kiwibrick

I'm sure that shub is a delightful colour too!, I have one sitting under the deck waiting to be turned into a small pond, it's a nice purple/maroon colour...

Damn thats a nice tank!

If you used a piano type hinge full height of the long doors it would probably eliminate any sagging.

Very interested to watch this for ideas as I will be building a very similar size tank with sump some time soon in a wall in my basement

This has motivated me do a small project on my 55g tank, I think a hydroponic box to replace the lid of the trickle filter on top of the tank planted with pothos/peace lily/orchids of some sort will be pleasing to the eye! And also slightly reduce my water changes, which helps when you are on tank water.

I used the heat only method when I had clown loaches, it worked perfectly, just have to watch for stress and increase the surface agitation to keep the oxygen level up.

There is no problem drilling a hole in a concrete base wall, just need a hammer drill and a drill bit,

Ah ok. My tank (220L) stays around 7.0 and I have a reasonable sized piece of driftwood in there too.

I'm on tank water as well, but mine comes out of the tap at 7. I have a bag of oyster shells in my filter because of the non-existant hardness, and I also dose my tank with Seachem Equilibrium every water change. I had my tank running well in the previous house we were in on town water, and after moving to this house I was getting regular random deaths with no apparent cause, after much hair pulling and research I found the lack of trace minerals in the rainwater could be the culprit, so I started adding the Equilibrium and the random deaths have stopped 8) With the ph coming out of the tap so low in your case I would be worried about any copper pipes that were in the house too! water tank might need a clean out to sort the ph, I've heard of people putting a concrete block in their water tanks to try and harden the water slightly too.

I don't know about the bulbs, but the drivers in the kits are 110 & 240V

Could try these http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-141/%28New%29-7-LED-PAR38/Detail or these http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-DIY-Retrofit-Kits-cln-Dimmable-Kits/Categories

Was browsing hack-a-day and found this cool hack to auto dose plant ferts in a tank, thought someone here might find it useful/interesting http://hackaday.com/2011/01/21/fertiliz ... more-33241

I have 10 of these in my community tank, and yes they are a nice lively addition to the tank with some good colour, they definitely have that piranha look head on. They do feed relatively aggressively darting around for flakes, but they go absolutely mental for bloodworm. I keep mine with 2 large Angel fish, some Honey Gouramis and some lemon tetras, all seem to get on well, I did just recently add a Redfinned shark and he was quite upset with the Columbians for a day or so constantly chasing them but he has given up now. One downer is they get some sort of unknown disease, they can get (and some of mine have) what looks like black pigment in a large spot/spots on them, it doesn't cause any sort of change in texture of the scales just black blotches, none of mine have died from it yet but from what I have been able to find out on the net sometimes they die and sometimes they don't (with or without the black marks going away), and it supposedly isn't contagious. Bit of a shame it spoils their colouring a bit though.

Check your water hardness. I believe guppies like water on the med-hard side so if they died off I suspect your water might be quite soft.

Those look pretty young, how long have you had them and how big were they when you got them? Have they always done the sitting on the bottom thing? Their behavior looks similar to when I had 70 or 80 fry, a percentage of the fry didn't develop properly and would spend the majority of their time swimming along scrapping the gravel, and they would also sleep/rest on their sides on the gravel at night, needless to say those ones got culled.

Smooth edge

June was our biggest bill last year and it is this year too, unit price has gone up 10% from this time last year. Two of us in the house with a fire so no heating power costs. Was $150 last year in June running one 55gal, and $185ish this year running the 55gal and a 25gal plus we got a dehumidifier about a month ago and that runs probably 8-10hrs a day. In the summer we run between $100-$120 a month. Our biggest increase is for hot water, we are on tank water and during the summer the cold water comes out at 12-13deg so I hate to think what it is over the winter! I use powershop for our power and find it quite good since you can pay as you go during the month so no big bill at the end of the month.

So we have some Honey Gourami in our community tank (55gal) and the male is determined to build bubble nests and try and coerce a female or 2 to deposit eggs, I have gotten to feel really sorry for the little guy so I have dug out my old 20ish gallon tank that I built many many years ago and am setting it up in the computer room to put the Gourami in. I used to run a HOB filter on it but I have decided to build a small triangular trickle filter tank to sit on one side of the tank which will be mostly hidden. Tank and filter tank http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/ ... z/tank.jpg Close up of the filter tank before I put the dividers in it http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/ ... filter.jpg I took out one of the corner panels of the tank and cut it shorter so I could have a weir overflow into the filter tank, unfortunately there isn't enough room in the filter tank for the heater so that will have to go in the tank itself. I am going to plumb the return into an undergravel jet system to try and keep the muck in suspension but to not have too much turbulence in the tank. I built the framework for the stand on the weekend, just need to cut up and paint some mdf to make it look pretty. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/ ... /stand.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/ ... stand2.jpg Set up in the room ready to be filled http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/ ... gether.jpg

Ok I will try the metro, I know someone who is a vet nurse so she should be able to help me get it, thanks for the help everyone

So I guess I should try some metro, but where do I get it from?

So I will try salt since I have some, what concentration? in a separate bath or in the hospital tank?

They aren't currently in a breeding cycle so I don't think it is stress, I used over 50% water for the hospital tank from the main tank when I moved him, so the water conditions are pretty much the same. No white lumps or any external signs apart from the gasping. The wormer doesn't have a label but I remember they said it was the same as the cat/dog wormer but in liquid form. Where do I get metro from? I have used PP successfully before on my clown loaches to treat gill fluke, I use a bath of it for 10-15mins then return to the tank.

The male from my breeding pair has decided to stop eating suddenly one day and is also gasping (excess gill cover movement and open mouth), he looks in good condition externally apart from the gasping, doesn't go to the surface to gulp air, and his behaviour hasn't changed apart from not eating. I have him isolated in a hospital tank, I have tried using some worming solution that I got from HFF a while back but no improvement, I am currently doing a potassium permanganate treatment on him to make sure it isn't gill fluke (which I have had in the tank before on my clown loaches). He hasn't eaten for just over a week now and I am running out of ideas! Any help would be much appreciated. /edit tank water parameters are all within normal ranges, I test regularly, and since his partner (or other fish in the tank) isn't exhibiting the same symptoms I had ruled out the water.

I can't quite remember the dosage, but I think it was 10mg of PP per litre of water So I put it in a bucket and mixed it up then put my loaches in with an airstone running, VERY IMPORTANT to have the airstone running in the bucket, and left them in for 20mins I think, I only did them for 10mins the first time as I was nervous but they didn't seem stressed at all so went up to 20mins for the next couple of treatments, I think I did about 4 treatments, 1 per day, and it cleared them up nicely. /edit I looked it up, was 10mg per litre link http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/i ... htm#Flukes Measuring it out is a pain, my scales are only accurate to 1gram, so I measured 2grams then divided it up until I had 100mg or so (10litres in the bucket)

There is some on trademe at the moment, also called condys crystals. It works well for gill flukes, I treated my clown loachs a while ago with it.