humvee

We're on well water out here so if anyone wants to get non-chlorinated water you're welcome to come out for a visit - just bring some containers to take it back with you

I reckon this one should go in as photo of the month - that's a dude with attitude

I have 3 L018 in my 5 foot tank, though do have 3 massive pieces of driftwood and they all have their own spot that they like to hang out in and occasionally chase each other up and down the tank - very cool to watch because they swim so differently to my red spot (who is just a big sloth). Mine are approx 8-10cm so will need to keep an eye on them as they get bigger and closer to breeding. Mine aren't quite big enough for me to sex but someone with pleco sexing experience may be able to do it Let me know when you are thinking about ordering .... I'm keen to get a couple more cause breeding them myself is the eventual goal (which gives me an excellent excuse to get a massive tank as well!!)

How long ago??? I've got 3 of them and they are awesome - 2 hide, one always out and about but I've changed their hiding places so that they think they are hiding when they actually aren't :lol: $160 is a good price, I've paid $190 for one of mine and not much less each for the other 2

hi all we changed 3 other tank's water at the same time, all the fish in them are fine. the barbs died before we'd finished refilling the tanks, and the distraction caused a slight flood the tank that they were in is divided, but water can flow through to both sides, and has platys, guppies, gbas and a couple of angelfish, all appear to be fine now that i think about it a bit more, there were quite a few bubbles rising up out of the stones while i was cleaning, so it could have been a gas buildup like you get in sand sometimes, but i cleaned the tank only 2 weeks ago so i'm not sure what would have made it build up so fast when there was nothing last time. guess i will just have to chalk this one up to 'fish mysteries' which is a shame because they were such neat fish

Have just done a water change on one of my tanks, and refilled with premixed water to the right temp, and hubby asked why all the tiger barbs were swimming upside down - I had 5 in the tank and every single one has died I thought tiger barbs were quite a 'hardy' fish, we've had them in the tank since sept (been meaning to sell them on behalf of our fish club but just haven't had time) and they've had a number of water changes and a couple of tank moves with no problems. Have looked at them quite closely, no cuts, all their fins are fine and they look really healthy (other than the fact that they are dead). A couple of them have died with their mouths open. Suggestions anyone??

Looking forward to meeting a bunch of new fishy/reptile people tonight. Also thought I'd mention that I'm going to have a big fish cleanout - our angelfish eggs have just hatched and hubby won't let me another tank, so have to make room in the ones I've already got. So I will have for sale: Guppies: young but old enough to sex Plattys: lotsa young (2cm) plus gorgeous red wag male, and 2 red wag females Angelfish: my second breeding pair (well they lay eggs but they eat them after a day), young adult silver/black and young adult gold Swordtails: 3x male pineapple Breeding Colony of Albino Cory: unknown how many are male or female but have eggs whenever we do a coldish water change and I know there is a fertile male amongst them. Bronze Cory Female GBAs - most 4-5cm long Red Spot Pleco - 25cm long All fish that I sell will have a portion donated to the club as well.

Forgot to mention: We'll be doing a bit of fundraising - we have a bunch of fish and plants kindly donated to us from Redwood Aquatics (thx Bob) that we will be selling and all funds going into the club. The fish: tiger barbs, neons, swordtails and a couple of guppies. The plants: I'm not a plant person but hopefully we will have someone at the meeting who knows their stuff! There is about 6 different plants plus a whole pile of java moss I've also got some of my own fish that I'll donate to the club (platys and some pineapple swords which were females but are now males , and may throw in a couple of gba's as well). Stephikins: don't think we've meet so looking forward to meeting another fishy person Snake kid: it will be great to meet you and you're more than welcome to bring friends along.

Hi All The September meeting is being held on Sat 5th at 5pm at my place (61 Carisbrooke St, Wainoni). Anyone welcome - just let me know if you're coming and please bring a plate of food to share. Look forward to seeing you all then (and fingers crossed for a demo of the new tt website!)

Hi All I've got a couple of hours to kill in Wellington before my ferry leaves and was planning to visit some fish shops - anyone got recommendations?? If you know anyone with gold nuggets (L018) in stock would be great. Thanks!

I remember 5 and a half You can still get candy cigarettes if you look hard enough - I don't think they taste anywhere near as good as I remember them when I was a kid. We had a little milk truck that used to deliver to our gate - remember using stupid little tokens in exchange and cute guys with no shirts hanging off the back of the truck in the summer Our telephone number had 5 numbers - does that count? Hubby's used to have 3 numbers and he's only a year older than me No letters though. Our landrover has the dimmer on the floor, and ignition on the dash - its a 1960-70 something dinosaur years old And had friends who used the pant-leg clips to keep their pants out of the chain when I was in college (only 4 years ago)

if it takes 12.5mm tubing, you can get it from redwood aqautics, about $8 a metre from memory (we had to replace ours about 6 months ago) very good quality tubing or you can get the same stuff from bunnings or mitre10 which is a lot cheaper, but it does kink and bend a lot easier and not in the same league as the stuff from redwoods

thanks mr pleco what size do they need to be to tell what sex they are? not sure how old this one is but it's about 8cm long - I can take some more photos if you need would be keen to have a go at breeding them if we could get hold of a pair

Hi All Just 'acquired' a new pleco ... at this stage we are thinking it is an L204 (Flash Pleco) as its the closest match that we can find ... if anyone can confirm or let us know what it is would be great! S/he is about 8cm so if it is a flash, we should be able to tell its sex soon as well.

