Ice222

Yea I really like a lot of them! Bet the look even more stunning irl.

I like the 5th one best . Sooo pretty

I hear the females can reproduce on their own anyway. Who need men ?

Sad to say I have never seen a native mantis, only the South African one. I've seen other colours before but knew they could change colour, which is what surprised me about this one. Especially since the leaves of the plants are almost all green and there haven't been any lemons in it for quite some time. I'm glad it seems to like the tree, I always wanted a praying mantis as a pet but they only seem to eat live food they catch so they're not the easiest bugs to keep. Also thanks to whoever said masonry bee. I googled them and they look and sound about right since they return year after year! As for stick insects, I still see them from time to time. Last time I saw one it was HUGE. I swear it looked around 15cm long sitting very exposed on the side of my house. Hope it didn't get gobbled. They are incredibly cool.

I have a question regarding Praying mantis. I have one on my little lemon tree and it used to be green but have since turned yellow. Is that normal? I've only ever seen green ones or baby brown ones around here before but never full grown yellow one like this. I've also been finding a lot of small wasp like critters dead around the house. Every summer they manage to get in (even if the windows and doors of that room are closed almost 24/7) and just die near one of my always closed windows. They are about a 1cm long, shaped like a wasp, but without the extra long back legs, completely black, and makes a slight buzzing noise as they fly, usually buzzing quite loudly as the fly at my ceiling lights. I'll see if I can get a picture the one. Just always wondered what they are, my sis and I just call them 'wly's since they look like wasps, act a little more like flys, and i don't know WHY they always come in and die. Edit: Just thought I'd add a photo of the mantis

The first is the wiki on the viral version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_hemo ... septicemia And this is the bacterial: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeromonas_hydrophila Aeromonas hydrophila seems to be the name of the bacteria that causes it, and hemorrahgic septicmia is a symptom? I've bought a packet of Furan recently, they have hemorrhagic septicemia listed as a bacteria as well. I'm not sure how to tell the viral and bacterial versions apart but considering that most of the fishkeeping informational sources seem to list the bacterial kind and the viral kind seems to come up with farmed fish or game fish, I'm just guess (and hoping) that it's the bacterial one.

Now I see, when I googled it before what I keep getting was viral hemorrhagic septicemia, which kept coming up with fish farms and trout and nothing on tropical fish. Turns out there's also a bacterial version which I'm guessing is what I am most likely looking at? I'm keeping a very close eye on the rest, just hard to see in small fish like this though. I think I'll go pick up some furan tomorrow, even if I don't end up needing it this time, I'm sure it'll be good to have some on hand.

It looked miserable today. So I had it euthenised today (Clove oil + vodka method). Such a shame, although the photos in this thread doesn't show it (stress from being netted), it was a stunning fish with brilliant colour. CPDs pale rather quickly when stress and since it still kept it's bright colouration when asleep in the clove oil, I reckon it went pretty peacefully. Hopefully none of my other fish will get sick since I'm still not sure what it is or how to go about treating it.

Had a look but couldn't find any good pictures of it on smaller fish for comparison. I did have another look at my fish just now though, and the bruising looks less like bruising today, and more like tiny blisters or a coldsore, so I guess it could still be something viral. Below is a better picture for comparison. I have it separated from the other fish now via a floated bag in the tank, but it would still be good to know what it is so that I can hopefully do something to prevent an outbreak in the main tank.

I've done some more googling but still no luck with any info. The closest looking thing I've seen from pictures is 'Egg Associated Inflammation' but I'm quite certain that this is a male fish so I'm really at a lost. I'd be really grateful if anyone can shed some light. Meanwhile I have upped the water changes in hopes that that would help since I'm not sure what else I should do to treat it.

I just found one of my adult CPDS looks like it's got a red sore/injury on one side. It looks like it's under the skin almost like a bruise, and the whole area looks slightly swollen. The 'bruise' looks quite red, so it almost looks like it's bleeding. I've attached a photo, but it's just from a phone as my camera wasn't on hand when I had the fish netted for a better look. It would be great if any one cna help me try id it or recommend any course of treatment. Don't know if it's relevant but I'll post it just in case. About a week a go I had a betta in the same tank that developed abdominal swelling and pineconing that I assumed was dropsy. Aside from that the only things I have done differently recently is feed some frozen bloodworms. Water parameters are fine too, PH is just below 7, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 5ppm or possibly less, which is lower than I thought it's be since the last WC was about 4-5 days ago. There's nothing sharp in the tank for the fish to get injured on and all it's with at the moment are dwarf cories, otocats and more cpds so nothing aggressive to bash it around. They've been hanging out near the heater a fair bit though ever since I put a plant in front of it, but I'm not sure if it could be a burn.

Amazing fish . Like many others I love the yellow HMPK, I think I just have a thing for plakat fighters.

Yea got myself a pearl gourami. They look awesome imo, they look lacey and glittery. How girly .

Bettas are rather prone to dropsy aren't they? Might try replace it today, undecided whether I'll get another one now, or whether I'll get a gourami as a feature fish instead. Just like a little bit of variety, no doubt I'll get another fighter in the future though. LFS here I come.

