Caryl

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.

I had the same trouble as you John and, like Pegasus, I have yet to have a test match the colours on any chart! Those pH meters are supposed to be good. Do you like yours Pegasus? How long have you had it?

Pegasus mentioned the idea of coating a pvc pipe with silicone and rolling it in gravel to make a more natural home for fish. This reminded me of something one of our club members did to make an interesting looking backdrop for her tank. She got a thick sheet of polystyrene and cut it to fit inside the tank tightly. She then used a gas ring to heat a loop of wire and used it to scoop out caves etc in the polystyrene. When it was all suitably craggy and river bank-looking, she coated small areas of it at a time with silicone and stuck the gravel on. She was also able to scoop out pouches halfway up the sheet to plant plants in. The final effect looked great and just like a river bank. It was a long tedious job though and she knew she would never take up glue sniffing as a hobby! She worked on it outside to make sure the fumes were carried away.

My having soaked it previously made no difference Goldie, it never leached from the time I picked it up. Why do you scrub it with every water change (unless it is hair algae) as algae adds to the character of the tank. Some of us have tanks chock full of character! :lol: Most fish graze on algae. Perhaps I should take some to the auction in Napier?

Some wood will do this as it is the natural tannins coming out. They are not harmful. Somewhere else in these forums is a big discussion about it (not sure where at the moment). The only cure, unless you totally seal the wood with sealant - which makes it no good for the bristlenoses to browse on, is to keep doing regular water changes until the tannins stop leaching. This can take many many months! I have seen a tank set up with wood to look like roots, with angelfish in it. The water was a sort of a weak tea colour and it looked great! I have never had any wood leach tannins but that was more good luck than anything. Either that or rimu doesn't leach tannins

You are welcome GoldieNZ. For those interested, the wood she refers to is beautiful, waterlogged, native rimu picked up off the beach at Hokitika I have a bath of interesting rimu bits soaking outside. It looks great in a tank and is often a lovely dark red colour. Others are a deep brown.

I just realised that, having been a member before this Welcome section was added, I have never introduced myself. My husband Grant and I have had fish for about 22 years (and my dad had a goldfish pond he built himself when I lived at home too). We started off by killing guppies in great numbers before discovering that the gravel the LFS (actually a garden centre with a few fish) had sold us was meant to be used to spawn Africans (no wonder the pH kept ring to over 8.0!) :evil: . Our one 2ft tank (sorry but I still think of tanks in feet and size rather than capacity. Someone saying they have a 25 gallon or 30 litre tank means absolutely nothing to me) grew to two 2ft tanks (one had the unfortunate guppies, then platies the other had blue acaras - beautiful fish). From then on - you guessed it - the tank numbers grew until we had 18 of the damn things all over the house. The smallest was 1ft square and the largest were two 4ft tanks. Each child (luckily only 2 of them ) had a tank in their room too. We have kept all sorts over the years, mostly barbs and tetras. Our worst failures (apart from guppies) were mollies. This was before we found out they preferred a little salt. I have bred (without any effort on my part, the fish did it all by themselves) mollies, guppies, platies, convicts, white clouds,bristlenoses, leopardfish, scheeli killifish and danios. The danios actually spawned in a heavily planted 4ft community and two fry managed to survive being eaten. We were very lucky to see an advert in our local paper asking if anyone was interested in starting a fish club so we rang... 13 years later we are still involved. Grant has been president over time and I have variously been secretary, editor, treasurer (they were desperate!) and am currently president. We affiliated to the FNZAS and eventually ended up on the executive. Grant was faulty equipment officer while I became editor of the national magazine the NZ Aquarium World. After 6 years of this (plus also producing monthly newsletters for the Marlbough Aquarium Club, Amateur Radio Club, and Lifeline at the same time) it got a bit much and I resigned. We have been attending FNZAS conferences for 9 or 10 years and thoroughly enjoy meeting fellow fishkeepers. A couple of conferences back Cees told me he was thinking about starting a web page and what did I think of the idea? I was enthusiastic and said if he wanted a guinea pig to test it on he could use me as I had no experience of surfing the Net and had never signed up to any site so if I could figure out his site - anyone could! For those of you thinking "Hang on, they own a computer company!" Let me point out we sell and repair hardware, not software, and Grant is the technician while I am the credit manager. This means he does the work and I manage to take the credit! :lol: I am sure Cees regrets the day he ever asked me to "try this" as the web site got off the ground. It has gone from strength to strength and I love logging on (see, I have even picked up some of the jargon - though it took me ages to figure out what a LFS was :oops: ) to see who has said what. Well, although we have reduced our tanks to one 4ft tropical (with rainbows in it at the moment) we are still interested in fish. Details of this tank - it is 4ft x 20" x 21" (1.2m x 51cm x 54cm), built into a floor to ceiling, 12ft wide rimu wall unit (I designed it around the tank and it covers the whole end wall of the lounge) with a homemade, external, under tank heating pad and running a Fluval 404. The lights are just 2 double fluorescents (bright white) with reflectors, sitting on top of a glass lid which in turn is covered by a rimu lid. All those of you who joined before this welcome section was added - come and tell us about yourself!

