David R

Oh come on guys, it was on the internet for goodness sake, IT MUST BE TRUE!!!!!! I knew a guy with a VW phassat once, its a rare USDM model designed for transporting 6' plecos that have invaded rivers and grown to three times their usual size. I heard you can also get 550hp out of the phassat motor simply by posting on three different forums that you have 550hp. Because the car has invaded america from its native germany there is much more space for it to increase its horsepower and it has increased in size considerably over the much more common vw passat. As they say, everything is bigger in texas. Prove me wrong, just because there is no documented proof on the internet or in any vw literature doesn't mean it doesn't exist...

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine. You can say what you want, if you believe common plecos can grow to 6' and clown loaches to 3' then good for you. Hey, some people believe in scientology. You can call me all the names you like, but until you produce a pic of a 3' clown loach or a 6' pleco then I (and probably most people) aren't going to take you seriously... I'm sure people are capable of making up their minds as to who is the "blind fool who understands stuff all about fish" and who knows what they're talking about.....

Snowman post up some pics, would love to see them!! Mac all I see is lots of text and no pictures. All I'm asking for is a little hard proof and a little less trash talk, is that so hard given that there are so many "old farts showing them off"? http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=20816 http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... p?t=333431 Still no replies. I've googled "huge/massive/monster/16" clown loach" and still found any of these pictures you're talking about. One of the few pics I've found is this one of "Albert" with a hand in the photo; If the hand in the photo is as big as mine then he looks as though he could be around 30cm, maybe even slightly bigger. But if you look to the left of the pic you can see the back half of an angelfish, if Albert is 30cm then that angel is going to be over a foot tall!! You're entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to mine, and I guess we have to agree to disagree. You're right that no one has scoured every inch of river looking for monster clowns and there may be some out there just waiting to be discovered, but the [slim] change that there could be doesn't mean there is. IMO the notion of 2-3' clowns is a load of rubbish, and even the possibility of them getting much over 12" is pretty far fetched, and nothing short of a picture of a loach lying on a tape measure will change that. Look at it this way, the tallest man ever to have lived was 8'11", about 3' taller than the average human, so do we say that people grow to 9' tall when describing the species? If there have been 14-16" clowns then they are most likely like the 8'11" man; an exception to the rule. *edit* I just re-read you post and noticed this: Are you actually suggesting that common pleco (or any suckermouth catfish for that matter) has the potential to grow to 6'? Or have I somehow mis-read that sentence. I hope its the latter.....

Yes they can be reinfected, its not something they build up an immunity to. Treatment should continue for longer than 3 days IMO, depending on your temperature. In cold water tanks their life cycle can take weeks. I read an interesting technique that involved transfering the affected fish between two tanks, every time the spots hatched it was moved to the other tank and the first tank emptied, sterilised and refilled with clean water ready for the next move.

It means they have hatched and are swimming around looking for fish to attach to. You can't kill the spots, only the tomites floating around in the water, which is why I do large frequent water changes during treatment.

A thicker headgasket will give you a slightly larger margin for error when it comes to tuning by lowering the compression a few points, but it'll hardly "solve the trick". You'll still have a weak bottom end and a motor that wasn't built to run boost, not to mention missing out on all the other things the factory turbo ones (S14 and S15 anyway) come with like bigger brakes. TBH $5k is a pretty minimal budget for a performance car, and the ongoing costs associated with the kind of turbo car you'll be getting for that sort of money will most likely be pretty high. Fast, cheap, reliable. You can only have two of those three things.....

Thanks, but I already got it from Mulford Plastics in Sylvia Park, they've got a good selection of offcuts for cheap and their prices are reasonable. Out of curiosity I priced up some big thick sheets, and a 2400x1200x25mm sheet of clear acrylic is about $750, how does that compare to glass Barrie??

