David R

A beardy would meet all your requirements bar price. Just save up for a few more weeks...

It only takes an email address and a couple of minutes to get one.

Red-head severum or Heros Sp. 'Rotkeil'. Not a hybrid or line-bred colour strain, just an as-yet unidentified member of the genus Heros. Ditch your green sev Ira and buy it. Or someone send it up to me so I can hopefully find a mate for mine!! *edit* They can look fantastic as adults, here's a really nice one from Jeff Rapps (mind you what isn't nice from him!)

Perhaps its like that email where the words are all scrambled but you can still read it! I think my brain has been trained for 25 years to recognise words with capital letters as new sentences, maybe thats why it gets confused? :lol: Sorry, back on topic!! If only you could get a wealthy property developer interested in the potential of the sections who could bail you out until the council grants you permission to subdivide....

Is it just me or do other people find that putting a capital letter at the start of every word makes it harder to read?? Good on you guys for making other people aware, hopefully the word gets spread around through TradeMe...

Just put $50 in there, its not much but every bit helps! Its no more than I'd waste in a single trip to the LSF anyway!! :lol: I'm with National too so it'll be in there straight away. Good luck guys, I really hope you can find a solution!!

Great news Mark! Fundraising and stuff will all help, but 4 weeks isn't a very long time to get approval to subdivide the sections off and sell them to pay off the loan!!

Obviously if you're buying from the LFS you can't be sure where the fish have come from, although sometimes you can ask if they're locally bred or imported. The best bet is to grow a group out to adults and pick the best ones. I'm not 100% clued up on the whole GBA/bristlenose thing, but if they are the same SPECIES, and the GBA is just a seletively bred VARIETY, then inter-breeding them isn't as big a problem as many think. The only downside is that you could be "polluting" the GBA line with 'normal' genes, and decreasing the chance of having more GBA offspring. As for breeding brothers and sisters, in some cases its good, sometimes its bad, it depends what you're after. Johannes had an interesting post about line breeding not so long ago, which had discussion about it. My view is that if you're line breeding as long as you're monitoring the offspring for defects, and adding new blood when and if possible then its not a problem. If you're just breeding a species (as opposed to a selected colourstrain) then genetic variation is a good thing, and if you can avoid breeding brothers and sisters then you should do so.

Here's my $0.02 on the subject... New Zealand is a small country with limited a limited gene pool and a very tight border. Out best hope for having quality fish is local breeders (who are more than just newbie hobbyists, no offense anyone!) who will breed for certain traits rather than just indiscriminately with two random fish from the LFS. Weather you believe we all evolved from apes, or that we were magically created in 6 days, you cannot dispute natural selection/survival of the fittest. In nature, the weak are culled by predators and other factors before they can breed. So a species is constantly being shaped and improved by the environment it lives in, with the individuals most suited to their habitat being the most prolific breeders. Obviously this doesn't happen in the aquarium. To ensure species are not only kept pure, but also kept healthy, strong and free of defects in very important. Essentially, we need to 'play god' and carry out the task of natural selection. With easy to breed species like convicts, kribs, bristlenose etc people don't go to the lengths required to ensure their breeding stock is the biggest, most colourful or most bristly, and so the offspring are less likely to carry the good genes. And when somebody randomly/unintentionally breeds those offspring the cycle continues, essentially undoing all the years of hard work put in by mother nature to refine that species. Reverse natural selection. IMO, if you are not prepared to select the best parents (for desirable traits and how related they are) then you should not be breeding fish. (to sell, at the very least). If you are not prepared to cull the weaker, less colourful, or defective offspring (either by euthanising with clove oil, or feeding to other fish) then you should not be breeding fish. If you are not concerned with the long-term genetic well-being of the species and producing the best possible young, then you should not be breeding fish. You should instead be supporting those who do make the effort. IMO, people who breed fish for the sake of making money (especially when they don't need it to put food on their table) and sell every last fry produced to cash in on their success are irresponsible and have no place in the hobby. I think frontosa could be a good example of this. They're new[ish] and there's a heap of people willing to pay money for them. People aren't likely to want to cull the slightly defective or runty fry as they know they can still get dollars for them, regardless of what this will mean if that person goes on to breed them. [bTW I'm not targeting anyone with this rant, just expressing my thoughts]. I'm worried about what could happen to Sajica's if they are indiscriminately bred for generations (like convicts) with no regard for keeping the stock as big, strong and colourful as possible. When I do sell mine I will only supply shops/tardme with males, and the majority of females will be culled or sold to people with the right intentions for breeding them. Anyway. I know not everyone is as concerned and/or passionate [crazy?] as me, and obviously there is no way to regulate or control who breeds what, and how. IMO it is highly likely that in years to come it will end up like cats and dogs with good [registered?] breeders selling purebreds/quality fish to people who do care and are willing to pay for having the best, and regular joe's selling the equivalent of mutts/domestic cats to other joe's who don't care and just want some pretty fish. As long as we have some passionate breeders breeding the good species well and producing the best quality fish then the hobby will survive. As people who care enough to bother signing up to a forum to discuss their hobby, I urge you all to think about the long-term effects of breeding, and think about where your fish come from and support those who make the effort rather than going for the lowest price.

