hovmoller

I know that slime you are talking about and I have also had that before on other new pieces.. But this is not the same.. the wood is very clean and non slimy before.. but when I put new water this white smoky stuff just seem to ooooze out of the wood and in seconds the strings appear and then the mess starts!

3 hours since "halloween" now... and all the "cobweb" has now vanished like it had never been there... very strange!

Well that's the funny thing.. the wood is always clean as!.. I got plecos, SAE's and snails so a well organised cleaning crew here! Thanks for the input Henward.. very helpful!... well at least it made me laugh!

What was this tank used for/designed for before?

Just stating the obvious here but don't take too much out of those dividers.. Could be catastrophic!

Ok title is a bit weird but that's what it looks like. Here is what happens: Time for water change. Drain 1/3 of water out then refill with water from the tap (that I run through a long tube full of activated carbon to remove chlorine). The water I put in is a few degrees less than tank water (29 degrees). Towards the end of refill a few pieces of my driftwood starts "smoking"!! (it looks exactly like it had been on fire, you blow out the flame and it keeps smoking) Next thing is that this "smoke" starts coagulating and flies around in the tank like flying strands of cobweb. Then (like cobweb) it starts to stick to everything. Looks pretty horrible huh?? But... after a few hours it slowly starts disolving/breaks down and by next day it is completely gone! My cardinals seems to even like taking bits out of it and eating it. It seems to only come from one type of quite dark driftwood because I have a lighter species of wood in there that does not do it at all... My driftwood is collected from river/beach here in NZ and I've been using in for a year now and it's only now that it has started doing this. So my question to you is: Is anybody out there familiar with this or can anyone give a qualified guess to why this only happens when I add fresh water to the tank? It literally happens within seconds!... smoke - cobweb - MESS!!

This is the first time ever I have had Cory's lay eggs.. what a nice surprise! They did it in a chain sword patch but I only manage to salvage 12 eggs. I put the eggs in a breeder net hung on the edge and will see what happens. Will update on progress

I had a 300w Juwel heater for a 300L Juwel tank.. when it jammed it boiled my fish slowly at 41 degrees... and that was in winter!

Yes the filter is real easy to remove but there is the warranty issue.. it's not really a problem until you empty the tank, store it dry for a while and want to use it again.. There will be a lot of dry crap behind there! Anyway to cut it out you just need a long (especially on the vision 450 cause it has the jumbo filter) thin sharp knife, like a fileting knife or similar and then you can cut through those silicone blobs easy enough, just jiggle the knife a bit and be careful not to scratch the glass. I did it to a little rio filter of mine and drilled a few holes on the back of it and squeezed some suction cups into them so now I can put it in and out of the tank like a normal internal filter.

Hehe yes guppys make great live food! If you mean a community of equal minded/sized fish and as David R said a proper size tank then yes.. The other fish would have to be able to stand up for themselves i.e. fight back...

I think the crucial thing is to acclimatise them very slowly.. even if going from very cold back to "normal" the shock of the sudden change might be more damaging than the cold experience overnight. But that doesn't really help now. I'd say keep them as stress free as possible and don't feed until they are feeling better. I had the opposite happen to me.. heater malfuntioned and wouldn't shut off.. so I woke up to a nice fish soup of 41 degrees!!.. my pleco was the only survivor.. the rest were floating belly up! Plecos are amazing!

If you live out west you are probably getting your water from the resevoirs in the waitakeries.. that and the Hunuas is some of the best water in auckland. Not like me who has to drink from the Waikato.. bvaddrr. nah it's ok actually gets treated very well.. So IMO I don't think it's the water quality that is the issue here.. But I can see the frustration.. so you are doing everything exactly the same as in your other house? (filters, substrate, food etc...) How did the shift go? did you try to keep your filter bacteria alive during the move or did you clean everything and cycled the tank from scratch or?

Hello everyone! First post!! A bit about my tanks: 300L Juwel (living room tank that wife has to approve of ): South American theme. Rocks, driftwood and medium planted for now. 5 Discus, 8 Sterbai Cory, 4 Bandit Cory, 20 Cardinals, L270 Pleco and few SAE's (oops not S.A. but they just do such an awesome job!) 400L Glass tank (2nd bedroom/fish room tank): I made the lights for this tank myself. Just mounted 4 normal 240V halogen spots on a piece of wood and suspended it from the ceiling over the tank. Then used LED lights for the 4 bulbs. Uses a total of 14 watts! A bit dim but no need for strong lighting in this tank so I'm quite pleased with it. Sandy(ish) substrate, some driftwood and some heavily anchored (between rocks) anubias A pair of Geophagus altifrons grown out from a group of 6 (female in quarantine due to excessive wife beating) Some penguin tetras, glowlights and a flok of red phantom tetras (tetras are really only there as dithers/leftover fish from previous tank but the altifrons hardly notices them) I'm a rescent immigrant from Denmark and I've kept aquariums for as long as I can remember over there and now finally in a position to have a few tanks again so it's good to finally find a Kiwi aquarium community like this. So I guess I am just sort of getting started again with this hobby but already find myself gathering gear like a snowball going downhill! Anyway thats me for now. I've got a long (and dramatic) story about my altifrons I would like to share but not tonight. Cheers!