David R

Great pics! You'll have to come shoot my fish some time.... :lol:

Yeah, either way its going to be a good looking fish! Did you get a festae as well as the FH?

Why would MAF want to make more work for themselves?

Lucky really, otherwise I'd have to do some serious rethinking of my stocking!! A group of wild type discus in a tank full of wood with blackwater, a big school of cories and whiptail catfish etc would be awesome.

Henward, have a look at the countless festae sex threads on MFK. From what I've read the black in the dorsal is very unreliable, and the blue speckles in the dorsal/tail/anal fins are a much better indication. Because I had mine in a group I was also able to observe their behaviour and the one of mine I'm picking as a female wasn't fighting with the other 7 as much, and "she" is showing much less of the blue in her fins than the other 7, even the less dominant ones (which also have black in the dorsal fin). My money is still on male for Frasers fish, I guess only time will tell.

Ask anyone with a large tank (800L+) if they use stuff like that. Expensive waste of money IMO. If you're not patient enough to wait for your filter to establish properly then fish keeping is probably the wrong hobby for you...

Thats what I was getting at, although "the hobby" usually refers to cycling as the process of establishing your biological filtration.

Define community? I see no reason why they couldn't be kept as part of a cichlid community in an appropriately sized tank.

Yep, the nitrogen cycle is the process of how biological filtration works, so "cycling" is a bit of a funny term for establishing that nitrogen cycle as one would think that "cycling" is what the cycle does when its working..

There's not really a set ratio, but IMO you're best to avoid tanks that are taller than they are wide unless you have a specific reason for wanting one (eg tall plants or angel fish). Tanks that have square ends (ie as wide as they are high) will have a good ratio of surface area to volume, and the wider they are the better (again, IMO). Having a larger surface area and footprint is more beneficial to the vast majority of aquarium fish than having height.

Yes and no, guess it depends on your definition. One could say its a way of cycling a tank, but you don't get the typical spikes in parameters as you would when you kickstart it with a fishless cycle or by using some hardy fish. So when does the "cycling" end If I add half a dozen fish to an established tank does the increase in bacteria to deal with the increased waste count as cycling?

festae should get to over a foot, so at the current size its still really a juvi, which may explain the mild temper, watch out when it gets to 6-7". I've also read that they're a lot more mild when kept singally, its only when breeding they get super aggressive.

Its because of the ratio of fish:water:media. You don't really need to cycle any tank if you add fish slowly enough to let the filter establish.

I'd go on a mission to get rid of and/or hide as much equipment as possible, IMO thats the biggest improvement you could make, other than that I like it! See if you can track down one of those glass filter intake/return.

man, don't even start on that, there's been so many round-and-round debates on MFK!!! :lol: So many varying opinions, made much worse by people trying to use the name "green terror" as though its some sort of official scientific name that only applies to one species. People seem to get all wound up about the "true green terror" when what they are really trying to say is the "true Aequidens rivulatus". The true A. rivulatus is rarely seen in the hobby, what we get is a different fish of the same Genus, as-yet undescribed AFAIK. There is also the silver saum and silber saum, which may or may not be the same thing depending on who you ask (silber is German for silver IIRC). Either way, the green terrors/gold saums that we get here are IMO the nicest looking, they are more colourful and have a bright orange seam [saum] along the dorsal fin. You manage to find another female for your guy???

True, possibly due to being confined to a tank, in a massive pond or huge tank they'd probably keep growing steadily.

Festae looks great!! I'd leave the lighter substrate, mine are on "brightwater" gravel and are all quite dark, that and possibly the fact that I have [most likely] seven males in the tank together. Mine are all quite shy, planning on moving them into the 5' as soon as I get the big tank running [hopefully soon!] and adding some dither fish to try to get them coming out a bit more. The one likely female I moved into the 6' with the clowns has gone from being shy to really active.

What kind of filtration do you have on the 120L? If you've got a canister running on it then you could just transfer it onto the new tank when you move the fish across. It depends on the fish you're keeping too, if they're tough like most cichlids I wouldn't worry so much, but if they're more sensitive like discus or clown loaches then you'll want to have the new tank a bit more established. There are plenty of ways to do a "fishless cycle", do a search here and see what you find.

Agree with Henward, there's a good reason why HFF only keep fast fish like tinfoils and silver dollars with Helen. IMO 6x2x2 could be a bit small long term....

TBH I think you really need to do some more planning and serious thinking about what to stock it with. And remember that once a fish is in there its not going to be easy to get it out! It all just seems a bit random, eg 5 severums; do you have 5 sexed adults, or are you going to grow out a smaller group? What ratio of M to F? Do you really want fish breeding in there? You've got an opportunity that most aquarists only dream of, I don't think there's a commonly available fish in NZ that won't be happy in that tank for life. But you have a lot to consider. The aro comm Henward suggested would be cool, but can you afford to [or will you want to] feed them when they're all 30"+? And what else will you keep with them? Stocking aside; What are you going to filter it with? I'm not really sure why you'd want to plumb it into the discus tank, risk introducing diseases, will increase the amount of things like ferts and CO2 needed if you use them for the plants, and the amount of turn over you'd need to make it worth while would turn your planted tank into a river rapids tank. A big DIY sump is probably the only cost-effective way to go. Lighting? Its a deep tank, will need something strong to get to the bottom. Power bill? Buying the tank was the cheap part, running pumps, lights and heaters for a tank of that size is going to cost you a small fortune. Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems to me like a bit of an impulse buy, I just hope you've fully thought through what its going to require to set up and maintain this tank. Good luck and keep us updated!

Nice work, I like the hidden/lack of visible equipment in the tank.

If you do that to your canister its not going to flow very well!! Stick your siphon hose 2cm into the water and suck on the end, then stick it all the way to the bottom and suck on it and see if there is a difference.

If he won't eat prawn its unlikely he'll eat shrimp. I'd give it a week, maybe longer, to get used to the new food.

If you put a straw in your tank does the water fill up the straw?

It is, but with a canister filter if the intake and return are at the same height (as they are when they go over the back of the tank side by side) then you have a zero head height, even if the canister is a metre below the tank. For the record I currently run two aqua ones and two via aquas, they all do their intended job and were good value for money as cheap second hand items. But money aside, there is no doubt in my mind the Eheims are a better product.