Caryl

1. Carry them in a container 2. Must be kept warm enough to digest food. All food must be chopped small enough to swallow readily. 3/4 meat to 1/4 veges. Diced beef, chopped fish, canned dog food, chopped beef or chicken liver, beef heart, beef kidneys, earthworms. Tomato, mashed berries, green lettuce, shredded spinach, oxygen weed. Add lots of calcium to their diet. 3. Males have long tapering tails and longer claws. Females have shorter stubby tails and shorter claws. 4. Most aquatic turtles will live in captivity around 50 years 5. Examine regularly for anything that looks injured or infected. 6. Turtles should not get sick. If they do it is usually because of poor feeding, improper housing, or both. Turtles can get worms but parasites do not seem to be a problem. All this information (except No.1) was gleaned from the book Turtles by John M Mehrtens

If you are planning on one betta in this set-up you would not need a filter or airstone as they are air breathers so he would go to the surface. You would need to do regular water changes though. Heat pads are available in NZ. Last time I looked they were $99 for a thing a bit bigger than a hot water bottle. We make our own. The one under our 4ft tank (which is the same size as the tank base) cost about $40.

My Fluval is very quiet. It sits in a cupboard beside the tank so I can't hear it at all. If the cupboard door is open though you can just make out a quiet hum if there is no other noise in the background. Get it back to the retailer fast!

Apparently Redwood Aquatics in ChCh sells live rock for $40 per kg. An average rock is around 4kg.

I would say your tank's too deep :lol: (or your plant's too short) (or the bottom's too low) Sorry Derek, I can't help you. Ira's answer had me laughing so much I had to add my bit of humour too.

Welcome to the fishroom Campbell I have never had trouble with UGFs and have had well planted tanks despite many saying they are no good for plants. Make sure you have a good depth of gravel over them though. My rainbows (boesemani, Mccullochii, melanistrus, blue dwarfs) swim all over the place. Kuhlis are fine in a planted tank.

What are you offering your books to him for? You should donate them to your club! :lol:

Grant and I are off to Christchurch soon too Got a computer roadshow to attend - get lots of freebies at these things. Have to stock up on pens for next year's conference :lol: One of our members has just set up a marine tank with help from Redwood Aquatics down there. She does not have internet access so I will give her a ring and get some prices for you. I am sure she has some live rock. She also has some clowns and an anemone.

I thought DH stood for Despairing Husband :lol:

Do another pH test this afternoon and see what the reading is then.

Tannin leaching from driftwood does not harm the fish at all. Some of them like it as it cuts down on visibility. I would let the tank continue to cycle a bit longer before doing a water change.

White clouds can be kept in cold, or tropical, water.

Barbs are well known fin nippers (specially the tigers) and will attack anything slower than they are - which is just about everything! Keeping barbs in groups of 6 or more helps. They are shoaling fish who develop a distinct pecking order in the shoal. If you have enough of them (more than 6) they spend so much time keeping each other in order that they tend to ignore the other inhabitants.

I have seen white clouds living with goldfishes but the goldfishes in question were all very big veil tails and could not move fast enough to catch the white clouds. Don't get any more fish anywhere Dawn! Sit back and enjoy what you have. Let your husband get used to the new tanks first Wait a few months and see how they all settle in and what happens as they grow.

Don't forget it would need to be heated - unless the room is kept at a good temperature.

There you are then. I would have looked for colour first, not size or shape. I had better leave the guppy picking to you!

I'm sure it was us fishroom members who got you into it again :lol: Don't tell Mariette it was us though! Are you able to describe what you are looking for in a guppy? Perhaps we can keep an eye out for you and report any finds. Grant and I will be in ChCh for a computer roadshow in the beginning on August and may pop into a fish shop or two.

Either that or we think you need more help than others :lol: I actually think it was Fatman who originally asked about AquaClears.

Another point to remember too is that it is OK to agree to disagree. If it works for you - great. A day in which you don't learn something new is wasted. Pleased to hear your looks have nothing to do with us! :lol:

There is a discussion somewhere else in these forums about when you should replace heaters. Some say every year or so but they must have more $$$ than us As a heater ages it gets less reliable. It also pays to have a spare on hand for emergencies. I have a heater I have used for over 8 years and it is still going strong. The heatpad under our tank has been going even longer. Good to see you seem to have your multiple personalities (and password) sorted out :lol:

I rarely get around to doing any water changes at all. You have the filter media around the right way. When I clean mine (almost as rarely as my water changes :oops: ) I rinse the 'noodles', as you call them, briefly under the tap although everyone says you SHOULD USE TANK WATER! It depends on what sort of water you have in your supply. We are lucky and don't have chlorine in ours though we now have lime to raise the pH to 7.0. I have 4 sections. The bottom media is filter wool which I rinse briefly and re-use once or twice before replacing. The other sections have Siporax which I rotate through the levels. The filter also has two sponges which also get a quick rinse and get put back the opposite way from what they were before. Too much cleaning and you destroy all the good bacteria which has built up. There will probably be lots of posts growling at me now

Britney is no more blonde than you are Warren! Have I confused you with someone else Ira or has someone else confused you for me? Sorry about that!! Thanks for the explanation Rob, I always wondered about the d.

He didn't look like that when he first joined The Fishroom. Perhaps we did it to him!

I had a tank on my bench island and thought it would be fine as it had cupboard bracing underneath. Over time it slowly bowed the bench top and we could not shut the cupboards properly. After removing the tank though the bench straightened up again thank goodness

Hope the shift went well Andrew. I bet you are loking around and wondering how it all fitted into the flat before! I will remove you from my distribution list.