Morcs

Mate, have a good scour of our favorite auction site. example: I found 2 stands for my 4ft, combined cost was $100. The strongest one (not being used) cost a mere $20 and will hold a 4x2 footprint, its a bit rough, some sanding and varnishing / painting and it would be sweet as! ill go have a look for you now

How about trying to get different height levels on that right hand side? instead of all being tall coming from the right, maybe have it coming from shorter to taller toward the very back corner?

Yes. Hopefully ill have some for sale soon, I wanted a female (more colourful) but couldnt sex them, so bought 3. Hopefully I have more than one female

Looking good Sam!

You can have my 18k...

The standard tube is an 18000k. not the right spectrum for plants. I changed mine out of my AL20 for a daylight tube (7000k) and its heaps better. Heres the difference between the standard tube and a daylight tube: (water was a bit cloudy in first shot) As for C02, Flourish excel is a liquid fert to be used daily, its a good start before you figure out where you want to go to next.

Blue acaras get to a max of 8'', but in reality dont get much bigger than 6''. If cichlids are what you after, you could have a peacefulish community comprising of a mixture of the following: Firemouth (6'') Female nicaragua (beaaautfiul) (6'') Blue acara (6'') Keyholes (4-5'') If that were the case, id stock the 200 with 1 of each of the first 3, and maybe a trio of keyholes... If you wanted slightly more aggressive, id go with: Female salvini (6'') Female convict (4'') Female nicaragua (6'') Blue acara (6'') Or you could go with a lone oscar in the 200. All the experts over on the cichlid forum say minimum for an oscar in a bare tank (not much decor) is a 55g (122x33x51)

Your more than welcome to come and see ours, im just round the corner in hobby Such nice fishes! quite peaceful too. they are just opportunists when there are fish small enough to fit in its mouth...

Id get a 122x45x45, 250L, that is just about minimum size for an oscar, but you could probably keep 1 severum in there too.

Everyone ignores me when I say Dats :lol: they are waaay cooler than aros

And have a habit of either breaking your cover glasses, or knocking themselves out if you have weights on top of the covers... Get a couple of dats instead :bounce:

I wouldve thought a 6ft would be fine for an arowana. Though the bigger the better.

Air pumps dont really create current, other than a bit of surface current. And get a small airpump, something like the aquaone SR2500 makes a nice amount of bubbles with bubble wand but not too high a output. If they dont like it, just remove it. Luckily they are quite cheap devices and make great backups for when filters fail.

Smart guy! now why didnt I think of that

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pets-animals/Fish/Fish/auction-245058163.htm He has an oscar. Obviously doesnt know what its called, or doesnt know anything about it - thinks its from Africa - and suggesting it requires african water conditions... Now guppies, neons and thos types of fish you can get away with to an extent knowing bugger all about them, but an Oscar! *pulls hair out* and then theres the guy looking to buy it, asking if it can be kept in cold water! No doubt in a 20L tank... *shakes head* *sigh*

Cool, but yes, drain your tank as much as possible and take the inhabitants out. Because you are doing it this way I would wash the sand even more thoroughly, then you can just dump it on, smooth it out, and it should settle quite quickly, then fill the tank up with a hose (if you dont have the means to store the old water), and get a heater (and any spare heaters you have) working on it straight away), by the time the tank is up to temperature, the sand shouldve settled, then you can turn your filter(s) on and re-add the fish

Id turn your heater down as much as you think your discus are comfortable with. Eggs generally benefit from higher temps, but on the heater itself is a fair bit higher. Get hold of a breeding cone or piece of slate or something to spawn on, if its their first spawn, if it fails, they should spawn again within about 3 weeks and hopefully you wouldve given them a better spawning site by then

I wouldnt really worry about a mere $9 extra lol

Just leave them. Start feeding them when they are free swimming. Make sure you dont have a filter with an intake otherwise bye bye fry.

The sirens stopped sounding at westpark marina about 40 minutes ago

Ah yes I get ya. Will give it a go when the plants are bigger

Plant rich wouldnt work - the water would be useless, as everything would already be stripped from it by plants. The only reason for water changes in a planted tank is to give a new source of nutrients. Theory was, water from an unplanted tank would still contain these nutrients, as well as nitrates which plants also love

Do you reckon its a good idea, when I do a water change, instead of fresh water from the tap, putting in nitrate rich water from my main tank - my main tank has bugger all plants in so the water should still have a good amount of nutrients?

Just flourish excel and standard flourish. Combined with Flourite black sand. Light is a T8 Daylight 20W (around 7000k i think) When my excel runs out ill buy one of those Plant gro C02 canister unit things The dosage of the flourish is so small (per week, double the recommended), it will last me 5 years

Update! I know its only been 1.5 weeks... I started flourish excel dosing 2 days ago. The hairgrass is spreading. Im so happy! The dwarf sag is also spreading, everything else is doing well, the sword and bigger crypt have a few new leaves, as does the vallis. Moved the filter central. The sponge prefilter is coming off as somehow 50 guppy fry have disappeared this week so no longer need it. Water evaporates fast in this tank! 10mm in just a few days... Spreading hairgrass! Yay Apisto steelblue Last lot of my angel babies. One looks like the mother (golden pearlscale) the other likes like the father (amazon) Baby Keyholes, I have 7 in here growing out Full tank shot