Ice222

Somehow I kind of like small tanks though. It's like you can look at the whole tank at once, even if you're sitting close to it . Plus I like small fish too, and for many kinds of small fish eg. pygmy cories, you'll never see them in a big tank. I think I remember sophia mentioning being a small fishy fan too. Only downside to small tanks imo is you can't put as many fish in it.

I hate the pigeons near my house . Wish my neighbours would stop feeding them. They keep roosting on my roof right above my room and making a racket stomping around in the morning, plus they kept crapping all over my roof :an!gry. Before these neighbors moved in we only had tuis, doves, sparrows and blackbirds, which were really nice. After they came, I don't know what they started feeding, but we started getting seagulls instead, which were tolerable, but pigeons have now taken over and I hate them.

Depends how far you are willing to go, basically from my research online there are 3 options (I had been looking into getting a dog and trialed a raw diet on my cat): 1) Commercial petfood. 2) Grain free and/or organic petfood. 3) Raw diet. Majority of what you find on shelves will be in the first category they contain grains, by products, and basically all the meat that can't be sold as people food. Astoundingly most vets tend to also recommend these brands. The second category can be found in some petstores, or organic food supermarkets. This is food without grain based ingredients and the majority of ingredients would be meat, while some fruits and veges may also be present. Just because it's in a can or roll and looks like meat does not mean that it fits in this category. Don't just think it must be good since it's expensive, actually check the ingredients. Brands that I've seen available in Auckland and are know to sell only grain free foods are: Ziwi Peak, Orijen, and Castor and Pollux. The third category has 2 different models of feeding. One where a strict raw meat and bones diet is followed, while a second includes veges and fruits in their diet. Each has their pros and cons, as the diet inclusive of veges allows a bit more of a diverse range of food, while the raw meat model is apparently more accurate in terms of what a wild dog's natural diet would have been. Many people have the misconception that any raw bones and meat will do, but in both models, the meat portion of the diet should consist mainly of actual meant, not only the petfood bits that butchers may sell (eg. Chiken necks). I don't remember exact numbers but I think it was 75% meat, 15% bone, 10% organs. These can be sourced from butchers, and some petstores/vets. Try K9 as Critter_Crazy mentioned, and Raw Essentials is another brand that does these meat portions. And did I mention that all meat should be served raw? Since my trail was done on my cat (they don't eat veges) I followed the meat only version of the raw feeding model. One of the key differences between the models is how the dogs get their veges, and the portion size of the meal. With the diet with veges, the model usually follows a regular sized portion every day, with the right proportions of vege and meat. With the meat only diet, it can be okay to provide larger sized meals paired with fasting days. Eg. give the dog a whole chicken one day, and don't feed him the next day. Again this is to mimick how dogs or wolves may eat in the wild. Additionally the means of providing the vege/fruit type nutrients to your dog in a meat only diet would be to include green tripe in their diet, so this is a really important ingredient if you want to do a meat only diet. There's quite a lot you should consider if you want to do a raw diet. While it is possible to feed any raw meat you want, I'm the kind of person who either likes to do it right or not bother doing it at all. Plus you wan't want your pet to have any deficiencies from feeding raw wrong, while it may not be as easy to 'misfeed' your dog raw food, cats for example, can get sick just by having not enough Taurine, meat normally contains Taurine, but it depletes quickly in ground up meats like mince, so they can get a deficiency just by not being fed unground-up meat. So basically, it's up to you how much effort you want to put in. Option 2 is easier, but tends to work out more expensive. Option 3 takes a lot of getting used to (but once you get the hang of it it's not as bad as it first seems), but works out a little cheaper than 2. Option 1 is cheapest, but probably not the ideal food for pets.

It's not just fish either, I find that all pets do it. My cat would sleep in a odd pose for hours perfectly still but as soon as i have the camera ready she'll move :facepalm:.

Not at the moment, I'll msg you if I do decide to though. Have some gear, fish and tanks I want to sell off before I get more/bigger tanks/fish. My white opaque fighter is just so pretty that it'll feel like a shame if I don't breed him .

I was in HFF today and they asked if I was going to the expo and they mentioned the prizes. Very nice of them . I hope we sell lots of raffle tickets!

Went HFF friday, saw 2 nice almost white dragon females and couldn't decide between them :dunno:. Now that I've decided and went back, the one I wanted isn't there anymore. Such is the way life works. This one's colour isn't as nice, but does seem to have a lot more spunk. She's in the tank next to my opaque white boy and he seems to like her. Seems to be trying awfully hard to impress her. I have no tanks to put any fry atm, but one day in the future, maybe I'll breed them.

Most fish that are new to a tank usually hide a lot. Plus considering that your fish kept dying you probably have less than 10 in there at the moment so they probably arent' feeling that secure. Give them time, and once these fish have settled in and the tank seems to be okay, the more you add to the shoal the more they should start to come out.

