Dark

5 read somewhere that khulis loved hiding in tight places, and the author had had repeated trouble with them getting into his canister filter and almost getting thrown out with maintenance. the luckiest fish i had was a goldfish. it seemed to have an adversity to being in a tank, and wanted to be out of the tank more often. one night i awoke to the sound of rustling in my room. thinking that one of my rats had escaped and was shuffling things around i left her to it and went back to sleep. The next morning i got up and heard the rustling again and thought that i had better check it out. Lo and behold, the goldfish had jumped out of the tank onto the ground, and landed on a plastic bag. there was obviously enough moisture on the bag to keep it alive, and after about 30 mins it was happily swimming around in the tank again as if nothing happened.

oh, bilbo; all free - as long as i don't have to pay for air! i am interested in donations of plants that i do not have, i could supply a complete listing but its complete, and therefore long.

there will probably be more plants too, i just looked at my tank layout and decided to change the whole thing around, right after i get something done about the frecking lid - at the moment i have to lift the whole canopy off to get into the tank, and it is a pain in the lower lower-back. i have a couple of ice cream containers full of microworms now. i've been looking into ways to store them long term - probably freeze drying them - so i can distribute them to people easily. the baby guppies have gotten used to eating them, and i am occasionally experimenting with some kind of microworm feeder so the 'lil buggers get suspended more often than floating to the bottom. baby guppies look like fish with binoculars for heads.

Hi All I recently added an extra 4 4foot 6500k fluros to my tank, and a rather effective DIY tornado-style co2 reactor. if only i had a camera. As a result I'm letting you all know I will be bringing a bucket-load of plants to the next meeting, including but not strictly limited to the following: Stargrass Ambula (roots and all in some cases) Marble Swords (about 5 at this stage) And please note that i'm on the lookout for any interesting plants people have, particularly ones that are not light green. Sale ends at the end of next club meeting, all stock must go, being your own baggies, massive clearance, herbivores welcome, batteries not recommended, children under 5 not included.

i have about 6 bistlenose in a tank with twisted and corkscrew val, the fish leave it al well alone (which is a shame really because the twisted val is out of control. I have found that the corkscrew val gets very brittle or woody, and i wonder that bristlenose may eat it if there is no wood in the tank for them to nibble on. It is a little known rumour that bristlenose require lignin as a part of their diet, perhaps they are trying to supplement their diet? Another thing that confuses the issue for me is that, to me, twisted or spiral val is what most people consider 'normal' val ie: it twists once or twice along the length of the 1m or so long leaf, wheras corkscrew val, what most people consider twisted or spiral, spirals continously from root to tip.

Melanotaenia, i would not worry about being late; the first meeting that i went to (when held in plimmerton) was a complete disaster. Coming from town i took the hutt turn off, rather than SH1, then when we finally did get to plimmerton (via upper hutt) i realised that my map did not reach that far. going on some vague directions we got to the right street, but i had forgotten the address! after wandering around the dark street for about half an hour, knocking on the occasional door and getting strange looks from people when asking if they had seen a whole pile of 'fishy' people wandering around, one nice fellow gave us a phone book. We finally arrived just in time for introductions and some tea and buscuits. these days we drive into tawa at about 6pm and loiter so even if the car explodes and raving mad devil goats eat my trousers we will not be late!

yo pies, thought you'd never build another tank yourself!

After the outstanding effort put in at the last meeting i am putting in my cullinary orders now in order to ensure that my taste buds are sated at the next meeting...

its curved like a banana with a big knot on one end i tried using weight to keep it down, i needed about 10kg at each end to keep it in place and 15kg if i wanted it to stay there. - thats a lot of lead any suction cup i can think of would have posed problems, and silicon - although probably my most alternate idea, would have been a good idea when the tank was empty. as it was i had trouble getting it into the tank, having said that i had problems getting it into the car, and its not like i have a small car! i promise pictures to you all, for those that do not come over and laugh at it in the near future

insane boiling of the log update: it worked nicely! the only problem was that the log was about 3 times longer than the bin i was boiling it in, so i only got the stump end of it in, so the end result was a log that sinks at one end! The other end is now weighted down with a brick that is cleverly concealed under the substrait - hopefully potential audience will think that bright green rope holding it down is some strange plant they don't want cuttings of! so, to conclude; boiling is good.

