GrahamC

You won't have dissolved organic compounds ( a carbon source ) to act as the electron donor in tap water as a DSB has from the tank water. What about using Purigen instead to remove the nitrates? The denitrators can be quite finicky to run properly from what I read.

I'm visiting upper hutt this week .. do you have an exact address?

You need to feed them carbon eg. alcohol. You don't get carbon from nitrate.

I can certainly consider this once I grow enough to fill my "sump"

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought there would be the population to support it out there.

And in case anyone is thinking of it, not just teenagers who overdose; we'd restrain them, put a large tube through their nose into their stomachs, do lots of 100% water changes and top it off by pouring a slurry of activated charcoal into the person's stomach. I don't recall anyone sucking on those tubes to empty the stomachs using siphon action though! :slfg:

Carbon can remove that yellowy colour you get from dissolved organic compounds. But that might not be good for the plants though in removing them.

Your little mudfish looks a tad similar to a baby xenomorph/alien!

Well enough though I was away for a few days and someone left it turned on so that the batteries were flattened. I think good enough for the purpose of tracking a dog left outside the dairy unless someone unclips it and leaves it behind while dog napping Sherlock!

5 goldfish with a BN in a 80L tank sounds overstocked as well. And BNs can latch on to the goldfish body and damage the slime coat. Is the tank rented, and maintained by the rental company? If so, I've seen a few of these tanks with dead goldfish in them. And these tanks are often tall for space considerations, rather than being wide which is the way goldfish prefer to swim.

This stuff ... and a tangled weave it sure is. It's got bits of fine pumice trapped it in when I pulled it out of the tank.

Good tip. I bought a proximity detector to hang around his neck. the first day I put it on him, he managed to get out of the house, and I used it to locate him next door. Couldn't find him though in the garden .. but that's because he had gone into the neighbour's house where they were looking after him! He also has a tag on him with our home number engraved on it.

The main role of activated charcoal filters is to remove toxins, and chemicals. In a planted tank the charcoal may also remove humic substances which provide nutrients and CO2 for plants. It can be used to combat a heavy algae infestation by removing allelochemicals ( chemicals released by one plant/algae which suppresses the growth of another ), and dissolved organic compounds which provide iron to the algae. So, activated charcoal is not recommended except as a treatment. Reference: Ecology of the Planted Aquarium, Dr Diana Walstad, Echinodorus Publishing, First edition 1999

I'm not concerned if it gets into the main tank because the gold fish will just snack on it. Just wondering if it will do the job though. I can only try to see if it will but I suspect the gold fish produce too much nitrate for anything except a heavily planted tank .. which they would then proceed to demolish.

Very impressive. Can I send my dog to you for remedial training?

In the city we get fined $400 if our dogs are found wandering the streets so we have good incentives to keep them fenced in to prevent such activity. In the end, it should be a researched and informed choice, and vets should provide both sides of the story. I only was given the positives by the vets, and no negatives were mentioned to me. Here's a referenced article from the National Animal Interest Alliance http://www.naiaonline.org/pdfs/LongTerm ... InDogs.pdf with a foreword written by Larry S. Katz, PhD Associate Professor and Chair Animal Sciences Rutgers University.

I'd like to teach my dog not to bite .. he nearly took a chunk out of my hand today .. all bruised and bleeding He's been on crate rest for a few days for a presumed slipped disc, and after carrying him outside to do his thing, tried to carry him back in again. I guess his back is still quite sore. He's normally not aggressive at all... just a fear/pain response I'm hoping.

How can you be off topic in the off topic room?

If there are guys here looking for young male fish, then there might be ....

My neighbour gave me some plants which I have in a small tank, but all the roots were covered in hair algae. Now the bottom of the tank is covered in the stuff. I have managed to remove a lot of it, and have fed it to the gold fish with a good outcome. It gets processed into small cylindrical blocks. I am now wondering since this stuff seems to grow so easily where I can use it as a nitrate reducer. I've seen projects where they grow algae on screens under intense lighting to do the same. But here I could take the algae and feed the fish. I already have a separate tank which is siphon fed from the HOB, and then feeds back into the main tank by siphon as well. I keep some duck and oxygen weed there so that the goldies can't eat it all in one go. Maybe I can just fill it with hair algae instead?

No one really knows what causes hole in the head disease but it is likely multifactorial with causes including stress, infection and nutritional/vitamin deficiency ( calcium, vitamin A, B, C etc ). It does not occur in the wild. Hexamita is said to take advantage of the weakened condition of the fish and to migrate from the gut to the sensory pits which may be already damaged. On the other hand hexamita infections occur without hole in the head. The onset is said to start with a pimple on the head which then deroofs leaving a hole with pus in it, which then clears leaving the hole. I see your picture shows that the abscess is involving a sensory pit, and there are other holes nearby suggesting possible previous episodes. Trauma with secondary infection is also part of the differential diagnosis. But I would have thought one would see an entry wound. http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-health/ ... amita.aspx http://www.worldcichlids.com/diseases/Adamhith.html

The information out there is pretty much biased towards desexing your dogs. All the vets I saw asked me when I was going to have my dog done too. Biologically it didn't make sense to me, and I didn't research the issue at all until I came across some sites the other day. The health issues are mainly it seems with large breeds in terms of the musculoskeletal problems so your pup will be most likely fine. As for pure breed bitches .. I wouldn't have thought the owners would be taking them out when they're in estrus. And should one really have one's own pet "fixed" to accommodate someone else's pet's potential genetic lineage? And if that is the main aim, I don't know why vets don't offer vasectomy instead. The downside of course is that my 10kg dog causes embarrassment when he humps visitors, and sprays every post we walk past ...

Doesn't sound like lymphocystis from the wikipedia description. Perhaps hole in the head for which treatment is lots of water changes, and remove carbon from filters in case it is contributing to some nutritional deficiency.

Well it it's done, it's done, but I'm not aware of any health benefits apart from stopping testicular tumors developing,and prostatic enlargement but lots of potential disadvantages. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutering and also http://www.2ndchance.info/spayneuter.htm Neutering as a form of population control is really aimed at irresponsible dog owners. Responsible dog owners are not the ones who are going to flood the SPCA with litters of puppies. As for the raw food thing, I was going to do that too, but in the end we ended up giving a mixture of raw food, cooked food and dry dog food. It is said you can give raw sharp bones to dogs to eat safely, as long as the dog also eats the pelts and feathers which wrap around the bones preventing them from perforating the gut.

Why neuter the guy? It's not as though he's going to be making puppies, and neutering may cause weight gain, as well as abnormal bone growth.