Dark

so now i'm an anemone (of the state)? pies, as much as i love you, you are not allowed to hide under my shirt

how about celeb 'Murray Sherwin' we could say he was hiding because he didn't want his secret trade-talks with the Kapi-Mana Club to be made public...

if you like i can put margaret thachers head on pies body, we can pretend like celebs come to our events oh look, i said 'our', i feel like a member already

The follwing article covers some interesting points about fish food, the preparation of commercial and home made food sources for fish, nutritional information, etc... good reading. HTML Version PDF Version This site also covers a lot of other areas including breeding, disease management, aquarium setup, all with a technical outlook and focus ranging from private to commercial ventures. (Many thanks to all the people with letters after their names who compiled the resources available)

Permisson Granted, you are go for type-setting

well that problem got fixed outright thanks to pies referring me to a guy whom i thought was a myth, the tank (in the space of 24 hours) had the seals re-done to improve appearance, three top supports with a lateral brace front and back, and cover glass to boot (all for the low low price of $150, delivered) it is now sitting in the garage completing its cure, which gives me the rest of the week to mix the substrate and sort out the plumbing (i'm wishing i had remembered to get it drilled for my filters *sigh*) interestingly enough the tank guy recommends the use of Acetic cure silicon, as the neutral cure tends to go white and gather brown algae in a very short amount of time. i assume the residual acetic substance in the seals deters/kills the algae. (which makes me wonder about using silica seals in a tank where certain algae is likely to use it as a food source, although i have never seen this happen to a great enough extent to be a problem) so although the problem with this tank is resolved, the question still remains.. whats good and whats not? apparently the design for my tank is now based on 'what works' rather than any special calculation or theory.

My Ghost Knife (Cochlean) is developing a taste for baby guppies Thanks Interfecus!

nice pic suemack

I remember someone mentioning a small catfish they had a couple of but couldn't remember the details/name of. Well I was looking through a 2003 practical fishkeeper (which the have at the wellington public library) and found the 'Hara Hara - Indian Moth Catfish' Dunno if that is what was being looked for - there is info but no pics under 'Hara' on fishbase, although Google brings up a whole pile of results - but it sounds right. Heres a pic http://www.scotcat.com/factsheets/hara_hara.htm looks like a cross 'twixt a syno and a banjo (producing 'synoban' which sounds like a cold remedy) So 'whoever you are' hope this is useful. Just for interests sake - anyone know if they can be got in NZ? PFK rekons they are hard to get because they are from india and imports rarely come, although PFK is printed in the UK. And to answer my own question: TropicalBlue rekon they can get them in for about $14.50

I have two types of tanks as far as water changes go: Holding Tanks I test the water daily and change it as necessary to keep the fish happy. The tanks are bare save some rocks and pipes to break up the boredom and give them a place to hide. These are my quarrentine tanks, so They get dosed, and 100% water changes are not unheard of. Setup tanks. Because my interest is in Tropical Freshwater Planted tanks ('till Pies gets his claws into me) i have a lot of planted tanks, some with fish and some without. None of these tanks ever get water changes unless there is something wrong, but they get topped up a couple of times a year depending on the evapouration rate. My theory is that 'it should all balance out' and i did manage to go a couple of years with 3 tanks and no test kits at all. Having said that, it is probably good to mention that I add iron and other plant supplements to the tanks to keep the green things alive - keeps them doing their filtration, and in encourage worms snails and micro/mini-organisms to make homes because they all have their own part to play in the tank cycling. I guess that it would be possible to get away with no water changes in a lesser-planted situation if one added some form of nitro absorber or remover to the system, as that seems to play a big part in the necessity for water changes. And although i don't know the reality of it, my plants seem to do better (i measure them :oops: ) if i don't vacumme the 'fluff' off the bottom of the tank - observation only, if asked to guess i would have to say it is because plants are from the 60's and therefore like brown carpet. Crazy idea: Take two huge tanks, create a nifty flow system that allowed you to take water from one, pump it to the other then back into the first. (add in a filter or something somewhere along the way, stick one on each side of a wall) make one a huge tropical planted tank, the other an unplanted tank. sounds like a rough idea for an instant excuse for two more tanks (not to mention the theoretical lack of water changes if one can filter the other)