i'm kind of working backwards on this project I have a nice piece of wood i collected from a beach, and with a bit of convincing it fits in my tank - and looks great! when the tank is empty. the problem ariseswith the addition of water & from it being about 1400mm long, 60mm high and a 10cm radius at the thickest part, with a larger root/stump bit on one end. ...and of course, being overly bouyant. i'll be posting the pics when i get the film developed. i experimented on a offcut (originally it was about 3m long) by boiling the heck out of it for about an hour, and it sank. Of course boiling a piece of the aforementioned dimensions is proving a hassle - the largest vessle i have in the house is the tank itself and rather hard to get onto the stove. it (the log) stays down if i attach a 10kg weight to it, something that i only have in double measures in the form of cinderblocks, and not to be rude to any up-coming construction engineers come aquascapists, they look pretty darn stupid in my tank, esp with string attached. at the moment the log is sitting in the bath in hot water and leaching out tannin to its hearts content. tomorrow i am heading to the warehouse to obtain a gas burner ring, and then i will boil the heavy knotted end of it to death in an old rubbish bin. and although it sounds like i have it all sorted, i'm just playing - knowing my chances when i get it back in the tank it will rot, float, or turn into a giant freshwater squid and eat my flatmates - never know my luck!

you don't happen to have any wood left do you? i'm not too sure what i'm looking for, except options as i am battling with a rather nice piece i have at the moment that i am physically unable to boil to get it to sink - its about five feet long...

our pet rabbit fell in the tank the other day - the hoplos swam around trying to get a closer look at the new furry fish whilst everyone else went into hiding!

due to the aforementioned plecs i have no real need, however if they are being lazy its the magnetic scrubber thing - one of the floating ones cause for my large tank i have to climb into it if i want to get something out of the bottom. Use them in lengthways - that is; if scrubbing up and down the magnetic scrubby thing has the longest side pointing sideways - makes for more scrubbing area per pass. the fun starts when forgetting about the algae for a few weeks - then comes the razor blades - that algae sticks like glue and can actually cause damage to the glass if left for too long (apparently...?) i have found, regarding algae growing in condensation above the tank, that, if the tank has no algae nor does the condensation. make sense but i only just though of it.

no idea about the tanks but i can tell you this: when we were young'uns we would go searching for koura in the creeks around havelock north. they tend to hang around in shaded, slower moving parts of the creeks, usually with a muddy bottom or hiding under logs and roots. although we looked we never found any in the gravelated waters. this point is probably mute due to artistic lisence. most of the creeks were devoid of any plant life save the occasional border of watercress/puha and the long slimy green weedy stuff. they probably live in nicer places but we didn't have any around so they had to make do. and the water was always *cold* but i was smaller then... i don't know what their actual requirements would be like, but i would assume under 18degC trout eat them; i only know this from gutting trout - you find small koura or parts thereof. planning on keeping trout? though i would assume that they only eat things smaller than themselves. good luck!

trust me i have considered it! last time i took photos of a tank going together (from glass construction onwards) someone chose to spill pineapple juice over the photos when i was reviewing them for scanning. none survived so far, as you can see from photographic representation i have a grand total of 0 tanks with no fish, and i just hang around here because i have nothing better to do... *sigh* now what i need is a GIANT flatbed scanner... i'm reading up on aquascaping at the moment and fine tuning my plant and landshape requirements... so much fun

Last night i finally managed to get some free time to start putting my new tank together. The tank was re-sealed about 2 weeks ago, needed to be left for a week to cure (external re-seal only). So, two frustrating weeks later, in goes the substrate. I had this kookie idea for the base substrate - this is a fully planted tank so i'm using a mixture of aquatic potting mix and propagating sand - it looks surprisingly good. In order to stop the majority of the potting-mix mix getting disturbed when i am moving the remaining substrate around on top of it, i put it in a 'bag'. the bottom of the tank is lined with a weed mat, and the base substrate is covered with the loose mesh of wind-break material - still enough room for plants to get their roots in but enough covering to stop it from getting mixed in with the soil covering it. sounds like a great idea - all the material is non-toxic and has been throughtly prepared - so i'll let y'all know how it goes in the long run. anyway, the annoying bit - i was snapping away with the camera getting all the shots of how the whole thing goes together - equipment line-ups, the substrate bag, the primary terraforming etc... (its still 'terra' due to a lack of 'aqua') and making up what each picture was about in my head so i can put them altogether on my website. this-morning i take the camera into the photo-lab and ask them to run my prints - the guy opens up the camera and to my complete horror... no film. apparently the counter and max-shots features on the camera work regardless of the presense of film. ARGH!...

