Caryl

Welcome to the fishroom John. It isn't always difficult to convince a wife

You should have found out all the answers before you got the fish! They are a cichlid from Lake Tanganyika and grow to around 8cm. Feed them cichlid food. They are mouth brooders. I hope you have them in a large enough aquarium.

They can certainly have swim bladder trouble but I would not say it was 'broken'. Fancy goldfish are particularly prone to swim bladder problems which means the fish has trouble swimming upright, or straight. It is often worse after feeding and can be helped by only feeding fine flake or live foods rather than dried pellets which swell up inside the fish. If the fish appears otherwise healthy and is able to feed I would not worry about it. Not sure if you can 'fix' it though, depending on why it has a problem with the swim bladder in the first place.

Gouramis have great difficulty taking photos due to their fin structure so they tend not to send holiday snaps - unlike gnomes who delight in having themselves photographed in well known locations :lol: It is also possible a fishing gnome got your gouramis

Most of the shops in ChCh have hairgrass so it is obviously around. Have you asked your lfs to get some for you? Mini chain sword looks good and doesn't grow too high. Echinodorus tenellus

Welcome to the fishroom. I saw my first altum angel last week. Very nice.

Note it only dropped the temp a couple of degrees. We needed to drop 12 - 15 degrees.

I thought the same thing. I know you are in Nelson andyman but summer is almost over :lol: Try it next summer.

Sorry about the pic. I will send it to Cees and ask him to post it for me as he did say to do so if I had troubles. I signed up with Photoisland thinking I could link to pics there

Here I go to see if this works. Here is the fishroom gang who attended the BBQ. Back row: Interfecus, Ira, Pies, Warren Front: Joze, Janey, Dark, Caryl

Good fudge too All the food was wonderful! Thanks for looking after Grant and me so well Janey and Pies. Great meeting so many fishroom people too. I will download the pic asap. but might not get it in here until Tuesday.

Also rip plants to shreds

You use guests??!! Oh no! No one mentioned that! :lol:

I presume you use the sumo to do your water changes for you? :lol:

It is like the coldsore virus. Always there but sometimes it breaks out!!! You never get rid of it but it will wax and wane over the years. You now have MTS - Multiple Tank Syndrome. Welcome to the club!

So what is the problem exactly?

When I had my coldwater marine set up I just used rocks from the rockpools I got the critters from. A lot less hassle.

As I know nothing about marines I cannot comment on quality as such. By awesome I meant size - they certainly attract the customer to go look at them. It is also very hard to compare small pics on a web site to actually viewing the real thing as you don't get the effect of scale. I am sure I will be blown away by pies' set-up at the weekend.

I visited Redwood Aquatics yesterday and their display tanks are looking awesome. Going back to Chch on Monday so hope to take some pics and do a report for the AW

It seems to aid in their digestion sumo_si.

What a link! Would be interesting to see one of those Aquaramas. Thanks

I saw a news report the other day about how released flowerhorns are devastating the local fish and plant populations. Being a lucky fish, when the novelty wears off people are too scared to kill them in case it attracts bad luck, so they release the fish into the local waterways. I am pleased to hear they are losing their popularity.

I have gone off canisters. Their flow rates vary dramatically and they are a pain in the a** to clean. AquaClears are simple and take 5 minutes.

Check your Year Book goldie as it has rules for the video competition. Would be good if you did some for the competition.

Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing