phoenix44

whangarei? what were you doing there?

make it face the rear wall of the tank. your plants shouldn't be stuck that far back.

yep. It used to be real good :lol:

are you going to sell this one too? are those plants real or fake?

I set one up at a friends house. Quiet as.

sorry :oops: . thought you meant glenfield can go all the way out to beachlands :lol:

but glenfield is on the shore.

Not to rain on your parade or any thing, but try not giving out all your personal information on a public forum. Especially if you are under 18. The internet isn't exactly the safest place on the planet. The off topic section is not viewable by guests on this site but signing up, and gaining access to it is not particularly difficult either. Fraser - Alfriston college is past the harbour bridge, way to the south side PS- I went to BC on the shore, as I recall we won all the dragon boating tournaments. :lol:

Hypans like Chocolate Zebras are omnivores and thus can eat and digest meat matter better than most other 'plecos'. Shrimp tablets and good quality bottom-feeder tablets are a must; shrimp, fish and other such foods can be given along with veges like courgettes and cucumber, peas, carrots, potato etc. I feed all bottom feeders raw prawn, not cooked. As for feeding all plecos the same food - bear in mind that the family Loricariidae may refer to hundreds and thousands of different fish and all their diets vary so we may need to know what the pleco is to answer that question Skip. Ancistrus species are primarily vegos, and eat a little meat protein. From PC-

It has nothing to do with DOC.....

Just flourish EXCEL.

They make terrible pets any ways :lol: They bite real hard if they are unhappy, and they tend to get unhappy really quick. At least guinea pigs don't bite all the time.

It isn't something you would normally miss. The fish won't just suddenly drop dead one day; more-likely you will notice the fish becoming thinner and skinnier, its cranial structure would become very apparent (Refer my pic below) and its belly would be sunken in. It would most likely take weeks of starvation in a small fish like sparkling gouramis and can take months in larger fish. The fish first use their fat reserves and become less active when they undergo periods of starvation; then once the fat reserves are used muscle degeneration takes place in an attempt to harvest more energy. It is easy (efficient) to use fat reserves and not so efficient to use muscle as a last source of energy so at that point the downturn is much faster. Stunted / Starved fish - This particular specimen lived for 2 months+ once he started looking skinny. The pic was taken about three weeks to a month before she kicked the bucket.

Yeah, its usually the nosey ones that get it the worst. Here's a pic of one of my clowns that got it a few years ago - (All of them recovered thankfully) you can see the tatty bits / 'burn' as I call it on the tail and face. And these unlucky ones did not make it -

When you dose with excel, under dose - particularly in smaller tanks. When fish can't tolerate the flourish the first symptom is what looks like a chemical burn. From then on, it just spreads like wild fire wiping out any fish in its path. It is pretty nasty, and many often look at the 'burns' and think of fin rot. Best thing to do is a massive water change, or better still take the fish out of the water they are currently in and put them in new water with no excel in there at all. Then keep a close look out for secondary infections. I've found stress coat really helpful at this stage, and it saved many of my clown loaches at one stage. Be prepared to lose a few fish, but in the best case scenario you won't lose any if you've caught the problem in time.

you don't have to be able to see the fish being fat for the damage to be done. its all on the inside. dissect it if you know how and see what's going on. on a large discus you may make the incision across the lateral line and then peel back slowly to expose some of the organs.

shall we have a specs war or is that taking it too far? :lol:

right- heater - $80+ heater guard - $10 UV tube - $80+ Heat lamp - $40 T8 lighthood - $40-100 Filter - $250+ calcium - $5 Then there is food and all the other stuff.

hamsters are smaller and nocturnal, sorta like rats. guinea pigs are larger and not so nocturnal.

yeah haha. do not interrupt. take out the male and leave her be, or she'll beat the male.

Fat is not always good. and i know there is no way i can know a fish is fat or lean by just looking at it, but aim at feeding healthy food. for a while switch solely to pellet food- food that has been specifically formulated for the species you are keeping. I know it is what I would be doing, and apart from that I can only echo what bilbo has just said. very sound advice. Think of it in this way. The food that you make may have a higher energy content than the pellet food. The energy that cannot be burned during the day is usually stored as fat. fat will eventually kill, just like in human beings. far fetched theory I know, but it wont hurt to switch to pellet food to see if that makes a difference.

be happy with guinea pigs instead. hamsters are probably a bio-security threat and are illegal here.

it is very very deep and unless you spent a fortune on t5 VHOs or the better option Metal Halides in this case (400W paris ought to do it), you wont get a lot of light at the bottom. however in a riparium you can have normal / good lighting for the plants out of the water, and the plants under the water are usually low light plants like crypts, java ferns etc. The plants above the water provide a lot of shade for the fish in the water. It is visually stunning. I personally would use peace lily as one of the plants that grows out of the water, and its roots can go in the water in time.

have you tried removing the male and letting the female raise them? not sure how it works with this species but its what i did with the agasazzi, and the mother did a hell of a better job than I ever could have because she constantly picked them up and cleaned them and spat them back out; transported them from place to place etc.. The cleaning bit was the most important thing I noticed.