GrahamC

In the past I think I just stuck a coat hanger wire onto a soldering iron with more wire to secure it. And when hot enough it just slides through the polystyrene.

Actually it's a 1919 australian half-penny ( bronze ) worth all of $1.20. I can sand it down and use it as a GPU heat sink!

nice ... I found a penny yesterday amongst my grandfather's possessions. Now I know what to do with it! :thup:

Ok, I was wondering why they are sitting above the water line in the tank... ammonia and nitrites are nil. And the surface is covered in duck weed so I would hope nitrates are nil too.

Is that insulation polystyrene they sell at the hardware shops too thick for the tank (aesthetically ) ? I wonder if one can buy cut offs instead of a huge sheet of the stuff. For cutting I imagine one uses a heated wire or something.

As per subject. If the pond snails stay in the water, is that a good sign the water is okay for the fishes?

BTW, the correct spelling is 'Piscine" and not "Piscene" though both forms seem to be used with equal frequency here. So perhaps it's a NZ idiom in evolution :smln:

Now that you know what it is, you can start a de-sensitization program so that you lose the allergy!

if it's a water borne virus infection, perhaps you can reduce the viral load by using a UV filter?

May be that is all that survived? Other predators might have eaten the white cloud mountain minnow eggs.

I'm thinking of building a tank divider to keep the plants safe ... but so far they're not eating the Xmas moss and other cuttings I got from Sarah, and the flaxes I bought from Animates seem to be okay.

Do you need an Epipen cheap?

Ahh....I should try and borrow one. My daughter's Canon camera can't take anything decent even though it has a fish setting. I was about to break out my old SLR and get some AS400 film!

Ok, but the plant I do this to is not rooted but weighted with lead. Stems are not crushed, and I can loosen the weights. Rooted plants don't survive in a gold fish tank.

Fish may have varying resistance to piscine tuberculosis, and it's the sick ones that get infected. As always, the treatment is prophylaxis by maintaining pristine water conditions.

Here's something that I discovered serendipitously. I had a 50L black bin from Bunnings ( all of $9) that I threw my tank water into. I also chucked in a few pond snails. When my plants look a little pale from lack of lighting, and covered in diatoms or whatever, I chuck them into this bucket which I leave in the full sun. A week later, all the algae and diatomaceous material has been cleaned off the leaves. There are brown tracks on some of them which I take to be snail excreta. Some leaves get nibbled but not many. I then put the plant back into my goldfish tank, and the goldfish then voraciously clean off the snail excreta, and any clinging pond snails for desert. My plant then looks like a bought one! Methods I read before include removing plants and washing them by hand under a tap leaf by leaf were tedious and did not work for the really stuck down growth, and also lead to leaf damage from my hands. This method is way better as long as you have a goldfish tank to do the secondary cleaning of snails and slime. Snails can carry diseases so I have managed to cultivate these from eggs. Your millimeterage may vary.

I was pointing out that if he has thoroughly cleansed this pond, and destroyed the biological filter, he may now expect the whole pond to recycle. It won't be just from the fish waste but other plant material that falls into the pond and starts to decay.

OT, but how do you manage to take these pictures ie. what camera setup are you using?

Maybe you need to get some crayfish pots lol

Isn't that brown stuff cyanobacteria and not an algae? And why are you replacing the plants frequently?

Google Koi Pearl for a way to see your goldfish in a murky pond.

Normally one does a 25% water change or in an emergency 50% water change. The fact that your goldfish had babies indicated that the pond was in good shape, so unfortunately what you did was the worst thing you can do. Green algae is not harmful to the fish, and if the vegetation were rotting, the filter was working sufficiently. You don't mention what else you cleaned but hopefully the biological filter is still in place. You need to get an ammonia test kit to check ammonia levels in case you've caused your whole pond to recycle.

Perhaps your pond fish are herbivores?

Not to the gourami's taste .. he captured it a few times and then spat it out. A swarm of fancy guppies then gave chase. Amazingly the waterboatman evaded them all for at least a minute before succumbing to becoming afternoon tea.

Great .. maybe the gourami I picked up yesterday will like them more than I do