Caryl

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.

Good to see your bowl is empty! They should not be allowed to sell them as housing for fish. Just finished reading your post in the welcome section. Is your floor braced enough to take the weight of these tanks or are they spread out? Of course, a concrete floor won't be a problem.

Welcome Dawn. Boy have you got the bug bad!! :lol: I hope you enjoy your fish and cut back on the overcrowding - especially where goldfish are concerned. They need more room than tropicals and poo lots more. Have you thought of joining a fish club in your area? They can also give you lots of advice.

The impeller would be my guess. Is it still under warranty? Or close to it? I would take it to the outlet you purchased it from and ask. Remember if you are polite about it they will be more likely to try and help you

Thanks for that idea John. What I actually did in the end was get rid of most of the Java. Problem solved It probably helped when I got rid of the large barbs too. They were always nibbling off bits of plant. The vaseline certainly worked well. The only difficulty I have now is getting the lid back on after a clean then getting the air bubbles out when it has restarted. It burps and coughs and splutters for ages before it free flows again. That isn't a problem though as it eventually runs quietly again after an hour or two.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear I think my age is showing. After John's comment about the Hagen A575, I looked it up on their site. When I went to look at AquaClears, there weren't any looking like the ones I was talking about! I now wonder if the ones Ira meant are different too. I had in mind the old brown (or grey) canisters with a sponge that were hung on the outside of the tank with the water flowing over a small spillway back into the tank. Are these no longer available? I couldn't find them on the Hagen site. All the stuff with the AquaClear name looked totally different to what I had in mind.

You are probably right John, especially with such a huge sheet of it. The tank has run for 2 or 3 years with no problems so far. Fingers crossed. Do you know of anything specific which would affect it?

Hi John, you ask if there is anything horribly wrong with your tank. Well, I don't know where to start! If you have kept fish as long as you say you have you ought to know the shit is going to hit the fan fairly soon. All is well now but all your fish are very small and have not reached maturity. When they do... The guppies will be eaten by the sharks, gouramis and sailfins. Speaking of which, you should not put ordinary mollies in with sailfins as they will interbreed. Mollies also need salt in the water. The small angels will probably get beaten up by the larger ones. The red tail sharks had better be different sexes or you will lose one of them as well. I don't know enough about the other sharks but the silver ones will grow too large for a 3ft tank. If they are not killed by the others first. The blue gouramis tend to be stroppy and one female to 2 males is asking for trouble. She will be dead before long too I fear. Serpae tetras are shoaling fish and as such there should be at least 6 of them for them to be comfortable. The kissing gouramis grow up to 30cm (1ft). They alone would suit that sized tank without anything else in it! I'm sorry, but you did ask! Please consider rehousing some of these fish!

PS. The smileys are what I would call bright yellow The hair on my angel is bright yellow.