breakaway

Almost a decade ago, when Linkin Parks' album "Meteora" was quite famous, I was listening to the track "Somewhere I belong" on my computer as I was sigining up to a forum. Just as I clicked onto the "user name" field on the sign up form, I heard the line "I will break away, I'll find myself today" in the song. The rest is history.

I'm pretty sure he has visual impairment. None of my other puffers do it. This puffer also frequently swims into plants and other fish. When I had him in my 200L he used to always hide. I figured this was because he got scared of other fish 'sneaking' up on him - truth is he never saw them until they were 1mm from his face!

I think this puffer is blind, or at least incredibly visually impared. I'm trying to feed him with a pipette, and he keeps lunging for the food but keeps missing. (Watch in HD if you can) Is my hypothesis valid?

What is this "Prime" stuff? Dechlorinator?

I had 3 in my AR380 heavily planted (34L) tank, and they were fine. I now have 6 in my 200L tank and its getting a bit crowded

Good stuff. On the other end of the scale, I'm having terrible luck with puffer fry, and have lost 3 batches so far. They still breed very often, but if I lose my current batch completely (down from 5 to 3) I'm going to give up attempting to raise them I think :-?

I have no idea. You should ask the "journalist" that wrote the article. Probably the same kind of "journalist" that thinks you 'drive' a motorcycle.

Did you read this part?

That's a really well-done tank. Nice work!

Nope, its the cheapest, nastiest asian made garbage money can buy. But I've had mine set up for several months now, and has have others on the forum, and it works perfectly.

In other words, you want a check valve? A plastic check valve can be bought from your LFS. However, I keep hearing that eventually, CO2 will 'wear out' the valve and will allow backflow / syphoning of your aquarium water into the regulator. So, I imported a brass check valve. Works great.

What kind of diffuser are you using land_lubber?

I was talking about the "ready made" units they sell in pet stores, i.e. the Sera CO² systems, the Red Sea CO² systems and the like, - the ones that come with regulator, solenoid, drop checker, diffuser and bubble counter. I believe some of them also come with a small CO2 cannister (like the ones in the soda stream systems.)

http://www.hydroponics.co.nz/bulk-nutrients.html http://www.hydroponics.co.nz/contact.html E-mail them yourself and find out?

Just thought I'd update the thread: I ended up getting 1kg bags each of 1kg potassium nitrate 1kg potassium phosphate 1kg potassium sulphate for $55 from Stocker (link above) Now I'm just waiting for my flourish NPK to run out, then I'll mix up some dry ferts.

Hi, Don't wanna buy double - I already have mine. Here's the solenoid + regulator setup I got - same seller, same model. I can confirm it fits the NZ bottles out of the box: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0578967676 If you want to save a bit of money, you can get a single stage regulator: http://cgi.ebay.com/CO2-Diffuser-Atomiz ... ltDomain_0 or http://cgi.ebay.com/Aquarium-CO2-Regula ... plies_Fish I wouldn't recommend it though, as the single stage regs apparently cause 'end of tank dumps - i.e. when the CO2 tank runs out, a dual stage regulator keeps the operating pressure (i.e. gas going into your aquarium) very stable as the bottle finishes. A single stage reg however will just dump all the gas, at once, into your aquarium and cause harm to your fish. However, if you keep an eye on tank pressure, you can avoid such an event easily by refilling the tank. The tank _SHOULD_ last for several months. Mine lasted for 2 months while gassing both my tanks, but I think that may be because I opened the valve without hooking up the reg to see what would happen And a good amount of gas escaped due to me being overly curious. I'd get the dual stage personally - it's a one time investment. You also need the following parts - US -> NZ wall socket power adapter (if you get the solenoid reg) - Timer (so you can set the CO2 to come on and go off with your lights). My CO2 is on a separate timer - it comes on 1 hr before lights, and goes off 1hr before lights. - Diffuser (Ceramic, In-Line, your choice. I run an in-line one on my 200L, ceramic on my 38L) - Brass Check Valve - Bubble counter (not critical, but makes fine tuning CO2 injection really really easy). - Polyurethane tubing (I recommend the black tubing, not the clear, - their diameters seem slightly different, and I could not fit the tubing onto my my glass diffuser. The black tubing, worked perfectly.) - CO2 Cylinder/Bottle (Obviously). I got mine from a place that sells refurbished fire extinguishers - $200 for a 3.5kg bottle IIRC. $11/refill IIRC. - Drop Checker (checks CO2 saturation - not critical but useful) The above information is all you need to set up your system _b Decided to post it here rather than PM so everyone can benefit from it, rather than pay >$600 for a local package with a 0.5kg cylinder that will be out in half a month.

That guppy has a bent/crooked spine. Might pay reading into some of these search results: http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=bent+s ... =firefox-a

Another advantage with LEDs its that they radiate the heat out the arse end of them unlike conventional lights which radiate heat straight down and evaporate water. Beneficial in marine environments. Depending on your driving current, prepare to install them all on an enormous heatsink.

Fair enough - my mistake. However, $2700 is still short of the $3799 they sell for in Auckland, and the stores that stock these seen haven't been able to shift much stock, probably due to the ridiculous pricing.

I'd ring around pet shops in other cities - Wellington, Christchurch etc. They're likely to have the RSM (250 even) at a much lower price. A RSM 250 sold for a bout $1300 recently from a shop in Porirua.

Fresh or saltwater?

Apparently blood worms are 'nutritionally void', but that's all I've been feeding my puffers for over a year and they are doing great and also spawn every so often.

What are you feeding them? I have read in the past that swim bladder problems are associated with food / gravel blockages of the stomach.

25% a week is fine for a tank that's low to moderately stocked. I'd personally be doing 50% though. Any update on the gourami?

Also, Flourish Comprehensive doesn't exactly contain a lot of phosphorous - look at the ingredients list. I dose 30 mL Flourish Nitrogen 22 mL Flourish Phosphorous 30 mL Flourish Potassium 10 mL Flourish Comprehensive every week after my 50% water change. It's getting expensive, hence my recent thread about switching to dry ferts.