fmueller

You know how to make a small fortune with breeding fish? You start with a large fortune! Sorry, I could not resist I've heard that joke a gazillion times when living in the US. I think Africans would be pretty good. Like P. demasoni still sell for crazy money in NZ, and they are easy to breed. I think there would also be a market for good quality L. caeruleus, but the breeding stock for those in NZ is appalling. Whenever I look at them in a store, it brings tears to my eyes. You would have to get some decent ones imported first. As others have said, once you really get the ball rolling, the market will quickly be saturated. NZ is just too small, and I have seen how difficult it is even in the US or Germany.

OK, that looks very different from the 1st photo! Sorry, my bad, I got it wrong. Now here is a question. Do you ship to Auckland? Happy to pay of course

The plant in the picture is exactly what you can find wild in the US, and what also grows in the Hauraki Gulf. No way that plant is permitted. It's a world wide problem, because it grows like wildfire, and blocks waterways. This plant might be permitted, but it's not what I see in the picture above.

WTB Anubias plants. The more the better. Any type. I'll pay for plants and shipping. I will not low-ball you! I am also interested in Bolbitis and Cryptocoryne.

In case anybody ever has the same problem, I got hold of a tube of Loctite 5331. Works great, and solves the problem perfectly. Highly recommended - by Hansen and myself ;-)

Cool. I'll check it out!

I wanted 50mm bulkheads, but the guy who built my tank made a mistake and made the holes too small, so I can only fit 40mm bulkheads. I think I'll be fine, but I can go no smaller or else I'd have to cut down on flow. I bought a Jebao DCT-15000, and really don't want to throttle it. I don't think anybody makes a 40mm hose, or at least I haven't seen one. I just had a look on the Hansen web site, and they make a specific recommendation for a sealing paste for these fittings - Loctite 5331. I should have checked there earlier, instead of relying on the advice from the guys at Chesters. I have ordered a tube of Loctite 5331 now. I trust that will solve the problem.

OK, I am finally busy trying to get my 3m tank set up. There are a number of 4cm Hansen bulkheads in the plumbing, which I bought at Chesters, together with male threaded adapters going to PVC pipe. I glued the pipe to the male threaded adapter with PVC cement - no worries. The Hansen bulkheads themselves are also perfectly tight. It's the Hansen bulkhead to adapter threaded connection I am having trouble with. For the life of me, I don't seem to be able to get it drip free. I've spend days of reading on the Internet - make it tight, don't over-tighten, use Teflon Tape, use the good grey Teflon Tape, which is thicker... I've tried it all, but drip, drip, drip. Has anybody had any luck with these connections short of gluing them together? I would really like to be able to pull this apart for maintenance when necessary, but if nothing else works, I guess I'll just have to glue them together and make do. Maybe if I put Silicone on the threaded connection before screwing it together, I might even be able to pull it apart again. The last thing I need is my wife finding a puddle on the new laminate flooring I just put down! Thanks for any advice!

Kinda late to point this out, but this is Vallisneria spiralis (Twisted Eel Grass) THIS IS A NATIONWIDE BANNED PEST PLANT. ITS ILLEGAL TO POSSES OR COLLECT IT. https://aquariumworld.nz/plants/articles/banned-plants-r1/ I used to grow this stuff myself, and it's a wonderful aquarium plant, but that was in the USA, not in NZ. In Auckland you can find it at the beach, because it does quite well in saltwater - apparently including the Hauraki Gulf ;-)

Fish bins tend to be a lot smaller than 100L. You don't want to carry a 100L bin full of fish! I forgot about the good ol Warehouse! That's definitely worth trying. I probably shouldn't sweat this too much. It's a 1000L tank. If the sump has 200L or 400L hardly makes any difference. It's only that I never expected having a problem picking up a 200L tote from Bunnings or Mitre10, and now they don't seem available at all! Should have brought some from Ohio. I am sure I gave some away at our last garage sale, because it's not something I thought worth bringing. I mean they come from China anyhow. How come they get shipped to the US so Walmart can sell them for $10, and we don't get any?

So I have finally started setting up my first tank in NZ. Talked to Greg Kingston, and he is going to built me a 3000x600x600, which he is able to do for a good price. Got myself some lumber and started building a stand. Ordered some bits and pieces, and am generally getting ready to roll. I am finding some of the things I never expected to have any trouble with turn out to be the hardest nuts to crack! For example sump containers. In the US I went to Walmart and grabbed two 45G (about 170L) Sterilite totes for around $15 each. I seem to recall getting them half price at the time, but never mind that. They aren't pretty, and they aren't very tough, but with the sides being supported by lumber in the cabinet, they held water just fine for 8 years without looking any worse for the wear. Naturally I was planning on going that route again. The last couple of days I have been hitting various hardware and storage shops on the North Shore, and the largest plastic tote I can get is 100L. I won't talk about the price - better not to think about it - but there has to be something bigger out there! Is nobody is NZ using storage containers larger than 100L? That is tiny! I was hoping to upgrade from 45G and use at least 50G or 60G. Am I crazy or am I just not looking in the right stores? The closest I have come has been Bunnings, Mitre10 and Storage Box on Link Rd in Glenfield.

Never mind, I think I found the man - Greg Kingston.