Depends what it is that is making the picture naff. Some of the most common problems are: your photo is blurring due to the shutter not being fast enough (the fishs' movements get blurred), your apature's not high enough (parts of a fish that are further back are blurry), or the focus is wrong (fish is blurry while something in the background is clear), or a combination of several of these. Movement blur usually looks like a smudge, apature blur tends to create a even blur that gets more blurry the further things are from the focus, and out of focus blur will usually have something else that is not the fish in focus. There are quite a few things to consider if you want a good photo, along with shutter speed, apature and focus, a there's also iso, white balance, zoom, preset camera modes that can help or hinder you and different ways to use flash effectively (esp hard with fish tanks). It's a little hard to explain without going in depth and showing examples, but if you have a good teacher, it's actually not very difficult to understand the basics of good photography. So do come along to the next Auckland meeting, bring your camera, and our speaker should be able to give some good tips and show you how you can change these settings on your camera. Although a lot of this info can be found online, until I got a camera myself and started playing with the settings I had no idea what all those camera terms meant in terms of getting a good picture. So it's handy to hear it straight from an expert.

Don't know why people hate snails so much. I personally think they're pretty neat as long as they're alive. The only annoyance I see is their shells accumulating in the gravel if they die. If i want to get rid of them, I just chuck in some vege, leave it until it's crawling with snails and putt it back out snails and all.

Just wondering, have you been acclimatizing the fish before popping them in the tank? Just wondering since no one else has asked yet, and that could affect how well fish adjust. Btw I think for some fishstores, if your fish die overnight and you're doing everything right: ie acclimatizing the fish, water parameters are fine etc, they MAY replace your fish for you if you ask, but of course that is up to the individual store to decide if they will, but it wouldn't hurt to ask nicely.

Tuesday I added Chocolate Gourami which I bought mostly on impulse, I was thinking "it's a gourami how different can it be?" so the only thing I thought to ask about was how big they get. Oh how wrong I was :facepalm: . Came back home with one, popped it in the tank (acclimatizing first) and read up on it, everything I've found has been 'they drop like flies', 'they make discus look positively hardy' etc. The one I have is still doing fine -for now - it looks happy enough, is eating plenty, and gets along with the tank mates but I am not counting on it to last that long. A lot about my setup isn't ideal, since these fish apparently need constant perfect conditions :nilly:. My PH's neutral, the temp is at 25C so JUST within range for them, not a species tank, no peat only driftwood, no floating plants, plus the worst is this tank is newly setup (although the filter and a bit of media came from an old tank). Basically the only thing I'd be doing right for them is that I have soft water, I'm just lucky my tapwater comes out soft. If it does somehow manage to do well though, I may be keen to get a 2nd one, because I really like the look of them. I think I'll name this first one 'guinea pig' :-?. Wednesday, my windelov arrived in the mail, had a few ramshorns in it, but was a really nice sized bunch. Took the wood out, put it on the table, tied the plants on and found a little upside-down cat on the table . it gave me such a shock! Picked it up with my hands and plopped it back in the tank, observed it for a long time and thankfully it was just fine. Fed everyone a round of bloodworms as a kind of appology but somehow the upsidedown cats weren't interested in them at all :dunno:. Today they only got NLS pellets for dinner, but it was amazing! First time I've seen them come out to eat from the surface. Plus remember the ramshorns I mentioned earlier? I watched one catfish hunt one down and eat it from the shell! I swear it was more vicious than the dwarf puffers I had once. Since they're finally coming out, I really hope it means I'll have pics soon, they're like the most amazing fish to watch :happy2:.

Yea me and some class mates managed to gather enough wet sloppy bits of almost-melted-snow to throw at each other. Didn't last long but was pretty fun (and cold).

The only puffers I've kept before are the freshwater ones, and they would be far too aggressive to go with the upside-down catfish. Puffers are pretty neat, but unless if there are any that could get along with the catfish, I won't consider them until the catfish outgrow this tank. In other news, one pygmy cory in one of my other tanks just randomly dropped dead overnight. Can't really tell what killed it, no signs aside from looking pale. I guess it could've been velvet since that can be hard to see. Keepign a close eye on my other fish now. Esp now that I've got my lovely betta in with them. He seems happy though, built a nice bubble nest yesterday :happy2:. By the way, are red tail red eye puffers as aggressive as dwarf puffers? Any one had experience keeping them in a non-species tank? Did a little googling and seems some people are able to keep pygmy cories with them so I'm just wondering if anyone has firsthand experience. My tank's probably too small to have more than 1 puffer, but I wouldn't mind having just 1 puffer if I could keep some other fish, like my upside down catfish, in with it. Haven't seen them for sale recently though.

A filter+heater combo does sound cool I'll have to check it out at a store and see if I'd like it first. I haven't actually seen one before, and I haven't heard much about them. I have the same Eheim heater in my other similar sized tanks, so it makes it easy to keep the parameters of all my tanks fairly similar, unless if it looks awesome I probably won't change it. As for my lotus, I have one in my other tank been here a few months and it seems to be staying small? Maybe it's cause I've got no ferts in that tank, but I've also heard that you can 'train' tiger lotuses to stay more compact by cutting the extended leaves. Is that true? Also the wood is as far back as it goes. the most I could do it rotate it counter clockwise for about 1 inch so that it angles backwards a bit more. Hard to find small but branchy pieces of wood like this in shops, been on the lookout for better pieces. As for stocking I'm still considering Marbled hatchet, scarlet badis or perhaps furcatus rainbowfish? Not a true oddball but definitely odd looking all the same. Think I need to go for another browse at the LFS to see what catches my eye.