nothing was ever stricter

i have had my tank double-dosed (due to plants) for about 3 weeks now to no ill effect. 60L tank 15ml of MelaFix per day, no water changes ever. tank contains guppies and fry (still breeding), bristlenose, khulis, cardinal tetras, black widow tetras, glowlight tetras, and a few others. now, it could be the plants rendering it ineffective or something else. as with all medication, if unsure - don't use it. i would hate to say 'no, go ahead' and have your fish die off. as far as methlyene blue goes - the asthetic downside to it is that it can stain the seals in your tank blue. i have a tank that was used with it about 10 years ago and the seals still have blue patches in them. solution: use MB in a quarantine tank

You can get Tea Tree oil from the Pharmacy - off the shelf. Just ask your friendly local chemist of herbalist. Heres a recipe i prepared earlier: 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). Shake well before use and dose as advised on the Melafix bottle (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 (2.75 litres worth of 5ml doses should treat a total of 22000 litres of tank (2750mL/5mL=550doses*40L=22000L)) This recipe is a work in progress. No warranties are extended or implied. Batteries not included, parts not suitable for anyone of any age. Any comments welcomed

teatree oil IS toxic so are most of the antibacterials we use every day, if over dosed. i get it in its 'pure' form from the chemist and mix it up myself, i think the idea has been around for a long time but not commercially available as such. don't bother removing your plants - the thing about planted tanks is that the plants eat melaleuca oil - the effectiveness is reduced somewhat - dosing still raises the concentration but the plants degrade that over a shorter time. the same is true for tanks running hardcore filtration - the only time you will notice is if you have lots of plants. in most cases it is easier to quarantine sick fish, and certainly easier to isolate them upon purchase (same goes for plants and any ornaments and hardware that comes from an uncertain source - i transferred whitespot with a stupid ornamental castle thing once...) i have noticed that MelaFix will reduce the population of smaller organisms like copepods and small worms - i should add that this is only an observation, it could be that my fish were feeling better and regained their appetite when i had them on a reduced diet (might be worth investigation) all in all, i reckon if your fish have white spot and they are still swimming and breathing, dose according to package directions and you'll be feeling better in no time. This Document will learn you about the ich organism - its always good to know your enemy!

i had a 2 foot tank on my desk with a pair of siamese fighters in it - the boss had no choice cause its my desk, and there would be times when people from the other offices on our level would come through to watch them swimming around. they (the fish) were a surprisingly good couple. the ladies from the offices got all cluckey when the fish spawned - they got given a jar of 'betta bites' as a congratulatory office present as fish do they passed away, i'm now planning to fill the space with a black ghost knife biotype tank. people still ask me where the fish are and i even meet new clients who, upon finding out about my fish obcession, recognise having heard about us - just from a pair of bettas!

melafix/tea tree oil/love and attention i have recommended this stuff so much in the past couple of days i should become a salesperson! does not harm scaleless fish (works well on armoured cats) if you are running a heavily planted tank you'll need to consider quarantine for the fish as plants reduce its effectiveness, but you'll also need to dose the tank if there are fish remaining as ich uses fish as a part of its lifecycle. MelaFix is expensive - use the pond stuff for better cost effectiveness (found at gardening centres in the Pond section if your LFS does not sell it) or you can make it yourself ich stresses fish out; it is good to ensure that they are as happy as possible, and feed them on live or really top quality food. This helps by ensuring higher nutrients when they eat less. almost a pity you can't cuddle them

melafix is a melaleuca (tea tree oil) based solution (1% melaleuca). It is a herbal-type remedy that (in humans) works to kill bacteria, sooth and aid in the healing process. Some clever person thought of adding it to fish tanks, found that it works, and melafix is a dilute solution designed for that very purpose. the propoganda states that it helps fish heal up to 5 times faster, i have not cared to make the comparison, however comparing similar cases in my own fish i have found it to help heal what would otherwise (without medication) be terminal ailments. you can also make it yourself and get 'pond strength' stuff if you have larger tanks or a need for an ongoing supply.

heater guards, quarrentine, and melafix (dosed to package directions) and he'll be right in no time. a fish of mine once got scorched by a heater and a few other fish started eating him, starting at the burnt bit - quarrentine is useful for sick fish. in consideration of the heater - the heater guards stop the fishies sitting next to the glass of the heater and getting roasted however most of the time i have noticed that fish hide there because it is a nice secluded place. as a result when i set up a heater i place it so that my filters push water across them - makes the water around the heater turbulent and therefore a much less sheltered place for fish to hide. definately go with the heater guard though. definately...