Romeo

Condolences

My favourite part is the very end when I've got competition. I like to drag out the entire process as much as possible and try and wear down the other bidders. I've got some special techniques that allow me to reliably bid within the last few seconds, so I take full advantage of that. Just the other day I stretched out an auction by 45 minutes by bidding this way. Won the watch for much less than it was worth - easy as!

Here's one I prepared earlier, 2 years earlier! Sorry for the poor quality, bad camera. That was Yabbowitz when she was young, poor lil' Yabbo...

If you're a fan of Doodle Jump, I strongly recommend Mega Jump. I'm totally addicted to this game, it's totally awesome. My other favourites are: Planets - for identifying stars and such, very cool. Stair Dismount Universal - throw the ragdoll man down the stairs, aim for a high score! Decibels - an accurate Decibel meter, cool. The Glowing Void - good little game. TVNZ - for news, weather and sport. Yellow - good for getting addresses and stuff.

In Akaroa they are :-?, the sign strictly states no flora, fauna or natural materials to be taken. The stream there is very cool, it's full of Inanga and Bullies. You can see them all just cruising around in the sun.

If you want some Takashi Amano style black volcanic rocks you can score some over towards Akaroa ways. Just make sure don't take any from Akaroa proper, as it's a "wildlife reserve".

I'm not too familiar with PMDD, but I had the same problems with my Java Ferns in my AR380 and the Flourish Comprehensive turned them around within a month.

Sounds like a Micro Nutrient deficiency, may be a good idea to invest in some Flourish Comprehensive.

Personally I found Leaf Zone to be pretty ineffective, it's only got Iron and Potassium, but Flourish Comprehensive has heaps of stuff in it, and apparently it's the "Micro Nutrients" that are important for plant health - ie: holes in leaves, brown spots, yellow leaves etc.

Well according to Alanmin it takes the plants 2-4 hours to realise that the lights are even turned on, from memory he uses very high lighting for up to 18 hours a day on some of his tanks. So just whatever you can afford and feel comfortable with, the longer the better in other words. But 12 hours should be about right. If you can keep the water parameters in balance and use the correct amount of Flourish Excel with the correct redosing periods, thus keeping ontop of algae, you could use even more light hours. Note: Flourish Excel isn't a magic bullet for "algae", there are many types all with different weaknesses and required parameters, but in my experience if you keep ontop of water changes and Flourish dosing, and have a good plant cover, the algae will slowly deminish over time. It's a balance between 1) Carbon [eg], 2) Lighting, and 3) Nutrients [eg]. If you combine these three with the correct type of plant then you should be able to grow them easily. As long as these three are in blanace you'll be in control of the algae, if one's out, then some types of algae will grow rapidly.

Don't know what the PH is, we've never checked it. I'd imagine it's quite acidic as we've got a huge bit of driftwood in there. Never lost a fish in over a year and never had any disease, so there's no problems there. We do check the big three every 2 weeks or so, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate. Ammonia & Nitrite always come back 0, and we've never seen Nitrate over 0.20ppm. Haven't added any reflectors, though it would be a great idea to do so. Would also be a good idea to have a long light period, 12+ hours because of the low lights. I'd strongly recommend Flourish Excel, it helps keep ontop of any algae as well as providing excellent growth.

Here's our tank, it grows Crypts and Java fern great! JBL aquabasis under the crypts. 5ml Flourish Excel & 2ml Flourish Comprehensive every 3rd day. 2 Lace Gouramis 2 Mother of Peal Gouramis 2 Sparkling Gouramis 2 Female Bristlenose plecos 5 Chain Loaches Monthly water changes - for real...

If you really want them out we've found that using a siphon tube is a great way to suck out small fry :].

I've got a 2006 and 2010, had a 2008 at one stage. Bloody good internal filters, especially the 2010 on my 80L Koura tank - gets a pretty good swirl on!

Have you tried Dyers Road Landscape Supplies? http://www.dyersroadlandscape.co.nz/ That's where we got our gravel from, there's some great stuff in 1kg bags inside. Great if you're doing a small tank.

In my experience they don't like it when you disturb them, they'll take a month or so to get back in full swing. If you haven't already got some undergravel fertilizer it may pay to get some JBL Kugeln Balls or something similar :].

Spoon Do you have room for these two? Would be logical to return them to you, considering you caught them for me :]. BDSpider Good thinking, but I don't think they'd need them. These Inanga are pretty common. Tame ones aren't though ;]. Stella Hell yeah, I'll miss these guys for sure. They're picking on my Koura though, they always distract her when she's feeding and steal her algae waffer. I feed my Koura Hikari Tropical Sinking Algae Wafers. They're good, they hold together when she's eating them and most important of all she goes absolutely nutts for them. I feed her one or two every night, sometimes she'll eat both, sometimes one and a half. She just shed and she's MASSIVE now! Well, it's a bit of a shock having them stay exactly the same size for 4 months, then suddenly increase in size by 20% overnight.

Gidday Guys, Unfortunately due to the ever increasing size of my Koura these two fantastic little guys have to find a new home. They're quite friendly and will come to the glass when you come into the room, the smaller one sits and watches me when I use my PC next to it. They'll take food from your hand quite readily. If you've got a nice pond with lots of insects then I'd really appreciate it if you could give them a new home. We're in Linwood, but will be happy to deliver them to a good pond . They cannot be released into the wild, as I've had them in captivity for over a year now and I'm quite attached to them! Flick us a PM or post in here. Cheers, Romeo

Here's the one I netted, was 18cm long at a guess. *Click for a much larger image

LOL, they're rare? Bubble 'n Squeak has a tank full of them!