well payday finally arrived and i have ordered the extra glass and brought the new caulking gun and silicon - placemakers have some good cheap stuff (kudos to Brent, the helpful employee who rang up the silicon suppliers, talked to the chemists and got their recommendations for curing and toxicity times) incidentally, the recommended calculation for curing time is 24 hours + 12 hours per mm of seal thickness. anyway - the two tiny glass blocks i'm adhering to the underside of the center support to increase the thickness have been cut to order and boy am i paranoid! two 80/160mm blocks to be adhere to the underside of a 160/600mm support, to be set then glued back in. it just does not seem enough, and i am seriously tempted to go back and get three more pieces to build another identical support for the top. i have however decided that if this does not work i will admit defeat and start adding stupid amounts of support - the angle iron idea i mentioned before would cost about $60 to get (inc gst & P&P), and for all the hassle its really worth it may be the simplest - just add silicon. As far as i am aware all the tanks in wellington are being built by a guy from Port Nicholson Glass, hence the similarity in construction, and this vexes me as they are the only tanks around that i have to use as reference.

i have a 'lil genio filter got given by a friend because it made too much noise reason - the auto primer, which was magnetically driven by the motor, had broken and was hitting the side of the case. a few minutes later and it no longer primed but is quiet as a mouse. problem with priming it after that was the sucking - takes about half an hour on a bad day, and this is a 400lph external with about 6l capacity! and the taste of month old cannister filter water is.. well its toxic, i had to take a day off work. arrives the fluval 404, purchased at cost price (www thanks to shawn, the rusty flatmate) and all i had to do to prime it was follow the instructions in the pamphlet - for some reason its the only way to get it going. the thing i dislike about fluval is the hosing concept - with the 'u' shaped clips and the ribbed hose - definatly not ribbed for hightened pleasure! the things drive me insane, so off to the hardware store, and now it is being re-plumbed with... plumbing bits, but it goes together sooo much better now!

as i remember you have to weld it if you want it done 'properly' otherwize you can get some MEK (methylethylkeytone) from your local plumbing supply - that stuff will fuze almost anything, including your brain cells. i don't know about the plastic welding - but you can get perspex from most glass supply places (just had to replace an odd shaped sheet in a 4foot light thing) if you need a hand let me know, i'm always up for some good old fashioned manual labour and a cuppa jo.

is there a supply or was this a once-off? not that i ever bother changing my filter medium... perhaps i should get another tank so i can get another filter and therefore justify getting some nice cheap filter medium!

if you are willing to take the risk of getting glass that may have a possible flaw you can obtain second hand glass from most glass suppliers. they save sections from shop-fronts to re-use. the problem with that is it is impossible to tell whether the glass has any flaws and is therefore going to hold the strain or not. usually i would use that glass as reinforcement or for a tank when certain that it will not matter (like making a 3 foot tank out of 10mm etc). i have read a few articles in the library on making plywood tanks - the idea being to make a box and cut a viewing hole in one side. apparently the original dutch tanks were constructed in this fashion due to the extreme cost of glass 'in the old days' the only problem i can see would be finding a waterproofing system that was not toxic to fish - otherwize you can then just keep nailing 2/4s to the tank until you think it will be strong enough!

with many diseases caused by underwater microbes they have a lifecycle during which only part of is spent on the poor fish. the rest of the time they are floating around in the tank, making homes on rocks or in gravel and lying around dormant until the conditions are better for them to come out. Because of this (and i only mention it because you did not) you need to keep treating the tank for a while after the symptoms have disappeared from the fish. In the case of Ich (Ichthyophthirius Multifiliis / White Spot) the only time they are vunerable is when they are free swimmming as tomides the adults (the white spots) and the cysts tend to be rather resistant to treatment. Because of this you need to be sure that any tomides are sent to their doom with a healthy dose of medication. Also recommended is regular vacumming of the tank to get rid of cysts that may be hiding in the gravel or sludge. A good article

indeed - back when there was no such thing as flat rate internet and i was paying $2.50 an hour for my connection. one of the main reasons i moved to wellington was for ihugs flat rate connection.