A while ago somebody gave me the contact details for a guy who builds custom tanks in Auckland. I think the person was also active on these forums. Unfortunately I have lost the details, but now is the time I'd like to get in touch. Can somebody help me out please? Many thanks Frank

I find this article pretty useful, but then I am a little biased, seeing that I wrote it :smln:

Thanks for all the input. I have ordered a Fujitsu system. From my research, Daikin seems to be the Rolls Royce of heat pumps, but they come with a price tag to match - about double of comparable Mitsubishi systems, which are next in line, and still considerable more expensive than Panasonic. I was leaning towards Panasonic, since the brands all seem to be fairly good, but the unit I had been quoted did not rate well on consumer - noisy and below average energy efficient. The Fujitsu I have ordered lies between Panasonic and Mitsubishi in price, and rates very well on consumer. What I am getting is a 8kW wall unit for a very large open space living/dining/kitchen area downstairs, and a separate 8kW unit for upstairs with ducts going to vents in 3 bathrooms, an office, and 2 bathrooms. Total cost is just over $10k, so this is a big spend. But with the initial investment made, I am hoping that I can have it nice and warm in winter as well as pleasant in summer without worrying much about the running costs. I also reckon my house in Auckland will appreciate the investment if ever I should have to sell it.

Thanks for the input. The thing is, I had about 6 people through by now, and they all recommend something else. But then all of these heat pumps seem to be pretty similar. Maybe I am over-thinking this, and should just pick one and be done with it. :dunno:

I am planning to have a heat pump system installed in my new house - something like a 8kW unit for the large, open plan, downstairs living/dining kitchen area, and a separated ceiling unit with ducts to all upstairs rooms. Is anybody familiar with this technology and can pass on some advice - brands, energy efficiency, what to look out for, anything to avoid? Many thank. Frank

The NZ Pondmaster pumps cost about the same as what I paid for the Danner pumps in the US. The Danner pumps are just about the best mag drive pumps I have had the pleasure to use - comparable to the longevity and quietness of pumps used in Eheim classic series filters. I guess the catch is that I should expect everything to be 2-3 times as expensive in NZ as the rest of the world, which makes the NZ Pondmaster pumps cheap dreck. :dno: For the record, I ran two Danner Mag Drive 18 on my 240G for many years, and their impact on my power bill was negligible. But I have no data comparing their efficiency to other pumps in detail. That all said, many thanks for the advice. I'll check out both Laguna and Jebao. I am not familiar with either of them.

I assume the Pondmaster pumps I see in NZ on TradeMe and at Petmart: http://www.pondmaster.petmart.co.nz/ have nothing to do with the Pond Master pumps sold by Danner in the US? Is that right? Are they any good regardless? I absolutely love the Danner Mag Drive Supreme pumps, and have years of good experience with them in the US, but I fear they only work with 120V. I am not aware of any 240V version. So I need to find a NZ equivalent. Any suggestions for die-hard mag drive pumps?

Good explanation from Adrienne. The main difference between a canister and a sump is that the former is a sealed container that is siphon fed, while the latter is open and is fed via an overflow in the main tank. Canisters are great for medium to large size tanks you don't want to drill; but where quiet filtration is important, you want to get the technology out of the tank, and you want an easy to set up, off-the-shelf filtration system. Sumps are great for large to very large tanks, especially when they are drilled or have a built-in overflow. Sumps lend themselves more to DIY systems, and can be set up very cheaply, but can require significant fine tuning to run quietly.

If you have a sump, in my experience it is totally impossible to avoid fish from going down there - especially fry. I used to have a 240G Tanganyika tank with two 45G sump containers, and I tried everything to secure the overflows to no avail. All you can do is secure the overflows against big fish that might actually block the piping, and make the sump secure for those fish that do go down there, so you can rescue them when they eventually are found. The large number of fry I always found in the sump made me wonder if females of mouthbrooding cichlid might have a preference for spitting where there is a strong current - maybe to disperse the fry quickly over a larger area and make it less likely that one predator picks up the lot.

No, first Descent was decent. Second Descent was a descent from first Descent :smln:

Only one ammonia source missing now: Not that I'd advocate that one or throwing any other garbage in your tank. Of course cycling with fish works. People have done it for ages. IMHO cycling with ammonia from a bottle is better, because it's clean, it's science based, it's fool proof, and you built up a huge colony of beneficial bacteria that allows you to fully stock a tank in one go. That all said, if you have access to beneficial bacteria from an established tank, you can save yourself the whole cycling mumbo-jumbo. Just use established filter media, stock the tank, and call it a day. People with multiple tanks do it all the time. Personally I would not use muck from the gutter, but to each his own!

It's only because your signature says "Graduate". To me this implied that you are still at uni, but I guess the term might be used differently in NZ. My wife works for the poor cousins - AUT. She is a chemist, but in the applied science department, where most of her colleagues are ecologists.

I might start beekeeping at some stage in the future when I have a bit more time. Gotta get back into fishkeeping first The Auckland Beekeepers Association also recommended farmers markets. I'll give that a try, but I find it hard to believe that none of their members sells excess honey from home. My dad supplies half the village in Germany, and has even sold some through stores, and he has only 8 hives at the very best of times, mostly less.