Ice222

The ones I can get are 100lm per watt, with 3 LED or 7 LED varieties, in a similar style to the one I linked in terms of appearance. I can get the 3 LED variety for <$25nz and 7LED for <$40NZ each. The cost for a fluro decreases as you go up in length, whereas LEDs have more or less a flat rate of increase based the number of bulbs you so I don't know about bigger tanks, but for smaller tanks I think LED is viable, the options in NZ are pretty limited but getting them from overseas means I have more options. Say for a 2 foot tank an AL-20 with reflector is 24w, assuming 100lm/w thats 2400lm for $90 not inc shipping. Now 3 700lm LEDs 'bulb' each plus 1 300lm LED 'bulb' creates the equivalent of 2400lm for $145 total. That's $55 difference but you don't need to change them every year and you basically get the benefits of a MH with the focused light, the 'shimmer effect' as well as being able to turn them on and off with a dimmer rather than that fluro flicker. Not to mention that LEDs can be used for odd length tanks unlike fluros which could be too short or overhang on tanks that aren't sized at 1,2,3, or 4 foot. I'm guessing just the 3 7watt bulbs would work for a 2 foot, as long as the most demanding plants are in the well lit areas. Reading from http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com ... hting.html I seems to suggests lower fluros have a lower lm/w output than the 100lm/w I based off of wiki any way and mention something about improved focused Lumens of LEDs making a significant difference in lumen output compared to florescent tubes.

I saw one in there yesterday. Blueish with tiny bits of red. Fins look a bit nipped though, probably why he's still there. I was really impressed with the size though! Edit: that was at the Roskill HFF though. Not sure what they have at Albany.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Building-renov ... 772516.htm Would something like that work if I can get the right colour temperature?

I have a 23L tank that now houses my Fighter and 6 Celestial Pearl Danios, and I'm at the conclusion that the Hagen Elite Stingray 5 filter that came with the tank is a real hazard for the CPDs. 2 nights ago I found one stuck behind the filter, and today I found 1 somehow inside the filter. The 1st fish suffered a few damaged scales but seems to be fairing okay, and the other one is perfectly fine, but I've completely removed the filter now, and will be picking up a sponge filter tomorrow. I've gone through a similar problem with my Aqua One AR380 involving Ember tetras, which I've coped with by putting sponge on the intake. Since this seems to be a common problem, or at least it is for me (I like tiny fish ), I'd like to know what other filters people have had problems with and how you solved the problem. I'm particularly interested in hearing about canister filters as they seem to be highly recommended on the forums in general but from what I've seen of the intake I can imagine it'd pose a threat to micro fish. On a side note, my CPDs seem to LOVED playing in the current created by the filter. It's incredibly cute, but makes me worry all the more when they hang around this hazardous filter so much. So sorry fishy dears, but no more wave maker for you.

Hmm no it's not black beard algae. It's light brown, like the colour of brown algae, but from what I know bron algae says , and fluffy not furry, fluffy like candyfloss. Except I wouldn't go around eating this stuff and my bristlenose isn't keen on eating it either. I suspect it's probably brown algae. 'Brown algae Forms in soft brown clumpy patches. In the freshwater aquarium, these are usually diatoms. Usually indicates a lack of light or an excess of silicates. Increased light levels will usually make it disappear. Easily removed by wiping the glass or siphon vacuuming the affected area.' http://fins.actwin.com/mirror/algae.html#brown If it's lack of light, I'm not sure if they mean the strength of the lighting, or the amount of time exposed to light, and what exactly are silicates? If it's from sand, the sand has been in the tank for almost 2.5 months now, and my QT has the same algae even though there's no substrate in it.

Ambulia's pretty easy to find, Trademe has some and HFF too.

Wow this is neat, I've never heard of these before . Got my Java moss from HFF in Roskill, and run both my main tank and QT at 24C. I used to run my tanks a bit warmer at 26C but slowly adjusted them a bit to mimic winter a little, but I've had the Nitella grow back then too. Both my tanks have a brown fluffy algae outbreak right now so I found the Nitella sp. (pretty sure that's the one) when I was chucking the worst of the affected moss out. Oh and the type of Characeae I see don't seem to have the bladders, at least not that I have seen, so would my daphina be safe or still Nitella chow? I have been seeing less cyclops and other small things around my tank lately, but assumed it was just the fish.

