David R

I should have said CA cichlid tank. :oops: I'm not too keen on using beach sand because of the bits of shell etc, I've used gravel off a beach in a tank before and it was really good at buffereing the water, shame I was keeping SA fish I'll go accross the road and have a look for pool filter sand. Caryl what kind of cichlids do you keep? Do you have any problems with their digging stiring up the sand?

Does anyone here have any of their freshwater tanks set up with sand instead of gravel? I've been looking at some photo's online and I'd really like to set up my next cichlid with sand instead of gravel. All the americans suggest using pool filter sand, would it be the same stuff here?

600mm?!? I've never seen one over about 20cm in captivity, and most books and internet sites say 300mm. I'd love to see a school of 2' clown loaches swimming around in a huge tank, maybe thats why no one has success breeding them in captivity.....

DOH! Yeah I meant red terror, not devil! Where have you seen flowerhorns for sale? They are a relatively new species/hybrid arent they, so there must be someone willing to import different cichlids. [either that or someone here has a rd and a trimac they crossed, in which case I'd hunt them down and slap them for not breeding pure trimacs] I've heard stories of a dodgy importer, who for some strange reason had his importers license taken off him, who brought in koi and piranha and other rare/illegal fish under false names.....

Similar question (but different fish) I've always wanted to keep a red devil (Amphilophus festae) or trimac (Amphilophus trimaculatus) but have never been able to find them. I have a contact in australia who is able to get them for me, but how would I go about importing them into New Zealand? Has anyone done anything like that before, any info would be useful.

I had a pleco that did that to my fire eel, I'm sure its not a good thing. I got rid of the pleco ASAP. My fire eel would eat blood-worms from my hand [5 cubes a day when it was about 14"!], you should start trraining them to eat a variety of foods whent heyre younger otherwise it can end up getting very expensive...

Nah its not really, thats a planted tank isnt it? Uaru's eat anything thats resembles a plant, and nibble on driftwood too. What I ment was witht hat size tank [and lots of filtration etc] you could keep a mixture of less aggressive cichlids. I'm planning on keeping 3 uaru's, 2 keyhole cichlids and maybe a surinamensis in a 4'x20"x20", it'll be decorated with large rocks and driftwood, and I might put a bit of peat in the filter to help buffer the water, and give it the blackwater look. I like large aggressive cichlids, but until I can afford a 600g tank so I can successfully keep a few of them together I'd rather keep less aggressive fish. I like watching them interact and being able to keep a few different species together, I'm not really into single-specimen tanks...

Darn right theyre expensive, my fire eel would eat nothing but frozen bloodworms, and would take the cubes and swallow them whole! Before I sold it I was feeding it 5 cubes a day, and it would still come looking for more! Perhaps you could vary it a bit, alternate between bloodworms, other frozen foods and prepaired foods, if they will only eat bloodworms and refuse anything else then its time to start starving them until they take somehting else, 9/10 times their hunger will get the best of them after a day or two.

No offence to all the oscar lovers out there, but IMO theyre over-rated as far as cichlids go. My pair of uaru's were way more intelligent than my oscar (and my new trio look like they'll be characters when they get bigger). Most medium-large central american cichlids will have an interesting personality/attitude, although you'll probably be limited to keeping a single fish in a tank that small. If you want more than one fish you could try a mix of south american cichlids, uaru's, geophagus, sevrums, festive cichlids, keyholes, etc etc.

http://www.aquariahobbyist.com/fotm/september00.html Thats about the only photo I've got online of the arowana, I didnt have a digital camera back then so the few photo's I've got arent on the computer. I had the arowana for about 2 years, in which it grew from a 4" baby to about 22" (the tank was 24" wide and when it was turning around it could almost touch the front and back of the tank, so 22" is a rough guess). I had the fire eel for about 3 years, and it would only eat bloodworms so I had to hand-feed it so the other fish wouldnt eat them! I sold them both to jansens in november 2001. One day when I own my own house I'll get another huge tank....

http://www.aquariahobbyist.com/fotm/september00.html Thats about the only photo I've got online of the arowana, I didnt have a digital camera back then so the few photo's I've got arent on the computer. I had the arowana for about 2 years, in which it grew from a 4" baby to about 22" (the tank was 24" wide and when it was turning around it could almost touch the front and back of the tank, so 22" is a rough guess). I had the fire eel for about 3 years, and it would only eat bloodworms so I had to hand-feed it so the other fish wouldnt eat them! I sold them both to jansens in november 2001. One day when I own my own house I'll get another huge tank....

Just signed up, thanks to Oscar Sheila for showing me the site. I've been keeping fish for about 5 years now, and have kept a wide variety, my favorites being my 22" black arowana, 14" fire eel [both of which I had to sell when I sold my big tank] and uaru's. I've currently got a 3'x18"x18" which I had set up as a planted community tank with 20 neons, 2 medium clown loaches, some cories and a pair of keyhole cichlids, but i saw 3 baby uaru's in the lfs and decided to buy them. [yeah i know impulse buys are a stupid idea, but at least I knew what I was getting into] I'm saving for a bigger tank, probably around 4'x20"x20". The uaru's are slowly eating the plants, but at this stage the plants seem to be growing quicker than they can eat them If I ever get some half decent pics of the tank and fish I'll post them up somewhere... David