Romeo

I was browsing MonsterFishKeepers for the first time and came across this one guys tank. It's like 2 meters wide, 30cm tall and 25cm deep. I instantly fell in lust with it, as it would be PERFECT for my Koura to scurry about in, plus I could have a school of Inanga. Have a big external filter and set it up as a river type tank flowing from one end to another. Problem is, there doesn't seem to be many of these tanks around? Long, narrow tanks. So I'm guessing there's a reason why there isn't? We're in a raised flat, so I don't want a 250kg+ monster fish tank. So the thought of a 5" by 1" by 1" appeals (about 130 litres). I like the easy maintenance of smaller tanks, but the width wouldn't add very much hassle at all. What sort of factors do I have to consider when looking at getting one of these tanks made? Cheers, Romeo

As per title, someone on that website is claiming it's $450! Thought this was a bit odd, taking into account HFF seems to have them for about $245

I've got a couple of friends who do it. They've got many thousands of dollars worth of kit as well. Seems a bit overkill, but when you're at that level of competition it's easy to go overboard.

Your Inanga eat vegies? Mine won't eat ANYTHING unless it's meat of some sort! Make sure you cut anything tough and slippery up into very thin slices, I've had a couple of mine nearly choke to death!

Had a look at the grolux, but they're bright pink! Since my light fitting is only a single bulb it would look rather silly. I'll have another look tomorrow. Cheers, Romeo

The best I could find today was a Philips Cool White (840 4000K Cool White). He told me it was around 6000k when I bought it, didn't mention anything on the package about kelvin, so I took his word for it. Will this do? It's giving off quite a yellow light, wheras my old tube gave off a very clinical white light. Cheers, Romeo

All I know is that driftwood lowers your pH, but surely there's a commercially available product that'll lower pH? Peat or something?

I've just been trying this over the last few days with mixed results. From the second night I had mine they were eating happily from the end of my 12" tweezers, but from my hand it has been a different story. My little one will usually come up and have a good whack at what I've got, the big one wont come near me. What're you feeding them? I feed mine with long thin slivers of white uncooked shrimp (stuff from the supermarket). I just put my hand in, wiggle the white food to get their attention, then let go of it and let it drift down to them. Repeat this a few times and they quickly get the message that they can just come and take it. Though, it may pay to starve them for a few days to hurry the process along ;]. For anyone who's interested: I threw in a big bit of white uncooked shrimp last night, about 2cm cubed for my crayfish. The two Inanga stole it from the Koura, and proceeded to tear it to pieces like a pair of rabid white sharks! There was only about 1/3rd of it left by the time they were done. I never imagined they'd have the jaw strength to do this.

Thanks for the advice, I used to have some java fern, but it turned black and died. What was left of the fern went into the goldfish tank and is doing ok. Can anyone be more specific about what type of bulb I'll need? The overall light unit is 80cm wide, has the following specifications on the side. 220~240V, 50Hz - 20W It's a single tube. Cheers, Romeo

RE Nemines Nah, I can't spot any signs that it's being grazed. It just doesn't seem to want to spread ;[.

alanmin4304 True, but it never seemed to grow when the lights were on for 8-10 hours a day either? There's no point running my lights all day if they're not even going to help the situation.

Hey, A bit of a 180° from the usual Java Moss problems - mine doesn't grow like wildfire! I've also had a few other plants, but they don't seem to do too well. I had a large one with big leaves, but the bases turned to mush and the leaves went transparent/brown and fell off. Gave the water a yellow/brown hue. Spoon gave me a handful of Java Moss about 6 months ago, and I stuffed it into the cracks in my driftwood. Since then it hasn't spread, grown or done anything interesting. I used to have my tank light on for about 8 hours a day, but now that I'm flatting it's only on about 3 or 4 hours a day. Current water temperature in my "cold water" tank is around 20°c - 24°c. My light unit is an AquaOne 80cm that Spoon gave me - I'm not 100% sure what kind of bulb I've got in it either. May be interested in getting a new one if it'll provide a tangible benefit. Don't use any fertilizers, but would be happy to as long as it doesn't harm my Koura/Inanga. Setup: 80x30x30 50 litres currently 500lph internal filter with venturi tube One 10cm crayfish, two 12cm+ whitebait/Inanga What can I do to help my plants grow? Thanks in advance.

