the-obstacle

Battlefield 3 released today. I'll be busy for the next few weeks.

I had my pandas and cockatoos in the same tank. Assuming you're talking about apisto cacatouides? The pandas took a beating when they were too close to the breeding female but it was a fairly small tank at that point.

WOW! That looks awesome. Well done

Yeah, that's my diagnosis too. They've been there for about 2 months. I'm slowly trimming them off with water changes. Here's today's update - it's getting a lot better after a week of daily water changes. There's a lot more coraline algae growing and the hair algae is dying off. I've moved the leather up to a nice position with plenty of light and no direct flow and it seems to be getting better - it's got polyps that are opening up and until today it was reaching for the light. It now seems to have split in 3 at it's base so I'll see what I can do to attach each piece in a good position to get it to attach more permanently. This is now only a temporary tank as I've put the order in for a rimless cube, some DIY LED lighting and a skimmer. I've got the NSW collection sorted too - weekdays at Takapuna the boat ramp is empty (don't even think about it on weekends) which makes it easy.

woah no! I'd better be careful...

ok, they're reselling Maxnet's solution which is wholesaled from Telecom. I think the onus lies with them to make it work. Charging $490 for a line test is robbery as it's a standard tool that Telecom use. If it works when you're on the phone then there isn't a line problem - it'll be in the network but don't agree to pay if they find fault at your end as that just seems like they have the chance to ping you whether the fault is real or not. Tell them to fix it or you're going elsewhere. Also - try the geekzone forums for help/advice as well as tuanz if you don't get any joy.

Is Telecom still your ISP? If so you shouldn't have to pay a thing. It seems very odd that it will only connect when you're on the phone. Can you tell us who your ISP is, who your phone is with and whether it's a voip phone or a plain old telephone?

I dropped the family off in the city to walk back home along the fan trail. Took me 3 minutes to get there (about 3kms) and 25 minutes to get back. It's crazy out there but looks like fun.

Picked up some glass from stephanie, went to get some NSW from Takapuna but it was far too busy, checked on my orders for the new cube, leds and skimmer and now just chilling waiting for the family to head out to walk the fan trail. I'm super excited about having a proper marine setup. Can't wait.

Sounds like some sort of parasite/virus to me. No idea exactly what it is though. Sorry to hear man. Good luck with the rest.

order placed - black silicone and low iron glass. I'll start a new build thread when the rest of the parts start rolling in.

Probably can, I'll check with Greg. I was wondering about black silicone too.

Will it be safe? All the calculators I've seen say yes but they all assume bracing of some sort. The safety rating with bracing is 5+. What do you reckon?

Sterbai and Julii were both $15.50 each or there abouts.

I can't say for sure but I'd put it on trademe with a start price of $100 and see what I got. There have been a few horror stories about these tanks so make sure it's water tight after being in storage for a while.

at least I'll happily buy the gold nugget back (or more if you have more).

I have pandas. If I was to make a choice now I'd go for adolfi (spelling?) as they're like pandas but with the cool orange stripe

I wouldn't trust a crack fix with that much water - it makes a big puddle when it goes wrong. When I picked up my tank it was 'cracked' in the base and the previous owner had tried the extra piece of glass on the inside but that failed pretty quickly apparently.

The best (most successful) setup I've seen for breeding is a shallow tank (250mm water level) with 2-3cm gravel (rock size not depth) and plenty of wide leaf plants. They lay their eggs on the leaves and when they hatch the fry fall between the gaps in the gravel and don't become food (bare bottom tanks run the risk of them being eaten). Once they're big enough they come out from the gravel (about a month later) and start growing like crazy. I doubled my population in 3 months with a tank setup like this (but deeper) and I had angels in the tank who spent all their time hunting for and eating the eggs off the plants. Without the predators they would have been more productive.

When I did my 700 I smashed the broken piece off the rest of the sides and carefully cut the silicone bits out then totally stripped the tank. I ordered the right size piece (Greg should be able to sort you out) and siliconed the tank back together. You need a couple of people to do the resilicone work when it's time to rebuild so just shout and I'll come round to give you a hand. You can just replace the panel without rebuilding the whole tank too

I had 4 large angels in a 700L tank and it wasn't enough I added 10 more (at 3cm each) and it was. I'd have to guess but I'd say 4 for a 200L and 8 for a 400L would be about right (if you were wanting to push it to the doable limits).

Shut down a 3 footer and spread the pandas and L140s between a couple of other tanks. Still considering shutting down/selling the remaining tanks and doing 1 marine display tank.

Yeah, I'm wondering if I should put a big school of tetra in there like I had with the lemons to take the focus away from the heckelii a bit. There are now 5 males and 2 females which I expect will be trouble going forward. I'm considering thinning the numbers down and selling 3 of the males so I'm left with 2 pairs. The trouble is picking which ones to keep. I'll keep an eye on it for now.

I fear this has already come true. I just found my largest female had been killed overnight. There are a few scales missing from her sides which I assume is from being attacked. Nothing obvious on the fins or tail though. Could be something else but the others all seem fine and there has been a bit of push and shove going on.

From what I understand if the coral has been in a freshwater tank before now it has already cycled and there won't be anything left on the rock to die off and create ammonia to feed the cycle. I'd try to find somebody local with some live rock to add to the tank to add good bacteria and maybe feed the tank for a while to keep the ammonia up too. I'd still leave the tank for 4-6 weeks before considering adding anything else to the system.