BikBok

SO pleased to hear he is home. What a big boy! I couldn't stand to lose any of our cats, they are so loved in the family. We lost a Birman a few years ago (probably stolen by some rowdy youths) with devastating results , it was just awful. Our current cats are not even allowed out the front and get locked in at dusk.

I don't dislike it but prefer it how it was before , on my iGoogle. Google plus looks like a social version of google. Facebook is enough for me.

oh I see. It might make a difference. Yes I am attached to Sharkey , he must be getting on in age now but he's outlived the extras I bought!

is it the black sponge that you're talking about - looks like a scouring pad?

I would be willing to pay more for fish from a private seller if I know they are well bred and disease free. Sometimes it's a bit potluck at petstores.

by the time I find them, they have been damaged and usually swim in circles for a while before settling somewhere in the tank and eventually die. This 3rd one has passed away too. I just have one left .. Sharkey. He will be lonely but I'm not sure what to do. If I get more and there's something in the tank making my otos sick, that's not good.. or if it's the filter itself and curious oto cats run out of lives , that's not good either! I might try the sponge thing though I've resisted that because I don't want to have to clean it every week! (It's in an awkward spot at back of tank that's deeper than my arm reach)

hmmm I wonder what's going on then. They do appear healthy and fat. I sometimes see them grazing on the filter pipe which worries me. Mostly they swim away if they get close to the strainer... then one day I'll see them stuck to it with no prior warning that anything is wrong with them.

YAY yes, i just got a trademe email about it. current categories: Cold water fish (170) Marine fish (53) Tropical fish (246) Other (135) My guppy listing was automatically transferred to tropical fish. (and so it should be - they are NOT cold water!)

I'm up to my third oto that has got stuck on the filter pipe. He's not looking great and will probably go the way of the other two. It's really strange as I've had the tank set up for 18 months but it's only been in the last 4 months this has happened. I don't know why they are getting stuck, they behave normally and Don't appear weakened beforehand. I'm not sure what to do .. mesh would only stop fry going up but not slow down the strength of the current - is that correct? I'm concerned about adding any more otos even though I love them so much , I don't want my filter to end up killing them all. But I have two more oto in the tank and they could probably do with a couple more friends. The filter is the standard one that comes with an AR850 tank. Any ideas what I could do?

i have heaps of ramshorns but they never seem to get to full size, yet they continue to breed extensively. I originally had one single ramshorn , now they are numerous across my 4 tanks. My female betta was ruthless on their feelers though! (poor things)

I'm pretty sure prazi won't affect your filter.. I've used prazi before and didn't take anything out. Prazi is not an antibacterial so you should be fine, i doubt it would harm the biological filter. The only thing you would need to remove is Carbon if you have it. Carbon is good for removing meds afterwards but not generally needed for everyday use. The general rule for medicating is to increase oxygen. Without an extra airstone or airpump the easiest way to do this is to lower the water level if you have a filter that splashes the water down into the tank. Also keep the tank lights off. Oh I just noticed it's coldwater fish you have.. Coldwater holds more oxygen so perhaps the oxygen thing isn't as vital, not sure.

If the tank has cycled properly you should get some reading of nitrate, even a little one. IF it's still zero, it's possible your tank hasn't yet cycled properly . Are your ammonia and nitrite readings still zero? Nitrate readings are perfectly ok as long as they are in the lower range. Water changes and plants deal with the extra nitrates.

I have een trying to get my spiney eel to eat it on the advice of HFF but the eel won't have a bar of it. The guppys like it though! (what don't guppys like !)

There were some that thought I was a teenaged male when I first joined. I have a teenage son, and daughter for that matter.

a water change has often triggered my expectant females to birth. .. sometimes right in the middle of a water change lol. And it also seems that once one girl drops.. the others all follow in the next few days.

that's awesome, What were they bred from?

in my 40's :thup: Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional. :nilly:

I've always used hot water mixer tap to bring cold water up to around 23-25oC. .. but in a bucket first before I add it to the tank. My biggest tank is only 170L though so 4-5 buckets at most , it's a bit of a pain i must admit. Any larger tank and I think I would resort to the hose method. I'm getting pretty good at telling the water temp by hand as I'm filling up the buckets.

nah, they're definitely just floating.. never seen it before until this week.

you're quite right! but my QT tank is filled with baby guppies right now! The shark is a young one, only had him about a month and I was hoping he was going to be a "friendly" Looks like I may have to choose between shark or guppies in my tank. Actually I never saw him nip any of the guppies but I have seem him give chase, only to give up as soon as they were out of his way. But it must be him that has caused the damage.

Has anyone used pima fix in a tank with kuhli loaches? MY rainbow shark has torn two of the male guppys tails (grrr :an!gry ) and one looks like the beginning of tail rot setting in. Apart from water changes I thought pimafix might help as it's been a week and the tail isn't looking any better and seems to be more tattered. I put the pimafix in this morning and within seconds all the kuhli laoches came out and started darting aroudn the tank before settling down on top of the gravel. They've done this before with other meds but eventually went back into hiding. This time they are just sitting there looking pale. The other fish seem unphased by the pimafix

this is really odd. For the last few mornings I have found baby trumpet snails floating on the surface of the water. They are not dead but very sluggish and close to dead. The water quality tested out ok and the adult trumpets are fine. Any ideas what is going on? I'm not really concerned about the snails so much but if there is something that could in turn affect my fish .. or a die off that would pollute the water - then that would be my worry.

well I don't like picasa much .. maybe I need to spend more time but so far it's frustrating me! and the collage is a pain in the but. It's either auto collage or you have to manually move pics around withotu accidentally rotating them and they have to precropped and Pre -edited BEFORE you add them to collage and in a seperate file. .. BLAH! I've also downloaded gimp, seems complicated but I'll have to get to know it better. :dunno: I miss my old ms picture it!! simple, straight fwd, logical and everything I needed. Where's the head against brick wall smiley?

thanks for all the replys. I will probably try a simple free software program first like Picasa and see how that goes.

JUst had a look at Paint.net which is on the old PC but it doesn't seem to have red eye removal.