Caryl

You obviously have a VERY green thumb David. Your tanks are beautiful!

If he whacked them against a rock to kill them first then they weren't live food were they? :lol:

Kelly Rennell (former FNZAS treasurer) has moved from Napier to retire in Invercargill. He has this site where you can go and see photos of his new house, scenic shots, and a number of photos of killifish, most taken at NZKA Shows. http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/kellyr_nz Kelly is very into digital photography and there are some really good killi pics here. If they inspire you to try killies, contact Andrew Broome (his details are in other killiposts here).

It can cause problems if you forget to turn off the heaterstat before lowering the water level too! :oops:

What did you do? Accidentally disconnect it in your haste to go do donuts in your 8" of snow? How come there isn't a smiley to indicate humourous sarcasm with a little yellow face poking its tongue out? I told Esmay you thought it was funny and she laughed too. She also said it had not snowed where she lives for 42 years so expecting equipment to cope with it was asking a bit much. She was doing water changes every 4 hours I believe so was looking forward to a sleep this afternoon since the power was back on. Here's hoping you are right and the spike is small. Keep your fingers crossed.

I have warned her about that Rob. How long after the power comes back on will the spike occur (like hours, days or a week)? She is due to leave on holiday (coming to stay with me actually) on Friday with our American club member Paula. So far all the fish seem perfectly happy and luckily her tanks are under stocked. She didn't feed them while the power was out and was doing regular small water changes throughout. There are two tanks. Both have undergravels and one has an internal Shark filter and the other one runs a Fluval 304 external.

Hi there Rene. Good to have another member from the Top of the South

Just because you got the rocks and wood from a pet store doesn't mean it will automatically be 'all right". When we first set up years ago we too got all our stuff from the pet shop. Lovely dark red looking gravel. Set up tank with guppies. pH kept rising to 7.8 no matter what we did. Tried adding pH Down and other products but it went right back up again. Turns out the gravel was meant to be used by those wanting to breed Africans and it was supposed to raise the damn pH. I have never trusted a pet shop since! The majority are out to sell as much as they can get. Our local shop keeps selling chlorine remover to customers, but our water doesn't have chlorine in it! Ordinary sea shells (had mussels lately?) will raise the pH.

I'm sure you could handle 8" of snow in Alaska but that's because you were expecting it and got that much snow, and more, most of the time. When things aren't built to withstand unexpected problems it creates havoc. Since it rarely snows in Ashburton a little bit goes a long way!

Kribs are extremely territorial when breeding and will attack anything that moves - regardless of size. Nice fish, shame about the behaviour

Hey they don't all go mad - probably just the male ones :lol:

Hi Peter, I was just talking to Kelly tonight as he rang from sunny Invercargill. He is loving it down there so far and has posted pictures of his new place on the web. I will check to see if he is OK with me putting the address here so FNZAS members and others who know him and have a look.

Have just been talking to our club member Esmay who lives on the coast from Ashburton. They have over 8" of snow and no power for 2 days so far. No electricity to pump water so relying on a truck bringing it in for the water tank. This also means no TV or computer. They lost the phone for a while too. Her tanks have been packed with polystyrene and wrapped in blankets. They have a very small cottage thank goodness so the pot belly stove has been running nonstop trying to keep the house at a temperature not too cool for the fish. Every so often she does a small water change with warm water, bearing in mind the lower oxygen content. No electricity means her filters aren't running either. So far the fish have coped well and she is keeping a close eye on them hoping for power to be restored tomorrow.

How big is it? They are usually peaceful until they reach a certain size then - wham! They attack everything. I wonder if males are more aggressive than females? This might make a difference to their behaviour

Personally I would but others might have other ideas If you have done it for a week with no improvement in the fish then obviously you might as well stop as it is not helping.

Syphoning can be bad depending on filtration and substrate depth. Undergravel filters with a thin layer of gravel can develop problems if you syphon them because you are sucking up all the good bacteria which were growing in the plates. My substrate varies in depth and is over 10cm in places. If I do not syphon it occasionally it can compact and develop 'dead' areas forming nasty bubbles of bad greeblies (I hope I am not getting to technical for you ). Syphoning keeps turning the stones over and the baddies to be sucked away.

Rob said "OK I don't have the plant growth rate that Warren has" Bet you don't have the equipment or power bills either! :lol: Warren's tank looks great (I have seen it live and up close) but I have seen other well planted tanks that haven't had so much time and money spent on them with perfectly acceptable results. Having put in my 2 cents worth I think I will go and trim the plants in my 1.2m tank as they are getting out of hand - without the aid of heating coils, fertiliser, fancy lighting etc.

I'm sure what it lacks in size it makes up for in personality :lol:

Perhaps it is mouldy because it has got wet :lol: My bristlenoses sometimes get quite odd looking on the top of their bodies - they get all patchy but it doesn't seem to bother them. Is its behaviour normal and is it eating well?

My guess (while knowing nothing about it ) would be air bubbles. Try the vinegar test. Any idea what sort of rock it was? Pumice-like ones will fizz just because of the air holes I think. One of our club members belonged to the rock and mineral club and she was a mine (no pun intended) of information. Unfortunately, she lost her fight with cancer earlier this year so I have lost my rock expert. We miss her very much too.

Because it lives on the substrate, it is more prone to disease from bacteria in the gravel. Do you syphon the substrate regularly? Perhaps it is picking up greeblies from there.

I used to have a 35cm plec but every time it moved it uprooted half the plants so I gave it away.

I don't think you get many gold nugget plecs in NZ SoulkeepeR and when you do they are pricey. I am sure if that was what it was, Zeta would know. Bristlenoses are a lot cheaper! I have only ever seen one gold nugget plec that I can recall. Are they more common where you are?

Welcome to the NZ Fishroom SoulkeepeR. If only all our members participated as fully as you! Where did you hear about us?

Guppies aren't called the millions fish for nothing! A female guppy can produce 3 different lots of fry after impregnation as she can store the sperm for a long time after being separated from the male. She can also produce different fry from different males (females have always been good at multi-tasking ) I think Pegasus covered all the most likely reasons for the colouration (or lack of it) and it is probably the age difference between the two batches and different fathers. Guppies start reproducing at a very young age so it is important to separate the sexes as fast as you can. Sexing small, colourless fry can be very difficult! Do you know how to sex them? Do you know what a gonopodium is? It is the guppy version of a penis so look for fry with that extra bit poking out underneath.