I too have treated mine at full strength (with the method I described before) many times and found it worked well. I would err on the side of caution when calculating the volume of water in your tank though, don't just go "its 90x40x40cm so thats 144L" or you'll end up overdosing them. I measured my 180x75x60 tank (which based on those dimensions is 810L) and allowing for the thickness of the glass, the substrate, the air gap at the top and the corner overflow (and not counting the volume in the sump) it actually only holds just over 700L. Measure from the top of the substrate to the water level, and the length and width inside the glass, then round it down a bit based on what you think the decor will be taking up.

Is that what glue sniffers call their mates?

What other fish are in the tank? I'd suggest going to 30C at least (with increased airation) if your fish will tolerate it. Quarantining now is a probably waste of time as there are likely to be tomites roaming the tank, although if your other fish aren't affected you could remove the pleco and treat it with tonic in a hospital tank to avoid staining your silicone and decor in the main tank (last time I used it I found it even stained my white sand blue!), and just treat the main tank with increased temp and salt. Here's how I have treated it in the past when my clowns have got it; -temp to 30C -full strength dose of tonic -48 hours later do a 50% water change and another full strength dose -repeat until there is a visible decrease in the spots on the affected fish, then start stretching it out to 3 days, then 4 days etc until all fish have been clear for at least a week.

fixed. I guess it depends on if you're shipping bichirs or angelfish?

Thanks Caryl, and my apologies to the OP for the keyboard warrior smackfest, if arguing on the internet is like winning the special olympics I guess I'm as retarded as anyone... :lol: Again, I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but I've been keeping clowns and posting on various internet discussion groups for over 10 years. This quote is from one of the links you posted: Emma Turner is one of the biggest clown loach fanatics/experts in the hobby, are you suggesting she hasn't been "searching the internet about clowns much" because she hasn't seen any pics of >12" specimens? One thing I've learned over the years is how much people love to exaggerate fish sizes. I've heard countless stories of 16" oscars, 4' arowanas, 18" jags, 30" doviis, and of course 12" and 14" and 16" and even bigger clown loaches. And you know what the only consistent thing between those stories is? A lack of photographic evidence or even a credible source. If someone with a reputation like Axelrod or Konnings wrote an article about clowns in habitat and said they caught some as large as 16" but didn't have pics I would be inclined to believe him/her. But all I've heard is internet rumours and fishermans tales. I've made a post on MFK to see if I can find some pics of >12" clowns, I'd love to be proven wrong but I am very sceptical... Good stuff, 8 is a lot better than 4! Keep a close eye on them for whitespot if you haven't quarantined the new additions, they usually seem to bring it home from even the best LFS. How big are they all? You'll probably find it takes a little while for them to settle in and really become active, having them cowering under the filter sounds to me like there isn't enough cover in the tank? Make up some caves with flat pieces of schist, or even use PVC pipes if you don't mind the look of them in your tank. Here's a video of mine from ~12 months ago, shortly after purchasing 6 large ones (even they were over-estimated in size, I was told the largest was nearly 12" when in reality it was about 7.5"). If you're worried about a few pics taking too long to load then forget about this, its about 40mb IIRC....

Been there done that; viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35853 IMO its certainly safety in numbers. My tanks don't have a huge amount of cover in them, and large clowns will often destroy plants so they aren't really the answer. I've found the more you have the more active they are. Keeping them in groups of less than 10 is a waste IMO, its like keeping 4 cardinal tetras and wondering why they don't school...

I guess you haven't been here long enough to remember when there wasn't actually a limit on the dimensions of pictures that could be posted. When I joined (and for years after that) people posted pics of all shapes and sizes and almost everyone was on dial-up. I certainly don't recall anyone ever complaining about pic-heavy threads. I'm not even sure why the size limit was implemented, preventative measure perhaps.... Reading comprehension fail. I said "been here 5 minutes" not keeping fish 5 minutes. I'd been keeping fish for about 6 years before joining this site, not that it really matters. :roll: I'm not really sure what your point was, but you're really just reiterating what I'm trying to say. Most of the people I know [in real life] who are serious about keeping fish don't bother actively contributing to internet forums. Do we want more people not contributing or less?