Noticed that my betta (the one in my display picture) was getting bigger even though he was being fed less, suspected dropsy. He was doing alright for about a week (from the day I started suspecting it), but I finally decided to move him to the QT to at lease attempt to treat him. He actually seemed alright at that stage, still colourful, swimming, eating and no pine-coned scales, but overnight he just got a lot worse. I was pretty sure he wouldn't make it so I went and got some clove oil instead of attempting treatment, I had work this morning and dinner with a friend, but by the time I got home he had already passed on. I always thought dropsy was slower, and he never looked quite as blown up as the bettas I saw in example pictures I found online, I wonder if I had added a little too much tonic salt. Sad to see him go though, was always a lovely fish, the tank certainly looks barer without him.

I wouldn't call it pregnant, I'm pretty sure tetras are egg scatterers and don't carry any live young, but the bigger one's probably a female while the small ones may be males. They probably just want to get in on some action :lol:. As for the gouramis I reckon it could be anything really, it could be aggression, interest in mating, or just a bit of fun chasing each other's tails, but from what I know gourami are similar to bettas, they make bubble nests if they are in the mood to breed, and involve the male wrapping around the female when the fish are ready. As for kribs, I don't know a single thing about them .

Yea the one linked is a nice small cheap one, I have one took and it's working great, but I've also got a eheim one that's almost the same size but the benefit is adjustable flow setting 150-300L per hour. Haven't had the chance to give it a go yet, but it certainly looks and feels much better constructed than the one that someone else here has linked.

Awesome. I'm keen to see your progress and updates . I'm preparing to do mine once my workplace closes for Christmas so seeing how others do it really help.

I know it's a plant substrate but don't know exactly what it is. It isn't clay though. Seachem recommends to use it on it's own and its supposed to be stable, so there should be no leeching of nutrients into the water column. I've read from a lot of forums that is is really really good, just also very expensive. It will cloud the water at the start, but it should clear in a few days.

If you cna dish out the dollars, flourite black sand is quite fine and is about the darkest I have seen. Not sure how it compares in grain size to silica sand though.

That sounds about right! Not many people do much research into fishkeeping and it's easy to tell that you have done a lot of the reading yourself first. I only just started fishkeeping this year really. I'm pretty amazed at the amount of chemistry and biology it involves. Kinda wish I kept fish when I was in Highschool, would certainly have made me a lot more interested in those classes, now I wish I paid more attention then!

It's also effective for smaller or odd sized tanks imo. I really don't like how fluro tubes add constraints to your tank lengths. All the lighting comes in set 'foot', sizes and it's a pain trying to get high wattage lights for nano tanks. Sure, LEDs may have lower lumen per watt, but imo that's not the only thing you should be looking at. With metal halides or fluros you get light across the whole spectrum, even if the light peaks at the right wavelengths, the peaks are not as sharp as in LEDs, so even with higher lumen per watt, it does not necessarily mean you're getting more usable light. It can also hard to tell where these peaks are, as many tubes only give a kevin rating. While from what I know, the good thing about LEDs is that red green and blue LEDs are all separate, white LEDs, are done by combining the 3 colours together to get white. This is good because it means that it's usually very easy to find out the wavelengths of the separate LEDs so you will know exactly at what wavelength the bulbs peak at. I really want to do a LED setup, but as I am absolutely dismal at DIY, and all my family is overseas so no one can help, I'll just stick with the eazy 'plop this over the tank. Done' system. I do hope to have a LED lighting setup one day though.

I second what phoenix says: don't use ammolock. From what I've heard, almost every ammonia locking product will skew your test results, making them pointless. The only one that I know won't skew the tests is Prime, but I've never had to use it for ammonia problems anyway. I wouldn't wash the media with tap water either. From what I know, unless if the buildup is messing with your filter's flow, the only media that should need washing is the sponges, and to change any filter carbon regularly. I don't know what kind of filter you've got, but I'd just leave any biomedia like noodles or bioballs alone, and even sponges should only be washed in a bucket of old tank water. The way I see it, tapwater probably killed some of the beneficial bacteria, and changing the substrate probably took out a whole lot more to boot. It's not that you can't wash media at all or change substrate, but just got to be careful how you do it, and best not to 'overclean' any tank by doing both at once. You probably caused the crash by over cleaning, got the ammolock, and have been doing daily waterchanges due to the readings that was skewed by the ammolock. I'm not sure how big your waterchanges are, but considering that you are waterchanging every day, there's probably very little ammonia in the tank, and having too very little ammonia would mean that it would take longer for the tank to cycle. Since you can't get accurate tests to gauge ammonia at the moment, I would recommend that you keep doing the water changes for now to be on the safe side. Stop using ammolock and try to remove it from your water as much as possible. If your tap water is quite similar to your tank water. I'd recommend 2x 50% water changes in the next 2 days (make sure the water is the right temp as not to shock the fish) in an attempt to remove the ammolock. Retest your water right after the waterchange and keep testing often during this time. Once you think that your ammonia readings are stable and accurate, you can decrease the frequency or amount of water to be changed. If you're only changing the water when ammonia readings are high, then the cycling process should go faster. when

They seem to have good prices and the fish that are there look nice, but it's not a very big place and there wasn't really anything there that was of interest to me. Maybe I just had high expectations after hearing about it a fair bit.

Wondering the same thing, otherwise that price really sounds good, and i'd love to give pressurized c02 a go in the tank I'm planning. Edit: actually just had a closer look on their site. considering that the cartridge is disposable I guess they are meant to be replaced rather than refill. Replacements can be bought at $35.60 according to their site.