twinkles

In my daughters community tank we have a golden algae eater called Algae, and last night he decided to start digging holes. I've been told he's really a she, because he has the 'round' look of a female, do you think s/he's trying to make a nest? He's never dug before, but went mad all of a sudden and dug a hole down the bottom glass, which is a problem because the substrate is 2cm of river sand, with 2cm of gravel on top = sand all over our tank now, and foggy water full of sand. I siphoned up as much sand as i could, and put some gravel back in the hole, but he dug it out again. He has a barrel cave thingy that he likes and spends most of his time in, do you think he needs another house? I'm thinking i might have to put him in a different tank, but i don't really want to, or take the whole tank apart and get rid of all the sand, but that would be a huge job. Any ideas why he's suddenly doing this? Or how to stop him?

favourite individual fish i have to admit is our evil golden algae eater, he has attitude and is the kids favourite too species is hard to choose, either the furcartus rainbows, or scheeli killies, or our tiny purple wild-type guppies i'd love a ghost knife and a couple of polypterids sp? one day too

some species the girls are easy to tell apart but you'd have to be very careful to get rid of any fry, mine bred happily in a community tank for a few months so i imagine they'd crossbred in a nice planted tank easily.

best tagging job i've seen in a long time :lol:

i can see it, funny shaped tank

you'd have to put chairs outside the windows for all the passers-by to sit on, might end up with a row of people outside watching the tank

you get more/stronger/brighter colours on a single killie than i've ever seen on a guppy, i spend hours marvelling at the blue, green, orange and red on my scheeli's, every colour is just so intense and so clearly marked out. The females have more colour than guppies too, especially oeminx's lovely golden australe girls, they're beautiful enough to display by themselves.

they'd look brilliant too personally i love huge planted tanks with small fish - cardinals, small rainbowfish, glowlight danios, ember tetras, anything brightly coloured, schooling and under 4cm. Would probably cost heaps to stock, but they'd look great schooling up and down the huge tank, and plenty of colour and variety.

yep there's a few vets that will, same goes for ferrets. I think they all should, better to have people getting them desexed than too scared to take them to the vet and keeping quiet about them. People will own them either way.

natural spring, used to be aucklands water supply. flows through the zoo, through a bush area, and out into the sea.

i used to go there most days to feed the eels, and watch the rabbits in the early morning, never saw any turtles so i'd guess people might have dumped the odd one, and someone else has grabbed them for a free pet. Most of the rabbits there are dumped pets, they cull them off every few months but people still do it. Why would they need to cull the eels? They've always been there, the maori name for the place means water of eels. The koi were added a few years back to get rid of the oxygen weed, excess bread etc, that was fouling the pond. I thought it was a great example of natural selection the way they added orange adults only, and a few years later nearly all the koi are grey, and all the young ones.

It will have 4x4 posts, with 2x4's for the beams, notched into them, then the insulation will fill in the 2inches between the beams and the outside walls. The idea is i'll be able to have more fish, without too much of a dent in the power bill, yet have them easy to look at and enjoy.

i've got one planned out, just need the money for the wood etc now. it will hold a 3ft and 4 ft on the bottom, 5x 1ft and 2x 2 foots sideways on the second shelf. I went for having it really long over an extra level, so i can have both shelves at easy viewing/cleaning height. It will be a wooden tank rack, with 2inch polystyrine insulation lining it, then seratone bathroom wall stuff on the outside. Not sure how to do the front yet, but will either be poly lined doors i can put on at night, or perspex so i can see through. Will have the bottom two tanks set up nicely for displaying fish, and the smaller tanks for breeding. I'm hopefull that heaters in the bottom tanks will keep the top ones the right temp, but we'll see how it goes.

tree trunk would look cool! you could make a big hollow fake tree, with the roots in the tank, filter bits hidden away between them, and the trunk going up to the ceiling with the cables in it. but thats probably far too expensive

and make sure you have it desexed

try the trademe pets message board, there's often people looking for homes for handraised ones on there

yup, got plenty of that here

good thread thanks, will stock up on beef heart and shrimps and peas when i go shopping and start experimenting

I want some frozen food for my guppies, since i keep reading how good the beef heart etc is for them, but can't buy it here. Is the packaged beef heart just beef heart or are other things in it? If i got a piece from the homekill guy and froze and grated it, would it be good for them? What else can i use?

going on a bear hunt?

i've read you're supposed to put them in a bag or something of water, add clove oil to anaethitise them, then vodka to finish them off. Supposed to be humane euthing but i haven't tried it

its coming back! Started growing out in the same spot again! what do i do now?

ubuntu here too, i'll never go back to microsoft :bounce:

i'd choose a cafe with a big tank over a plain cafe, but it would have to have small interesting fish and plants, and be somewhere you could see it while drinking your coffee. And i'd want it to have very strong glass because my kids would be trying to touch it and tap it the whole time.

i want to get a big fish, so i can feed the occasional deformed guppy to it. I'm too much of a pussy to kill them and i don't want to end up with 10 tanks of mutant guppies, it seems like the best thing to do with them. Only i haven't got a big tank for my big fish yet, so still working on the idea