My 2 nearly breeding pairs (they keep eating the eggs) are in a divided tank thats 45cm tall, but we've just got another that is 65cm tall that we're picking up this weekend, so they will move to that once its set up, and we'll keep the current one for raising fry.

I checked the other 2 gold nuggets in the tank, and at the moment both appear to be happy and healthy with no redness around the stomach area. Is there anything else that I should be doing or checking for to make sure that the same thing doesn't happy to my remaining nuggets? Does anyone have pics of a pleco that has been fighting with its tank mates? I'm having a few doubts that fighting was what has caused this because I'm sure I would have noticed it and I thought it would have happened sooner rather than being in the tank for nearly a week. I would love to see this too. How big are your nuggets? How far apart did you get them? How many hiding places do you have in the tank for them?

Thanks Caryl. I hadn't really thought about it yet - just want to make some more caves in the tank. How much do you need for that? I'm open for suggestions cause I haven't even used it before - just saw it in other tanks and it looks cool

To be honest, adding more caves isn't something that I though I would need to do - there is at least 4 good hiding spots in the tank (big cave, under driftwood, piece of downpipe, about 6 terracotta pots, and sometimes they hide up behind the filter when I have disturbed them cleaning the tank. Everyone's favourite place is in the big cave - often has 2 nuggets, the SAE and a couple of corys in it - the nuggets hand upside down off the roof (its a long cave - one of those plastic half round ones at least 30cm long), so I may take it out and replace with some smaller ones instead - maybe they were just getting too crowded when the 3rd nugget came along This is a photo of the cave, before we got the 3rd nugget - it looks a lot shorter than it actually is in the photo Does anyone know where I could get some slate from in Chch? I really like the look of it in the Cichlid tanks, and have been wanting to try it out in my tank for something different.

They're currently in a 145x38x45 tank - so about 240 litre, just under 5 foot, and once they grow a little, the plan is to get a 6 or 8 footer for them that's wider than their current tank, but our house doesn't have the room at the moment to start with one that big - the plan is to move to a lifestyle block next year where I will have a dedicated fishy room for our breeding fish so that our fancy plecos can have the main display tank almost to themselves With the exception of the SAE and handful of neons, all the other fish in the tank are either male livebearers (to give my ladies a rest), breeding corys (don't have room to separate them out so eggs get eaten by others - they have an orgy every couple of weeks when we change the water), or our honey gouramis which we are growing to start breeding, so most of them will be moved into the fish room. PS I'm not looking forward to dismantling and moving 6 fish tanks (actually we have 8 now - bought 2 more this week) and over 100 fish 30 minutes out of the city and setting it all up again - will take all day plus some

thanks guys - we suspected that was what may have happened but it was a little strange that it took 5 days to happen. I would have thought that something like that would happen straight away. But when you look back on it, he's been hanging out at the front of the cave on the gravel for about a day now, whereas when we first got him, he was in the cave and under the driftwood with the others. They're all still babies, about 7cm - 8cm long, we'd had one for 4 weeks, one for 3 (which is a bit bigger than the first one) and then money meant we had to hold off on the third for 2 weeks and he was the smallest of them all but not much smaller than the first one (probably about the same size that the first one was when we got it but they love the fresh food so it had grown). RIP little fellow I'm really gutted because we are getting them with the hope of breeding when they have grown a little - its going to be harder to raise them if they're so territorial, and you don't see them for sale much either. Looks like I need to redecorate my tank a little, add some more caves to stop it happening again before getting another one, and then watching the tank even more closely than I was (somehow - I keep a pretty good eye one my fish as it is because I work from home, its sometimes very tempting to just sit in front of our tanks all day long)

BUT: what if you're putting it down for the second time??

We have 3 - I'm pretty sure this is the latest one that we picked up last weekend. I've taken some photos as it looks like his stomach has been ripped open - my apologies if they are a little gruesome (macro setting on the camera so REALLY clear) but if anyone has any ideas why this might have happened, they would much appreciated and hopefully prevent the same thing happening to our remaining 2 (cause they're expensive little buggers as well) Eariler tonight he was sitting in front of the cave, not moving much but that's nothing out of the ordinary for any of them, and checking the fish just before going to bed, we thought he has his tail caught, so put my hand in to free him up, and found him dead He wouldn't have been caught there if he was still alive, think he just got knocked there by another fish. Face on view Top looking from back Underneath Tried to take one from the side, to show that the stomach wasn't really sticking out, not sure how helpful this will be. I've checked my other 2 - their stomachs look fine, as does everything else. Other tank mates: neons, corys, honey gouramis, male guppies, a male platy and a SAE. The SAE is the only thing bigger than them, but pretty placid towards the nuggets - they even share the cave. Water tests: PH 7, Ammonia Nitrate Nitrite all 0 - did a water change last weekend and its a well cycled tank. I've put the poor little guy in a snaplock bag in the fridge so if anyone wants extra info, I should be able to give it for the next day or so. Would really like to find out what happened.

Just make sure you do it in old tank water, not under the tap We have an aqua reminder that tells us to do it monthly - must be about due to do all ours again soon