lmsmith

You can give them a live one from the supermarket, it'll last about a week if you halve it (cut the flesh too), put one half in the freezer, the other bit in the tank. Leave it while they eat, and put it in the fridge with tank water, then feed again the next day. You could probably leave it 72 hrs, but I usually only keep it 48 hrs with putting it in the fridge when it's not feeding time. The other option is buying frozen seafood mix that has prawns, crab and muscles. They're about $3-4 a bag for 300g, and that has HEAPS of food for a puffer. Just defrost and pop it in the tank, take out when he's fat. If you do that though, make sure you feed snails too, or their teeth don't get worn down fast enough.

Ah, but then a 1000lph isn't a small common powerhead, most normal people call small 100 - 300 lph!!

Yay, I'm really glad you found him!

Side on, where their black dot is starts to stick out and their belly starts to look really square.

If I pay for shipping would you please send me some???

I got some in the culture I got from you a few months ago. They're fast, and the cichlids love them.

Set up a basking light on a platform, it should come into the heat, especially later when it starts to get cooler. I hope you find it!!!!

You can tell when they're about to drop because their tummies start looking square. I know it sounds silly, but you learn to pick it pretty quick. If you keep them in the breeder box for too long it can stress them out.

Grab them up, put them in a container, and post them to me!!!!!! What sort of snails are they, because if they're ramshorns or pond snails, I seriously want them. What I do which has depleted all of my snails is each time I see one, I grab it out of the tank. Get most of them out when you're doing a big clean, then when you see them up near the edge, just pick them off. It's labour intensive, but it sure does work.

Well, at least it wasn't just me who lost all their money!

Sounds like you might become a daddy!

It's much easier for us if you tell us the number rather than colour.

I like the idea of getting more. Have them in a bigger group with lots of places to hang out and they'll probably be better.

Sand's pretty good for the puffers because they like to make burrows to sleep in. I use sand for my BBGs and they're fine too, so I'd say yup. Maybe choose a sand that has buffering capabilities if you want a little help keeping your pH high and stable.

It really depends on what sort of puffers, how old they are and what their nature is. Obviously, you couldn't keep BBG with dwarf puffers because BBGs need to be in brackish water. I wouldn't keep them with green spotted puffers because they need to be in more than brackish water, so your last choice in NZ is figure 8s. They can be quite agro, but maybe try them and keep an eye on them.

I'd recommend 2 x 25% water changes, rams can be very sensitive to water conditions (more so the blue rams, but bolivians too) Neons and glowlights school together, so they'd look pretty good. You could probably have a few more in there because they're pretty small. In my AQ1 620 I have: 2 x GBA 2 X L270 chocolate Zebra 6 x black widow tetra 6 x guppies 2 x angel fish It's important to cover all levels of your tank if you want it to look balanced. The rams are bottom/mid dwellers, BN is bottom, and the tetras are all mid dwellers, so you might want to think of something to put in the top level. An AQ1 380 is WAY too small to even think about putting fig 8s into. It's only 35l!! I'd maybe put 2 in a 620 to grow out in, and even that's small. They need 60 - 80l each (60 when they're young, 80 when they're fully grown). Your best bet is getting a 980 and getting some green spotted puffers; they're way cooler (although I may be biased :oops: ). I'm happy to help if you want some more info on puffers. Brackish water is easy, buy yourself some red sea salt from a fish shop, and a specific gravity measurer (it's like a thermometer you float in the tank). Mix up salt and and it to the tank until it the SG meter is sitting at 1.002. Repeat each week with your water changes until it is sitting at 1.008, and tada!! EDIT - just read your pH on your 620; rams prefer a lower pH around 6.4 - 7.0. The other fish will be happy in the lower pH too. Add some driftwood which will help bring down the pH. Also, BN need it to keep their digestive system working, so it's a 2 for 1 deal!

^^Yup, that's that I said.

I'm not saying that teachers should get kids to save, and the saving scheme Diver is talking about was actually a Government thing, not a school thing too. My school did it as well. It's the Government's problem, because the Government has to clean up the mess that is left when parents fail. Obviously parent's aren't doing their job; if they did, kids would save, clean their rooms and send their kids to school. People are the product of their education, which is why we have a policy that kids MUST attend school until they are 16. Schools DO have a duty to teach kids things, because their job is to educate a child, not recite from a text book. If parents taught their kids things, then all kids would be like I was when I started school; I went knowing how to read and write, and was streets ahead of the other kids in the class. However, the reality is that historically, education hasn't been a priority of the New Zealand Government. Kids could leave school at 12, and things like sex education, relationship help, and saving skills were missed out on. Because of this, 25 years on, we have a new breed of imbecile parents, who don't teach their kids the basic skills they need to survive. Governments now need to make up for this, and do things to encourage those imbecile parents to send their kids to school, so that schools can teach kids the basic skills they have missed out on at home.

Also remember that more air does not mean more oxygen in the water, the only way to increase O2 in the water is to increase the volume/surface area ratio; that is, expose more of the surface to air. Having your filter outlet above the surface of the water helps if it stirs up the top of the water, having a pretty bubbler which makes very little change in the top of the water won't be doing much.

+ 1 on briscoes. I only go there if they have 50% off sales, and even then, sometimes they're still dearer than other stores.

Whetu's right about raising the temperature. It doesn't kill the bugs, just makes them grow and mature quicker, meaning that you can get away with treating for less time than you would otherwise, and the fish can survive better because they aren't under so much stress being medicated. It's the same thing with cycling; your tank can cycle in about a week less at 29* than it will at 25*.

Acrylic won't bend till closer to 100*, not fish tank temperature. Even if it is acrylic (I'm pretty sure they're glass anyway), it will be fine at fish tank temperature. Acrylic tanks are used by lots and lots of people overseas use tropical acrylic tanks. As a general rule, what Mystic's saying about the heaters is good - the heater shouldn't touch anything because it's more likely to tap against it and smash.

Am I missing something :-?

I've seen that in a magazine too, I think that does look like gas bubble. Have you done a big w/c or added cold water? I've also heard that lowering the water level in the tank to the lowest you had it in the w/c and adding a bit each day can help. Basically it's like the bends, you need to match the pressure the fish is under because it had a pressure change. If it's not eating, that's not a good sign

Thanks everyone for your advice. The acid thing could be the problem with one of my tanks, the snails never survive, and the pH is about 5.8. I'll def give the trout pellets a go, it's lots cheaper than feeding them my plants or fish food. Anyone know how long the eggs will take to hatch at 20deg? They've laid heaps of eggs, already. Thanks for all the advice guys!