David R

As I said in my first post, the coral would have caused the pH to rise, thats how it stops the pH dropping, and when you left the water change longer than usual it just kept rising.

Wow that sucks! You breed and sell the fighters eh, so there's probably a fair few people who know where and what you keep. On a similar note, I always leave the curtain on the door of my fishroom slightly open so people can peek in and see whats there. I have nightmares of some stoners seeing the blueish light at night and hearing the sound of water running and thinking its a big hydroponics set up, then when they break in they're rather disappointed and decide to throw a rock through one of the tanks...

Nope, indo. It did eat like a pig though, would eat food sticks and sinking carnivore pellets until its stomach looked like it was about to burst.

Another thing to try would be doing more frequent smaller water changes instead of one larger one, if there is a big difference between your tap water and tank water.

The 2.5" I bought from hollywood a little about 16 months ago is getting close to catching up to the 13" one I've had for nearly 5 years. The difference? The smaller one eats pellets and has spent most of its life in 600L+ tanks, where as the older one grew up in a 300L 4'. Big tanks = big fish.

Most important thing, rotting rood will turn a small body of water toxic pretty quickly. Soak it in fresh water, changing it regularly until you're happy its clean and not rotting.

As Ira said, keep up with regular consistant water changed, leave the tank as-is and don't worry about it unless there is a reason to.

"green severums" are hybrids. As the article in the link I posted mentions, fish of the genus Heros have been bred in captivity in Germany for close to a hundred years. Most of the fish we see here (probably the only exception being the rotkeils) are most likely hybrids of H. efasciatus. The true H. severus is a much more attractive fish and is actually a mouth brooder! http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/oo16 ... 309_09.jpg Its a nice looking fish, I'd say keep it.

Hybrid of some sorts. Nowhere near enough red to be a true rotkeil. As explained here, most "severums" in the hobby now are hybrids, unless they are wild caught or from wild caught parents. Its a nice enough fish but I certainly wouldn't encourage you to breed it.

What? pH rising from 7.0 to 7.6 over a "couple of weeks" is called a crash and would kill all your fish????? oh, you said Ph, not pH, you must be talking about telecoms XT network or something. Glad I stuck with vodafone, I'd hate for my Ph to crash and kill all my fish. :-?

Ideal if you're breeding and/or constantly moving fish from one tank to another, no need to acclimatise them as they're all in the same tank, so to speak. How are the tanks going to be set up, on some sort of racking system? How much space is below them? Obviously the sump needs to have enough space left when running to be able to hold the skim off all 6 tanks when the pump is shut off. As well as housing enough biomedia for how ever many litres of water will be in the system. Really its no different to setting up a sump for six 4' 200L tanks than it is for one 1200L tank, just a little extra plumbing and a few more holes to drill.

There's your answer. TBH I'd just keep up with water changes and stop checking the pH.... :lol:

Damn we're an impatient bunch! :lol: Post the pics, will be cool to see.

Just remember, if you try to make a living off your hobby you may just turn your hobby into a chore....

You're telling me! Slightly OT, 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson is a really good read if you're interested in general science and interesting oddball bits of information. Like, for example, that the number of molecules in 2.016 grams of hydrogen is 6.0221367x10^23, equivalent to the number of popcorn kernels needed to cover the US to a depth of nine miles, or the number of cupfuls of water in the pacific ocean.

It most certainly is a hybrid, have a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_%28biology%29 1. Hybrids between different subspecies within a species (such as between the Bengal tiger and Siberian tiger) are known as intra-specific hybrids. Hybrids between different species within the same genus (such as between lions and tigers) are sometimes known as interspecific hybrids or crosses. Hybrids between different genera (such as between sheep and goats) are known as intergeneric hybrids. Extremely rare interfamilial hybrids have been known to occur (such as the guineafowl hybrids).[3] No interordinal (between different orders) animal hybrids are known. 2. The second type of hybrid consists of crosses between populations, breeds or cultivars within a single species. This meaning is often used in plant and animal breeding, where hybrids are commonly produced and selected because they have desirable characteristics not found or inconsistently present in the parent individuals or populations. This flow of genetic material between populations or races is often called hybridization.

If the fish are healthy then there's nothing wrong with the hardness IMO. Better to keep it stable than have it fluctuating.

Should we factor in the time it takes to learn a second language so you cab understand morse code?

Perhaps we should just allow registered breeders to export them? Would have to very tightly monitored, but it would help take money away from the black market and bring money into the NZ economy.

And more to the point are the fish happy and healthy?

I'd like to see that test re-done with someone using a cellPHONE for its intended purpose, ie making a phonecall....

Albinos don't get as big as a normal senegal, about 10" max IIRC.

I'd agree with what Ira said. What is the volume of the bio media?

No need to imagine, check out the article in PFK on wild type discus, some photos of massive blackwater tanks with huge groups of discus, angels etc. Great looking tank btw!!

Incidentally, I read somewhere that around 85% of people are idiots.... :lol: Seriously, its almost as bad about argueing over the toilet seat being left up or down, if phones had come out with predictive text right from the start then absolutely no one would use non-predictive and that stupid txt language that no one can really understand would never have existed. I think the reason the oldies don't like it is because they only send about 3 texts a week so don't get enough practice to learn how to use it. Gie it a week or two of good effort and you'll wonder why you were making such a big deal about it....