David R

:iag: Are you going for a simple ply box coated in fibreglass, or are you going to frame it with timber first?

They're are more at the green end of omnivorous so plenty of veges, the protein isn't too bad but don't feed lots of meaty stuff, even though they'll scoff it down.

No pics yet, will let them settle in first. As for food, stuff that isn't super high in protein and has lots of vege matter is ideal. NLS is great (no they don't pay me to keep saying that!), and in the past I've fed spirulina flake and cos lettuce to them too.

Hopefully there are others here who bought some. Levon said they were shipping eight off to someone in Wellington. I noticed the first hint of colour in the eyes of one of mine today, at this stage I'd pick they're the orange eyed form, not the red. Either way, I'm just happy to have some again!

Who else bought some from the latest shipment? I'm interested to see how they progress. I released my group of six into the big tank yesterday after nearly two weeks in quarantine, a touch of whitespot and some damaged fins healed up quickly. They are still very dark though, active and eating eagerly, but darker than any other young uaru I've kept (which I added up to be 20 individual fish, four separate groups over the past fifteen years!). I''ll try take some pictures once they've settled in.

:nfs: Will have to come check it out some time.

Just did a water change, I did a big water change out of the sump and refilled about 250L out of the tap dropping the temp in the sump to about 16C, I refilled the tank out of the barrel, but when I switched on the sump there was a big influx of cold water. Next thing I know there's TEN sterbais out schooling and hooning around the tank. Guess they've been hiding all this time. The six little uaru are doing well in quarantine, fins mostly healed up and starting to get a little less shy. Can't wait to release them into the big tank!

Buy a 300W Jager heater and an accurate digital thermometer, or even better a digital controller for your two existing heaters. Most of the thermostats in aquarium heaters [particularly cheap ones] aren't that flash, and trying to balance multiple heaters is nearly impossible. A controller will give you the ability to set the temp you desire and it will only fluctuate by 1C before the heaters come on, you won't get it much more stable than that.

Used media will certainly speed up the process, but if you've already got the discus I'd suggest using Seachem Stability and regular water changes (and established media too, if you can get your hands on some).

Typical clowns! Great looking group, not sure I'd be giving them up to go marine.

I'm not sure they are any more cold-tolerant than any other Amazonian species, and think it is probably more likely to be a knee-jerk reaction to the situation with bullheads, based on the RTC's size and appearance. TBH I'm actually glad. Not sure how many people there are in NZ with private tanks bigger than mine, but I don't think my tank is big enough....

Dark room and well-lit tank helps too.

Yeah not sure eh, there was plenty of food for them, temp between 26-27C so not too hot for sterbai, but gradually their numbers dwindled. I did get a good deal thru HFF as someone had just traded in a huge number of them that they had bred and been breeding from, I tried to stay away from the ones that were larger and obviously a bit old and tired, but I have no idea how old some of them may have been.

Not a big female, but an "average" sized one. They haven't fared particularly well, I've got about 3-4 stragglers left from the 20 I started with about a year ago. Haven't seen too many corpses so I'm guessing the plecs cleaned them up (or geos?!), bit of a shame as they looked awesome in there.

Yeah I still have a few of them, a couple never grew and some are much smaller than the other two. They've turned out to have a bit of a yellowish colour to them, nice looking fish but not really what I want for the tank.

So Facebook tells me it has nearly been two years since I started this tank, and not much has changed at all since last time. I did get a group of Columbian tetras, but find them pretty inactive and not as colourful as I expected. They don't really school well either. Will probably get more lemon tetras at some stage. I'm down to two of the large geos, and have picked up nine smaller ones from Hovmoller to replace them. Thought I might have been down to one big one last weekend when this happened... I'd noticed a dead sterbai cory earlier, but it was way over the back behind the branchy wood and I couldn't be bothered trying to fish it out. The large geo obviously thought he'd be able to swallow it, but it looks like the stiff pectoral fins got stuck. With the body of the fish taking up about 3/4 of the opening he was breathing pretty heavily, and with his mouth extended like that I knew there was no way he'd be able to spit it out. After an hour of chasing with nets and a long piece of pvc pipe Hannah and I finally managed to net him and remove the sterbai. That'll teach me for being lazy... What's next? Pass. Still really want a group of Uaru, or some nice angels. Or both...

:thup: It sure is fun, just remember that the only things that happen quickly in a fish tank are bad things! I think you'd want to have the tank up and running for a while before adding the discus, make sure it is well cycled and established with other fish first. If you're buying larger sized discus be aware that the sudden increase in bioload could cause a mini-cycle. I may be worth using something like Seachem Stability for a couple of weeks after a large addition of delicate fish, IMO.

