Sunbird73

Did you treat the soil first (ie. baking in an oven?) Just wondering cos there are a lot of soil endemic bacteria (eg. listeria, legionella, clostridium ) that can be pathogenic in the right circumstances to mammals. And not to mention fungi.... Am also wondering what it might do to the fish.... Will be watching with interest when you add the fish.

Agree - would love some cockatoos as well.

I don't know what it is with Animates and neons - are their tanks badly designed or do the neons just hate being in there so much they commit suicide? Every single time, without fail, when I go into Nth Shore animates there are always at least 2 neons dried up on the floor for my 3yo to find and/or a couple of freshly dead ones on the ground. DId manage to save one once when it jumped out in front of us tho but they just keep on doing it.... I don't get - no other fish shops I go to seem to have escaping/suicidal neons?

jeez Tauranga is more dangerous than I thought

people?

I have been around a fair few dogs, and a large number of times the owner has told me "my dog is fine, so friendly" just before its growled and snapped. Owners often are blind to pets faults, so saying there are guidelines about asking first doesn't necessarily guarantee safety at all. I don't take owners word for it. I think the idea of inviting large numbers of dogs and owners into the store, milling about with children and other members of the public is the bad idea - an accident waiting to happen. The added lure of free food may cloud the owners judgment about how well their dog will react in that kind of environment.

This tank is going into my 7yo daughters bedroom so an external canister filter is out. I have one in the lounge tank and I agree that they are great, but I need something that cannot potentially drain the tank to the floor if a kid decides to turn a lever or two out of curiosity. And is far cheaper than a canister

Poor poor girl. And sad that she is taking the fall for this. I think animates are incredibly lucky that it wasn't a customers 4yo child that had their face bitten off. That place is usually crawling with children, and children + dogs and distracted owners (leads or no leads) IMO is a recipe for disaster. I understand that the dog was on a lead and perhaps she didn't approach the dog in the accepted way - but TBH this dog reacted badly to an everyday situation (someone patting his head) and if I was the owner then I think I would be thinking very long and hard about what to do with the dog. I understand Animates saying "it was the girls fault, not the dogs" because I am sure asking for a dog to be destroyed is simply bad for business and goes against the idea they are selling that "pets are people too" - but lets hope that this dog doesn't bite the neighbours kids face off next time. And blaming Rotti's particularly is not necessarily helpful. This could have been *any* breed of dog, spaniel, german shepherd , mongrel whatever. Pretty dogs can react aggressively too. A real wakeup call for Animates I think. I really don't think you can blame the girl for this. This is managements fault at the highest level and not a young girls fault for being put in a dangerous situation.

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/man ... ishTB.html interesting reading. Answer - very rare for humans to get it, but yes it is zoonotic (transmissable from animals to humans). Symptoms in humans sounds a bit like "seal finger" - also thought to be caused by mycoplasma so maybe not surprising. Not sure how common it is in fish tho - Jen do you know? Tho I guess that 99% of cases would be undiagnosed due to the difficulty and expense of diagnosis / culture of this bug.

the buyer, bigfish, is in manukau. try with some punctuation and spelling...

haven't heard it, very amusing

ok doke will focus my finances on better above gravel filtration

ah you are not helping in the decision making LOL. back on the fence again, after I decided not to go UG.... I don't know, maybe its better to spend the money and upgrade to a eheim 2010?? Cos the UG's I saw were around $30 anyway.... I did worry a bit about the sand when I saw a good proportion was pumice, and had visions of it all floating to the surface :lol: So good to know it doesn't float! I am putting off moving the tank, as I just bought a group of panda cory's that are now being quarantined in the space where the tank is going.... think i am going fish mad LOL dreamed about fish and filters last night! Somebody save me :roll:

Thats all well and good 90% of the time it wont be an issue. But for a lot of cities they will treat their water in a chlorine dump, and put a big load in on treatment day (this is especially true for Napier and Palmerston north). Also sometimes they will flush the mains lines with chlorine to clean it. So, most of the time, the water most likely will be fine, and maybe henward lives in an area where the water comes from a reservoir that doesn't need much treatment. But for a lot of NZ it could be playing a little bit of russian roulette.

I did think this might be the case. Well 2008 will just have to do the job on its own then (seems to be doing ok so far anyway). Saves $20 I guess!

I am re-doing substrate in a 60cmX30cmX30cm that has an eheim 2008 pickup internal filter, as I have to move the tank. So am thinking about UG filters as now would be a good time to do it if I was going to... Would it benefit from adding an undergravel filter? But there seems to be a real love/hate thing with UG filters out there? Would the 2008 be ok on its own (its rated for I think 60L and this is a 50-54L tank)? I used to have an UG filter (which years ago I used in combo with an internal filter) but gave it away when I started back up with fishkeeping, as when I got my DD's AR380 the LFS seemed very negative about UG filters ... Am just a bit worried there is not enough bio filtration with the 2008? I plan on having a moderately planted tank, have a 24W PL tube on the tank (so whatever that amount of light will grow) ... but in saying that I have never been good with plants in general :oops: so probably at the end of the day will likely have very easy to grow plants anyway. oh and planning on changing substrate to daltons washed sand and getting some panda corys (so cute!!)

Awesome photos, and cute babies!! congratulations

perhaps it is very clever marketing ploy

Within a day. They chop them all off 1cm from the roots overnight so they float up and then eat them at their leisure over the next week. Well, thats what our naughty snails did anyway.

Go out the back of Harvey Norman etc or any big store that sells tv's, fridges etc. There is usually a big wire container full of bits of polystyrene all shapes out in their rubbish.

saw some new imports at albany animates, tho that was a week ago. No females tho. LOL about the spear tails, we had a couple of fry develop what I called "munter tails" and they got culled :oops:

totally agree

We will never see them here with the genetic modification hysteria here. I don't think its very ethical tho IMO, but very interesting and a pretty big scientific achievement. But would you need to expose them to light first like glow in the dark paint :lol: Or would it save on tank lighting....

hi James, I wonder if its something to do with genetics and dominant behaviour (getting the best/most of the food when fry?) rather than a "real" dwarf mutation? Like runts in puppies? There must be a reasonable variation on the standard curve in terms of size anyway... look at the difference with people - michael J fox to michael jordan....

thanks, $$ saved means more money to spend on lights etc.