David R

Its a shame that doesn't apply to beer....

Dig Your Own... Seems how we don't have many big rivers or beaches covered in driftwood up here in Northland I've taken the liberty of getting my own 'drift' wood straight out of the ground. Its a little more work than wandering the coastline picking it up but can yield some stunning pieces. Here's how I spent my Sunday morning; Found a suitable stump in the Manuka on my in-laws property (trust me, they don't all look this good!); Removed the tree part, dug/pried it out of the ground, then scratched off as much dirt as possible to make it lighter; Dragged it back down the hill on a furniture trolley, it only just fits in the back of the ute; Attack it with the water-blaster to unearth the beauty; Many guys moan about their wives constantly hassling them about the hobby, I guess I should consider myself lucky that mine likes to get involved! After about 40 minutes with the water-blaster its clean; This piece will be the main feature in my new tank, well worth the effort I think! For now its drying out under the house so it hardens and I can check for any rotting patches before soaking it. Not sure it this stage is necessary or if you're better off just keeping it wet and submerged, but to me it seems better to let it harden before putting it back in the water. Fresh pieces like this may leach a heap of tannin, especially if the tree is still living when you cut it down, but after a month or two of soaking in a large body of water (pond/lake/stream would work, I'm lucky my folks have an unused swimming pool!) most of it seems to be gone IME. If you want to have a go at it you'll want a spade, trowel, crowbar/similar for levering and scratching, axe for chopping roots in the ground, and a saw. Having something with wheels to help carry large pieces is a big help too, and obviously knowing someone with a stand of Manuka who doesn't mind you chopping down/digging up the odd one is fairly important (don't go trying it on the local council reserve!). The above also works for branches as well, and they're certainly a lot easier to get and clean, but don't usually have as nice a shape as the stumps.

:lol:

I've done the same as Smidey for long tanks, just use a combination of shorter fluros, certainly the cheapest/easiest option. You could look at making your own LED rack to fit the length of the tank if you're not afraid of a bit of DIY.,,

He has to promote his other endeavours to fund the new mega tank... :sml1:

So I'm part way thru this thread on MonsterFishKeepers about how we feed our cichlids, and I stumble across this post; I haven't looked at the PDF [yet], but was rather surprised at the difference in intestinal length between captive bred and wild caught fish! I'm only part way thru reading the thread, but have often wondered about the quantity and content of the food we feed our fish. I've had several cichlids that grew large fast and IMO died considerably younger than I would have expected. At the time I blamed warm water on speeding up their metabolism, and still partly do, but I feel that diet and quantity also played a big part.

The colour is great! I was expecting them to end up looking dull and grey, hope they keep it as they get bigger.

I've been running a net under the spray bar of my sump and its been a really effective and easy to clean pre-filter. Not sure how many messy fish you're going to have, but for catching bits of plant debris, uneaten food etc its great, really easy to clean too. Can't wait to see it running!

Looks like an over-exposed pic taken thru badly scratched acrylic! :slfg: kinda cool, but a bit arty for me...

I know you're trying to minimise the oxygenation of the water because of the plants, but I can see a couple of potential problems with the sump.. I'd suggest putting the noodles/bio in the last compartment after all the mechanical media to minimise the amount of crud that gets caught up in it (far easier to clean out sponges than a big compartment of noodles, trust me!!). You may also find the ceramic noodles create too much restriction depending on how much water you're moving thru the sump. Also, I'd be worried that the first sponge will clog and the water will just flow straight over the top and into the next compartment. I'm not sure how much water you'll be pushing thru there and how big the sponge pieces are in comparison, but from my experiences it looks like it will need fairly slow flow and regular cleaning for it to work as intended, especially if there isn't much difference in water level between the compartments. I will confess I know little about planted tanks, and even less about running sumps on them, but I have had plenty of trial-and-error with sumps on non-planted FW tanks! I hope it works for you, I guess you're not going to have a massive bio-load so the reduced flow won't be much of an issue. And if thats correct then I'd say you've already got plenty of bio media in there with those noodles and the chopped up sponge too.

I did have my uaru with the festae pair short-term, and the festae were still in the sub-adult stage. Not sure how it would go with adults, it could work if they all have plenty of space, but look at the difference in jaw structure; one is made for lip-locking and eating fish, the other is made for scraping wood and nibbling plants...

yeah, need this big tank going ASAP, would be good if I could sell a couple of the L14's too.... :lol:

won't Jack be paying millions to out-bid you for the massive texas?! :sml1:

That is what the review said too, eheim certainly has more bio capacity but less turn over/flow/crankput.

I have 16 (I think!) plecs in my tank and almost never see any of them sucked to the glass!! May be a different story at night though, but they are well fed too. Don't have any algae problems...

How big is a tank?? Make sure they've got plenty of wood to munch on, soft water and lots of greens and see if you can breed them. I know a guy who may be interested in a group of young to grow out some time in the not-too-distant-future....

110cm will be the MAX width due to the size restriction of the window I have to get the stand thru. 105cm gives me 50mm at the back and sits flush with the window at the side. 4' wide would be awesome, but hopefully 105cm should have a similar wow massive footprint factor, and will certainly be enough to keep Blacky Jr happy even when he hits 70cm+!!

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... 3-compared So the Fluval costs nearly double what the FX5 does to run per year... I think you're looking around $600 for the 2080 from that German website Hovmoller posted (IIRC) so perhaps you'd get two used FX5 for that price, but not really comparing apples with apples...

Yeah they're fairly similar to sev in terms of attitude/aggression, and as Snookie said, they're fantastic fish!! I just wouldn't mis them with your current stock, IMO they deserve a good sized group in a big tank with soft warm water and tankmates of similar requirement and aggression.......

I'd happily put them with other "moderate" cichlids like severum, geos, threadfins, or even angels and discus, and I don't think you'd have aggression problems with smaller CA cichlids like firemouths or convicts. I wouldn't put them with larger ones like jag/midas though, they just aren't built for the same kind of aggressive behaviour, and they do prefer warmer and softer water. Great fish, but better off being kept with something from their own continent (excluding the likes of festae and GT, which technically are SA but should be treated as CA cichlids in terms of water requirements and aggression).

Might have beel a little lost in amongst the vastness of western springs? Were awesome at the town hall foo's gig, and TCV...

Cairo Knife Fight are certainly worth a listen if you want some new/good kiwi music http://youtu.be/u-fd5qcRjtE

I'm sure I've posted some of these before, but meh, here they are again! We have a beagle X foxy and a hungarian vizsla, they're both great dogs and I quite like taking pics of them...

Good idea, should have been made sticky long ago...