the-obstacle

I'm really liking this idea mixed with some plants/wood/rocks, some caves and a little sand. Although it does sound exactly like my 2 other main tanks I could do a better, more focussed job of this one with emphasis on the plants/scape rather than what will suffice for the fish.

hot damn! It's looking great.

I wasn't that sold on the idea but the rocks are beautiful. They are a lot like the little ones I got off you a while ago. Can you flick me a PM with the location? I couldn't think where to go in the top half of the north island to get river stones, especially ones like that.

My pandas only bred from day 1 because I bought them as adults at over a year old. I'm not sure any of my others have bred yet but they will. Good luck with them. They're awesome fish.

that was my point - you've already got a tank full to grow out. Still, can't complain.

sweet! now you've got even more to get rid of

and a very stern telling off by the wife.

crikey! L140s?

That would be cool. I've seen a high flow river tank with them in it and they love it. It was a 6 footer with an fx5 running full speed from left to right plus 2 or 3 large flow pumps to make the most amazing currents. It belonged to the previous president of the auckland fish keepers and he had whiptails in there too. They all loved the currents but spent a lot of time hiding from it. I do have a long thin tank that I intend to one day turn into a river flow tank but for now it's a community tank in the lounge.

they truely are stunning plecs. Now if only I had something else I could trade with josh...

This tank isn't really suited to a fast river flow setup as it's only 60x30x30 (essentially) which is what I'd want to give the loaches.

Nice!

The article the photo comes from suggests they need higher than normal flow and in 1 direction like a stream. They come from a relatively fast flowing stream in china. In the photo they're essentially hiding from the current behind the big boulder as the current runs from left to right which may explain why they're lower in the water column? I'd have to add a little powerhead to achieve this myself as the tank has an overhead filterbox that drips straight back into the tank.

Mine has holes and I don't have any bn's. I do have plecs though and I'm willing to bet they've been 'cleaning' the leaves of my plants.

like this but with some fern / moss? I tend to discount the WCMM as a 'basic' fish but it seems they're quite interesting. I'm not entirely sold on the idea but this could work quite well. Per fish I'm not sure. I would happily buy 2 or 3 $50 fish if they were the right ones for the tank/biotope etc.

I'm keen on encouraging breeding if it's something that the chosen breeds will do happily in a display tank. Something like a tetra I wouldn't expect to breed but every other fish I've got has at least tried to breed in my tanks.

awesome! Imagine having a dugong (spelling? manatee) in your lounge.

what do they check for?

I found that most of my fish were fine to start with but it spread slowly through them.

huh, same. I doubt eheim expects their 300W heaters to be run vertically in all instances. I can barely stand them vertically in my tank but most 500-600L tanks wouldn't be able to.

thanks. I was going to ask too.

I put 9 adults in the big tank 2 months ago. Today I counted at least 17 of 2cm+ size and there are heaps more wrigglers to come I'm sure. I'll get some photos for this thread.

Ahh yeah, i missed the part about the film. I read flashing and spots and seemed to miss the rest. I'm with you guys on that then - columnaris would be my pick too. I treated it in my guppies and cured it with salt baths and melafix in a seperate hospital tank for the infected only.

Ok, here's what I'm NOT doing: I've written off the idea of a salt water tank for now but will maybe come back to it at another date. This is the direction I'm thinking of going: After turning it on and testing the light I decided it'd be a real shame not to put something in there that can use all the light it throws out as it's got a 20W power compact bulb in it and is hella bright for the size of the tank. I'm thinking either colourful little african fish with rocks/sand or planted tank of some sort with interesting wood work and/or a focus plant. I like the idea of a big school of little guys. I wonder if RyanJury will sell me his tank full of runt size steel blues? They'd make an awesome addition to a planted tank. I thought about puffers or shellies only in this tank but I'm quite keen to try something different. I may still come back to these ideas though. Thanks all for the ideas - keep 'em coming if you can

That's the exact one I got. I think you'll find it's the same one but with a different set of pictures / box to the other. Although it does only say 110v on the auction it actually says 110v / 240v on the picture of the solenoid.