David R

The pool shop in Hamilton (next to the cheese shop in ham east) GAVE me a bag of pool filter sand FREE!!!! Mind you, they did drop their sign on our letterbox when they were putting it up...

I'm sure there's plenty of people in christchurch with arowanas that need feeders... (evil elmo?) :lol:

No. Silica sand is white and very fine, so any muck sits on top and stands out. I was doing a syphon every 3 days (in a heavily stocked tank) and it was still dirty looking!

Isn't it 50% OFF? There's a big difference between 50% off and buy-one-get-one-free....

How big is your tank? You'll want 3-4 loaches at the bare minimum, and I'm sure most LFS's would be happy to take some good sized loaches off your hands!

No there are many inter-generic hybrids, like blood parrots for example.

How big is large? AFAIK they only get to about 2cm long, and I dont see how the sell could harm the loaches unless it had a sharp lip as the loaches just suck the animal from inside the shell. Do you have any of those Mystery Snails in stock??

Aren't they the annoying little ones that I feed toi my clown loaches?? :lol: Do we get any larger rams horn snails?

Other than the common apple snails, and those little annoying prolific pest ones that I feed to my clown loaches, what other species are available here?

+1 for the chocolate self-saucing fanclub. :lol:

Any luck finding a name for these guys?

How long-term are you talking? I've seen some pretty old tanks with painted backs and they looked fine. I guess for the life of an average aquarium it would be fine.

SAE's only have the black line too, no gold line above it.

Satin black spray cans from Supercheap Auto FTW!! Clean the back of the tank (outside :roll:) with meths and a paper towel and allow to dry. Mask the rest of the tank off so its completely covered and sealed from any overspray. Do 2-4 coats and check to make sure you get good coverage by looking thru the front panel.

festivum, heckelii, balzani, surinamensis, juripari, steindachneri are all possibles. Forget plants if you want it to be a true SA tank. White sand, some smooth round rocks and tangled driftwood. Add a school of tetras (larger ones if you're keeping the sevs), some pictus or chocolate talking cats and a few nice plecos and you're set. 8)

My sister made a pumpkin pie last weekend, first time I've ever tried it and it was awesome!! I didn't even realise it was sweet, I always thought it would be savoury. She served it with whipped cream mixed with maple syrup. Definitely a good way to warm up a winter evening!

There's some good winter beers out there, I particularly like the Resurrection Ale from Galbraiths (don't bother looking for it in the supermarket, you can only get it at the bar/brewery in Auckland) and Macs Sassy Red is pretty good also. Jamie Oliver's recipe for Beef and Guinness Pie is a fantastic winter warmer if you can spare the time to make it! Recipe

Tropical all the way! American or African cichlids...

At work we left Ihug because we were having too many problems with them being offline. Havent had any such problems with Xnet.

I'd suggest at least two of each for the fish you've mentioned. Otherwise you'll only be turning over the volume of the tank ~3 times per hour (at the peak flow under optimum conditions with as over-exaggerated by the manufacturer) which isnt enough for big messy fish like oscars and pacu.

I wonder where that is? Probably France going by the way they're driving... :lol:

Northland Pet and Aquarium in Whangarei is pretty good for a small-town pet shop. Nice new set-up, good range of salt water stuff too. Richard [owner] is pretty clued up on reef tanks (and always tries to talk me into setting one up!) and is always happy to order stuff in. Best shop north of the big smoke IMO.

Anytime .... that its actually working!!! :lol:

In time the tank won't be big enough as they can get over 2' in length and your tank is only 50cm wide.

1. Its a lot finer than gravel, so make sure you're not throwing too much of the actual sand away. 2. Don't go too deep or you'll get dead spots and it will be harder to to stir up. 3. The fish will stir it up, and you will too when cleaning, so it'll end up just being mixed in with the sand. There won't be much water flow under a layer of silica sand so I don't think it would work as a buffer very well even if you didnt disturb it. Also, what kind of filtration are you using? It is easily stirred up by cichlids, so if you're running a canister you'll need some sort of foam over the intake unless its a long way off the bottom (probably at least 18" to be safe).