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i really don't mind we are coming up for a wedding so i will not have all that much time (although where fishies are concerned i have a habit of making the time, even if accidentally) i would happily settle for a cuppainstant and a few fishy tales

yeah, what she said

I actually like starbucks. as coffee goes you can spend hours/days/months trying to find a good barrister and a nice place to stop and enjoy your coffee, or you can go to a place which is relativly nice and has reliably OK coffee. i'd rather have good coffee all of the time than great coffee some of the time

Joze: if you are willing to part with some i'd be grateful - my only real alternative (aside from paying stupid amounts at Animates) is to go to my grandfathers place and start dredging lake rotorua. Chris.L: if you shout me a coffee i'lll bring some up to auckland with me at the end of the month - providing i can convince the lovely Joze to part with some for you too. I'm sure the car can handle it.

because of the stress of the center of the tank not being held together properly it would appear that one of the end supports is suffering from the same stress that the middle one was. as I have to remove these anyway to re-glue them should i do the same thing for added support? that basically goes back to my theory of adding a strip all around the inside of the tank to rest the supports on however i'm unsure how that strip would react when the glass curves under the weight of the water. i must admit, the simplicity of your solution appeals to me greatly, and it does remove the need for ugly extra strips that will mean i have to cover nearly 15cm from the top of the tank to hide them.

the internal measurement of the tank is 580mm, i do not think the support was a snug fit before it was glued. the tank used to be 1000mm tall, and the only extra reinforcement was the 'strip around the top with the supports on top of it'. are you in fact suggesting that i double the thickness of the support itself?

So i'm sitting around at about 1am making sure that PJ (the baby bunny) doesn't do anything naughty or messy, when all of a sudden the top middle support for my tank decides to give way and all the cover glass comes floating down into the tank. fortunatly there is no damage to the tank or the glass, i just need to do a little re-sealing, and considering we are moving at the end of the month and the tank has to be emptied anyway... so the question remains, what should i consider when re-sealing? the tank dimensions: length: 1400mm height: 750mm width: 650mm what i assume happened was the front and back of the tank flexed out under the weight of the water and over about 8 months the middle support became unglued because it was too short to span and gap. the supports are only glued in to the sides of the tank, there is no supporting underneath them to hold them in place. this provided them with very little glueing area and probably is the cause of the current problem and perhaps more. i am unsure if i should run a vertical supporting strip around the top of the tank and then glue the supports back in on top or indeed if just putting a small vertical strip under each horizontal support would be enough to hold it all together. the other questions would be in regards to the size of those supports and what the pros and cons of each could be. any comments or questions are welcomed - i have about a month before i am considering setting this tank back up again so i'll be asking a lot of people and hopefully coming up with a solution in that time. (i'll also try to post some pics of what i am talking about but if anyone in the wellington area would like to come take a look see i'd be ever so grateful!)

i have a couple of ideas but upon consulting the family engineer and looking around the net for prices i have come to the conclusion that you are probably looking at over $10,000 for a brand new fully automated setup. the setup, however, would do the following: Empty to a point and fill each of your tanks individually with fresh, treated water at a specified temperature on an automatic basis with manual overrides. each tank could be set with unique adjustments to temperature and water treatment agents, and indicators would alert the up-coming need to renew water treatment/medication sources. and of course it comes complete with safety overrides and wet/dry pumps. aside from the system itself the only requirements would be drainage and a water source. how much did you want to spend again? i have another idea which i'll post for you when i get a scanner working - i actually think i'll be able to afford to build this one though...

i can hand feed mine sometimes - its hard getting to the bottom of the tank where he likes to hang out but he is very active. if you are ever around at about 4am light a candle and watch - i have had two in my time and they both come out about then and do acrobatics and swim in even more ways you would not imagine. as far as them eating things go: my current black ghost (named 'Cochlean' which is latin for 'spoon') tryed to eat my red-spot plec, then gave up after causing serious damage and now only nibbles on the silicon seals - i think its a bit like cats sharpening their claws. the previous on got himself eaten by a gang of angry gourami! i didn't see it happen but after morning feeding he was fine and that evening he was a skeleton. the only other fish were gourami and a couple of tiny port-hoplos (and they are too cute to point the blame at ).

