Caryl

Welcome to the fishroom bandit.

I scrape any algae off the glass then let it settle before I shove the siphon as deeply as I can into the gravel and systematically move across the tank, starting in the front and making my way to the back. By the time I have covered the whole tank I have removed about 60 litres from a 4ft tank.

We buy fish from ChCh and drive home with them - a 4 hour minimum trip. Never had a problem. A cooler bag as hand luggage and they will be fine. I have also flown (in a plane - before someone makes a smart comment) carrying axolotls in an icecream container.

My tanks are lucky to get a water change once every 2 or 3 months.

Heat shouldn't be a problem, especially in bigger tanks. Have a blanket or duvet handy to throw over the tank to keep the heat in. If the temp drops slowly it won't be a problem and I doubt it gets that cold up your way anyway BG. When the power comes back on the temp will slowly rise again. The filters are the problem as the bacteria in them start to die quite quickly. Get some battery operated pumps or a UPS as discussed in other threads here.

Bristlenoses will eat anything but are mainly veggie eatres. The bottom dweller pellets, spirulina and cooked veg will be eaten. Cooked, shelled peas are a favourite. Also try lettuce (hold it down with a rock) cucumber and zuchini. Plants need 10 - 12 hours of light per day. Personally I never use plant fertilisers so I will leave that question to someone who does.

Well done. Breeding the fish is often easy - raising the fry to adulthood is the hard part.

Yes I have, that's where I have seen the photo myself, but not had the time to go through them. Knowing the cover colour will speed things up as well as Aug 79

Of course only dechlorinate if you actually have chlorine in the water.

I have carried fish in hand luggage (better if you don't tell them you have them as sometimes they decide not to let you take them) in one of those foldable hot/cold 6 pack carry bags. No problem. Just make sure you have 1/4 water to 3/4 air and not too many fish per bag. Double bag and pack with newspaper to keep them from falling over if necessary. If you are really worried you can fill a bottle with hot water and wrap it in newspaper or cloth to use as a heat pad but it should not be necessary on such a short trip. Of course if you are not actually travelling with the fish it might be more difficult.

I wonder if it is the right photo cos Marty said Virginia wasn't in it. You have obviously found the photo I was thinking of Alan but perhaps it is not the same one Marty originally asked about. Send us a copy Marty!

Hi and welcome. The marine section is where you ned to ask your questions and the guys there will be a big help.

Fins crossed for you and the discus.

If you have a marine tank, I suggest you post this in the marine section. The reefers there will be great help. Welcome to the fishroom by the way.

I use a white hankie but I hear coffee filters work well too.

Thank you all for your kind words. These were only a few of the photos taken :lol: I actually have over 800 - mine, suemack's, Marion's and the ones taken by the Downs Family. Those on the website are the best of the mix. When you go and look at the pics in the album, do you see the words under saying what each one is? I assume, from comments, that you can. When I am logged in to it I see 3 lines below with url, tags and img. I also see what the pic is actually called but if I look at the album when logged off, I get the url, tag and img but not the explanatory title of the pic. :roll: Bill, it took almost 3 days to resize them and about 6 hours to get them uploaded into the right albums. Hate to think how long it would have taken without Jetstream!

Yep! :lol:

Thank you chim but I must also point out some of those pics aren't mine. Quite a few are suemack's and I think most of the closeups of the sea slugs were taken by Marion.

You only get a power overload if the total power is too high. We have some 8 point outlets but they are home made. All power boards sold these days have thermal cutouts in them so you can't overload them. There is nothing wrong with plugging one power board into another. This way you get 11 outlets from 2 6 way boards. Bear in mind 2 sockets in the wall are wired together so are no different to using a single socket with a double adapter.

The thermostats were originally bought from a lfs. The pads haven't cracked the glass because the wire was coiled evenly around and around the pinex sheet so weight was evenly distributed. I have heard of people cutting channels to put the wires in but we didn't. Our heat pads are under two 4ft tanks and a 3ft.

How's about these? Believe it or not this is the same butterfly, top and bottom...

Here is a link to my photobucket album (I hope it works). http://img47.photobucket.com/albums/v144/carylnz/ You should find 16 albums, 8 of them from Fiji and split according to contents - animals, birds, conference and people, entertainers and locals, fish, flowers and sea critters. Feel free to look at all the albums As soon as I get the pics onto CD it will be sent to Cees and hopefully onto a gallery in the fishroom.

Fiji was brilliant! Am working on the pics to get them on here so you can all see. We use bought thermostats on the heatpads rather than make our own. Any thermostat will do but we used the one you get when you buy a heater and thermostat separately. They used to be common but nowadays you get them as one in a heaterstat. That shows my age doesn't it? :lol:

What on earth are you planning on doing with them? I doubt they actually hold their breath when taken out of the water. Bristlenoses can last several hours but I don't know about the others. As long as they stay wet they should survive a leap.

I have never had trouble growing plants over UGFs. The trick is to make sure you have a decent depth of substrate on top - about 5cm at least.