David R

Stone and Water World on Marua Rd sell it, I think it was $17 for a 25kg bag, still got over half left after doing the 3'.

Bjorns fish are on TradeMe at the moment, its not just a dream...

There's probably plenty of things they would rather eat, keep them well fed and your plants should be left alone.

I like both, never had a tyre track before so I thought I'd give it a go as I couldn't find a nice fire eel. I've also got a peacock and a banded eel in the same tank, one from my sister and one from Duncan7 (was supposed to be sold but the buyer never contacted me to pick it up). I <3 eels! :lol:

Probably hoping to get people emailing them so they can add their email addresses to countless spamming lists. Either that or MAF trying to entrap people...

You can call it "Raphael the spotted talking catfish" if you want, common names don't mean that much. The fish is really called Agamyxis pectinifrons. And before people start saying 'you don't need to bother with the scientific names', I got 18600 hits for "Agamyxis pectinifrons" on google, 12600 for "Spotted Talking Catfish" and only 5550 for "Spotted raphael Catfish".

I put the tank on the stand tonight, and the top is nowhere near level. Seems to be sitting on the points where the two centre legs are, and both ends are low, about 4mm out at the worst point, and about 1-2mm on average. I've shimmed it to where I think it should be level, and the four centre legs are off the ground. I've put some large plastic containers on top of it and filled them with water so there's about 150kg on there trying to sag it a bit so all the legs are on the ground. So, I'm going to do the liquid nails thing under the ply to take out any unevenness, how big a gap can I rely on it to fill in??

Not at all, unless the lights are out. Mine spends about 90% of the time sitting in a piece of PVC pipe, very rarely coming out during the day if he's really hungry.

The chocolate cats get to about 15cm, but really fat, I think a large one should be OK with the ornates and aro, my big fat one is far too big for my 14" ornate to swallow. Sucks that we don't get many large cats over here, I'd give my left one for a tigrinus or irwini...

I reckon! The neons aren't going to dig in the sand, why would I want them!!

HFF have got some decent sized tyre tracks if you're looking for one thats big enough to not be eaten. Sounds like a good mix. What kind of stand are you putting it on? Filtration? I know what you mean about heavy, my 150x70x60 is 12mm and it weighs a ton!!

I just had a look at the tank, the substrate is now covered in craters from the 6 heckelii's and 3 geophagus picking up mouthfuls of sand!

Not much when they're only 3-4cm at the LFS, but big difference when they're bigger. GT is bigger, more colourful and more aggressive.

There isnt one. You need to upload the pic to www.photobucket.com or just find a pic thats already on line and post the link.

Haha is the pool shop still there? The guy gave me a bag of filter sand for free when I lived there, maybe he felt bad because they dropped their sign on our letterbox and smashed it... The silica sand is way finer than the pool filter stuff (which is also available at stone and water world), I'd call it grit rather than sand. Here's a video on how to vacuum the sand; http://www.cichlid-forum.com/videos/cleaning_sand.php

LOL! I'm sure your ornates (and the aro, when you get it) will love the new tank! What are the dimensions? Looks like about 6'x2'x2' to me.

I'll try to take some better photos after I clean the glass properly and give it a vacuum.

Here's some pics of my 3'x18"x18" tank with silica sand as the substrate. Its quite fine and the geo's seem to love digging in it, as do the eels. The two biggest problems is that all the muck sits on top of it so its hard to keep clean [visually], and it shows up all the algae I haven't cleaned off the glass. :oops: Tank: A. heckelii's, growing fast. There's some good photo's of a group of larger heckelii's on MFK at the moment, link. They've actually got a bit more yellow colour since I put the white substrate in. And my two new G. balzani, I might actually got get a few more on tuesday, they're awesome little fish!

I agree, although its funny how sometimes things just work for newbie's who haven't got a clue what they're going. I had sevrums, firemouths, kribs, electric yellows and angels in a 4' "community" tank many years ago, along with congo tetras, fire eel, clown loaches and a massive redspot plec. I should try find a photo, but then I'd also need to find a scanner... The best thing to do is read. Books, the internet, anything. Look at what other people are keeping together, find out what generally works, and what doesn't, and take everything with a grain of salt. All fish [especially cichlids] have different personalities, what will work for one person won't for another.

Meh, you're Asian, thats only a 4' tank. :lol: Disclaimer for those with-out a sense of humor: this is not a racist comment, I have plenty of asian friends who hassle each other about their height and ability to parallel park.

Fighters are probably easier to keep if he's not very experienced.

What do I win?

Distichodus affinis.

Hmm, could be, but I hope you're wrong Bill! Is it one of these cure little things: that grow rapidly into one of these: It shouldn't be, well not if the person at the LFS is "knowledgeable", although I find it hard to fathom that anybody at a shop could end up with a fish they know nothing about, considering they have to order them in by name...

I'll confess I haven't really spent much time using vista, and I probably have a grumpy-old-man attitude towards it. The thing that really annoyed me is that they had changed certain things that didn't need to be changed, its not better or worse, just different for no reason. Imagine if every time they brought out a new car they put the clutch/brake/accelerator in a different order. Since the 1960's nearly every aspect of the automobile has been improved numerous times, yet the basic controls are still the same, clutch/brake/accelerator, steering wheel, H-pattern gear selection (or automatic) etc. You don't have to completely learn how to drive every time you get in a different car, I wish you could say the same thing for microsoft operating systems.