Fair point Smidey, I guess I'm just questioning why I feel inclined to want to share pics and knowledge here, I should probably just listen to the half of me that says "don't bother". If that how I come across [other than in the past few posts in this thread] then I'm genuinely sorry, its not intended. People have a tendency to act tough on the internet and I guess I should have just ignored sams post instead of dragging the thread off-topic, although why he chose this thread to make a song and dance about it instead of this thread in the fishroom forum I'm not sure. My point still remains, and its hard to make without sounding arrogant. If this forum would rather cater to people still using dial-up than people who want to post big pictures then thats fine, but its membership is going to reflect that. Its fairly typical of the kiwi tall poppy chopping syndrome. Sam H Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:05 pm Doesn't look like 3 years to me, but what ever. Either way, I've had half those loaches longer than that. You're right about age and experience being everything, just look at the saga about the "Chirwa Island" peacocks....

Actually I don't NEED to contribute anything, I choose to spend my free time posting here, and if I choose not to then its going to be the forum missing out, not me. TBH as an advanced fishkeeper this forum offers me very little, there isn't much motivation for me to post here other than to try and support the local scene and help people out. Its easier for me just to post the pics on MFK and have intelligent discussions with people who have similar interests, of which there are very few here. There are a lot of people who could contribute all sorts of interesting stuff but don't, I was waiting for a friend to post pics in the 'NZ Aro Community' thread but he simply said he couldn't be bothered. In the 7 years I've been here it seems like the membership has become rather bottom-heavy, with many experienced hobbyists with interesting fish choosing to post elsewhere or not at all. I guess I should stop trying to buck the trend....

Man, I love being schooled by kids who have only been here 5 minutes. Have fun talking about how many tanks your mum will let you keep in your bedroom. Its not really surprising why so many of the "greatest fish keepers" don't bother posting. :roll:

No problem, I'll leave the pics for people like you who make such great contributions to this forum. Do you actually keep fish? I don't recall ever seeing you posting pic of them. If anyone wants to see the pics of my loaches have a look at the Loach forum on www.monsterfishkeepers.com :roll:

Because I usually post them on on other forums and don't see why I should have to resize them for this one, especially when they are already small (usually under 100kb). Thats why I usually don't bother posting pics here, maybe I should just stick to that...

Boohoo, are we really going to be restricted to posting tiny low-res pictures until everyone on the planet has finally upgraded their 33.6k modems and 15" CRT monitors? Those pics add up to a grand total of about 180kb, hardly massive, the problem with the stupid image restriction is that it works on the DIMENSIONS of the picture, not the SIZE meaning that I could post an ultra hi-res 2mb 640x480 but can't post an 80kb cropped 900x350 full tank shot. But I digress.... Zayne, there are 30 there, plus one American Tiger. They range from about 7.5" (there are a couple of fat gravid females in the pics) to about 2.5". Great fun to watch at feeding time, but expensive to keep fed!! I'll make a video when the water in the 810L has cleared up.

I'm sure there are older clowns out there, they are a large slow-ish growing fish therefore probably have quite a long lifespan. My oldest ones I've had for 6-7 years and they were already around 3" when I bought them. [go to http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... .php?f=282 if you want to see the pics that were here]

Like the black aros, it won't happen overnight but it will happen..... [maybe] :lol:

bleh.

Try talking to Hollywood, they'd have as good a relationhip with the importers as anyone in Auckland. I think you'll find the importers generally don't deal with the public as it would be seen as taking sales away from the shops they supply.

Here's a pic of my old one, was about 12cm when I sold it IIRC. I think Snookie ended up with it? http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k186/ ... nopoma.jpg (can't actually post the pic because of the ridiculous image size restriction thing, so you'll have to click the link)