David R

All my water goes down the drain, there's no way I can discharge 800L+ per week onto my lawn or it would be a swamp!

:oops:

When you say "1000L canister" do you mean 1000 litres per hour, or its rated to 1000L? (or the actual volume of the canister is 1000L ) And when you say "cichlids" do you mean african rift lake cichlids?

One of the things I like about your tanks is the lack of visible equipment. I hate seeing small tanks packed full of big equipment...

I'm still not sure what your point is, higher paid workers will benefit from the drop in the top tax rate, and I'm not sure if they dream of being super-rich any more than anyone else does... :-?

Don't forget this is a thread about the budget, not the politics of asset sales..... Some of them do, which is one good argument for having the top tax rate equal to that of trusts etc, but certainly not all of them. There are also plenty of "workers" dodging tax, not declaring income, doing cashies, etc and then often receiving a payout from working for families for doing so! Also, if they don't pay the tax then they aren't going to benefit from the tax cut, so all the "tax cuts for the rich" arguments aren't really valid....

What are you trying to achieve? Bio filtration? extra volume? Sole method of filtration or working with other? Planted or not? Fresh water or salt? How much space is there under the tank? Have a browse through the Setup & Filtration and DIY Projects forums on monsterfishkeepers.com there are loads of different ideas out there that you could adapt to suit your application.

You're not wrong P44, but it is also possible for a single species to have a large distribution over an area with plenty of "geographic isolation" between populations. Look at Homo sapiens for example....

Hah, I've bought fish from birdbarn before, certainly have nothing against them. I wouldn't say they are cheAp though, about average from what I've found.

Ryan I appreciate that its not just a matter of inventing new species to create sales, I was more suggesting that hobbyists/sellers are more likely to embrace the splitters ideas than the lumpers as it better suits the,. By lack of geographic isolation, I mean that the fish are essentially in the same body of water (albeit often separates by many many miles of open space), not isolated in separate likes or rivers, or even separated by some other impassable obstruction like a large waterfall. I have no idea just how far apart the different species are or what their range/migratory habits are, and I am aware that open water can make them seem to be just as isolated. I just feel that Konnings arguments have valid points, if the lake level dropped by 50 metres would they still all be isolated? Going by the heated debates over the names of 'distinct regional varieties' of lake malawi fish that have a 'lack of geographic isolation' then some people would obviously think they do.. Basically what I said before; that the differences aren't great enough to warrant splitting at species level, and the fact that with such a long history in the lake (including times when they would have been split into 3 separate lakes) that distinctly different species haven't developed as they have with other genera endemic to the lake.

You think anyone paying the top tax bracket is rich?!? Raising a family while paying a mortgage on a single income of $70-80k in Auckland isn't easy. School principals/DP's, supermarket store managers, machine operators, train drivers, etc, all paying the top tax rate, hardly rich listers really, there are plenty of "workers" being taxed at the top rate. IMO instead of cutting the tax rates, they should have stretched the brackets, making the top rate not kick in until ~$150k like Australia. Wins for me: Tax rejig- According to the experts I'll be around $20 better off per week, although thats a wild guess because who knows how much anyone really spends. I like the idea of having the option to pay more off the mortgage or save for retirement, or spend it and pay the same amount of tax I was paying before. Investment in rail- A; its a huge slap-in-the-face for all the paranoid lefties who said "national is going to sell everything". B; I think its vital to the country, building and maintaining our roads to handle the amount of freight rail moves would be far more expensive. Imagine somewhere between 300+ extra trucks per day between Auckland and Tauranga. Once the past 20 years of zero-investment have been made up for it should be a viable entity IMO. C; it means my job is pretty secure.

So Axelrod doesn't share Konnings sentiments, and it seems like C. gibberosa is widely accepted as being a valid species. Makes sense if you're a collector/wholesaler looking for new names, or a hobbyist looking for a point of difference. TBH I tend to agree with Konnings, given the subtle differences and lack of geographic isolation I think it would be more logical to keep it as a monotypic genus and split it at subspecies level to define distinct regional varieties.

