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squidgey, rubbery, slightly furry on the legs, but the bits that stick up are rubbery and balloon like...

the snails i do keep - the knife fish love them Although at the speed they are starting to multiply i think you'll be able to have some the plant, i think is perhaps some kind of seaweed, although i'm stumped because it is growing in a fresh water tank!

A short while ago my fluval 404 was not running all that smoothly, so i took it apart for servicing. I did find a couple of hundred snails that were breeding in there (none in the main tank, only in the filter, the white bumpy things in the picture are their egg clusters...) more interestingly though, i found this: click image for larger shot (1600x1200) Any ideas?

Hey Warren; how did we get on in the end?

yeah, na, the 'we are not willing to sign to anything unless we know the full extent of our obligations thereafter' excuse. regardless of the evidence and reference material that i was so kind to present, and point to original copies of... 'we'll have to talk about it on monday' 'i've been trying to get you to do this for three weeks' 'well...' 'you do like having a job don't you?' still, serves me right for not getting onto it earlier. and kudos to all you late nighters i've been getting to sleep around 5am recently after working on this...

just finished working through my entries with the help of some friends. seems so few when compared to 4000+ but every little bit counts! anyway, i would like to publicly thank our breeding co-ordinator, Mr Kevin Rowe for helping me think, Chris Downs and his library (just you hope you get those books back) my flatmates for their support and putting up with no dining room for about 3 days (yes, three days) and a giant slice of kudos to Graeme from The Lower Hutt Pet Centre for letting me take photos and taking the time to sign all those pieces of paper. I would also like to publicly scathe another pet store in the lower hutt region for refusing to help out, but I won't, and I really hope that the 30+ species that I was not allowed to document are being supplied by others. And I'll publicly frown, yes... FROWN, at anyone I find with a fish that was not registered by anyone. I was talking to a client on Thursday who was getting slightly annoyed that I cancelled a meeting to take pictures of fish. As I explained to him; I would rather take time off now and risk loosing a client than take the time off later and not have anything to do. I really hope y'all took that into account when thinking 'everyone else has that fish, someone else will take a photo of it' - heck, I must have taken 10 photos of 'electric yellow cichlids' (and I submitted them ALL ) Good luck y'all and fingers crossed i'm not the only nutter out here...

always nice to know more people are getting into the fishy thing the right way (joining KapiMana ) i think we are going to have to start club funded rennovations of our current gracious host living room

i have had two black ghosts in my time The first one was eaten by a school of angry gourami the second one is still alive and thankfully stands up against anyone who wants to give him crap. i feed him souly on bloodworm however i have noticed that he has a tendancy to eat a lot of plant matter as well - often the stems of juicy plants like cabomba and hygro, and the flesh from the leaves of sword plants. he also loves flake, and watching him try to catch it is fun too! he also enjoys neons, fry, and anything else he can fit in his mouth.

i thought that was a recipe for fish food for a second there!

you could try attaching a flow control to the line itself - a brass needle valve similar to the 'gang valves' you get for air lines? look forward to the pics - considering that new soda stream systems can be got for less than $80 these days it sounds like a good deal!

was talking to a chemical engineer regarding the diffusion of CO2 - his response was; 'CO2 is heavier than air, so if it escapes to the surface of the water it will just displace the air above the water and then the entire top of your tank becomes a [bell]' thats a nice big bell! apparently unless you are putting the bell about 10 feet underwater you will not make a noticable difference to the diffusion rate. useful to note if you have fish (eg gourami) that need to breathe air; if you are worried about the layer of CO2 on top of the tank being bad for them you'll have to watch that your bell doesn't overflow complete diffusion is your best bet

like fish pong? - when you have a fish shaped ball and two fish shaped paddles? that could make for some interesting ponging

what would people would actually use 'the ideal' application for...?

*achem* not that i'm about to go completely off topic... *goes hunting for a big rubber baseball bat* anyway...

spreadsheets work well and i am in the process of creating a box [computer] that measures and automatically records these things the software was the easy part, the parts are the hard part (anyone know of a good source of USB ph metres?) in all honesty i have actually found these two methods the best: 1) don't bother unless necessary (if it ain't broke don't fix it) 2) manual graphing (like they use in hospitals to record your temp) i use my spreadsheet for figuring out all sorts of things, the lifetime of my lights, what fish i have and how many, what plants i have, average mean and median values for water quality for all the things in my tanks so i know about where the tank should be (assuming my info is correct and that i actually bother to check - see point one above) not until recently did i start recording water quality values etc and i have found that i really can't be bothered getting the laptop out in addition to measuring the water, therefore the graphs look empty and are of practically no use. hence the great idea of getting an automated system that does it all for me. i guess the downside to that is then i would have to look at the data it collects. poor poor me...

