Caryl

Congratulations to our new office holders and thank you for offering your time and expertise for what is often a frustrating and thankless task! :bounce:

Nice tank Rey. Welcome to New Zealand :-)

As I understand it they wreak havoc in the wild and would out-compete natives and other fish for food and possibly destroy plants as well.

You've heard of catfish and dogfish haven't you? These are parrotfish ;-)

What do you mean? It was already on the list :-?

You need at least 2" (5cm) for planting over undergravel filters.

He says he could help (not sure if he means both the tanks and frogs or just the frog minding, as his partner has frogs too). Send me a PM with your phone number and I will pass it on to him so he can ring you to discuss details.

I have a son (who has fish) in Belfast. I will ask him.

Most of the cheap ones sold in shops. The trick is to make sure the substrate has enough depth for the roots and the plants you choose have a good root system. I have way too much red rotala and it is growing in ordinary aquarium gravel.

You are referring to Larnce Witchman I assume, from Burkhart Fisheries (Top of the South Conference 2008) Alan? His hints were; - 24g/litre salt/water - 1gm/L cysts (there's approx 5g per level teaspoon) - Good aeration required but not enough to cause surface to foam - Airstone not needed, just air line - 28C is optimum temperature

What part of ChCh?

Welcome.

Fingers crossed they both do well. Good looking fish.

In that case, buy another tank. You can never have too many tanks ;-)

Pick one and keep your fingers crossed 8) Our Fujitsu is so quiet we can't hear it. The Carrier is dreadful and very noisy (and unfortunately in our bedroom). Can't comment on ducting as ours are not ducted but we hope to do something similar from our lounge with a pellet fire that heats open plan lounge, dining room and kitchen.

http://www.earthporm.com/lizard-playing-leaf-guitar/

Under gravel filters work very well but need to sit flat on the tank base with the substrate on top. You can't have fine substrate, like sand, as it gets sucked through. You also need at least 5cm of substrate on top of the filter plate if you wish to successfully grow plants. I would use UGFs in a small tank, up to around 60cm wide but not on larger tanks unless I also had supplementary filtering, or several outlets along the plates.

They will see them as food. A fry tank would be good (do not use a breeding trap) or just get a lot of fine leaved plants (Java moss, cabomba, ambulia etc) for the fry to hide in. Remember, they reproduce so quickly you will not want to save all the fry each spawning or you will quickly be over-run!

MAC will not have one as we do not have meetings and would not get a quorum.

Welcome to the forum. You need to put an aquarium in your car and combine both hobbies ;-)

Luckily we had visitors this morning who asked to see the fish. Went out to the pond to discover it had cracked in the quake yesterday and most of the water has gone! Will need to see if EQC cover that (I doubt it) or our insurance. :-?

Region intensity strong NZST Fri, Apr 24 2015, 3:36:41 pm Depth 76 km Magnitude 6.3 Location 40 km north-west of Kaikoura After watching the water sloshing alarmingly in the aquarium during this quake (thank goodness for the large bracing at either end keeping it in), I have now dropped the water level in case we get more, or especially bigger, ones. :tears: Not sure how much use it will be in anything bigger, or shallower, but it should reduce the amount of water on the floor at least.

When I was 15 or 16 (way back in the dark ages) my dad built a pond in the backyard (I have a photo somewhere of my friend and I swimming in it before he added the goldfish). Up until then we had some goldfish inside in a bowl. Once a week they would get poured into a jug while the stones and bowl got scrubbed out in hot soapy water then rinsed, filled up with very cold water direct from the well, then the fish were thrown back in for another week. Not only did they survive this regime but they went on to live long productive lives in the pond. Once married, Grant and I decided a fish tank would be interesting so we went to the local garden centre (our only option) and were told all the wrong things, sold the wrong things, sold the wrong fish - you name it, we did it wrong. Then came an advert in the local paper from people wanting others interested in starting a fish club. We went to that meeting (Feb 1989) and have been in the Marlborough Aquarium Club, followed by the FNZAS (1992), ever since. Thankfully our fish keeping also improved once we were better informed (no internet or Google in those days!) and have acquired, over the years, an extensive fish keeping library. At the height of our fish keeping we had 18 tanks spread throughout the house, including 2 or 3 each in the kids' rooms. This was because we often kept incompatible fish so always needed "just one more tank" to house the latest acquisition. We have kept tropical freshwater and cold and a local cold marine over the years. We now only have 1 x 280L freshwater tropical, filled with geriatrics plus a few younger ones who keep spawning and so keep the fish levels relatively stable plus a large goldfish pond.

I will probably be criticized for this but I did a water change on my tank before we went away on the 7th April. I think it was the 2nd water change my tank has had this year. It mostly just gets topped up. It is chock full of plants and has a low bioload of fish.