David R

Silvers can get pretty big alright!!

If I were you I'd rather pay a little more and buy from the local pet shop than getting them shipped and buying sight unseen. Make sure they're fat, healthy and eating well. How big is your tank, and what temperature is it?

arapima?

Simple, supply and demand. Large fish are difficult to breed, need large ponds occupying large areas of land. To harvest the eggs you need to catch the parents out of the pond at the right time to strip the fry from the parents mouth. Then the tender young fry with egg yolks still attached have to be raised up to a size where they are able to be microchipped and issued with a certificate of authenticity to show that they are second generation captive bred fish (and therefore not putting pressure on wild stocks). They then are passed from the farm to the distributer in singapore to the importer to NZ and finally to the LFS, all who put their mark up on the fish, to cover the costs they incurred. Thats the supply part of it, then there's the demand from superstitious asians who like the red colour and good feng shui it brings, along with something to do with the dragon shape.

I wonder how many generations it takes for something like that to become domesticated? :lol: Still, our cat gets pissed off every now and then and digs the claws/teeth in, I certianly wouldn't want anything bigger doing it...

Mark; what you've said there is exactly why I don't agree with people trying to tame such animals. They are beautiful animals and skilled predators, and should be appreciated for that rather than trying to turn them into something they're not. All this talk of people bonding with them makes me laugh, if the lionman really bonded with them he wouldn't need to have them declawed....

Nice!!

My dull eye is growing slow but the other one in the first pic (L27 Tapajos?) seems to be growing a bit faster. Henward you probably won't see it eat, just make sure there's wood in the tank, throw the occasional algae wafer in after the lights go out, and try broccoli stalk cut in half and weighted down.

I'd vote with my wallet and move house....

And speaking of royals, did you see this thread on MFK with the monster royal!!!

One of my royals My other dull eye royal: look on the tree stump... :lol: Also got a sunshine that I haven't photographed yet.

LOL whens that coming?? More tanks, or perhaps you should go all out, get rid of the silvers and do an asian comm in the big tank with reg, XB, rtg etc...

*waits for Ira to pipe up about bought/brought* The sevs will get far too big and boisterous for the rams, although TM they will handle the higher temps fine (come from similar area to the cardinals and rams). Can't wait for pics!

If you don't stop the filter you'll have to afterwards anyway because you're bound to stir up a heap of crap and it'll get clogged...

There's people that weigh more than that tank.... :lol:

:lol: I was going to mention that but I though it was a bit coarse [the gravel].

Losing the bacteria isn't as much of a problem as stirring up all the crap in the gravel, creating more waste than the filter can process. Especially with deep gravel that hasn't been well siphoned and has 'dead spots'. You could try to get it as clean as possible first by doing a few deep thorough gravel siphons in the weeks/days leading up to the change over. With such a small tank it might just be easier to get a couple of big 60L plastic bins and transfer most of the water and the fish into there while you re-do the substrate.

Can I ask who for??

If you don't replace all of it then the old stuff will mix in with the new. It can cause an ammonia spike, that said I've done it several times with fish in tank and had no problems, just keep an eye on the parameters after. If possible use a big siphon to suck all the gravel out rather than stirring it up trying to scoop it out. Although if you've got lots of gravel in a small tank it might not work.

Weird, I've had two dreams with hovering over-sized fish!! The first was in a huge greenhouse kinda like the winter gardens at the Auckland Domain, but with a stream running thru it and tall patches of bamboo, and there were about 3-4 red finned cigar sharks about 6' long hovering around. The second was at the lfs in whangarei and there was a school of cardinals about 20-30cm long hovering under the racks of tanks in the shop. Maybe we should get a shrink to look into what it means.... :-?

noooo!!! One is [more than] enough!

Ha! If only it was that simple, I don't think there's a retailer who would disagree with you, but finding that person is pretty hard.

Sounds a little dodgy, is the 'ring' a spacer that goes over the studs on the hub to make the wheel sit out further?

At least now I'm not going to get a million emails from my saved search for "tortoise" for tortoise shell cats! :lol:

Phone/email Stone and Water world in Auckland and ask if there's a supplier in the South Island, the stuff in my tank is called "charcoal grit", and its a dark grey, not totally black.