JaSa

I just asked them a few more questions for you. 5050 are better (brighter) then 3528 and even if they have double the LED number per meter without the Lumen (lm) to compare "double" doesn't mean anything. And looking at the watt/m I have a feeling it is the 3528 LED... Example for numbers you can buy out there: 300x 3528 LEDs in 5m strip (60/m) = 1500lm (~ a standard 100w light bulb) 600x 3528 LEDs in 5m strip (120/m) = 3000lm 300x 5050 LEDs in 5m strip (60/m) = 2400lm 600x 5050 LEDs in 5m strip (120/m) = 4800lm JaSa

Have a look on the net. Heaps of examples for every taste out there... I personally like that one: Click Two LED strips cut to length and glued in a aluminium profile that hangs from the ceiling. Very simple + looks great. If you use google translate it will give you lot's of information and technical details...

LED strips are what they are, just strips. You have to make them fit for your needs. Dunno about a place that sells them per meter and all setup, sorry. Pretty sure HFF have LED hoods for sale + there are a few clearance sales of LED light hoods on TM which look pretty good...

I personally have them mounted under the shelving - so no housing needed: or used a old cable duct as housing for the top row: Since you can cut them every third LED it is pretty easy to get it to the length you need. If you want them in a double row to have it brighter just adds a bit of more soldering to the whole installation but no big deal:

Yeah, that's the type I used. Cut it to length, bit of soldering, silicone, a old notebook power adapter - all done...

Hi there. I build my own lights for my breeding unit using cold-white 5050 LED Strips with 60 LEDs per meter. It gives me enough light for javafern, javamoos, duckweed and vallisneria spiralis - but the two last ones are growing slow. Have two strips (2x1m) 20cm above the 25cm deep tanks. That gives me 1600 lumen in total for 70L of water and uses 29 Watt which gives me a light yield of 55 Lumen/Watt. In comparison a 18 Watt T5 (which would put out ~ the same amount of Lumen) gives between 45 and 100 Lumen/Watt - but only lasts 16000 hours compared to 50000 for the LED. Another point is that the T5 puts light out 360° (up & sides = need reflector or hugh wast) but the LED only 120° down into the tank. I hope these numbers (lumen, distance to ground, tanksize and plants) give you an idea what works and you will be able to adjust it to your needs. The panel you linked got 112 blue LEDs. Their light yield is low compared to the white ones. It might work but there will be better (more lm per W) panels out there. Check out TM for Aquarium LED lights... Hope that helps, JaSa

Sorry to read that - sucks bigtime Probably the last thing you wanna hear now - but that is the exact reason you have to have a quarantine tank! Every fish I get from the outside has to go through a 4 week quarantine. After one week of acclimatization (food, water, routine) I start a prophylactic treatment with NaCL (non-plus-ultra for livebearer) for a week. In the second week I put a couple of rubbish fish from my stock in the quarantine tank together with the new ones + use water from my tanks to do waterchanges in the quarantine tank. This will show two things: 1.) Is my stock okay with the bugs the new ones will bring in (and they always do bring some !)? 2.) the other way round gives the new ones a chance to get used to my bugs. If everything looks fine after two more weeks they are good to go. In 20 year of keeping livebearers I never had any problems... Hope that helps, JaSa

The problem with breeding guppies is - you continuously run out of tanks. And I just gave away about 300 fish from different lines and crosses as feeders to get more room!!! So many different batches of fry to hatch, keep males & females separate, put certain fish together for mating, ... I threw this little one together last weekend. 35l existing tank, cut two dividers and glued them in. Used some waterpipe, O-rings and 6mm elbows to build three little TLH (no, it's not just an air filter, it's a TLH! ) and some little pots together with some expanded clay aggregate and crushed oyster shells make up the simple filters. The light I made out of a LED-Strip left-over and a cable duct as housing. Bit of soldering - all done Now there is some Bleeding Heart Platy fry in the middle, F1 of AlbinoBlond x Blue on the left and F1 of Albino x Blue on the right. Will need two more tanks in a few days to keep males and females separate - to be continued ... :digH:

Cool ! Congratulation, this will be a :cr8: for you

In this world, money can buy everything - even a tank in a NZ quarantine facility. I wish I could come up with that amount. What a waste to spend it on discus ... :digH:

Animates had them a year ago: 10x for $30 @blueether: Should check my give-away feeder fish better 8) JaSa

Leopard Fish are perfect...