It is probably the manufacturers' of fish foods fault for making fish food sticks resemble fish poo The poor fishys get confused.

Here's your chance to experiment and report back Ira

Can't help you sorry Ira. I hoped Warren may have seen your question by now and answer, since it was his recipe. I assume he specified gluten flour for a reason and don't know what would happen if you substituted plain flour. All I can tell you is that gluten flour has the starch and bran removed and a higher protein content than plain flour but what affect this has on your recipe I can't say. Gluten makes me think of better binding of ingredients but I may just be fooled by the 'glu' at the beginning

If gluten flour isn't with the rest of the flours, have a look in the healthfood section.

Thanks for that Andrew. Do you want to be removed from our club newsletter list then since it is pdf?

As I have mentioned in other posts, our club has a member who lives in Texas, USA. Paula recently visited NZ and managed to see most of the South Island. She was amazed at the plants we had and said that where she lived aquatic plants seemed to be hard to find. She wondered if she would be able to take some home so, we packed up a few small plants, along with some west coast rimu driftwood, and sent her home (at the end of her planned stay of course) to see if she could get them through US customs. They were declared, she had no plan to smuggle them through. Interestingly enough, they took the plants but let the driftwood through. They said if NZ had given her a paper (from MAF presumably) saying the plants were ok and had no disease, she could have kept them. Does anyone know how to go about getting such papers? Would MAF be willing to declare the plants disease free? How would they tell? We will know these things and be prepared next time.

Here's a silly question. I know plants need light to grow but do they need the same light at the top of the plant as at the base? My tank is a bit deeper than the norm but the tops of the plants are certainly a lot closer to the lights than the bottoms. It is the tops that grow usually so does it matter if my light is not enough for the depth? My plants are certainly growing and I have Anubias nana and mini vallis growing ok at the lowest levels. The red rotala has been taking off lately and I am trimming it almost weekly.

That's all right 'cos I am unlikely to order any either! :lol:

Wonder if we can get a group discount? Anyone else for a $8,000 laser printer?

Of course you can buy liver and beef heart in smaller bits. Go to a butcher and ask for the exact amount you require and they will cut it for you. I am one of the "Yuck liver!" brigade too but Grant loves it. Needless to say, if he wants it, he has to prepare and cook it himself!

In that case I'm surprised it sank! I thought the marshmallow would float

They say bristlenoses like zuchini too but mine wouldn't touch the stuff. Just as well as cucumbers are lots cheaper! I thread cucumber rings onto a knitting needle weighted down with a fishing sinker so it sits on the bottom. Others just let the rings float. Which method do you use? My bristlenoses just get cucumber and peas too, along with dried fish food (fed to the other inhabitants) and sinking pellets for bottom dwellers. Blanched lettuce is another option. Get a lettuce leaf, drop it into boiling water for a few seconds, then add it to the tank. I gather it has to be blanched to break down the cellulose for ease of digestion.

I didn't do it personally but... you want a tank of at least 6 litre capacity and use a spawning grid. Make sure you have good light or full sunlight. Sex ratio needs to be 2 males:1 female. Temp 22 - 24C. pH 7.0. Separate the boys from the girls for 7 - 14 days before spawning. Spawning takes place in the morning with the female depositing up to 2,000 eggs! When spawning is over, take out the parents and remove the grid. Replace half the water with fresh water and treat with methylene blue. The fry grow well and quickly in shallow flat tanks. Hope this helps Good luck!

I'm not surprised they hadn't caught it judging by the bait used. Why bait a trap with catfood? I would have thought using an actual cat would have enticed the fish more! :lol:

I know people say you should remove fish from a room being painted because of the fumes but, for those interested, I have just had new carpet laid in my lounge and the awful glue fumes and the smoke from the hot iron they used to join the carpet sections together didn't bother the fish at all. Now, if I could just convince Grant it would be OK to have an $8,000 colour laser printer (and not have to justify the expense) to play with...

You plant cardamine but it grows roots at all the junctures of the stem. I let mine grow long and floaty then anchor down one or more of the aerial root sections otherwise it gets tangled up with the other plants. you can also keep chopping off bits and replanting them.