Are you starting from scratch or do you already have an established tank? A well cycled bio filter is another important aspect of keeping discus.

http://www.fish-street.com/tds_meter_pe ... string=tds I think it would be a good investment if you're keeping discus, especially if you want to mix your tap water with rainw ater to keep the mineral content down. Though going by Hovmollers comments it doesn't seem like that would be necessary with the West Auckland water supply. I've always been a little reluctant to use hot tap water for water changes, but I don't think there's much science to back it up, especially not if it's working with Hovmollers wild discus! I might just go do a comparison of my tap water TDS from hot and cold to satisfy my curiosity.....

For the best clarity, you're probably going to want multi-stage mechanical filtration with something coarse to catch the larger particles, something in between like filter wool, then fine polishing pads to catch the really small stuff. Carbon may or may not be necessary depending on whether you have tannins from wood etc, and whether that bothers you. If you're after that gin-clear water I think you may be better off with two smaller canisters than one big one, so you can have one set up traditionally with plenty of bio media and "regular" mechanical filtration that isn't going to clog as easily and restrict the flow thru the bio media, and another set up dedicated to mechanical filtration with the multiple stages of mechanical filtration. With one canister, if you're going to run finer media to help keep the water really clear then you're going to have to clean it (the mechanical stage at least) more regularly to keep the flow moving through your biological filter. I haven't bought traditional filter media for years, but when I did AquaOne used to (still do?) make filter pads that did a reasonable job of catching the fine particles, and they could be cut to shape to fit the canister.

Whether or not you can use your tap water will depend on the mineral content of your tap water. RO water [probably] wouldn't be necessary, unless you're keeping wild-caught fish, but if your tap water is hard you could collect clean rain water and mix it with your tap water to soften it. Driftwood, peat etc, will only do so much, they can lower the pH if your water isn't too hard, but they won't do anything to soften it or reduce the TDS (which is probably far more important than the pH by itself). I believe the large water changes are [partially] to do with the young fish secreting some sort of growth-stunting hormone, so I would heed Adrienne's (or Ron's) advice to buy larger fish. The water changes are only as onerous as your set up makes them, If you have to carry buckets up stairs you're not going to do them as often as you should! A few dollars spent on equipment like a barrel for treating and pre-heating water, a pump to transfer it to the aquarium, and long siphon hoses that reach a window or drain is money well spent. ps. my favourite discus aquariums are neither bare bottomed nor heavily planted...

:thup: Don't think you're going to get some amazing new form by crossing a red one with a stripy blue one, it takes a lot of work and time to "fix" new varieties with selective breeding.

:thup: How messy do you find them? Mine seem to be making less sawdust now at 20-30cm than they did at half that size.

Those three smaller ones look like L191 where as your bigger ones are L190, so if you're serious about a breeding project you should probably either get a few smaller L191, or look or for more L190 of a similar size. TBH, they certainly won't mind higher flow, though mine seem to be doing ok without it, but I wouldn't worry too much about the tannins. Most of the habitat footage I've seen of P. nigrolineatus (such as this video from Mikolji; https://youtu.be/B3cg9tGiFPA) has been in clear water. In my view, the biggest factors in growing these fish large are tank space and food. A big tank with plenty of wood to chew on, and regular feedings of other foods (both prepared and vege) has worked for me. While your cichlids (and datnoid and bichir) aren't incompatible they do offer competition for pellet foods, and the diet of the carnivorous species is going to potentially clash, unless you can get them hooked on something like NLS Mega Fish Formula (which is about as good an omnivorous food as there is) and make sure there are no prawns or other meaty foods lying around for the royals to get. Feeders would work too, if you want to offer them something the panaques won't touch. With the stock in my tank I'm able to feed a large amount of smaller food (NLS Thera A, Cichlid Formula and flake) which the plecs will often come out and graze on, as well as putting in a good amount of pellets/eafers late at night knowing they're not going to be snapped up by a greedy CA cichlid. Your current stock can work with the plecs, but there are other options not quite as drastic as a species-only tank that would help optimise the tank for growing panaques.

How big are the other three? TBH I wouldn't rush out and sell your other fish, at least until you've got a pair of royals in a cave together! I just noticed my largest doing that high-frequency "shivering" thing at one of the others,not sure if that's an encouraging sign now he's pushing 30cm, or if it was just the 50kg of cold sand I dumped in to top up the substrate... :lol: