Sophia

A small school of Cardinals, a few platies and kuhlis. Clearly you love kuhlies and platies, and the cardinals can be a roaming shoal of another bright colour. They are hardier than neons and if you change your mind later you can sell them easily on TM or here. You could plant some twisted val or ambulia to grow towards the top, which will encourage the cardinals to be more bold and come to the top at feeding time. If platies behave like swordtails then they will hang about wherever they like, looking for food and being busy bodies. As they are such bright colours you don't need many to give some variation. I had a tank the same size and comfortably kept 2 oto, 7 or 8 cardinals and 7 corydora. The cardinal were more interesting and bold when there were 6 or more and higher growing plants. don't forget to post pictures, we :love: pictures

:happy2: i just had to

if the baby is a girl you could call her Charlize Heron :facepalm:

That would be great. My next thing to think about is what plant(s) to give my bugs. Would be cool to grow a pond plant that grows out of the pond rather than something solely submersed.

Mmmm delicious peat pudding hot from the microwave! :love:

no way jose, I am keeping my commitment small and tidy and moveable! I AM DISCIPLINE! ... now off to make some microwaved mud :happy2:

Thanks Stella, I will do as you suggest. I will start soaking some leaves now so they are sunk by the weekend. These are going to be spoilt bugs. I will have to arrange a sheep to visit and drink from the tank now and again so they don't miss their old home

cool :bounce: looking forward to some more photos from a bit closer,.... hint hint

Thanks guys for the confirmation. :bounce: All I need to do now is get the tank and I'm ready to start ! :bounce: I have some hauraki peat moss - the sort in the yellow bag from the garden centre - is that OK to put as the substrate? I've got a pond plant or 2 on my watchlist at TM if I don't find anything when out hunting too.

When I was a very beginning beginner my prettiest guppy died during cycling too. :oops:

Chihuahua, you have been instructed! :lol: :lol: are they crypts on the left side? the other thing you could try (since you are obviously in the mood for rearranging ) is to put the flat topped stone nearer the front. I find that the fish rest there and find it easy to find floating debris to sniff through so you can see more of them when it's closer. Of course it's hard to get a proper perspective from a front on shot, it might look different in person. Anyway it's still very cool 8)

Stella, have just found your 'new pond critter tank' thread where you made the 3 foot tank after having a 1 foot going. This is pretty much what I was aiming for - did/do you use any filtration?

I haven't monitored the temperature but it's generally a steadily warm zone. It's under the house, made of concrete and bricks and there is a room to the side where I will put the bugs. It's always warmer than outside in winter and a little cooler than outside in summer. I haven't bought a tank yet but the one I'm thinking of is 30cm long x 28 deep and high. It might be 28x28x28, I'm not 100% sure. I was thinking of having one made but it seemed a little too anxious for raising bugs. The next thing that bugs me about bugs is the conflicting information I have found about raising them. I want to raise pond bugs to feed to the fish, and my source of various bugs is the sheep trough. So I thought I could copy that environment and set up a bare tank with appropriate food and cover. Then I realised some sort of filter would surely be necessary. Then I found an article on culturing daphnia alone and it says no filter, and only very gentle aeration so they don't get bubbles under their jackets. I'm all for trial and error but also keeping things cheap so if I don't need a filter I don't want to buy one. But I do want to have them reproducing and living semi-normally in the enclosed space. Any thoughts?

Test the water. There should be low to zero ammonia and nitrite, and under 20ppm (I think) nitrate.

bigger tank not an option at this point, so it will have to be shrimps and bugs only then. Zev, do you have any photos of your daphnia set up you could post?

Just thought I'd share a few pics of Rangitoto from my trip yesterday. Spent most of the day walking but have now been to all the places on the map as far as Islington Bay. What I like best is the quietness. It's within spitting distance of the city but once you are a few mins down the track the silence descends and you are in the wilderness. The 'path' to Wreck Bay with Motutapu in the background. This is what they call a difficult path - I call it complicated. Mostly flat but as it's basically just walking on lava it's uneven and often moving under your feet. Kicked a stone into my ankle and rolled both of them at least once - next time I'd wear hiking boots. You could walk it very slowly amd carefully and get to Wreck Bay in the 50 mins they suggest but we walked briskly and got there in about half that. Very interesting moss that looked like Father Christmas' beard from a distance, up close looks like coral It's me, pre-burnt crab legs stage...

I didn't think of that, thanks Josh. Further research into fish, it looks like an indoor unchilled tank wouldn't be cold enough for bullies. Unless I find some living in the warm sheep trough that is

I am taking the plunge in a small way, in the shape of a 22L tank. I will set it up in the garage so there won't be extremes in temperature and it will get a short time of a sliver of sunlight when the sun goes past that part of the room. In there I will put my bugs caught in the sheep trough (and more when I go hunting again) and I will be going hunting some shrimps and the like later. Questions: Who: If I am lucky enough to catch a bullie or 2, will that tank big enough, or should I let them go and stick with shrimps and trough bugs? My original idea was to grow bugs for feeding to the fish only but my fish-greed has returned and I wonder what else could be kept. Is there a limit on the amount of shrimps that should be kept? Filter: Presuming I need a filter, is one better than another? I don't want much current in a little tank, so I was thinking of a hang on back filter, or a little corner sponge jobbie. Light: I think filtered daylight from the other side of the room is enough light, please correct me if I'm wrong. There are no curtains on the room so they will get all naturally occurring daylight.

An exciting day in killifish land today, after making my first batch of crypts wait a few days to get planted (and yes there were meltings), my final batch of crypts arrived, so I rearranged and planted it all. Some new JBL balls went in too. Water is still rather cloudy so will post pics later in the weekend. The tiger lotus got moved to the filter side to make room in the crypt rock garden for wendtii brown and beckettii. Twisted val may have to be moved again, I'm not sure it will get enough light where it is. :bounce:

You could try putting the top feeder food out first to attract the neons to the top and then fire some worms down with a dropper to get more quickly to the fish at the bottom.

keep wondering

if there are going to be rocks or wood in the river there will be some sort of natural places for eddies too

that's a good idea, very creative does the foil heat the light unit up much?

maybe the glowlights were pregnant after all you won't know for weeks haha

As a child I had 2 goldfish called Bit and Bot (don't ask why, I don't remember) and they lived for about 2 years in a big glass jar of maybe 8 litres or so and part of the irregular cleaning regime included taking everything out, cleaning it all (including rinsing the gravel), and putting it all back in. No filter, maybe a bit of oxygen weed, but overall a sparse existence. I vaguely remember using water conditioner. With what I know now about fishkeeping I think it's a miracle those fish survived. I think I had about 4 over the course of my childhood. They died that death of floating on their side or bottom all curled over.