F15hguy

only have unheated tanks atm, i'll hand it off to a mate and see how it goes.

if you have a fry tank I would seperate them as soon as the parents stop trying to bring them all back into the same group, especially if the female strates to colour and fatten up again.

I'll point out that you will most likely end up with dead dwarf cichlids if you mix them with tiger barbs, yet again, kissing gourami will most likely get too big for this tank, remove the tiger barbs and replace with Snakeskin barbs (rhombo barbs) and you would have a rather peaceful but active tank. (althought the ruby (rainbow) shark may become more agressiveas he gets older, normally they are fine though)

you could look at the under tank heating mats, a bit pricey atm but completely hidden, and filter see if you can buy a mini canister, and glass piping. thats as invisible as you can get. or else consider building a partition in the back to conceal the heater and a mini sump filter. other than that looking awesome.

hrmmm I have always noticed that fish under natural lights have better colours, even when brought under artificial lighting, have a look for research about the effects of UVA on fish. but if you just want brighter colours then try picking standard aquarium lights with spectrum that match your fish (i.e. higher in pinks and blues to bring out the pinks and blues in your fish, higher in yellows and greens to bring out the plants and yellow coloured fish) most light bulbs have a small spectrum graph on the side of the packaging.

nope, has a distinct 4 pointed top down view, not 3 pointed like elodea. the pest plant dude said it was not a noxious species but he's not too sure what it is. i must say it grows well in a coldwater tank though.

trimming them doesnt bother them if what my B-nose do to them is anything to go by. btw if you have any trimmings give them to some silver dollars, always good fun to watch them go down like spaghetti

I have an extremely bright red/orange coloured juvenile at home atm stayed red in the transfer from river to low light tank (it has no lighting itself but gets a bit from the tank next to it), i'm gonna keep an eye on him as he ages and see if he changes. i'll post a couple of pics when he decides to be a bit more photogenic.

hellow and welcome

awesome!!!!!! love the photo's, is that a hunting technique or is he just groovy?

interesting, no responses other than some form of rotala, (which I tend to disagree with, its quite different than the rotala's ive seen. I'll hand it over to the local pest plant manager and see what he says

lol, you could pick them up with your hands in this one, gotta love them, pity I don't have a spare tank large enough

wow, keep at it, totally worth it. normally takes me at least 3 months without boiling for just small bits. (and btw blueether, no shipping in rotorua)

got a couple of shots of 2 of the banded kokopu. also new additions this week are 3x inanga (little big bigger this time round :roll: ) and 3 redfins, 1 x male and 2 x bigger females (different population so will be interesting). Its hard to say no to collecting fish sometimes but I put back all of the giants I found and all the smaller inanga and banded I caught last night.

cheers.

so I went for a walk last night and found a massive colony of giant bullies, had no accurate measure but got some good pics against my average sized hand. walked about 250-300m of creek and stopped counting at 20 My first ever giant bully Heaps of shortfins 2 big giants in one scoop doing a fin count for the hell of it (yes I have been reading your posts stella ) little cutie there were 6 in one 2m stretch, only got 2 in this pic though

you can relax now, waiting is over...

Longfinned rosy barb males, those ones in particular are bred in Tga by the local tropical fish farm, ask at your lfs and they should be able to get some in

ok, back to bully behaviour, i'm assuming that adding some giants to my 450L tank would mean that I would have to remove all the redfins (or leave them as "live food")

do you just sit in front of your tank all day taking millions of snaps????, your fish like to pose well for you loving it

maybe the problem is the suppliers continue to supply both retailer and internet retailer at the same rate. I personally would rather visit a shop than sit at a computer. but the shops will not be there much longer at this rate. (plus if they absorb the price increase it still gets passed on, i.e. higher fish prices)

cool, any special tips for spawning them or just extra love? according to the data I have seen the fry are approximately 3mm long so easily able to handle infusoria, good luck. btw if you are sucessful I may be interested in a captive bred specimen.

was wandering the local creeks the other day and found a plant I havent seen before and im trying to ID. it kinda looks like a cross between a ludwigia and a starplant (Heteranthera zosteraefolia) its growing in a permanent creek in medium/low light, and is the dominant plant in the creek, I'll go back and get a couple of photo's hopefully this week. I have not been able to find anything that looks like it on both the FNZAS or the Niwa databses, except the Heteranthera zosteraefolia picture in the FNZAS database but with much shorter leaves and alternating leaves (not arranged in a whorl)

looking for a good place to go smelt hunting as close to Tauranga as possible if anyone knows of anywhere.

ok has anyone done any research on WHY the bullies need to go to sea?, it seems to me that id a diadromous species such as the common could become landlocked then the effect of the ocean trip must be minor enough for a landlocked population to have a sufficient survival rate to evolve. which also brings me to the point, if someone was to get redfins to breed in an aquarium, what would stop them from creating an artificially landlocked population. I currently have a nice male /female pair, and am planning on setting up a dedicated tank to test this theory in the near future. any links to research on redffin spawning would be handy