kinnadian

Agreed, I wouldn't keep discus below 27 degC if you want to ensure their health, minnows don't do too well above 23.

How are you finding the Resun Sk300? I've been considering it given it is only like $45 shipped from fish-street...

A complete stocking list for your tank would help us.

Yeah sorry I did indeed mean ice blues and not electric blues, it was a typo on my behalf. I've had ice blues and not noticed aggression, is what I meant. His photos show the fish as small juveniles, can't be more than 2cm.

Yep so to reiterate what others have said, the demasoni and electric yellows like to be in groups. The demasoni get aggressive within their own species, so to spread out the aggression you need 10+. Electric yellows are social fish and prefer to be in groups, this is more for a health thing than anything else. I've not had aggression from my electric blues, but YMMV. You will indeed need a 4 foot tank minimum for those fish (provided you provide the appropriate sized schools). I wouldn't even keep them in your 60L tank for any more time than you have to. Please move them into your 120L tank asap, and look to either sell the Demasoni or upgrade to at least a 3 foot tank within 6 months. There are a lot of more mild african cichlids you can look at to replace the Demasoni. You'll also need wicked filtration for cichlids, expect to spend $400+ on this. You have the right idea with the rocks, cichlids like TONS of hiding spots and caves. I might recommend using dead coral rock (around $15/kg from fish shops) as this will help buffer the pH to around 8 (which africans prefer).

Dwarf gouramis are generally quite peaceful and are fine with your current fish. However, two males can fight for territory in such a small tank, and a male/female pair can get aggressive when spawning. Two females are fine, although typically fish shops sell only males. Also they can attack other fish with long colorful fins, such as bettas or guppies. Also a more heavily planted tank is preferred by them.

Pop on down to kaikoura, there is a koura farmer there who will sell them for like $5 each. Otherwise just put some crayfish traps down in a river with some dog meat in them, you'll find more than you know what to do with.

Buy it overseas, can get it for around $40-$50 shipped. It's definitely the the most recommended test kit there is. Invaluable for a new fish keeper but once you have a cycled tank it becomes fairly useless.

Is it alive?

What I would do is just wedge it in hard then silicone just around the top of the background, so the silicone can easily be removed.

The video is nearly entirely about the filtration system, but then the video practically doesn't even show it? Odd.

I think Eheim a bit hit and miss, some can have good success with them and others find them unreliable. Some people flat out refuse to buy them now because they've been stung too many times. I've changed to the Taiwan Sunsun's now. Despite the odd name and the low price, they are extremely reliable, quiet and have good output. I'd recommend looking at people's reviews of them around the internet before you judge them. 2217's are $350 each on Trademe. Get a pair of Sunsun 303's (1400 lph) for $140 each or Sunsun 404 (2000 lph) for $210 each.

I actually quite like the look of duckweed in my planted tank. Not too hard to remove if you want, just use a net, would take 1 min tops.

Is this in a shop of some kind? Or just a big spare garage?

Tie black thread around the moss and the rock/wood (wood much easier).

I'm assuming this is a diet of something like 80% veggies and 20% insects, for an adult beardy? In which case 7 adult locusts for an adult every 2 days seems fine. Certainly not 7 appropriate sized feeder insects per 2 days, for a beardy under 2 yrs... For every opinion out there on the internet there is an equally opposite opinion, and both can have positive results. We are spoiled with excessive information I feel sometimes... And there is no rule of thumb like other pets, such as "as much as they can eat in X minutes". I have tried with my beardy, giving him a big meal before going away for a couple of days. They will not stop eating even if they are full. This is more of a trial-and-error thing I find, simply guessing how many they should be fed and watching their weight over weeks/months. Difficult to give advice for someone like OP who has not done their research and doesn't appear to respond to advice.