I've been noticing some green unknown thing growing in my java moss, and I'm really curious as to what it is. Looks too thin to be a plant and doesn't seem to have leaves, but the way it grows looks kinda like one. It's got a node, with 4 branches coming off of it (think of a hydra but much bigger and green), then from the node there's a longer stem and further along the stem smaller versions of the main thing grow. He's a very scrappy MSpaint pic of what it approximately looks like since I don't have a good camera to take decent photos of it. Evey part of it looks and feels like thin green fishing wire, and seems to grow with one end attached to Java moss and the rest kinda entwined with it. The whole length of one of the ones I found was about 5cm, so the pic above should be more or less the right size although the whole 'plant' has a more even thickness all over, I just made the main 'body' part bolder to stand out. There are no roots either .

My tank's been set up for 2 months now and this algae appeared about 1 month ago, started slowly, but now it's become a real pain. Grows mostly on my plants and is very hard to remove. At first it started on a red stem plant I have, the plant never grew, but didn't rot either, but I figured that the plant must not have been doing well and the algae took hold. But then it also started appearing on my feeding ring soon after. The more I try to remove it, and do water changes the worse it gets, each time I do a water change, the algae doubles what it was overnight. Whereas if I leave the water alone it grows slowly. Doesn't seem to discriminate between plants either, my Ambulia which is growing well has a bit growing on it too so it's not just weaker plants. I'm thinking it must be related to phosphates, since I don't have trouble with nitrates and my lights are on a 10h per day, just the default tank lights of an AR380 so they aren't particularly powerful. Aside from reducing light period, and cutting back feeding, is there anything else I can do to try get rid of it . I rather like my current plants so would be a shame to have to get rid of it all. My bristlenose doesn't seem to touch it either. Will get a phosphate test kit to see if that might be the problem. It basically looks like hair algae, but brown, not green, and it's hard to remove.

Although I've tried stress zyme, I have no idea how well it works since I only used it at the start of my tank cycling but gave up on using it before any changes in my readings occurred. I can say that a similar product, seachem's stability is quite powerful and fast working though, so if you're looking for something with a clear effect that's fast acting, maybe stability would work better for your experiment. I was going to cycle a tank with pure ammonia, and had the tank at 4ppm ammonia, but decided to try using stability on it instead, it went down to 0.25ppm when I checked it 4hours later. Although I think it would be neat to see if your results would show if stress zyme is effective or not, just though I'd put the option out there in case if stress zyme doesn't work out for your experiment.

Yea I have relatives that live on the street next to a huge fish/pet market so I go have a browse every time I visit them. What I'm most jealous of is that they can get snakes there . Then again not like I can ever keep one even if we had them here, my stepmum's phobic of them and I hear snakes don't fare well NZ even if we could get them. Fascinating just to see fish, reptiles, bugs and other pets you never even heard of though.

Why do you want them so angry . My Plakat's pretty laidback and thank god he is, since he's in a community tank

I remember posting in your other thread saying I have the same tank, my own setup is 6 ember tetras, a male betta and a golden bristlenose. Like others have said, I'd vote against putting most tetras with a betta as well. Ember tetras aren't well know to be nippy, and yet mine still nip the betta. I only have one particular tetra that's nippy (yes I can tell them apart) and only during meal times if I feed the betta first, but if you're unlucky you may end up with several nippy ones while I was lucky that my single nippy fish is manageable. I think any small non-nipping schooling fish would be fine, small rasboras should be good, harlequin rasboras are popular and should be easy to find. Otherwise Emerald eye rasboras is one I know you can get from Hollywood Fish Farm that would also work. I know there are many more options, but I don't remember what else is easily available.

Looks kinda similar, but I have had 0 bites from these critters so I can't be sure. Too the single live larvae out of my filter, hopefully it'll turn into it's adult form at some point so that I can get a better pic of it. Oh and if it helps, the larvae seem to crawl along the bottom of the container I have it in and moves in a caterpiller-like way. Haven't seem it swim, but when I picked it up with tweezers it was moving in a bit of a 'S' shape so that may be how.