I had plants, I've now got half dead Java Moss and a back wall completely covered in horrible algae. But hey, my water params are literally perfect even 2 weeks with no water change - it's not going to win Tank Of The Month, but I'm not complaining! Crayfish are inquisitive, they will tear everything up just to inspect it. My cray rearranges the bog wood to make her cave darker, moves the filter, tears thermometers off & eats the plastic sucker, and tears plant lead weights off and half eats them. These things are little monsters, that said, they're very neat little pets. I say your best bet is to do as Stella says, as well as at least considering these ramblings below... 1) Get lots of tall and intricate bog wood and get a fern for the back like Stella suggests. 2) Have a large variation in stone size, plus extra gravel at the bottom for your Koura to pile up. I can move all the gravel to one side of my tank, and yabbie will spread it all out again very eagerly over the next few days. 3) Make lots of tight hiding places for your fish to sleep, as the Koura will hunt them down at night and savage them. 4) DON'T bother with plants, if you decided not to have the Koura then you could have plants, but the cray will purposely destroy them - it entertains them. 5) Not a good idea to have more than one Koura, unless you raise them from tiny sizes. One ends up the dominant cray and lives happily in the tank, the other spends 23 hours a day clawing and leaping at the glass trying to get out. When it's not doing that it's getting attacked by the other. 6) Don't bother "designing" for your Koura, it will NEVER go where you want it to, these things don't seem to think logically at all. Create a perfect cave for it and no doubt it'll dig a new one under the filter. 7) IMPORTANT. Make sure all the heavy stones and bog wood is level on the glass bottom of the tank. So put the big stones/wood in FIRST, before you put in the gravel. More than once have I come into the fishroom to be horrified at the sight of Yabbie pinned under a piece of wood. They excavate all the gravel out from under things, then it topples on top of them! 8) Fine gravel, but not sand, is good for Koura. They're VERY messy, they don't eat per-se, they shred everything infront of their face then slowly inhale it. So most of the food ends up stuck down between the gravel rotting, or sucked up the filter. The finer the gravel the less that gets stuck in the gravel. 9) Don't use water from other tanks. Clean your tank down very well if it's 2nd hand or used already. Algae grows supprisingly well in cold water, and you can't combat it with chemicals as natives are VERY sensitive to any type of additive. Flourish excel will kill natives quite easily I'm told, as most of our natives are either scale-less or invertibrates - neither of which can shed toxins through growing scales. 10) Clean/boil driftwood or stones that you've collected from the local waterways. Don't use water from the local water ways either, it's FILLED with nasty green hair algae which looks terrible. It'll rapidly take over in a fish tank like yours, since yours has a lot of light. Taking rocks/driftwood from their natural environment makes them happier, plus it looks a lot better in a fish tank. Take a look at some of Stella's videos and you'll see a perfect demonstration of this. 11) Don't expect to see your natives for at least 6 months. My Inanga would hide constantly, I never saw them at all, I thought they were dead. One night I slowly pried the door open to see them dancing about the tank beautifully, but as soon as they saw me they scurried off and hid. Today they don't care about the lights, neither does my Koura. They see people as being "Food Bringers", and will come and beg whenever they see someone comming. Though, my cray has terrible eyesight! That's just a little bit of what I've learned keeping these fascinating creatures :]. http://picasaweb.google.com/bersirc

Smaller Koura will grow up with the fish a lot better. My Koura "Yabbie" has grown up with two Inangas, now they all quite happily co-exist, but Yab does get a bit nippy when she's hungry! When I introduced a new fish to the tank Yab tried it's very best to hunt it down and kill it as rapidly as possible. I think if you start 'em young, they grow up a lot more peaceful.

Strongly recommend you look in the yellow pages for landscaping places. Our local has about 30 different types of fine gravel and shingle, perfect for any tank.

There are a lot of flaws with the current system. Displacement DOESN'T equal rider danger. A 250cc 2-stroke will easily outrun a 850cc parallel twin. Off road riders, motocross, enduro and farm bikers don't pay a cent, but rack up an equal toll in injuries. Scooter riders have always had a free ride when it comes to ACC, they've always paid the car rego levy, but been included in "motorcycle" ACC payouts. People with multiple motorcycles pay multiple times - why, it's not like you can ride them all at once. There is such a diverse range of rider mentalities, from people who ONLY ride in complete protective clothing (me), compared to those who think shorts and jandals are sufficient and think that high speed lane splitting and generally riding like an idiot is an acceptable thing to do - I'm looking at you, moped riders. Quite a few riders only ride on the weekends, or rarely at all. Why should someone who rides only on the weekend be forced to pay the same outrageous levy as someone who rides daily. Just a bit peeved off about the whole thing considering I've just bought my second bike.

Luckily I didn't have any of these problems. I layered up some gravel to create the terrain I wanted, then layered in the AquaBasis where I wanted it, then covered it again with substrate. I planted before filling, so that may explain why I had less trouble with it. Sorry that you had to throw out the AquaBasis, it's not cheap !