my only fear is that the tank i built in the living room will not get out of the building - i took rough measurements at the time... i'm sure nothing would please someone more than to have to dismantle their tank after 8 months to get it out the door!

when we were flat hunting the other day we looked at a couple of places in ngaio. i thought to myself at the time 'what the heck would i want to live out here for' - and now i know

that would be great however in the long run it may be beneficial to be a member to one of the FNZAS Clubs - i think i'm going to be doing this for a long long time.

ira: looks like this is the place to find out! btw: how much for the kidney? i didn't see a wellington club listed at the front of the site... i guess one of the reasons i want to find a club is because my flatmates are getting sick of me talking about fish all the time

nice jumping! nothing quite like a quick reply i'm living in abel smith street (far southern end of the terrace) at this precise oment in time however as of sometime at the end of this month i will be moving even further south into kingston.

we were up in hamilton over the holidays and i did intend to stop in and see if i could offer a hand... karma ate that one for brekky - when we got back our landlord advised us that he wanted the flat back and now i have the honorable task of moving all of mine fortunatly this time i have a garage so i can start expanding my preoccupation with collecting tanks then finding a use for them!

well i think my hobby finally did become an obcession and therefore i think it high time that i join a club! problem: I live in wellington city and i don't know where to turn or who to call. Suggestions coercions and bribes all accepted and welcomed

I read in one of Amano Takashis' publications that this is a disease/genetic defect unique to javaferns that commonly comes on around summer with the warmer water and will spread from leaf to leaf via contact. The solution: cut out the diseased pieces to stop it from spreading. i'll try and track down the article and see if there was anything else mentioned.

its more to keep the temperature stable if there is a big change in the atmospheric temp. Living in wellington helps, today it is sunny and warm and the living room will be, but tomorrow it could be freezing cold and wet. because the heaters turn off when the temperature is right they hardly have to run at all. the elecrto-thermostatic ones sample the water temp every second and average the water temp over a time period to determine whether they should switch on. kinda nifty. would be interesting to try running a cold water tank if you liived in the tropics - is there such a thing as a water cooler? no wait... i'm not keeping my fish in one of those. cooling systems?

i use two 300w 'Tronic' heaters in my 600L Because the thermostats in them are instant they do not suffer from heating up too high before switching off and they also have that lovely feature that goes something like 'warning, warning, internal temperature of heater too high, disengage power'. great if you forget to turn them off before removing them from the tank - if... only problem i have with the electro-therms is that my tronics are set at 29 and 32 degrees and heat up to 26, but almost as if the knob that controls the temp was put at the wrong angle, if i adjust the knob 1degC i get 1degC variation

and because i love the sound of my own typing: The moral of the story is: don't underload/overload your heaters. For those that can be bothered reading more stuff: From my experience, here are a few quick ways to harm heaters: Use a 300w bi-metal heater in a 60l tank The heater was set to 18degC and kept the tank at a lovely 26degC (because the strips take a little while to adjust during temperature changes & the heater put out a lot of heat in that time). Upon putting it in a 400l tank the heater coil burned out after about a week. Put a 300w bi-metal heater in a 600l tank When I was warming up the 600l tank for the first time I went through 3 new 300w heaters. The damn things were on for about 3 days straight in the middle of winter warming up from icy water, running two at a time. The autopsy showed signs of over-heating - melted/burnt insulation, the plastic circuit holder melted in places, blown elements and one bi-metal strip with fused contacts. Oh, and summer is here! That explains why I gained about 3degC in my tanks! Incidentally, because New Zealand no longer uses copper coins we officially have a bimetallic currency!

tip: when sticking them back together again put some kind of sealant like petroleum jelly (Vaseline) around the seals to ensure that they are watertight. The biggest problem that I have with heaters is condensation and it seems to happen on the new ones as well as the old. The condensate causes the bi-metallic strip to decay resulting in a usless heater. Because of this I have sworn to replace stock only with the electronic thermostat types like Hagens' Tronic (no bi-metal strip, uses electrics) but even those come apart before they are used and sealed.

