polgara

What time will the hunt start Dave? I might come down for a little while. Hey and guess what. Moving back to Hamilton at the end of May. So you might get me back there.

LMAO LMAO :lol: I got such a laugh from this (kids cost to much) I had you at 21 Darling son, and yes you were a good boy and did all my water changes for me. SO you see that is why I had kids. Now you wold live all the way up there, or maybe mummy would have been able to help you out sometimes. When my back is ok that is.

Ok I have programmed my celll phone to remind me as I have missed the last two meeting due to getting old and the memory failing me.

Email...........Thanks

Hi Hamilton fish friends. I am doing ok. Its a long time since I have been in here. Out here on the farm is really busy, and I still hate gettin up at 4.30am to milk cows, but I love this lifestyle. William and Jo are doing really well in Auckland, I am sure that you still hear from them often. We are moving farms in June, going off to a lovely farm in Te Puke. I am thinkin that once we get there I might be able to do more with my fish again. Dave I hear that ou got married, congrats, I guess my invite got lost in the mail.......lol Daniel, the newsletter was awesome. I am so happy that you are still sending it to me. Please say hi to everyone for me at the next meeting.

well started the co2 up last night and ph has been fine... but if you ask me the bba looks like its growing more... are you sure the co2 will help get rid of it?

Have made myself a diy co2 unit for one of our tanks and theres a little bit of black algae in the tank, will the co2 make this grow like nuts too... other wise gonna have to go buy some flying foxes to start eating it but will these guys be ok with guppies, platties and bn, that are all breeding?

Hmm the zebra is a Metriaclima estherae dam you live in chch otherwise we'd take him off your hands.

just found this on ratio on sexes in different pH's http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/aquainfo/ph_sex.html

how well does limestone work??? have thought about using it as a substrate but wasnt sure how much it effected ph and gh/kh and stuff... We havent had any probs with the coral rock... either use it in the filter or mix it in with the substrate... we get all the crushed up pieces and most of them arent all that big.

Yeah soap was never left on my hands. always made sure of that... all the fish are eating fine... and have always kept an eye on the ph's... they never really drop but we are using coral rock to keep them all up so ph is never a problem.

electric yellows have always been feed the same as the malawis but sometimes gave them some flake food coz i was feeding them to try fatten them up for breeding so didnt just want to give them spirulina sticks... no have got a bag of other high vege matter food Hikitata or something like that lol... brichardis are a tanganikian fish so was trying to get them to eat the other stuff but they dam fussy... as well as the flake food was also feeding bloodworms to the south americans and other americans and also live brine shrimp to the malawis and baby's (which also got ground up flake food)... all the babys seem fine but most of them are only like a cm so cant really tell... gonna try get one of the geos to the vet to get something to treat them.

Another way is to stand something like a upside down coke bottle with air hose going thru the lid of the coke bottle on top of you fish tank and crimp the hose so a drip goes thru every 30 seconds or something... not sure if it would work with brine shrimp or something like that though... worth a try though.

Quit school and become a full time fish feeder :lol:

Hmm yeah its fine to feed them but personally i like to chuck them in some boiling water first to kill any nastys that may be on or in them.

Found it that it was probably nutrinational reasons why the malawi's were dying... were just feeding them on a general flake food and since we've switched to a high vege or spirulina food havent had any troubles... as for the sunken bellies we originally only used a certain bucket on the geo tank and had a seperate net for them to... then we noticed it in our electric yellow tank which is in our bedroom (others in dinnign room) and no it has spead to our brichardi tank which didnt have any water changes done from the time hte geos first got it untill after we noticed... I always wash my hands with soap and HOT water after each tank and dry them... dont think its tb coz its not sperading fast coz some fish in with the geos still dont have the sunken bellies, we are completely stumped and I think its the flake food and thats why our malawis havent caught it coz we never feed them the flake food but all the other tanks get it. Will try get a few pics later on in the week.

Convicts are great fish... just try get hold of some sexable ones and get all females or something like that... we have all females in our malawi tank (they just went in there one day and havent come out.) and they are doing great and arent bothered or bother the malawis at all.

All the ones with sunken bellies havent yet died... not a single one... lost a few malawi's though... all from mysterious things that dont have anything to do with the water quality(they as yet dont have sunken bellies). Going to hopefully try get one of the geos to a vet so he can give us some of the stuff we need... dam shame about the cost though.

No not all of them are in the same room... only other symptom that is present is that the geos scales seem to be flaking off... not sure if they are getting beaten up or not by the salvini's, colour is fine... faeces are green/brown... the food we feed them is green so figure thats teh right colour... the occasional one does have long white faeces though... just reading a disease book (the same one caryl uses) and if its worms or flagellates i need piperazine citrate for the worms or metronidazole for the flagellates.... could also try flbendazol for the worms

The weird thing is one of the tanks had not had any water removed or added since it first started appearing and theres only 2 fish in the tank (breeding pair) and they are fussy fish and will only eat flake food so im actually putting this all down to the food which has infected most of our tanks.

Well only 3 or 4 tanks now out of 11 that arent infected with sunken bellies... dont know what to do.... treating with cure-ex on a few but not sure if its working... anyone else got any ideas???

I've found that just about every plant you buy from a LFS dies when you first put it in a tank and then re-grows from the stick... most aquaruim plants arent grown in water, they are grown in a room that always has a fine mist of water thru the air so they are not used to being submerged completely, so most of the time they die off and then regrow from there. best place to buy plants is off other hobbiests, cause 9/10 times their plants are submerged and even a cutting from them will grow faster than a plant from a LFS.

Ok im thinking of setting up a marine tank but what does all the equipement do... skimmer? Calcuim reactor? refugium? i've been doing a bit of research and have a fair idea how to set one up and the cycling part but not sure what everything actually does and want to have a better understanding of everything before i lungge into it.

hmmm yeah probably internal injurys like i described... the only thing that was ever wrong with ours was there fins being niped from the other fish when it was doing this.

We've had a couple of fish do this in our malawi tank... if a fish gets picked on their swim bladder or lateral line can be damaged which cause it to be unbalanced and swim all freaky... usually the fish will never come right and die fairly soon. Best thing to do is put the poor thing out of its misery.