Well... The History of Dark Once, long ago, a young forklift driver by the name of Chris spent all of his hard earned cash building his first computer. Overwhelmed by the amount of time he could waste, he purchased a game known as Diablo. This game, set in a mythical land overrun with demonic influences, featured passages and themes from well known authors, such as; Dante, H.G.Wells, Edgar Allen Poe and Sam Raimi. One such myth that caught this young game addicts attentions was 'The Dark Exile' - a few lesser overlords from hell kick the greater overlords (from hell) out and make them mortal, meanwhile throwing the largest party ever to rock the underworld. The term The Dark Exile became darkexile - a fearsome online nick intended to make all those opposing the might online game-playing skills tremble in fear. Unfortunatly the online gaming was short lived due to a sudden addiction to chat rooms, and our tormented computer addict started to spend hour upon relentless hour talking to people online. Many of those people resided in Wellington, so away from the orchards and home-town lifestyle our travelling youngster went, to find a new life in the Big City. That twisted youngster was me... Thereafter people started calling me Dark (darkexile sounds a bit dorky) - thats how they already knew me. I use the nick as much in r/l as i do online - i must say it confuses the heck out of a lot of people, clients mostly. As far as the demonic influences go, i took a shower and some sleeping pills and now i feel a lot better *twitch*

i always refered to her as a silicon based lifeform - her life (or at lease reputation) revolves around her... silicon... anyway... there is some fancy stuff you can get for fixing ponds and pools, a silicon that bonds if it is under water, but it comes in a rod, you break off a bit, knead it for a few minutes and then press it into the area that needs fixing. i would assume that it is safe for fish as it is often sold with pond equipment so the curing agent should be non-toxic.

oh yeah... :oops: seems you guys are bringing out the colourful side of me - isn't that sweet! the silly thing is, aside from black and grey clothes i only have 4 clothing items with any color - one of which is white and therefore conceivably not a colour either. somehow, i manage to wear these items i never wear when i am going out to meet people... somehow... anyone got a spare goat that i can scape or should i just change my nick to 'Rainbow'. (that had better not stick)

you didn't lose you car around the same time did you? my gourami have changed the channel on the TV before in a mad flying effort to get away from shortland street.

apparently topicalblue can get them in did a bit of a search around the net, google groups returned a few comments about trying to ID them - apparently they are a newly discovered species which is why we have heard nothing about them i rekon tropical blue would have some idea. and i quote: http://groups.google.co.nz/groups?q=%22gold+batik+eel%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=77piec%24pg3%241%40newsource.ihug.co.nz&rnum=1 which was probably one of us anyway...

i'd just like to state that i never wear orange. that day i was wearing a new shade of black. i have never worn orange, and never will. if you look at that picture and see me wearing an orange shirt you are mistaken, please contact your ocular technician for more information. just thought i'd clear that up.

i had plants do the whole 'melting' thing, turning yellow and bits floating off etc. although you said 'if the lighting is considered to be enough' thats usually what i have to do to fix the problem. example, i added some hairgrass and stargrass to a tank and they started to die, i doubled the lighting and the problem went away. i think the main problem there was getting enough light saturation to get light to the bottom of the tank. if you have checked out all the water chemistry options try the light thing again, or perhaps even tackle the ratings of your lights - something that i can't really comment on yet - always still learning!

we could car pool