F15hguy

anyone else hate it when you spend time making a good response only to have it dissapear cuz someone else posted while you were typing?

red rams are just brown rams that are red, never asked why, probably a sex thing, or else they might be blushing :oops:

we'll the knocking back the feeding may be a bit hard, but we will work on the other idea when I get my dwarf puffer I'll bring it round on a play date with your snails

I would arrange the layout so the twisted val eventually reached the surface and kinda draped over creating a shadier are for the java fern and poly to grow, with a nice carpeting effect with the dwarf sag.

cories are easy to breed, all you need is a seperate filled and cycled tank for the breeding to occur (with a few hidey holes), willing participants (2males 3 females preferably), foam filter (cheapest easiest option), heater, bucket of rainwater, a razor blade and an icecream container and air stone get the tank set up and the participants settled down with LOTS of bloodworms/live brineshrimp naupili/whiteworms/boiled egg yolk/mozzie larvae etc... (you get the idea, they want to be FAT) and wait for the next storm front to arrive. as soon as the barometric pressure drops do a 50% water change with unheated rainwater, this normally send them into a spawning frenzy. make sure your heater turns on to reheat the water though eggs are laid near the water line and can be scraped off with the razor blade and put into the icecream container filled with some tank water. float the icecream container in the top of the tank to keep it warm and add the airstone with just enough bubble to keep the water moving without blowing the eggs all over the place. I like to add meth blue here to prevent fungus. but many people dont with good success. wait a couple of days and you should have many tiny "scooters" in the icecream container. feed them on microworms and fry liquid for the first few days (if you can get it live brineshrimp naupili) and then switch them over to fine flake and pellet foods after about a week or 2 depending on growth rates (if they are in a bigger tank they tend to grow faster but are harder to feed without fouling the water.

are you talking about the common ramshorn??? which have jelly like egg masses with small eggs visible in them or the more annoying 'Mini ramshorns' which will breed what ever you do and cannot be stopped!!! (nah jokes, chain loaches LOVE them)

all of those are considered easy to grow, the sag prefers higher lighting though which may make your poly grow a bit stringy

Striata's are good loaches as well. but seriously get a dwarf puffer, im sure you can find a mini tank to keep it in and trust me that lil 1.5cm fish will eat every snail you can give it and more. plus they are as close to pokemon as you can get in a real animal.

wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to just shell out for a skimmer (there are some very nice nano tank ones available nowdays) than keep buying additives?

I wouldn't consider it too much of a prob if a few babies disappeared, most of the time you have problems with too many bristles

a nz mudflat tank works well if you use a 5cm deep live sand bed for denitrifying and HEAPs of water changes. sand gobies are best as they handle just about anything and they are real characters, had mine following me around the tank as i was cleaning, and this was after feeding so it seemed more out of interest than hunger

did you check gills for any damage, larger fish can burn away their gills with ammonia during transport especially if they are put in a small amount of water

cories tend to do best in groups of their own type, but if you have 2 groups then they tend to mix a bit more. try 3 julii's and 3 peppered

wow, where did you get him and when???, hopefully we can track down some more from the same import. I would love to have a go at breeding some of these

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=59522 that was a really fun discussion, learnt a few new things when researching for replies

You should really be stocking with the fish's fully grown size in mind, in the case of fancy type goldfish you are looking at a fish that will grow to around 20cm. keeping a fish in a small tank only stunts its growth in the same way as keeping a kitten in a cat carry cage would stunt it.

wow, go back to poker, at least youl save some $$$

nah, the commercial seller just uses the 2-6mm grade river gravel, and the ranunculus go mental in it

certain pH down products use phosphoric acid which gives a false reading on most test kits.

We have been getting good results from using fine river gravel for the lillies in perforated pots with some fertiliser sticks added, this was recommended from the wholesaler and it works wonders, that way they will absorb their food from the water more and help clean your pond. if not then try the Daltons aquatic mix.

i'd say 6, even if they are breeders, highly social animals, they tend to be shy and dissapear if they are lonely

I would try using the fry liquid foods available, or squeezing the water out of a hardboiled egg yolk (make sure you keep up water changes though that stuff fouls your tank quickly)

a cat nearly killed my boss, bit him pretty bad

take me next time!!! was pic#3 the "select your dinner" resturant?

easy to breed, hard to breed well