Carlos & Siran

Ohhh, didn't realise you could do that..

Aqua one yes. Its an aqua grande 120. Just 2 plant grow tubes and 1 sunlight. What can you do to upgrade the lighting?

They are just branches from a Macrocarpa tree that had been cut down, we siliconed them to the bottom of the tank and zip tied them together in the shape we wanted.

Almost 300L, We are aiming for a 500 - 600L tank one day.

You can poke the intake through the existing hole on one end but you need to cut a gap into the plastic lip on the other end for the wand to go. We put the intake/wand in opposite corners to the trickle filter intake etc in hopes it would kind of neutralise the current, seems to work fine.

That's Choccy, our new Choc Zebra Pleco, we don't see much of him at the moment, he's so little, but cute.

1 of 9 Sterbai Cory's Choccy our Choc Zebra Pleco X1 Our Kuhli that we see more of now we got fish Bristlenose 1 Bristlenose 2 Only decent pic so far of Yoyo's X4 Mr Wiggles our new Spiney Peacock Eel X1 Curious George, named because he's always there when the camera comes out X7 Mr Wiggles and George

We finally have our tank the way we want it and have added our fish after a year of getting the plants established and dithering. Sword and Anubias Hydrocotyle and Crypts Java Fern Tiger Lotus

Not sure if this is helpful or not but we noticed that our khuli (who we never saw and assumed had died) has become a lot more active since we added our new fish, we think all the activity has made him more social. Might work for you?

Ahh, which remands me of another product. Do you guys use stresszyme or cycle and if so how often. We use it once a week with every water change, and have mostly had very stable tanks, I'm not sure I could sleep at night without it, or have we just been sucked in by good marketing?

sludge destroyer?

Heh, I think common sense shall prevail. Don't fiddle too much but don't let it get ridiculously filthy either. Thanks for the replies.

I've noticed there seems to be 2 schools of thought when it comes to the frequency/necessity of cleaning your filter Some say clean them often or the filters will become blocked, becoming less efficient whilst over loading the bio-load of the filter. (I seem to read this more often on official type web sites) Others say leave them alone, or clean them infrequently, over time the filter becomes full of the good bacteria necessary to keep the tank in balance. ( I hear this from experienced hobbyists who have been there done that) We have a heavily planted tank with plenty of filtration but the tank is fully stocked and we want to do the right thing for our pets. So what is right? clean or not to clean?

Got rid of the kids to their Grandmas' place today and we thought 'why don't we go for a wee toddle in the Puketi forest" looked on the web site to find a nice medium track and discovered that all Puketi tracks have a charge, some upwards of $55 per adult per hour. This is outrageous, the bush is like the beach, it belongs to all NZers and should be free, even a $10 fee to help maintain the tracks would be understandable but 55 bucks? Apart from the main tracks like MT Hutt and the like, does your local walking track charge a fee and how much?

Thanks for that Adrienne . Am doing a water change now and have squirted excel directly onto bba. Will finish doing what I need to and will fill tank and wait and see what happens in next few days. Hopefully it will go red and die :thup: .

Grow them and they will come.

Naw, it's at the back on the LHS.

We added an external to our AR850 and AR120 exactly as you've described and it works a treat. Though we placed the external inlet and outlet at opposite sides of the tank to the trickle filter inlet and outlet so as not to create too much current.

oh, Ira's unique little welcomes were gone so I assumed the room was no longer used by FNZAS

We're going to put in: Congo Tetras Marble Hatchets Another Peacock Eel ( Cause my Monty died) BGK Cory's and Choc Zebra Pleco and we already have a Kuhli and two bristlenose in there with a couple of other fish but they will go somewhere else when we put the others in if they haven't died by then. The four other little fish are quite old so its just a matter of time. Carlos likes the look of the tank too, so do I. We think the BBA gives it character too. Its nowhere else but the wood and only on the top.

We've been adding flourish since we set the tank up, and it actually grew while we were doing so. The bba we've encountered in the past has been course and wirey and is easily removed from plants and wood. This is velvety and strong, we have to scrape at it with a knife to remove, if you try and pull it off it's roots remain, it is only on the wood and not on the plants. Personally we're not too worried about it, it adds character to the tank and adds that natural look we've worked hard to achieve, we just wanted to know if it was harmful to the fish. Cheers Chris b and Shell, this is our 6th try and we're finally getting the look we've wanted. Thanks for the welcome back Snookie, but we won't be hanging round much as this place makes us feel about as welcome as a fart in a space suit....

what happened to the chat room?

This is a pic of our only tank at the moment. We have worked hard at getting the plants established before we stock with new and interesting fish. Also does anyone know what this stuff is? It is only affecting the wood, not the plants. It does not appear to be beard algae.

We live directly across from the swamp where the mud fish are in Kerikeri so you're more than welcome to crash here for a while if you're of a mind.

Merry Christmas