Kinbote

Found one of my rosy tetras dead; stomach was yellow and slightly bloated, similar to the dying cardinals but not identical. I haven't had a lot of experience with dead fish; is the yellowing normal or does it suggest it had the same disease as the cardinals?

Are you boiling the rocks before adding them? I got some from a garden centre that are very dusty.

The employee who caught the fish for me was pretty, um, what's an innocuous sounding euphemism for stoned... :facepalm: As long as my current fish don't get sick I'll be happy.

Yeah, it's good of them. Would have been better if they hadn't sold me sick fish in the first place, but that's partly my own fault for not watching enough. I have a quarantine tank but unfortunately it's what I'm keeping all (15 of) my fish in at the moment until the big tank's ready to go.

The stress of travel might have made them worse, but they were definitely sick when they arrived. One was half yellow and floating around on the current, and another (in the photo) was quarter yellow. It's partly my fault for not paying enough attention to them in the Bird Barn's tank and not paying enough attention to the employee, but I assumed he'd be a better judge of fish health than me. I'd seen one near-dead fish in their tank but didn't worry much since it seems pretty common, but I think that was one of the ones they gave me. By this morning three were dead, and couple more looked like they had very fine, feathery, fungus-like growth. I took them all back to the shop and got store credit, and they said if my own fish showed any signs of sickness in the next couple of days to let them know and they'd deal with it, so I guess that's the best I can hope for.

I think my water's pretty fine, and I don't want to infect the fish I already have. Think I should return the whole batch to Bird Barn or is it already too late, contamination wise?

I got some cardinal tetras from Bird Barn Henderson today, and perhaps stupidly went to check the driftwood while the employee caught them since I was in a hurry. When I got them back home and into the tank, it was immediately obvious that one was pretty sick, constantly gasping and just drifting around on the current, eventually tumbling and spinning. The blue band that runs down the side didn't go all the way because the body was a yellowish colour starting from the tail and extending nearly halfway up the body. I took it out [so to speak] but I see that another one also has a smaller yellowish area starting from the tail and was starting to separate from the others. I have no idea about cardinal tetra diseases, although it sounds a bit like NTD. I'll call Bird Barn tomorrow, but what should I do in the mean time? Don't want them all dying. I've attached a fairly bad photo but it should give some impression of the yellow colouring.

Slightly less interesting post than the topic might have implied. I've been googling but haven't been able to find any conclusive answer on what the range of colours is in wild angel fish populations, other than the basic silver with three stripes. I'm hoping a fish expert can educate me. Also, is there a general thread for fish questions? Might not be a bad idea.

If you don't want pebbles you might as well go with straight silica sand. Put some gravel underneath it, though, for the plant roots. In my last tank I had a layer of aquabasis, then a layer of pea gravel, then a layer of sand, and the plant growth was fairly out of control.

Well that's a swimming pool.

I though the South Hort propagating sand in this tank looked pretty nice viewtopic.php?f=4&t=48411

I've got white silica sand sprinkled with some fine dark reddish gravel, which I think gives a nice effect that you can see here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=50055&start=45 Under it I've got soil substrate and pea gravel since sand is pretty hopeless for planting on its own.

Thanks; yeah I thought mine was big until I saw the 1400 litre monster that David R has.

wtf? http://www.aquascapeonline.com/products ... liath.html

I can see the appeal of keeping the inhabitants small and spacious, but it's an 800 litre tank and I'm going to have some things bigger than 10cm in it. :roll: Probably seems small to the guy with the 1400 litre tank. I'll keep the stock fairly low at least. I'd said in an earlier post that I'm planning cardinals, angels and geos, but those all look a bit too fishtanky... I'm pretty tempted to lose the plants and get some striped metynnises to have something with more of a wild look. Any other fish species I should consider that don't look so familiar?

Sounds good, don't see the piranha resemblance myself though. http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/image ... anus.e.jpg http://www.destination360.com/south-ame ... iranha.jpg

Got about 200kg of substrate into the new tank and starting to fill it with water. Running one power filter with peat moss in place of the carbon; will set up my two Aqua One CF1200s in a couple of days. Need suggestions for amazonian fish to put in it. Nasty, wild looking ones ideally.

Thanks Stella. So what kind of temperature do we need to keep it at?

I presume natives need fairly cool water. Are there any chillers that don't cost $1500?

Any piranha-looking fish that won't eat the plants then? Other than piranhas...

lol :facepalm:

Is there any kind of metynnis that won't demolish a planted aquarium?

After a lot of trouble with different options, I finally got a table custom built by a friend of mine, and got the new tank inside for the first time.

That stand you built is intense. What went wrong? The pallets being untreated shouldn't be an issue since they'll be indoors, right? You generally don't want treated timber for indoor use. I'm not concerned about looks but I am concerned about strength; average pallets are rated for about one tonne, and I'd be using two stacks of them each taking about 500kg.

Let's see some photos of the 2800 litre.