Ice222

Not a good idea. you'd either have to have lots of dying fish involved, or lots of tanks/huge tanks to house all the babies in. Considering that you can't afford a Larger tank than a splish splash, it's really not a good idea.

Yep, they are one of the easiest fish to care for imo, and fun to watch. make sure you have some decorations or plants, they like to lean on things, hide behind things, as well as general investigation of deco. Mine sure is a nosey fella at least .

And I used to cut earth worms into halves and quarters trying to get them to turn into more worms. Never really worked... Anyway you're free to take my garden snails too . The're not exactly a welcome guest here.

Expected as much. Can't wait till summer/late spring now. Would give me an excuse to plan for a beach road trip .

Wow that beach looks awesome. Anyone know good driftwoody places near Auckland? Thinking of driving an hour or two out of town if there are.

I just went to Mt Eden Animate today. Pretty sure it wasn't verticillata. The one I bought at aqua fun day definitely looked different.

Okay here are pictures! My pennywort from Animates Aqua fun day (Wish I'd bought more then!). Small with leaves less than 1cm in Diameter. The pennywort I bought recently, the pic is already only the smaller leaves that I thought might sorta fin in my aquarium. Most of the leaves are over 6cm diameter, some reaching about 12cm! Also found what looks like bloodworms in the larger pennywort, had them dumped outside in a bin of water and found about 30 as I was sorting the plants a bit just now. How safe are they to feed to my fish? Suppose the main risk is parasites? Anyway to make them safe for fish consumption?

Well if this overgrown monster of a pennywort is is H. Verticillata, what would I have to do to get it grow back into submersed form? I have small tanks they're so big that they won't even fit in my tank, I have them outside in a barrel of water atm. Even the new growth on the big plants are bigger than the adult leaves on my own H. Verticillata that I got from a different source.

Even with pictures I find the H. Leucocephala and Cardamine Lyrata, but that's not a big worry as they sound like pretty similar plants. Still confused about my large plant though, it basically looks like the Verticillata pictured in the FNZA plant ID page linked, but much much bigger. The leaves are the same shape too.

Thanks. I think the 2nd plant, the one that I saw at Animates, was most likely Cardamine lyrata then. Although plant no.1, the one which I guess is verticillata, was also from Animates. The two I saw were definitely different plants though. Oh yea and I just thought I'd add that the 3rd plant, the large one, also smell quite fragrant like a herb, in case if that helps with the ID.

Wow, I don't really have much driftwood so I can't help you, but ty for sharing the pic, they look kinda neat in a crazy cobwebby tank kinda way. I suppose a layer of white stuff grewon your driftwood and got dislodged by the current created during your water change. Love your answer btw Henwood :lol:.

I just what to know, what types of pennywort we have available, in New Zealand, and would also like some help IDing some different types of pennywort: 1st type is small, bright green plant. Leaves are less than a cm in diameter and seems to stay fairly low in the tank 1 leaf per stem. 2nd type is a little bigger, a slightly lighter green, leaves a bit bigger than the 1st type. (Can't describe much more cause I only saw this one in Animates and don't have it myself). 3rd type is deep green with leave 5cm+ in diameter, lots of roots, stems 20+cm long, was sold to me as Hydrocotyle verticillata. From what I could find, I'd venture to guess that the 1st is H. Verticillata, 2nd is H. Leucocephala, and the last one is H. Ranunculoides, but could someone confirm it for me? I would also like to know how big the 2nd type of pennywort listed here is expected to get, both in terms of leaf diameter and stem length. I suppose it would differ depending whether it is used as a floating plant or potted?

Sorry if this is a little off topic, but I hope I'm not the only one who thought of MTS as 'Multiple Tank Syndrome?' rather than the snails when reading the topic title.

I'm no expert, but it looks like beard algae to me. I hear flourish excel is good for getting rid of it if that's the case. Have it in one of my tanks, but been reluctant to use excel on it yet since a) it's expensive, and b) I don't want to accidentaly overdose and cause harm to the fish I have in there so I can't really say how effective it'd be.

