Kinbote

:facepalm: Hoplos seem to be on the mend, at least... I'd still be interested if you've still got them when I've got somewhere to put them. Any chance you could put up a pic of them?

After the success of my 'help me choose catfish for my tank' thread, I thought it was time for another. Here's the latest view of the tank And here's the kind of thing I'm trying to model it on; not too bad so far, I think Dimensions are 160x100x50cm. Currently all I've got are rosy tetras, bleeding heart(s) and two hoplo catfish. Any ideas for interesting blackwater amazon fish that would make an authentic looking ecosystem and are available in New Zealand?

I got 3 nice hoplo cats, which I'm quarantining. Megalechis thoracata as far as I can tell. Here's the latest view of the tank, and I'll finally be introducing the first fish tomorrow.

"Illigle"? Come on, seriously. :facepalm: Animates acted like I was a monster because I wanted to feed my fish live insect larvae; there's no accounting for some people.

Silica sand should be chemically inert. A 0.2pH increase is pretty tiny; if I had to guess I'd say it's more likely caused by gas escaping from the water in the bucket due to handling.

Yeah, it's white silica and then some fine gravel sprinkled on top. I vacuum with something like this http://www.hollywoodfishfarm.co.nz/deta ... 5cm/m/980/ although I actually made it from a non-priming vacuum which I jammed into the end of a manually-priming hand pump that I got from Payless Plastics for $3.50. Never had a problem with sand getting sucked into it; once it's been in the water for a while it packs down pretty tight.

The budget brand from Countdown is called 'Home Brand'. There's another brand called 'Budget Brand' which is stocked by New World, I think. But Home Brand is bleach and scent-free anyway.

Those are all pretty inactive aren't they?

Amazon tank! Come on... :roll: I think I'll definitely pick up some hoplos.

I'll check them out, thanks.

Those are the magic balance? Too bad mystus are asian and synos are african, though. I thought GBAs were moveable ornaments. Hoplos sound good. So it is. Especially impressive since I don't even see a catfish in that pic. :roll:

Hopefully someone can advise me on something between the frantic pictus temperament and the moveable ornament pleco temperament, catwise. Thanks. I think the tank looks better now that I've replaced the bamboo you can see in this picture with some more driftwood. I'll try to get pics up tomorrow.

Pictus stress me out with their constant frantic swimming. :facepalm: Seems like it's usually a choice between that or a stationary ornament that occasionally switches location, as far as catfish behaviour goes.

No other fish in it yet, but planning to stock with mid sized tetras, spotted metynnises (hopefully), and maybe a black ghost knife later on. Will be blackwater, and full, when it's done.

Not sure which you meant. Blue and white label on a white bottle sounds like Janola, which has scent and detergent. But if anyone else checks this, Home Brand's is pure, unscented bleach and costs about $1.60 for 2 litres.

Budget Brand?

Anyone know? Need to sterilise a canister filter.

Fish seemed to survive it, and I've never seen them so excited as when they were chasing a bunch of larvae around.

I have a pond that's frequented by ducks and various other birds, the water is a pretty solid green; it's full of mosquito larvae, some of which I netted into a bucket of clean water. What's the consensus on feeding it to fish? Would it be safe after, say, 48 hours in clean water? or is it best not to risk it? I know people regularly feed their fish mosquito larvae, and I've got to assume most water sources are far from sterile.

For everyone's information: I was in Animates Henderson today and saw that two of their cardinal tetras had the same yellowish white discolouration that looks a lot like incurable NTD on their bodies as the ones from Bird Barn that started all the trouble with my fish. The tank was 'under treatment' but they hadn't done anything to remove the obviously sick fish from the rest. Probably got them from the same breeder as Bird Barn, so I'd say if anyone wants cardinal tetras, now probably isn't the best time to buy them.

Don't want to sound ungrateful or anything but I mentioned columnaris 5 times in my original post. :roll:

Seems impossible to find. Does anyone know of a place to get pure ammonia / ammonia hydroxide? I'd consider cycling fishlessly with ground up fish flakes, but I don't want to increase my chances of a columnaris/saprolegnia spike since I'm already dealing with the effects of what's presumably that in another tank. :dunno:

I'd posted this before in the Freshwater forum since I didn't realise this one existed. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. --- Another dead fish today, this time a rosy tetra, and a sick bleeding heart is steadily deteriorating. I'm assuming it's columnaris, have completed two cycles of Furan-2 and am starting a third, but it's had absolutely no perceivable effect with the fish still steadily dying, so I have to suspect it's something else. I'm trying to keep the temperature down to 24C as recommended for columnaris but with the ambient room temperature it's usually nearer 26. Ammonia and nitrite have consistently been reading 0. The fish aren't eating much and I'm not feeding them much, so I doubt decayed food is a factor, but I've removed most of the gravel in case that was harbouring anything. I've also added tonic salt since that's meant to inhibit columnaris's ability to attach to fish. But if it is columnaris (or saprolegnia) I'd have expected it to respond to Furan-2, and it wouldn't make sense that this all started after contact with some sick cardinal tetras. My last bleeding heart that died was a lot more symptomatic than the current ones, but I didn't get a picture unfortunately. It had the characteristic whitened saddle ring around its dorsal fin and some fuzzy white patches on its side. I don't see anything on the rosy other than some internal whitening around its stomach, which looks vaguely like NTD, which would fit my suspicion that they might have NTD and only have columnaris as a more obvious, but secondary, infection. The bleeding heart has a big patch of fuzz on its mouth and some more on its left pectoral fin and tail. And here's a pic of one of the sick cardinals that seemed to start it all about 2 weeks ago. Hope someone can suggest something. Pretty depressing so far. :dunno:

I figured. Good advice.

I think that's pretty unlikely since everyone uses StressCoat and StressZyme together, and consequently would be using those together with tonic salt and/or Furan-2. There are some contraindications for combining different antibiotics, but that's all I know of. The others are unrelated. I only added the salt a couple days ago and like everything else it's made no difference. And it's always only ever one or two fish that show any symptoms at a time, the other fish are fine.