David R

that's what's up.....

I guess you are lucky! I keep my intakes as high as possible, 30cm+ off the substrate to avoid the sand. Luckily the messy fish also seem to keep the crud stirred up so the filters can pick it up!

So did anyone get one of these?? I tried my favourite LFS, they ordered them but none arrived. Guess they sold pretty quickly!

And me, and me!!! lousy pic, but obviously an AT...

Where do you have the intakes for your canisters? I'm not interested in a pissing contest either, I just thought it strange that I don't have a problem with sand getting into my filters despite keeping similarly messy fish.

I doubt they move it around half as much as my geophagus who spend all day picking up big mouthfuls, swimming up into the mid levels of the tank then slowly spitting it out their gills so it drifts everywhere. Obviously you need to have your filter intakes as high off the bottom as possible, but unless you are using some incredibly strong current (which would seem strange and unnecessary for lake-dwelling fish) and powder-fine sand you shouldn't have a problem with it getting into filters. Worst case scenario you could put a sponge over the intake of the filter to prevent any sand getting sucked in, but really if it is a problem you're probably using too fine a sand. The good thing with getting sand off the beach is that the wave action tends to sort it out into all sorts of differnt grades, you just need to choose somewhere that has the right sized granules for your needs. Other than beach sand, Bunnings sell bags of "builders sand" for <$10, just don't believe the bag when it says it is washed! It won't buffer your water, but as mentioned earlier crushed shell in the filter will do this cheaply and effectively.

You don't need coral, coral sand, limestone or aragonite to keep rift lake cichlids. Plain old beach sand in the tank, or crushed shells in the filter will usually provide all the buffering you need. Still not sure why people are so concerned with pH though. I can get the pH of my rain water up to 8-9 very easily, doesn't make it any more suitable for rift lake cichlids... *edit* rcallander; as for the vinegar test, if you are looking to use the rocks in a lake malawi aquarium then you should be glad if they fizz with vinegar, the calcium [what you're testing for with the vinegar] will add to the mineral content of your water, which is a good thing for rift lake fish. As for the tank, if you're driving distance to Auckland [you need to add your location to your profile] then contact Greg/Tanks2U, his details can be found here; viewtopic.php?f=24&t=42159

I'd be far more concerned with the hardness and TDS of the water than the pH... viewtopic.php?f=3&t=63463

I used to run wool in the top compartment of my fx5 (two layers thick) and change it weekly. Can't comment on what that did to the flow as the return was submerged so it wasn't really noticeable. I presume you're running the sponges around the outside, how often do you clean them? If you put in some coarser media instead of wool that doesn't slow the flow as quickly all you will be doing is letting more fine particles through. Maybe a coarser sponge with the wool on top would be a little better?

I had a "thinbar" clown with very narrow stripes, I thought I'd chucked it in with the ones I sold to Henward but ended up accidentally taking it to HFF to be sold on behalf!

Taken out of context it's just a mildly amusing cartoon, but in the context of the whole post it was a very clever analogy to an important and very hard to describe problem. Glad she's back posting again!

Great looking FH, hope you can find him an equally attractive female!

Yes, the bacteria feed on the ammonia from the physical waste from the fish, uneaten food, etc (and the fish urine), which is already in the water column. Even if you removed 100% of the physical waste from the water column with some clever filtration like a Cetus Sieve you would still have bacteria performing the biological aspect of filtration to deal with the ammonia from urine and from waste that has already broken down before being removed from the water column. Your bacteria will not go hungry even if you clean your mechanical filtration daily.

You can't say that then not post a link!!!!!!!!!!! :nilly:

The point of biological filtration isn't to build as big a bacteria as possible [and therefore wanting them well fed], it is to have enough bacteria to convert harmful waste into less harmful waste until you can remove it from the water column all together. The longer you leave physical waste in the water the more it is going to break down and degrade the quality of the water, and IMO the most often over-looked aspect of aquarium filtration is how quickly and frequently that waste is removed from the water column entirely. Leaving your canisters for months is bad practice IMO, and a disaster waiting to happen if your power goes off for 6 hours over night or while you're at work then switches on while you're not looking.

Also makes me thankful I'm on tank/rain water with my love of South American fish!

Very interesting alright, reinforces what I've said in the past about keeping fish like Clown Loaches with African cichlids...

You've seen an NGT here?! I'd love a thin-bar too, they're cool fish alright. I've only ever seen indos and American tigers in the flsh, but have seen pics of what could have been a true widebar. The number of bands on the base of the tail is the give-away. They do get massive though, biggest I've seen would have to be the widebar belonging to Richard aka T1KARMANN from MFK in London. My pics don't to it justice, it is a truly massive fish, 20-24" long and about a foot tall. Kinda hard to get an idea of the scale when everything else is so big, tank is 3' tall and 6' front to back, rays are 2'+ disc and the aro is a good 75cm+. Best thing about it is it's always perfectly stable.

^ what he said, makes sense to have the mechanical media before the bio. I usually have a coarse then fine sponge, then a couple of trays of noodles. That way the top 1-2 baskets with bio media usually just need a quick dunk in a bucket of tank water (if anything) while the sponge gets a thorough rinse with the hose. I do tend to clean my canisters more frequently than most though. I'd probably run wool or something a little finer if it were my only source of filtration.

They certainly hit the food hard when hungry!

Interesting idea, so you pushed them right down inside the sock? Are yours completely above the water level, or partially submerged? You're using 100micron eh?

Still tossing up between socks and poret. Socks will provide better mechanical filtration but will [probably] require more cleaning. Poret will last longer between cleans but won't catch as much fine stuff, and is somewhat of an unknown used in the way I want to use it with the turn over I'm planning. I'm leaning towards four 200micron socks with some sort of net pre-filter to catch most of the Panaque sawdust, hopefully that should get me at least a week between cleans.

I'm basing my calculations on about 28L for each cm of water level about he height of the overflow, so I'm thinking with all the plumbing etc I'm going to want at least 90-100L spare space if I don't want to flood the garage when the pump goes off. Do you have an idea of how many LPH that pump does?

They're probably not going to be either as you've crossed two different strains. The fry will most likely vary with some looking more like one parent than the other and some looking like a mix. Should be interesting, but you've got to do a lot more than cross a couple of different fish to create a new colour strain/morph. You're probably on the right track though, I'd hang onto the fry and grow them out to a decent size to see what they turn out like, and pick the best/most interesting if you want to continue breeding a new strain. Probably the best thing to do if you get some that are pretty close to the electric blue strain is cross them back with another electric blue (not their parent) to add a bit of genetic diversity to the strain.

Are you going to have enough space in the sump to hold all the water when the power goes off and the pumps stop? I'm trying to remember how your old set up worked with the auto water changer and seem to recall the sump overflowing if the pumps shut off, or was that the old sump?