Caryl

Is this a trick question?

Can anyone tell me if the sintered (I think that is the correct name)glass used in the Eheim filters absorbs lime? A tank has been set up with plenty of plants but no fish. The water is 7.0 pH out of the tap but moves up to 7.2 in the tank. The owner previously used the filter on an African set-up and was wondering if it had absorbed the lime used to raise the pH.

Try http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/gmoonlight.html There are people there who have bred this fish so perhaps you could contact them directly. It is a pity the font colour used is yellow as I found it hard to read but I think some of the information there will be useful to you.

I just had a visit from Warren who confirmed it is the same stuff he has in his tank but we still don't know what it is and I still don't think it is bladderwort. By continually hauling it out by hand it is being kept under control and now I only have a few strands to pick out here and there. Warren says his always floats on the surface but mine wraps itself around the plants - especially the fine leafed ones. If you pull it too hard, it tightens around the plant and snaps it in half.

I agree with Rob Goldie. Note he recommends Siamese algae eaters, not Chinese algae eaters. They are two different fish. The Chinese ones are the ones that sucked your angel to death.

Substantial grants have recently been approved for the brine shrimp project being conducted at Grassmere. I think NIWA are also helping. They say it will be a slow process but keep your fingers crossed that one day we will have our own supply of brine shrimp eggs at a much cheaper cost that the current imports!

Can you be a bit more descriptive? Is it hair-like or fluffy? Short or long? Grow on everything or just plants and logs? Clumps or spread out? If it is what I think it is, you may have to strip the tank and start again.

I thought of bladderwort too but the photos and description don't seem to match my plant. All of them talk about fine bits off a main stem but this plant does not have any main stems for anything to branch off. The little brown bits look more like seeds than bladders capable of catching small prey.

Check out photos of Dunedin's Tank Parade at http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/carylnz

Thanks for the correct killi name Andrew. I thought that was what it was but didn't use it in case I got it wrong and someone complained. Some of the photos are not the best but trying to photograph tanks during a parade is difficult due to poor lighting and people walking in front of the camera all the time!

I have a photo album on the Internet. There are various albums anyone is welcome to view (although the Family one is just my brother's wedding). You will find albums of Fish, FNZAS Conference 2001 and the Dunedin Tank Parade which was held recently. Find it http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/carylnz Look at the thumbnail views and double click on any photo to see a bigger view.

Doesn't grow fast???? I can pull out a handful per day! Luckily it is easy to pull out. Nice to know someone else has it too

I have a plant in my tank which I did not put there. It looks like it is coming off the cabomba but that may be just where the water current is leading it. It is long fine green strands with little brown nodules along it. It breaks off and gets stuck on the other plants or forms a clump together at the surface. Can anyone tell me what it could be? The only thing I could find in the plant survey book was Nitella flexilis (stonewort). Could it have come in on another plant? I fear it is going to take over and all my plants are growing so well at the moment.

I was asking on behalf of a new club member who lives in Texas - we have club members from all over She has signed up to this site so will be able to read the answers herself. Thanks for the suggestions.

If I had a tank around 380 litres with a pH of 7.6, how much peat would be needed to bring the pH down to 7.0 or 6.8?

Members from Marlborough, Canterbury and Timaru headed south to participate in Dunedin's annual Tank Parade. We all had a great time, saw a large variety of set-ups, met some interesting people and were well fed! Does your club hold Tank Parades? Thanks Dunedin, you were excellent hosts and we came home enthused and with new ideas to try (not to mention the extra fish, plants and axolotyls too). There's a lot of discus down south and some beautiful rainbows. Tanks ranged from small tabletop sized plastic aquariums to a huge (8ft?) set-up with large severums, plecs, Jack Dempsey and pacu. We had a local in our car to help us find our way around - only to find he didn't know where he was going either! Others had similar problems and when it came to finding the last entrant of the day - we Marlburians led the way! It pays to carry a Year Book and cell phone Marlborough has their Parade in 3rd weekend of Feb. All welcome! Come a week or 2 before and enjoy our beer and wine festivals too.

Yes we did try the pipes through a fridge trick. It didn't work as it could not cool the water down enough. I found a number of articles on the net which said the same thing too. Shows they were right! Living in sunny Marlborough, keeping tanks cool in summer can be difficult. When the room temperature gets up to 34 and never drops below 28, even at night, expecting a fridge to drop the water temp to 15 or lower is a bit much to ask.

I would not recommend basalt as it has very sharp edges and will damage the fish. A good alternative would be quartz which you will find in the Ashburton rivers and places like Mt Somers. Agate is also plentiful down your way. Greywacke will be fine. It does not leech anything and does not have the sharp edges like basalt. That information came from one of our members who is a member of the Rock & Mineral Club. There is not much about NZ rocks June doesn't know!