I think it might work better to put some sponge material in the inside of the strainer rather than just switching to the short one, since that might keep loaches out, but if you plan on getting any small fishies, the short strainer might not be sufficiant for keeping them out. I used to use the short strainer, but found that my ember tetras could get sucked in. Added filterwool on the inside but found it a bit too dense, as it would inhibit the flow a bit after 2 days, which can't be good for the powerhead. Switched to the long strainer (with wool) and that's working a bit better, but I will switch to using some very coarse sponge as soon as I finish this bag of filter wool since, I think that should allow a lot more waterflow while keeping fish out.

Siamese fighters are great but in my opinion the current in an AR380 is too much for them. You may be able to adapt it somehow though or provide lots of plant cover. I kept a female betta in my AR380 and she was fine because of the shorter fins. a real character and fun to watch. Hmmm maybe a Plakat fighter would work. Kuhli Loaches are perfectly OK too, current doesn't bother them at all in fact I think they like playing in it at night. Just make sure you use the shorter intake strainer not the longer one that rests on the bottom... reason: the kuhli will move along the gravel and swim into the strainer and up into the filter. Mine did this several times before I switched to the shorter pipe.

Not quite. Shorter body and wings. And not 'dusty' looking. keeping an eye out for for a fly so I can look at it more closely.

I've been noticing small flying bugs near my tank. The tanks is covered so they can't get in the main tank, but the filter cover has a hole on the top for you to lift the cover and apparently they've been laying little back worms into my filter. There aren't many, and most are dead, but I want to know what they are. Would they be a problem if they get in the tank and the fish eat them? Here's an approximate drawing of what they look like in the adult form and are about 4mm in size. Overall I think it looks a little moth-like, short legs, grey, large triangular but rounded wings and a small body. I think it's some kind of fly and not a moth though.

I'm not sure if you've read about 'Cycling', but in case if you haven't, it basically means setting up your filter with the right bacteria to make your water safe. It's VERY important step, whether it is a Coldwater or a Tropical tank. Fish pee, poo, rotting food and such create ammonia which is bad for fish, so you need some bacteria to turn it into something safe for the fish. Bateria1 turns Ammonia to NitrIte, which is still toxic, and bacteria2 turns NitrIte to NitrAte, which much less toxic. So by adding a small amount of fish to start with, and slowly adding more fish, you give time for the necessary bacteria to develop in your filter and tank. You know you have enough of the right bacteria when you consistently get 0 Ammonia, 0 NitrIte and some amount of NitrAte, so I'd recommend buying a test kit. After first adding fish, it can tank over a month for this Cycling to be complete, so patience is required. I think there's also a detailed link in the beginner's forum here. I also have the AR380, my first tank. I choose to go Tropical, and I'd recommend the same to you. Coldwater fish generally mean goldfish, which tend to get big, and are very messy fish (ie poo a lot). So you won't be able to keep every many in your tank, I definitely recommend against these. Although if you do decide on a Coldwater tank, maybe consider White Cloud Mountain Minnows, or there are some types of Danios that should be good in room temp, but overall you'd be pretty limited for choice. As for a Tropical tank the only real difference in cost or maintenance is the cost of a heater + thermometer, but the trade off is that you would have a much wider variety of fish to choose from. It's a bit of a double edged sword, since the variety can make it hard for a beginner to pick the right fish, but if you look up the needs of the specific fishies you want first before buying them, and ask for recommendations from experienced fishkeepers (NOT store people). Then keeping tropical fish should be no harder. I'm not too sure of the best tropical fish for a beginner, but I think it's be good to start with some cheap and peaceful fish to cycle, pick hardy ones! Zebra danios are great I hear, and you can always sell/give away the cycling fish if you decide that you don't want them in the end, better than picking more sensitive fish, like neons that might die in the process. Once it's cycled, you can take your time choosing what fish you want to keep for the long term; I think the easiest way is to pick 1 fish you want the most, look it up and find out if you think you can deal with it's needs, than work from that one type of fish to find others that would go complement it.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out in greater detail once I get a chance and I'm gonna check out what the prices are like for decent light output. I still need to get a job and save up money for a bigger tank setup before I do anything with the lighting anyway, Prices of LEDS have been dropping the last few years anyway, so who knows it might actually be pretty affordable soon .