Yea I was thinking that. I know they'll eventually get too big for the tank, so it'll depend how quickly they grow. I have a much bigger tank that they could go in eventually, but I probably won't be doing anything with the big tank till the end of the year when I have a break.

Now that my sis has gone overseas and can't tell me off for getting yet another tank, I've now setup a new 38L sitting in my living room :happy1:. Tank is 500L x 250D x 300Hmm, and only has 3 Upside-Down Catfish, 1 Sparkling Gourami, and 4 CPDs at them moment mostly cause I had to boot them out of their original tank to make room for this slightly bigger one. Plants are various bits from my other tanks: Java moss, java fern, twisted val, green lotus, ambulia, congo fern and lilaeopsis. Anyway here,s a pic of the newly setup tank. I'm hoping that once the catfish settle in, they might let me get some decent pics of them. Still a little shy atm, but they sure seem to be out a lot more when in this tank. Decided I like long tanks after all. Compared to my other tanks, I think this one looks deceivingly bigger even though it's actually the same size/volume. Can't wait till everything grows in. Thinking of moving the lotus to the left a bit and putting it a little further back, and might get some water sprite, or something else easy and bushy, to go in front of the val so you don't see so much of the bg. It might also be nice to get something more for the wood, like Windelov java fern (or more congo fern, but that stuff's expensive and temperamental). What do you guys think? Anything I should change or move around? Once I relocate my 4 CPDs and Gourami, I'm thinking of adding some other fish in. Thinking of putting some 'odd' fish. May give glass cats, hatchets or Kuhli Loaches a go. Just kinda want something that even non-fishy people will think are interesting for once :roll:.

Lol well they're labeled as such :dunno:. Never kept them myself and 0 interest in guppies so never looked them up in detail.

I personally don't like goldfish too. They tend to be big/bulky looking and I don't really like those googley eyes a lot of them have. There are other neat coldwater fish though, like paradise fish, coldwater guppies and White Clouds so you don't have to buy a heater to get smaller easier fish. Just a lot less variety to choose from without it. Another thing is that goldfish need a lot more water volume than smaller fish. So while you could keep 2 goldfish in a 38-40l tank, it's a lot harder to maintain than if you were keeping 10 1inch small bodied fishes in there.

Gratz! More and more, I'm guessing they're all the same kind (CPDs)?

Yea unless if we know what your situation is in terms of the stuff Josh listed above it's hard to say. I don't know about goldfish, since they can be a lot messier, but I'm finding keeping tropical fish easier and easier. I mean it's probably not the best animal husbandry, but during the break I spent some time overseas and my tanks had no waterchanges for around 6 weeks. My sister even overfed 2 of my tanks and completely did not feed one tank for half that time, she thought that had no fish in it! Only 1 fish died, and it was in the tank that was not fed. All the other fish were perfectly fine, no illnesses some are even laying eggs. I really do think fishkeeping very much about finding some kind of balance and a routine that matches it. If you find it, everything can be very cruisey, sometimes it's just hard getting there. I also think it may have a tiny bit to do with luck. If the fish you currently have doesn't work out for you, sometimes it's good to have a change. It could just be that you jinx that type of fish for some unknown cosmic reason . I remember a thread awhile back, where very experienced fish keepers were saying that specific types of fish never works out for them, even if they're meant to be hardy fish, nothing's wrong with the conditions and all the other fish in the same tank are perfectly fine, that specific type would always die.

I'm doing a project for my class in which we're meant to find was to reuse common waste materials/objects to create an design. Examples are things like using recycled ski poles to make a fence. I'm on a hunt for materials that fit this criteria, as the original materials I gathered were things that I had low quantities of eg. cassette tapes, useless CDs etc. I'm looking ideas/sources for more accessible materials, as the project requires that I'd have to make my design for assessment. I don't need a huge quantity, but just something I could fairly easily/inexpensively get more of, eg. Ski poles would not be appropriate. I'm all ears if you can think of any other visually interesting trash, or know of great locations to find funky rubbish for a minimal price or free. I'll be going on a hunt for this kind of stuff in the next 2 days. Otherwise if you happen to be located in Central Auckland and have some neat trash that you would like to get rid of, feel free to PM me.

Can't wait to see photos when you've got them . Or maybe I should just find a excuse to visit you and your tanks some day, since you live so close by and all .

Got myself some unknown small looking lilaeopsis form animates aqua fun day. So Gonna give it a try and see how that goes. Bought myself a new tank and 3 upside down catfish too . I'm pretty sure they're s. nigeraventis and not eupterus, though I'm not 100% sure. Either way, gotta do more plant shopping soon to get my new tank planted up. Just waiting till my sis goes overseas in a week, then I can stop hiding my new purchase and set it up :oops:.

Yea I've seen dwarf sag around but I think they look too 'sharp' if you know what I mean. I think I prefer the softer look of lilaeopsis.