David R

Watch them closely, we tried that and ended up with a single male and a vets bill for a damaged foot...

The polythene might be a bit glossy and reflective, especially if there is a gap between the polythene and the tank. All of the above seem like good ideas, but only if you forgot to paint the back of the tank before setting it up. A good coat of satin black on the back of the tank is the best background IMO...

There was an interesting article on mate selection in cichlids in TFH a while ago. The author did an experiment with a group of 6 (3m 3f) small central american cichlids, and found that the dominant male and female would breed, and the two other females would court with the dominant male but not breed with him, while ignoring the other two males. They would rather not pass on their genes than breed with a sup-par mate! Not saying this is true for all fish of course, but there is a lot of varying factors in how fish select their mates...

Yeah but thats what happens when you buy big fish and tanks when you're young and still living at home. Moving those fish and getting a bigger tank (which the aro needed when I sold it) to go flatting in Hamilton just wasn't an option. I wish I didn't have to sell it, but I don't [can't] regret it as it was the right choice at the time. I just wish I could find another one now...

Never under estimate an american cichlids ability to survive! Years ago I had a 5x2x2' with a big black aro, 14" fire eel, a couple of half-grown oscars and a few other fish. Bought a small jag on a trip to Auckland (from Whangarei) to visit Hollywood, got it home and realised it was a lot smaller than I had thought! I didn't have any other tanks so I had no choice but to drop it in the tank. next morning I couldn't see it and thought it had been eaten, no surprise really. A couple of days later I'm feeding the tank and I saw a beady little orange eye peeking out from a small hole in a piece of driftwood, then the jag darted out, grabbed a pellet half the size of its head, and went straight back to its hole. It kept that up until it was big enough to avoid being eaten...

Yeah, the guy in canada's is 57k gallons IIRC, I've posted a link to it before. Too big for me IMO, even if I won lotto I doubt I'd build something even as big as Johns tank. Neo's 600g is cool, but a bit bare for my tastes. Yeah the fish are rare and amazing, but that doesn't mean you can forget about the aquascaping...

Yeah, you should look for some of his threads on the Photo Lounge on MFK, that video doesn't show the true beauty of many of the fish, like the 2-3' black arowanas. I'm a bit sceptical about some of the facts/figures in that clip too (not saying I doubt John, more the hyped up nature of that kinda TV), for a start its not even the biggest privately owned tank on MFK...

I'd say with a well stocked tank you'd want 6-10 times turnover per hour, and a sump sized appropriately for a balance of the two factors you mention. The sump I'm designing for my next tank (on that topic did you get my PM's Mark?) is going to try to cover both by having the above-water media fed by its own pump separate to the return pump and independant of the flow in/out of the sump.

Sp. = species singular eg "that fish is a Synodontis Sp." Spp. = species plural eg "there are many Synodontis Spp. found in this river" Ssp. = subspecies.

Very interesting, looks a lot safer than collecting bichirs... pic Wonder what the locals think of the crazy westerners going to all this trouble for a little fish thats too small to get a decent feed off...

Did you forget the rest of your post? :roll: Nearly, he has a ~37000L arapaima tank. House Of Sam meets Animal Planet

How can it be more than one species??

lol, asking where the punctuation is then forgetting the question mark at the end of the sentence. :lol: Imagine taking Dee to see someone like JohnPTC from MFK, I think his head would explode....

I've had problems using deep layers of builders sand for substrates as it seems to build up gasses if left unstirred, especially under the driftwood. Ususally end up with ammonia problems after a while, and found the only way around it is to keep the sand no more than a couple of cm thick and stir it every water change. The geophagus and loaches stir the top layer constantly, but thats not enough. Are you saying if I increased the depth to 3-4" and never stirred it that would not only solve the ammonia problem but help remove nitrates?

Not really, more like Lamborghini verse Holden. Yes they are both good but one is clearly a better car/filter than the other, but in terms of value for money the cheaper option is the best way to go for most people.

The intense red is the breeding colours, but they are still an atractive fish when not in full colour. Male unsure of sex, possibley female.

For a free piece of software it is brilliant. I'm sure the hardcore photographers will say photoshop is better, which it almost certainly is, but I'd say for the basic tweaks most people want to do picasa is more than adequate.

I haven't set a tank up from scratch for years, in fact I'm not sure if I'd even know how to cycle one properly! :oops:

Good looking fish and pics, the ebjd has got a lot of gold on it (there is a guy on MFK trying to selectively breed the gold, but thats another story). I would have thought the fish freaked out when transferred to an empty tank with the stress of being netted and moved, but they all seem to be coloured up and happy so I guess its not an issue?

Yep, big thanks to Hollywood and the importer for sourcing rare fish from a quality supplier! Long term I'm planning on keeping a pair in a 180x75x60 tank (yes just two fish in that big tank!) so I can [hopefully] see their natural behaviour as a pair with out them killing each other or the need for a divider!

If you haven't already, could you do some sort of a write up on this?? Sounds interesting...

Barrie, have you already bought photoshop? You could always try picasa from google; http://picasa.google.co.nz/intl/en/ Its a lot simpler to use than photoshop and does pretty much everything that an amateur needs to do to adjust pics.

I'm not going to resize and rehost the pics so I can post them here, so you'll just have to click on the link. They're really starting to colour up now, I'm looking forward to seeing them in full breeding colours once larger as the females can rival just about any other fish (fresh or salt) for intense colour, check out these pics Largest one is about 3" now.

Sounds like you're going to need multiple tanks of identical fish to do any serious testing. Perhaps you could make some kind of food or other product? My sister did a science fair project many years ago (at a similar level) on snacks for her pet rats.

Which one is better? Eheim hands down, there's no comparison and anyone who tries to say otherwise is quite simply wrong. Which one is the best value for money or the best for your set up is a totally different question...