Caryl

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.

Many aquarium fish have teeth of some sort. The ones that eat live foods don't gum their prey to death Fishes teeth don't have roots and are firmly attached to the bone or embedded in the mucus membrane. The teeth are renewed throughout the fish's life. They will grip, crush, cut or rasp but they don't chew. Not only can the teeth be on the jaws, but some fish also have them on the tongue bone, palate, and the opening of the oesophagus. Some fish, mainly cyprinids, have their teeth augmented by bony plates. These can crush and grind.

Assuming Mesonauta festivus is also the Cichlasoma festivus or flag cichlid or festive cichlid, then yes, they are in NZ and have been bred by several FNZAS members.

If the knifefish gets sick, check it for lead poisoning (from the pencilfish - in case you didn't get the joke)

Have you actually checked the pH and nitrate level in your water source recently? This can change. Since all your tanks now seem to have a high nitrate level they have not had before, there must be something connecting them. Water changes is my first thought. Have you changed anything else in the tanks (type of food etc)? Just having a lot of plants will not ensure a low nitrate level, plants can only do so much. I am still concerned about your duckweed's behaviour. This is well known as a hardy plant which is hard to get rid of so there must be a damn good reason why yours keeps shrinking and dying off.

Oops! There must be a lot of dead plecos about then! Is this belief held by those people who also don't mention the play Macbeth by name? "Alas poor pleco, I knew he wasn't well" :lol:

Fish will often rest on the bottom to sleep. I will never forget one night (many moons ago) when I got up in the middle of the night and turned the lounge light on. Glancing into the tank I saw all my fish lying on the bottom of the tank and just about had a heart attack!! As soon as the lights were turned on they started to get up and move about again.

If I was your guppies I would be hiding in a corner too! Never ever say they're "just" anything. Just because fish cannot cry, bark, mew or otherwise indicate verbally they are sick, does not mean they don't suffer. The smaller ones die first because they are not as hardy. When you decide to keep animals in an enclosed, artificial environment it is your duty to make it the best environment you possibly can for them. Hang on a minute while I climb down off my soapbox... Such a large water change would have changed other water parameters too, not just the nitrates. What was the pH before and after the water change? They might be suffering from a massive pH swing on top of the original problem. Why was the duckweed shrinking away? I would have thought this was the effect of the nitrates, not the cause. Something else may be wrong. It may just be shock and they will settle down soon. Hopefully someone else has more suggestions.