Should keep it original, "modifying" a vehicle does nothing but depreciate it, whilst at the same time chewing up your capital. I see quite often guys will buy a 'not-really-a-performance-car' car and put $5-10k into it, then end up selling it for 1/3rd the amount they spent on it. If you want performance, get a motorbike. That's what I did, haven't looked back since ;P. IE: $6k worth of mid 90's 600cc+ motorcycle will dominate 95% of the vehicles on the road. EDIT: Lifespan really depends on how well you treat it, given 15 minutes warm up time those engines are pretty safe. Turbo? Also, depends how you drive as well. If you want to be fast in a straight line, then engine mods would be a good idea. But if you're a real man and plan on actually cornering, you'll make up a lot more time with suspension work than engine work.

I've only got two fish and a crayfish, so I don't need to feed as often as some. Just bloodworms, finely sliced shrimp and flake 2 nights out of 3 for the Inanga. The crayfish gets a big bit of uncooked shrimp every second night, and treats in between - like broccoli, apple or just whatever is tasty that's left over from dinner. Got go be careful about not overfeeding the crayfish with tasty stuff. If it doesn't eat all of it's broccoli or carrot, it's no big deal, it just pushes them to the end of the tank. But if you give it too much shrimp, it tucks it away deep inside it's cave for later. "Later" being 6 weeks after, when I rearrange the tank to find what's causing my water parameters to go crazy.

As I kid we had a couple of eels, don't know where we got them from, but these ones were about as long as a pencil. One was black and the other was bright red! I'd love to find out if it's possible to get a couple more tiny ones, they were cool. Unfortunately they became carpet eels after a few months.

You do realise that goldfish/orandas EAT shrimp?

They've got a red light over the octopus at Southern Encounters Aquarium and he always seems to be out and about. It's a very dim red though :]. Good luck.

How big are the orandas? It's hard to say sometimes with Koura. Judging by mine, and a few other member's Koura, it depends on the temperament of the koura you get. My 10cm+ koura happily shares it's cave/lunch with my 12cm, slender inanga. But in general, I'd hazard to say that if the fish is 50% larger than the koura, you *should* be fine. But I wouldn't bank on it, as they will nip hard if something bumps into their claws or flashes infront of them.

Bunnings sell black gravel. It's about 5mm³ and comes in 5kg bags for $11. I've got two bags for my 80*30 tank. It's not totally black though, it's more of a grey - it's quite uniform though.

Web developer - I do a lot of stuff with the CakePHP framework :]. I'm currently working at the 23rd fastest growing business in the country.

Update: The lump appears to have burst now. It's just a dangling strip now - which looks familiar to last time. I'll see what happens...

RE Stella Thanks for the help, it sort of looks like an injury/tumor. It's definitely not fluffy and it's uniformly coloured. Like a lump under the skin, it doesn't appear to move around at all. The worm thing, it was going CRAZY figure 8 styles. I don't feed them live food either, mixture of bloodworms/shrimp/raw steak offcuts, so I'm stumped as to where the worm thing came from. I haven't seen anything like it before, or since. I'll see how we go with the lump, if it gets any bigger I'll notify the forum. Cheers, Romeo

So, is it something to worry about?

I've got two inanga, and the big one (12cm+) has a lump on it's lip. I've had them for about 6 weeks, and I haven't seen any evidence of whitespot. HISTORY: It's had the lump for about a week and has seemed to swell up pretty quickly. A few weeks ago I noticed something white in it's mouth, hanging out, but it disappeared after a few days. Following that, my GF spotted what looked like a parasitic worm of some sort in the tank. It was about 1cm long, and looked like a white hair that was wiggling around like crazy. A few people have suggested I euthanize the fish, but he's my third favourite pet! Cheers, Romeo

RE NinjaFroglet I got my Koura from a Koura Farm, and it's extremely well mannered towards my fish. You'd expect that coming from an environment with such fierce cannibalism that they'd be quite aggressive. So maybe aggression is on a koura by koura basis. I had a couple of big shrimp from spoon aswell, about 3cm body length. I'd love to see a 5cm one, that'd be awesome!