Sounds like they're right up there with gambusia for pest potential... :-?

That was a pretty good clip, although I didn't realise Mark looks a bit like a kiwi Mr Miyagi! :lol: They didn't make any mention of the possibility of paying off the loans by subdividing, and being held up by the councils red tape?

Leopard fish. Leopard danio? Leopard Ctenopoma? Leopard groper? Gold leopard cory? :lol:

Was it fully supported around the edges? If so then thats a totally different senario to having the edge of the tank unsupported. I've seen countless stands where only the edges of the tank are supported, and generally they work fine unless you want to pile it full of rocks. OP; What are the actual dimensions of the tank? I would err on the side of caution and get a thick piece of MDF to go on top of the stand so that the edges of the tank are supported. and for goodness sake people, its 2008 and we don't live in backwards america, can we please use the metric system!!!!!!! :lol:

I've noticed my three females have yellow fins (especially dorsal) and the males have darker red. Not sure if thats always the case though.

Cool, I'll check it out. Thanks!

Its funny, my three males are in a 3'x18x18 with a heap of other american cichlids and they seem to get on quite well. There's a bit of a tussle now and then, but mostly they hang out near by each other. The three females (two from Afrikan one from Firenzenz) are constantly picking at each other! Probably because they're in a smaller tank (2'x1'x1') and are only with 3 corys. I've actually had to separate the largest female from the other two as they were both kept pinned in a corner behind the filter intake!!

Link. Just in case anyone needed reminding that behind all the friendly smiles, fancy buildings and stunning fireworks, China still has an appalling disregard for animal rights (not to mention human rights)......

Fingers crossed the Cambell Live thing finds someone with deep enough pockets to help you our. How big are the sections? I wonder if my GF wants to move to Tauranga.... :lol:

I think I'm going to move to Florida or SoCal.....

:lol: I hadn't looked at the bill thoroughly and was only using the $0.093/kWh Mercury Energy portion, now that I've added the $0.08/kWh Vector charge my spreadsheet looks a lot worse. Maybe I won't show my other half... The 100 hours was just a nice round number. I have 2 300W heaters in my 300L tank and have estimated one works about 50% of the time and the other about 20% of the time (cold nights and water changes). Its a stab in the dark really, but I can't be bothered working it out more accurately. Do those power usage meters have a memory that tells you how many kWh something has used over a period of time? If so then I might invest in one so I can measure how much power the heaters use.

Trying to work out what the fish cost me per week, according to Wiki "kWh is the product of power in kilowatts multiplied by time in hours". So if I have a 300w heater running for 100 hours a week it will be using 30kWh, which will cost $2.79 (based on $0.093/kWh). Does that sound about right?

Hah! Perhaps in a developed nation where human rights are placed above money.... Oh yeah, where was Tibet in the opening ceremony, or had I just dozed off around Taiwan? :lol:

As juveniles maybe, but adults can be quite territorial, especially if they pair up.

Will definitely be missing shortland st on wednesday!! :lol:

looks like it could become a classic stoner movie. If you thought superbad was funny you should like it!