was a female, then I would expect the second triangle to start at the start of the caudal fin, and go down to the tail. The area in between the caudal fin and the pectoral fin, in this case would be more rectangular. If the fish is "over conditioned" then other factors can come into play, like the head shape, hairy parts, thickness of the leading edge of the pectoral fin, thickness of the top edge of the tail fin, etc. Those features having different dominance depending on what genus you are looking at. Cheers

How big are they? The look too small to me, but if I had to guess I would say all male. Cheers

Merry Xmas..... At a guess I would say that they are more than cuzzies. I think that they both have the same father, and one is also the others mother! I think perhaps 192.168.20.1 might be your machine or your router and that device is under attack from some kind of virus, and I am reading a zombie book at the moment but that will be of no help, so perhaps we should wait for phantom, or try rebooting the router, running a virus scan on your computer? Cheers

At least that means it is your machine rather than anything else. It could be that your temporary internet cache is full? Or corrupt? Or something else? I think that the first thing would be to clear the cache. Open internet explorer. Click tools (top right corner on menu bar that has the internet addresses in it.) Looks like a spikey wheel thing Select internet options On the general tab select delete which is in the browsing history section Now it gets slightly confusing. If you have FNZAS in your favourite then you need to make sure the top check box is NOT ticked. Check the Temporary Internet files and website files box. The rest are up to you, the only harm that can be done is that you will need to log in to any site that remembered your password. Then click delete. Next click settings, on the general tab again (beside the first delete button) You may want to increase the "disk space to use" amount. It should be at least the maximum recommended. Then just OK or whatever you need to do to get out of there, close down the browser and restart the machine and see if that fixes it. Note that you are allowed to swear as often as you like. Cheers

Pleased you still have your sense of humor, Xp is an operating system not a browser, but I'll assume you mean IE, and chrome. It's a bit like grasping at straws, but the only thing that I can think of is either the photo hosting site is moving the photos around, or it may be something to do with the cache on your machine, but that just doesn't quite seem right, but never hurts either.... So....... Test one, Can you see the two pictures below. They are the same picture, just posted slightly different ways. Cheers

Do you have an example post etc

I found the other day when I was loading my photos up that if I was logged into photobucket then I could not see my images via the forum, but as soon as I logged out of photobucket they became public again and I could see then via the forum. Other than that spot of weirdness I was going to say the same as Phantom. If you "quote" the post with the photo, then you can see the link, then you can copy the link to another browser and then you will get any error message direct from the hosting site, as opposed to just clicking the photo which may swallow the error message in one of the redirects. Cheers

I'm not convinced it is a L333 however as I was sort of under the impression that they were part of the black and white scribbled family...... I still intend to update this thread with the conference summary information, it's just amazing how being back to normal life interferes with the important stuff!

I think they said it was a L333