Recommendations on fish are difficult, because different people like different things! Live bearers are the easiest starter fish: Swordtails, mollies, and guppies. Neon tetras and other tetras are really easy and hardy. Some swordtails/mollies can have nice freckled colourings, and tetras are always a good addition for some color (neons are just abundant and cheap, but can be prone to diseases due to how they are tank bred these days). Whitecloud minnows look nice and are quite hardy as well. All of these are relatively cheap and good for cycling a tank. DON'T overstock, get only a few fish at the start (3-5 swords/mollies/guppies or 4-6 neons). If you buy a product called "Nutrafin Cycle" it will drastically speed up your cycling process, in some cases you can be fully cycled in as little as 1-2 weeks. Later on you could consider leopard/zebra danios, paradise fish, corydoras catfish Otocinclus are a good first fish for maintaining algae, hardy and easy going. Just will need to feed them some blanched courgette, algae wafers or sinking bottomfeeder pellets as you won't have any algae yet. Later on you can consider getting a dwarf community cichlid, something like a bolivian/blue ram or dwarf gourami.

Nice fish :thup: What kind of lighting do you have? Why did you opt for no substrate?

When you get excess proteins in your water you will notice an oily sheen on the surface of your water. This is dissolved proteins which collect at the surface of your water, and they limit the exchange of oxygen into your tank. In small tanks or tanks with low protein load, you can redissolve the proteins back into the water using an overflow or a surface skimming function on your canister filter (something like this). Then the proteins can be removed with regular water changes as they are (approximately) equally dissolved in your water rather than collecting on the surface (where it is rather hard to remove them during water changes). Alternatively you can use surface agitation with a powerhead to redissolve them, but in little tanks the amount of agitation you need can be unattractive.

Depends entirely how you build it, if all edges face outwards from the enclosure then you can't really. I built it this way and also sealed the corners with 100% silicone just for easy cleaning, but it wasn't entirely necessary. Certainly a few edges is better than 100% uncovered surface area with unsealed mdf. You could always try unsealed mdf like alan says, but in my opinion do something once and do it right. The potential is there for something to go wrong, so why go through all the effort and expense of building an enclosure with the potential for something to go wrong? Not worth it in my opinion. I tried an aquarium once with MDF, it warped badly within 6 months and started dropping bits of mdf (and hence mdf glue) into my tank, would never do it again.

I've personally never seen a fish store that sells marine fish/corals that DOESN'T sell live rock. It is incredibly abundant, it is basically free money for them because they just put it in their sump and sell it for a bit extra over dead rock. Where did you find that RO water? He hasn't added any live rock at all and said he had no intention of adding any. In all of your examples you are using live rock, he has used none. It WILL take months with NO live rock, and just doesn't make sense not to get live rock. I think most people will say that a skimmer is unnecessary in a tank that size, as long as you are doing water changes. Especially since the aquanano 40 has an overflow box there which essentially redissolves protein. But of course up to you, if you have the money to spare it definitely can't hurt.

I strongly recommend spray painting the back of your tank black, it looks MUCH nicer than those stock backgrounds. Also, you've already bought it, but personally I think sand looks much nicer than that gravel. White or black silicone sand are boss :bggrn:

We stir ours up regularly, to airate the soil and make sure it is moist enough. Not sure if this is necessarily the correct thing to do, but our worms have been reproducing at a rate greater than what we can feed out, so it can't be that bad.

Mdf for your enclosure isn't good, it can absorb odours and moisture and become warped and unsanitary. Melamine is the recommended wood to use for a DIY enclosure, with sliding glass front and vents. You've also missed the boat on hatchlings, the season has pretty much come to an end so you will really struggle to find one anyway (although there is one or two adults on Trademe). Heat lamp, just use a ceramic heating element and thermostat. These can be had from ebay for like $30 shipped total. Don't use heating tiles, beardies can't really detect heat beneath them so they can overheat. Black ceramic tiles are good for a base of your enclosure, though. I personally use the ceramic heater + thermostat on the "cold" end (to maintain ~28 degC) and a Philips brand floodlight (100w) on the "hot" end, along with an energy saving bulb and the fluorescent UV bulb. Use the floodlight on a dimmer to play around with the basking temperature to get it right, but the floodlight is a warm white and not a cold white (and I've found mine prefers the cold white). Quite a few lights in there but I think it is optimal. If you are going to the states, the only thing I would recommend getting would be some good cheap florescent bulbs. Arcadia are one of the better ones, also Reptisun.

I have often wondered this.