Carlos & Siran

Aye, that's one thing about my chosen career I find embarrassing, intensive dairy farming is quite hard on the environment, water ways in particular With extensive N usage, erosion, effluent and spreading noxious weeds Dairy farmers get a bad rep. If ever I find myself able to purchase a dairy farm I'd seriously consider going organic.

Heh, you'd be surprised what happens on private land, last Friday I had to walk 4 cows out of the bush up behind Kamo, all full of native bush all been chewed on by the moomoos. As for the swamp, if it's in a paddock it's fair game.

I've worked on a few farms with natural wetlands on them, and the farm I'm on now backs on to a volcano, we get a lot of runoff so we have lots of swampy areas. Lots of flax and reeds, floating vegetation. Good frog life, eels. But with the cows they tend to muck it up a bit, goes all muddy and smells. but with walking platforms zigzagging through it, along with the bird life I'd imagine it would be quite pleasant.

G'day mate, nuthin wrong with Feilding, my home town. Welcome, hope you enjoy it here Cheers

He was acting peculiar before we noticed the ich, we see him flash from time to time, but not heaps, I just read that fish can sometimes flash after a water change if there's a significant change in PH. Though our water comes from a natural underground spring and has a real steady 7ph, and that's where I keep it in the tank, so we'll just watch him after the next water change and see what happens.

he's the same, not sure what to do now..... oh well, all a learning curb I guess.

clown loach died this morning, bugger

Got the airline in, looks cool. yeah, he's still acting strange,sitting on the bottom, then sort of flicking along on his side one minute, then floating vertical straight up and down head up by the neater then next. Maybe he's just eccentric. Got the quarantine tank, hopefully get that all cycled next week.

Yup, he's in the same tank. We're getting an airline tomorrow. Temp is sitting at 28c, don't want to play with it any more. PH is 7, Ammonia and nitrite tests were neg. My first thought was perhaps lack of oxygen but everyone else seems happy, even the clown seems better after the water change.

We've just noticed something else weird, our male platy has been acting strange, floating vertical head up by the heater or sitting on the bottom, with his fins all down, he isn't eating and doesn't look at all happy, any ideas? cheers for all your help all

Cheers for the advice guys, have done a water change, and the missus is gonna pick up a air pump and stone today.

Aww man, the missus noticed tell tail white spots on our clown loaches tail last night, I kinda panicked, my first fishy disease. But after reading a bit about it I don't feel so bad. We suspect it came in with some Neons and Danios we bought on the weekend. So we turned the temp to 30c and dosed with blue circle and we just bought a small tank off trade me to use as a quarantine tank, so hopefully we can have that set up before this weekend as we ordered 2 mates for the clown loach, he doesn't seem to be very happy on his own, and now with the white spot he seems really agitated, poor fulla.

Hey pegwood, welcome, this is a great site full of good info, good luck with your set up. Wow, 3 great danes?.....crickey...

G'day there Megs, welcome, I'm new here myself, there's tonnes of info here and plenty of folks that are more than willing to give a helping hand. Cheers

Thanx for the info guys. I've started doing a 50% water change and vacuum on Sundays and just a 50% water change on Wednesdays and so far the tank glows under the lights. Think I'll just leave things as they are and see how she goes. Cheers

Hi guys how's it going? We have a 100ltr tank and it came with two Aqua clear media filers(30 and 50) but no under gravel system. We've had the tank set up for two weeks, it came with heaps of platies and plants. We gave away most of the fish after the first week, but I didn't want to vacuum the gravel until the plants had become established. I finally did a vacuum yesterday and the smell took me by surprise, it smelt really pooey and nasty. My first tank had a under gravel filter and I bought a large cartridge filter for it and I don't ever remember the gravel smelling as bad. Do you think an under gravel filter along with the media filters would help? Or is it because I left it too long to do a vacuum? Thanks guys.

OK, so we bought our tank off trade me, and It came with a fair number of breeding platties. I'm not really a platty fulla so we bundled them all up and gave them to our local fish store. Aside from two males that caught our eye, a big bright yellow fulla with a bright orange tail and a wee bright orange boy with a black tail. Now I've heard that platties can change their sex, but I thought "Naw, It'll take ages, she'll be right for a while!" but a day latter I noticed the big orange and yellow boy chasing the other one around, but not aggressively, he seemed more attentive as if hoping for a bit of how's your father. I'm pretty positive we sexed them correctly, we spent several days observing them all and the orange one held it's rear fin up all the time. But now it's rear fin is fanned out and held down. So is it possible for him to change sex so quickly?, or is it more likely we sexed him incorrectly? Cheers guys.

Howdy, cheers for the welcome guys. I've updated my profile. I'm a Dairy farmer from Kamo in Whangarei. Me and the missus are just trying to figger out how to post a few pics, should be up soon. Cheers all.

Hi all, myself and my wife just purchased a 100 ltr tank off trade me a few weeks ago and have set it all up in the lounge, it looks good. Now we are just deciding what fish to get, there's a good selection in town. This is my second tank, I had one for about 2 years a while ago, but I'd still call myself a learner. My favorite fish would prolly be Clown loaches and pleckies. I'm looking forward to getting to know you all. Cheers guys.