Four posts, a bit of string, a tarp from the warehouse and a bin. Tie two corners of the tarp up high to the posts (or use the washing line) and the other two low and place the bin in the middle on the low end. Big area = heaps of water. No rain => store tarp in bin and put in garage. I'm sure you can use some #8 wire as well to make it 100% kiwi-style :rotf: JaSa

Use decapsulated brine shrimp. No work, no waste, a third cheaper and more nutritious - but less fun to watch ... JaSa

Good but hard to get your hands on the flapper valves after they are stuffed. 6 month backorder for a part isn't funny ... JaSa

Gambusia in every drain, stream, pond, ... in the Waikato. On every single farm I go and have a look I see them... They are in the War Memorial Park Duck Pond in TA aswell + some nice eel's JaSa

Go to RD1, Wrightson, Farmlands, ... and ask for a returned 200l drum. Pay $5 in the social club and away you go. If you know a farmer he will probably pay you to take them away! The drums had acid for the milk plant in them and after triple rins they are good to use. There are 50, 60, 100 and 200l drums out there... JaSa

Nice fish ! Looks like I have to shop with you at some stage to get the long dorsal fin's Cheers, JaSa

Tell me all about it &c:ry This is one of my buggers I keep at the moment rather then put him in the feeder tank. There might be the time when I need a double sword and then I have something to start with - but it is a horrible quality...

Hi caserole I have seen the 'Albino Blue Neon' Guppies before on a show and they are very, very beautiful - especially if you have a black background in the showtank together with cold white LED light. Spectacular! Hopefully they will look like you want them to be ! :nfs: Do your 'blue' females have a slight purple shine on their sides? Compared to 'grey' females from the same litter they are slightly lighter coloured grey and have that purple sheen on them. Have to take a picture of one of them... Well, and tails - I'm not even selecting for them at the moment, lol. I just want them closest to the wild type as possible. I have some blond wild type upper sword's in horrible quality swimming around. Some very long time down the line I will try to breed a decent upper sword guppy because i haven't seen any of those here in NZ before. Have you seen some upper, double or under swords in good quality here before? Cheers, JaSa PS: That's one of them. In reality the blue shine is more purple but I can't catch that with my camera See the two small blue spots an the tail? Some have more spots, not too sure what to make out of that ...

As I said, I bought the male from the first three pictures so no information on his status, sorry His sons in F2 are with a not related blond female and to get the rare one (double recessive) I had to cross sisters with brothers from F1. So all up I wouldn't call them inbreed - yet. But I will keep lines from now on to experiment and achive tripple recessive = 'White' or sometimes called 'Super White' - depending which "Blue" is used... Thanks for your answer & liking my fish, JaSa PS: This is where most of the breeding is done atm: and this is where the new fishroom goes:

Pretty quiet here so I thought I add some of my guppies... This one here has got the base colour Blue ('rr' which means no Red can be shown on body - not sure which blue it is since there is more then one known): Old boy by now but together with a few albino-blond ('aabb') females to hopefully create basecolour White ('aabbrr' - only 1 out of 15 fish in theory) in F2. I found him in the feeder tank full of "cold water guppies" and since I never saw this basecolour before in NZ I bought him. Because there was no maching female I first put him together with a blond female and these are a few sons of him in F2 ('bbrr'): My goal is to have a short finned White guppy with only the iridophores showing a silver-white glitter on the body. Then I have a few Albino Guppies swimming around: Don't like the long tails but the strain is very healthy and is a good source of the albino-gen to play with. Not really selecting them at the moment and they just take care of themselfes. No Guppies but nice anyway - my 'Bleeding Heart' Platy's: Quality of the females is bad but I have to secure this strain before I start selecting for best colour and pattern. Long term goal is to get the albino-gen from swordtails and have a "Albino Bleeding Heart" Platy. And of course favourites - the cute Leopard Fish: Will post more pictures if one of the rare White Guppies gets finally dropped and makes it to adult stage... Cheers, JaSa

5-ish gH after a few days with a BIG waterchange. Smaller changes more frequent keep it more even around that mark I figured. Doing ~20% weekly now. Think it depends on the filter. If you have lots of water flowing through the level might be higher and get there quicker. As I said I have it behind the HMF and that one slowly filters the water. But then the contact time here with the grit is longer so could be the other way round? Try&Error I guess... JaSa

No, they really eat it. I can see them every now and then having a go at the grit pieces. But sure it disolves as well... I have a golf ball size amount in the back of the HMF in a little bag and add a tea spoon of it every four weeks to the sand. This is for a 50L tank. JaSa

I use a little bag of oyster grit behind the HMF and also add grit to the sand and dig it under. Takes a few weeks and it's all gone - snails love it. That + one tea spoon of sea salt per 10l worked for me on rainwater. JaSa