Salt is one of those things that i would keep for extreme emergencies... So much so that i have never used it. I would suggest heading down to your LFS and getting some Melafix - a teatree based solution that seems to fix everything. its a tad costly, especially compared to salt, but if you try it and like it you can easily make a very similar solution yourself. Advice for Melafix - plants eat it, and at its price it is best to quarantine the fishy in a small place so you don't have to use very much in treatment. Recipe: take one 2.75 litre container, add 25ml of Tea Tree Oil (Melaleuca sp/alternifolia - available at your local pharmacy) + top up with purified water. Shake well. Consider that you are adding oil to water; it will not mix immediately. This can be solved by leaving it in the sun or adding a tiny drop of dishwashing liquid (the more natural/biodegradable the better). Dose as advised on the Melafix bottle, or 5ml per 40-50l per day until a week after symptoms are cleared. Works out at about $12-15 for nearly 3 litres as opposed to $30-40 for 500ml. Quick Comparison; Home Made: $15 for 3 litres Melafix: $180 for 3 litres (3 litres should treat a total of 22000 litres of tank water) This recipe is still a work in progress. No warranties are extended or implied. Batteries not included. Any comments (especially on the math) welcomed

Does anyone have any good resources or advice on non-fish/plant life in the aquarium? After my hiccup with whitespot i moved all of the new plants into a 2/1/1' tank to encourage their growth whilst i was looking around for a new lighting setup. I then spent an evening researching and creating a (now, rather efficient) DIY CO2 fertilizer and mulling over the amount of nutrient in the water and substrate - I now have a stable environment save a little too much algae. One tiny valisneria i saved is now 3 large and healthy valisneria with about 7 more sprouts - and thats after 5 weeks! All of the other plants have taken varying leaps in growth, and even the cabomba is now multiplying - never had any luck with the stuff before. This tank was to be a breeding tank - the water has been stable, the plants grow, but so do the critters... I have noticed (so far): thin white worms - (about 10mm) that move the substrate around and occasionally wiggle around whilst floating around in the water. thin white worms - (about 10mm) that use the sucker at one end of their body to haul themselves up the glass copepods - population has died down since i noticed them 4 weeks ago snails - two types, small conical shelled black things, and the orange-ish shelled snails that look like mini rams-horns. Baby snails? - something that looks like an egg sac but on closer inspection (size about 1mm max) seems to be a snail encased in a total covering of something that is not shell - i have only seen one thing that passes for an egg sac but i am not sure what it is for (still watching!) there is no real infestation of any particular critter, the snails are a little more populous this week, the worms i only just noticed when i saw them pulling dead plant matter down between the gravel (i think i like them), the copepods are there but they take some finding as opposed to a few weeks ago. my thoughts on dropping the snail population included a couple of khuli loaches, the algae; a bristlenose. However, after the whitespot and reading up a little too much on diseases i'm not too happy to use the tank for fishkeeping purposes, and regardless of the tanks appearance one of my female opaline gouramis is laden to the point she looks like a balloon - i think its time to put her and her man in a place where they can have kids. regardless of the eventual usage of the tank it has been well worth watching a small biotype develop though i am still tempted to go and buy some small cheap fish and throw it in there to see if it dies of any deadly diseases - i couldn't bring myself too. Tank Stats: 26degC, 14 hours light/day from 1 36w 10000k and 1 36w red spectrum, 2/1/1' tank filled to 95%, minimal direct daylight, 1-2" propagating sand substrate, assorted plants, minimal filtration through a bubble powered foam block, 1 DIY CO2 unit with non-forced diffusion, misc lifeforms as mentioned above, no fish

oooh you could get the cases that they have on display that have no stuff in them. kinda like the cellphones they have on display that look real but don't work, but bigger...

i was reading up somewhere that catfish communicate through electric 'clicks' and signals etc... always wanted to attach an oscilloscope to the tank and see how they react to food, fingers, large plastic lobsters etc... my gourami go nuts sometimes and crash into the ends of the tank - they come out with some quite nasty bruises too... usual cause is someone opening the bathroom door, which is at the other end of the house through a couple of concrete walls - i have no idea why at all unless the door causes some vibrations on a level i can't perceive. The last time everyone in the tank bolted (except the lazy plecs) was during a thunderstorm that caused the lights to flicker - again, electrical. they also don't like it when people shine lazer pointers into the tank - high-frequency somewhat-electrical concentration of light?