Well I've never seen the bubbles attach to fish, but the filter sounds similar to the one on my kit tank (ie. the kinda that can make lots of micro bubbles). Well if what's on your fish are bubbles, then they shouldn't be on the same spot on your fish each time, so just get a good look and see if they've moved spots

Well I know there are medications you can get to treat it, most petstores will have them but I don't know how good they are. Hopefully a more experienced aquarist can give you a better answer, since i hear some medications can also be pretty toxic for fish. What you could do for now though, is to keep the water clean, so lots of water changes. I think turning the heat up a bit can help too, but only within reasonable range for the species of fish you have of course. Try googling 'ich treatments' and you should find some decent info. As for the silvery sparkles, what kind of filter do you have? I think they may just be bubbles in the water. They're everywhere in my kitset tank with a wet-dry filter, but I never see them in my tanks with sponge filters.

Do they look a bit like grains of salt stuck to the fish? If that's the case it's probably ich, which is a fairly common fish disease that'll need to be treated for. I'm not sure how so I'll leave that to the others to answer. Don't know what kind of white flecks are floating in your tank though. If they're 'swimming' not floating, it could just be small water critters such as cyclops and daphina that are no harm to fish.

Well you can get ones that already have a heatsink. The heatsinks are much larger than the actual LED itself but no bigger than a standard light bulb all together.

I did some reading on LEDs when I was considering them (still might use some later on). The thing with Kelvin ratings though is that it tends to be a sum of the wavelengths put out by the light, and with LEDs, because of they way they work, it can be hard to tell if the peaks are are where you need them to be. Most companies that make LEDs have colour LEDs, try and find out what wavelengths their red and blue LEDs are. If red is between 610-720nm and blue is between 400-520nm then their white bulbs should be fine. That's because white LEDs are usually made up of a red, green and a blue bulb's light summing together. Also, the focused light is not the only advantage. With LEDs you can use controllers or dimmers on the lights, creating a more natural day/night cycle. I also know that 100lm/wat LEDs are available, and not as expensive as everyone seems to think they are. I think you'd be looking at around $50 for 300lm. I've come to the conclusion that LEDs are great if you have a smaller or an odd length tank, but with standard 3ft, 4ft, 5ft or other larger 'standard' sizes, tubes for them are readily available and tends to get cheaper the larger you go.

Fish is still fine today, even started chasing my oto cats a little like he usually does (don't worry the otos are much too quick for him, and he only chases them sparingly). Did a waterchange too just to keep the water as clean as can be. I've been water changing this tank about 1/6 every 2-3 days anyway so it should be good.

One of my CPDs got stuck behind a old filter I've since ditched. it's stunted as well, tons paler and smaller than the others, didn't help that it was already the smallest in the bunch i got to begin with . She's fine now, but I sure thought she was a gonner too. the betta's surface dmg was definately tons worse than that of the CPD.

That's true, but when it's my pet I can't help worrying. Still doing away with the lids though, I can imagine that the damage would've been a lot worse had the glass landed on the fish completely. Plus one of the lid pieces is big enough to squash quite a large area under, such that fish wouldn't really have room to avoid where it lands. I'm still amazed at how quickly the scales seemed to have grown back though.

Really, I've always found glass lids terrible to maneuver and today it finally happened, it fell in the tank and hurt my fish D:. My poor poor fighter had a chunk of scales scrapped off his side and some brusing too. He sat at the bottom of the tank completely still, gasping with fins clamped and looking much paler than usual. I panicked and put in some Stress coat as the amount recommended but the bottle (I kinda just poured the whole dose in at once instead of slowly mixing it like I would've if I was less panicked). After about 10 minutes he finally started swimming again, thank god too. He looks much better now, swimming normally except just a little slower, and even had an appetite to eat. I swear the missing scales have even grown back already (after 20mins), although not fully healed as you can still see his injury. I'm just amazed at the recovery, and thank god he's okay, I'm so attached to all of my fish, and I'd feel so guilty since it's my fault that the lid fell in. Changing my tank lids to over sized clear plastic covers from now on. Lighter, easier to move and much harder to drop like what happened today.

I saw that on trademe, snazzy looking dude . Think you could post some of your own pics once you get him ?

Did some tests because my betta just looked 'off' to me. Now readings are Nitrate 5ppm, Nitrite 0, and Ammonia is at WTFGLITTERSPARKLEVAMPIRE!!!! :lol: Basically I have the bad habit of leaving the chems in the tubes for a while before I clean them. Once I started doing the ammonia test, I must not have cleaned it throughly enough so a thin layer of residue from last time must've become dislodged and reflected the light, pretty, but I'm sure it's not how the results are meant to look. Anyhow retested and Ammonia is at 0. So lesson learnt, clean your test kit tubes instead of letting them sit. Meanwhile the fish does not look any better, nor any worse. Will have to see how he is in the morning.