Man, either you lot are terrible spellers or my amazingly lame sense of humour is wasted here. Tough crowd....

If you were at the bird barn I doubt it was the fish that were cheep...

Certainly not! The biggest difference is that the chest beaters and chinese whisperers KNOW that they are right and their claims are set in concrete, while the likes of Konnings and Nakaya say things like "in 2003 Takahashi Nakaya suggested the southern populations be regarded as a a separate species" and "Although this appears to be a good morphological difference, I feel this image is based on the morphological variation falls totally within the species". (both quotes from the afore mentioned PFK article). Not once in the article did Konnings say he was right and Nakaya was wrong, he simply stated his beliefs and the evidence to back them up, and disagreed with Nakayas suggestion to split the genus into more than one species. True taxonomists make suggestions, float ideas, and admit all the grey areas on their knowledge, while the internet experts argue about taxonomy as if it is a clear cut black and white subject.

There's not the same controversy surrounding the taxonomy of fronts as there is other rift lake cichlids. Could you split the conversation part into a new thread? It seems like an interesting and worthwhile discussion to me, and while it may be slightly off-topic its still fairly relevant to the subject at hand...

Sorry, I'll try keep the intellectual stuff to a minimum.

Classified by whom? The Feb '10 PFK magazine has an article on fronts written by Ad Konnings, and says in 2003 Takahashi Nakaya suggested the southern populations be regarded as a a seperate species (C. gibberosa), but the author believes the morphological variation falls within the species. He goes on to say that fronts are a deep water fish and has been in the lake for several millions of years, and that there would have been several times the lake level would have dropped enough so that the lake was split in three. "One would have confidently expected to see several species of Cyphotilipia living sympatrically at any or at least many different localieies around the lake - much as we do with those of Cyprichromis or Petrochromis. That this is not the case strongly suggests that C. frontosa it is not likely to be speciated soon and that the recognition of new species of this genus is based on personal opinion rather than evolution. A single species reflects much more the known natural history of the Tanganyikan humphead." The article was an interesting read, even for someone who isn't particularly interested in rift lake cichlids (I bought it because of an article on Geophagus!), I suggest you try find a copy of the magazine. So is C. gibberosa really a valid species? Or is it a case as mentioned in this thread of internet chinese whispers fuelled by an industry who wants to sell more fish and a hobby that wants more varieties of rare fish?

They're all the same species anyway. It happens in datnoids and that would be simply genetic variation, not "hybrids"...

That pretty much sums it up...

I was thinking (after reading a thread on MFK about names and varieties of cichlids) about how the internet has changed the way fish are named in this hobby. In the "old days" it was left up the the experts, and if we wanted to know something we looked at pictures in a book and compared traits and assumed that the experts had got it right. Now it seems that every forum has god a bunch of "amateur experts", with varying degrees of knowledge and strong opinions, who love to argue about the correct names for fish that haven't yet been formally named. There have been many multi-page threads on MFK arguing about what is the "true green terror", and I'm sure there are countless similar cases with african cichlids and catfish. Correct identification is an important part of our hobby, but common names certainly do have a place. It is much better to admit you are unsure about the true identity of a fish (especially breeding and selling) than perpetuate misinformation by "having a go" at identifying it based on your limited knowledge. There seems to be a big push towards having wild caught and rare fish rather than the prettiest/most attractive fish. This seems to be fuelling the name-makers to come up with different varieties/localities when ever possible, and people often seem to put more emphasis on the name/rarity rather than the appearance of the fish. Combined with the average hobbyists appalling grasp of Latin nomenclature, it seems we've ended up with a bunch of amateurs fiercely debating the identities of fish that taxonomists are likely to consider the same thing, mainly because importers/wholesers/retailers would rather make more sales by offering a different variety with a different name that can be argued about on an internet forum.

The sand isn't deep enough (and won't be in the 370g either) for plants, and the geos turn it over on a fairly regular basis so I doubt they'd stay rooted anyway.

Yes, you just have to incubate them right.

What kind of fish are in there?? (punch in the nuts for the first smart--- who says "africans")

guppies, not chickens?