fishy-fish

Actually she would be turning 48 this year

Mine is connected to a cannister filter hose at the moment. You could by a reducer. Local hardware stores should sell them along with farming supply stores. The stuff mainly used for irrigation, trophs etc.

check on shipping rates etc. Ordering from USA can get expensive. fish-street have a shipping calculator to NZ which is exact. It goes on weight. It's pretty handy. I have the single LOC line on my new 200L tank. Great water spread.

It's called Loc Line and I get mine from fish-street cheap as chips. Here's the link: http://www.fish-street.com/water_movement It takes about a week to arrive and probably worth grabbing a few extra bits and pieces to make it worth while :thup:

welcome back to the hobby! I too have recently returned to fish keeping after having a spell out of it, but I think my 15 year hiatis dwindles in comparison! Glad to have you here :thup: Any thoughts on what you may stock your new tank with?

went to animal antics by bayfair. All in all, not bad. Pretty average display of africans, with some dodgy specimens being sold as zebras, but they had a a nice adult pair of lumpheads at $30 each. It seems tauranga is in need of a decent LFS if this is the best on offer. HFF should open up shop #3...

Hey all, I'm in tauranga this weekend and wouldn't mind checking out some of the local LFS. Any recommendations? First priority is africans, but keen on all fish really.

Refer to my first post

As the water temp changes coming into winter or depending on what time of day I do the water change will have an effect on how much I change. In summer I can comfortably do 50% but in winter 20-30% would be max as the water is a few degrees colder. I simply aim to fill the tank back up and drop temp to 23. Never had a fish with bloat yet... touch wood!

cold water changes works for my malawis but I don't keep any tangs (not yet anyway). 50% water change then add cold water. Drops the temp to around 23 and takes about an hour to get back to 26-27 but it seems to do the trick when it comes to breeding action. Maybe it replacates a monsoon dumping in the wild? P S it makes water changes a billion times easier - I use a garden hose to refill. I just kick back and watch :thup:

wow that's alot of harlequins! Nice apisto too by the way :thup:

:nfs: and nice size too!

I noticed today that my golden spot plec has a yellowish fleshy looking section on his belly :tears: Not sure how long it has been like this. Is it a disease? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Nice one - a good sized tank. Any decisions on what you are going to put in it?

WOW! Nice fish mate! I want them all... !drool:

Look a whole lot like my schwartzi....

Jeepers! That's some impressive growth in 7 weeks! Super healthy plants mate, well done!

That sucks the big one :facepalm: My cannister filter started leaking yesterday. I'd say the o-ring seal has perished but none the less, I am down on filtration at the mo so I can sympathize. Hope it gets sorted for you asap!

Tank looks great Holly. Nice rock work! Will you add any other species?

What size tank did you end up with? :spop:

What size are you after?

Welcome Jacob. Looking forward to hearing about (and hopefully seeing) your journey into fishkeeping. It's an awesome hobby! Definitely decide on fish first. That will decide your tank requirments. :thup:

I got a couple of 20L buckets of beach sand a couple of weeks ago from a local beach which I've been washing out. I wasn't that keen on the browner look that beach sand gives, but caved to impatience and decided to use it. The added PH buffering I'll get will also be beneficial to my africans. For interests sake, I took a PH reading before adding the sand so just straight tap water, and it was around 7.2-7.4. I added the sand, gave it a couple of hours then took another reading and it was 8.8 or possibly higher! I took a photo of the two tests side by side which I'll try and load tomorrow, but if the PH is closer to 9 it's no good for fish right? How high is to high for malawis?

No dice. Placemakers, Carters, Allied Concrete, Firtha local landscaping centre and hardware store and nudda thing. Noone in Whitianga sells silica sand. :facepalm:

Can you get silica sand suitable for aquariums from building suppliers i.e Placemakers?