No I did not have a lot of algae, just a faint green sheen on the glass. The tank has been re-set up and now only has 3 bristlenoses in it (mainly because I could not get them out of their niches in the log - hanging them upside down out of the water for 2 hours didn't make them let go either!). I bought new plants - hairgrass, cardamine, cabomba, hygrophila polysperma, cherry leaf, green and black mondo grasses and another which looks like mondo, is just as stiff, but a lot finer. There is also some pine tree I think (the top has a red tint on new growth) and a plant which is green, grows straight up with sawtoothed edges on the rounded leaves which grow in pairs. Each new pair grows at right angles to the previous pair. It sends out fine roots at each set of joints. The 2 fluorescents have new tubes and are certainly brighter than before. Temp - 25C pH - 6.8 CO2 - 20 mg/l GH - 4 KH - 3 Nitrite - 0.025 Nitrate - either 0 or 40 depending on the test kit used Iron - 0 Phosphate - 5 Can you tell Grant won a fancy test kit at conference? I have no idea why the phosphate is so high as the bristle noses have only been fed once since the tank was set up a month ago. It reads 0 from the tap. All the plants have been growing well so far and I have been trimming them and planting the offcuts. The polysperma is the only one not growing as rapidly as the rest - and the finer mondo-like plant.

I like to have a coldwater tank set up with inhabitants from local rockpools but the room gets too hot in summer. Does anyone know of a cheap way to keep a tank cool? With the tank needing to be below at least 15 degs C. and the room staying above 28 degs C. it is difficult. We tried floating 3 litre bottles of ice but it was time consuming replacing them and the freezer was running non-stop trying to keep up!

I have been looking this subject up for my club newsletter Kelly. I found lots of articles on the Net re using copper etc but all gave differing volts and I would not trust any of them. It would appear attracting them to lettuce, meat or food pellets is the safest and haul them out in bulk. You can also squish the little buggers so the fish can eat them. Children usually get enthusiastic when it comes to squishing things as many adults seem to be squeamish.

I think any book which specialises in breeding bettas will have the genetic information. Try the library. The 2 books I looked up are very old. One was Siamese Fighting Fish by Dr Myron Gordon (a geneticist at New York Zoological Society)and produced by TFH Pblications. The other book had the same title and was by the same author plus Dr Herbert Axelrod (also a TFH publication). I haven't looked at them in detail but suspect the genetics information is probably the same in both books.

I wrote a long reply on how to build heatpads but was disconnected at the time. When I connected again to submit it, it said I could not connect to the Forums and I lost the whole thing! Email me with your address and I will post instructions to you.

It is at this stage that the fry are most prone to disease etc. Keep the top of the tank well covered and free from draughts as the fry start to use their labyrinth organs at 12 weeks. An additional sponge filter (or corner filter with a gap for the fry to escape from)will help keep the tank clean too. Boys are blue and girls are pink Actually, males are more colourful and their fins grow faster. They are also more aggressive as it is only the males who fight. Once you remove the ones you are sure are males, the other lesser males should become 'top dog' and colour up more and start being more aggressive so be easier to sex. Unless you have a pure line (highly unlikely unless you have bred it yourself over several generations), your colours will be mixed. Get a book on the subject of breeding bettas and it will tell you about the genetics. [ This Message was edited by: Caryl on 2001-07-09 17:14 ]

Hi Derek, The tank is 1.2m wide x 53cm deep and 45cm high from the top of the gravel (around 10cm deep) to the top of the tank. Lighting is a double 4ft fluorescent running ordinary bright white tubes, 12 hours daily. The tubes were new at the time the plants died off. The lights are in a reflector and sit on top of a glass lid 5cm above the water level. The plants, apart from the Java and a Japanese rush, started dying a month or two after set-up. They slowly turned pale and started to rot at the base of the leaves. I did not notice any deformities or crinkles in the leaves. The other plants (if I remember correctly) were Hygrophilia polysperma, Cabomba, Anubias nana, a Japanese rush and a lot of crypts which had previously overtaken the tank and were the main reason it had been stripped down and replanted as you could not see the fish for the plants! The Java was not in the previous tank. Lack of light could certainly have been the problem with the Cabomba as they like strong light. The Java had been in one section at one end of the tank and the other plants were arranged in bunches everywhere else. The tank used the old filtration as I kept the bacteria going, the same gravel, and the plants were given fertiliser tabs. Plant growth was vigorous in the tank before it was re set-up with the Java added. [ This Message was edited by: Caryl on 2001-07-06 03:33 ]