no offense taken - the system i have come up with is easy to construct, install, obtain, and because it can handle higher flow than the typical aquarium valve you can rig it to feed multiple tanks (probably well more than 200 tanks if you wanted) anyway... if you purchase a bottle it will cost you around $350 new. conversion of an old fire extinguisher will cost about $200, has the advantage of being cheaper and available in more size/shape options, but can be dodgey and not everyone will fill or test them testing costs about $50 - $100 depending on where you go, needs to be done every 5 years or less depending on the age of the bottle and the testers recommendations. filling of a 6.7kg bottle is around $30. hireage of a bottle: $10 per month, no testing costs ever, $30 fill. if you hire a bottle you will most likely (certainly with BOC) require a gas system that uses welding gear. and of course you need an account with BOC (easy to get if you are over 18 and have a clean credit record) (i believe the over 18 thing is government regulation regarding young people having high pressure gas bottles in their posession) apparently the only non-welding fittings that will be allowed to be owned tested or filled after 2007 will be the 9oz soda-stream style bottles, which are not compatible with the welding fittings. Most of the c02 systems i have seen; dupla, SERA, eheim etc. use fittings that will (in theory) become obsolete - note that because i have found what i consider to be a much better option i don't keep up with the market

I can build you a system the same (but slightly better) as the one on trademe for about $420. i know this because it is/was my auction It is all 100% approved NZ gas gear; no worrying about compliance, and will attach to standard NZ gas bottles. comes with solenoid, needle valve and reg and works like a dream. i can honestly say i will NEVER use yeast again, and with a 6.7kg bottle i will only have to get more gas about once every 2 years. anyone interested in just the solenoid unit i can get you one of those for about $140. (all prices include PnP, blah blah blah)

you can use a light level meter to measure the intensity of your lights - i have not done this but i believe there is some form of photographic device that measures light levels. you might have to put it in a plastic bag and drop it into your tank to get a proper reading though

i believe they are the aqua-glo life-glo or power-glo range - it should be stamped on the tube at one end. regardless, the K rating on the box is misleading, i believe it was branding to confuse consumers into continued custom - nowhere else would stock a 14,000K bulb. this is of course assuming that they are using a standard array of phosphors in the tube (the substance that makes it glow) and have not concocted something themselves, which i seriously doubt. their new boxes do not have the existing ratings on them, but it will probably a year or more before we see those in the pet stores what you need to do is purchase your tubes from a lighting wholesaler - a professional. that way you can ask for 6500K tubes (which is what you want to grow plants and minimise algae). this has the benefit of being cheaper - 6500K tubes cost me about $10 - the equivalent from a pet store is about $40. pet store tubes also boast a service lifetime of 10,000 hours or more. this is true, they will glow for that length of time, but for growing plants you need to replace them every 2500 hours; just before they start to loose their colour which results in less plant growth and more algae. this is approx every 6 months - you can get away with longer of course but the effectiveness of the tubes will lower. learning about the lighting requirements of your tanks is important - most pet stores will sell you whatever they have to do a job whereas a bit of research, (in my case) a much shorter trip down the road and (having 8 tubes on one tank) i save myself $240. at least.

you should probably know that 14000k is a trademark not a rating - i believe they are actually 6500k bulbs in reality 14000k would be some form of black light.

i keep a spreadsheet and add features to it as i need them. graphs and logs of tanks, lists of fish, tanks and plants etc... helps to be a computer nut i guess, though this way i get exactly what i need.

what are you trying to source? filling a bottle of 7 litres or so costs around $25 - the $325 bottle was around that volume. from what i have picked up so far, a bottle of this size should last around a year or two depending on the use it gets. solenoids come in all shapes and sizes, some use a flashback arrestor with a solenoid attached to the diaphram to stop flow, some use a pin through a brass tube, some use turn-ball valves with solenoid arms - it all depends on what you can get at the best price for the size hosing and pressure throughput you are using. i got one from the old man for $free but i'll ask around next time i am looking for parts - $120 seems alot though! bubble counters concern me as they seem completely inaccurate for the task - i'd rather use a proper mil/sec flow meter but most, if not all, the info i read on C02 is in 'bubbles per second' which, considering the different methods people are using to create their bubbles (pressure, hose size, counter liquid medium etc) seems about as accurate as saying 'buckets per second' and neglecting to state the size of your bucket. because of this i have neglected to get one. my short term solution is the aforementioned flowmetre (another fatherly gift) and a (modified) drip counter (from the IV lines used in hospitals) to get a rough idea of how many bubbles per second are gained from my mils/sec. once i get a feel for it i probably won't need any of them anyway - heres hoping.

After wandering around the city for a while i found out the following: a BOC C02 regulator is worth about $150 a needle valve is worth about $20 extra fittings required total about $40 a new C02 cylinder will cost around $325 a cylinder can be hired for about $10 a month getting an old C02 fire extinguisher converted tested and filled will cost about $165 + the cost of the extinguisher i also found that i don't have $325 for a new bottle, and no-one wants to give me one for free the biggest annoyance is that i am looking at an old fire extinguisher as i type, but i think the landlord would be naffed if it disappeared!

*trys to contain excitement* well... in that case i could give you two plants! Or as much plant matter as i can realisically get away with... anything in particular you are looking for?

Na, I have E. osiris and E. cordifolius var marble - it is the marble that is showing the red. the E. osiris is doing well. question would be, what do you want for it? i'd like to experiment with them to see how it went before investing in the system...