My dad has a friend whose company sells LED lights, mostly for signs and such, but I heard that they also have LEDs for plants. Aquarium plants are still plants, so logically I assume they could work for aquariums too. So I did a bit of hunting online for info on LEDs for plants, and found out that the optimal wavelength for plant growth is 400-520nm for the blue and 610-720nm for the reds. I also read that blue light promotes growth while red light promotes flowering, but I had a hard time finding what the overall ratio of red to blue LEDs should be for plants, let alone for aquarium plants specifically. I did find that both the reds and blues are needed even if you don't particularly want flowers though. The closest info I could find on red-blue LED ratio is from http://www.earthled.com/growled-led-grow-lights.html whose plant LEDs sit at around 64-77% red lights. Yea I know you can buy ready made LED lights for aquariums, but most are just moonlights, and true aquarium plant lights they're very expensive and hard to find in NZ, not to mention that I'm kinda keen to experiment with a little DIY . The advantages I see with LEDs is customisability, low power usage, directional light, and it sounds pretty easy to control LEDs to set different timings for them. Not to mention that they have very little heat output compared to most other bulbs so a fan might not be needed, and a long lifespan, so if this works out it could really be awesome. Don't know if I'll ever actually make this, since I still need to figure out the cost of the LEDs and still have several technical things I need to work out first, but I thought I'd post here in case if anyone knew the answers, or if anyone is keen to try making DIY LED aquarium lights too. What I still need to find out: 1. The best way to make the light more easy on the eyes for viewing. Whether to add white LEDs or add some green LEDs. Since with light, Blue+Red+Green=White, it could work in theory, although trying to find the specific wavelength of green to get a good shade of white would probably be more hassle than anything. 2. The ratio of red-blue-white or red-blue-green to have for the setup. 3. The right output of LEDs to use. Apparently LED output isn't best measured by Watts, so I'm not sure how to compare it to the output of fluorescent and MH lighting equivalent, as such 'Watts per gallons' and similar rules don't really apply and so it's a little hard know how much light is too much or too little light. Cheers to anyone who actually read this lengthy post :lol:.

I'm not certain on this but this is how I think it works. Decaying organic matter are good fertilizers, not only for plants, but also for algae. Phosphate and nitrate are also good for both plants and algae, but ferts contains other elements which plants use. You probably want the plants and not algae, so if you have excess phosphate and nitrate in comparison to what your plants need and use, you'd be promoting algae growth. Hence why some people use phoszorb and nitrazorb or whatever. Additionally, in order to help your plants to out compete algae, they also need good water circulation, so that nutrients/ferts in the water are spread evenly to reach them all. If you don't have good circulation and some plants aren't getting the nutrients they need, algae may take hold. As for why some people vacuum the gravel, I think it's because mulm can be unsightly and if your plants already have a rich substrate and/or root ferts. You might pref to gravel vac and opt for cleaner looking substrate. Or if you have sand substrate like me, I read that it's good to stir it from time to time to stop anerobic bacteria build up or something. If I'm stirring it and dislodging mulm that might end up in my filter, I might as well just vacuum it up to prevent it mucking up the filter (since my filter's nothing grand). I'm not a very experienced fishkeeper yet so please correct me if I'm wrong guys

I'd be happy to get more than one, but since my tank is small I don't want to add too many fish at a time. Just added the fighter recently was thinking of waiting longer before getting otos but my algae is a bit of a pain on the plants and I can't clean them off there. Suppose I'll wait a bit more and get 2 otos at the same time instead of the 1 now.

He's doing very well . Likes my driftwood cave (sleeps in there) and lets me feed him by hand now. He seems to be okay with my tetras, I've seen him swim in a somewhat threatening way towards them, no flaring of the gills or nipping though, the tetras just move out of the way. They don't seem too scared of him either. I saw my female tetra nip at him once, but only that once and his fins don't look damaged, I think she may just have been a bit overexcited as it was during feeding. Still checking on them a lot just to make sure things are staying peaceful. Thinking of getting an otocat fairly soon. Hopefully he won't mind sharing 'his' cave. I never thought bettas would like caves!

:lol: I doubt you Longfinned BNs will take long to find homes if you planned on selling them. I guess it would depend on the price a bit, but still, they sound to be rather rare in NZ and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's a sucker for fish I can't have/can't afford. Can't wait to see them grow up. Glad you're posting pics.