spooky

In general a pond freezes from the top down - almost all the heat gets lost from the surface. So yes, the bottom is warmer than the top, but not by a lot. The real advantage of having a deeper pond is that it is more water to cool per unit surface area, so it cools slower than a shallower pond. Therefore it won't get as cold in the first place. If the water is moving that will discourage ice formation, but I doubt a bucket floating around will do enough to stir things up to stop ice formation. A bubbler will definitely keep a hole open, although I'm not sure I would bother. Down here in Dunedin people keep goldfish outside over winter (my mother-in-law for one). I think you'll be fine.

A very long time ago, due to an unfortunate incident involving my sister, I had a heater fall off the glass onto a zebra danio. It eventually died in a similar manner. Internal hemorrhaging I guess. Although I can't see how your fish could have got such a nasty knock in transit.

Just a final comment to say how this has all been sorted out. Firstly the builder postponed the work until the end of this month so we are going to be around to deal with it. Secondly we purchased the house next door, so we're going to run an extension cord. I'm not entirely sure that purchasing another house for this purpose is entirely practical, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately we are going to rent the new house eventually, so it can't be an extra-large fish room.

You forgot the automatic lemon juice dispenser! Depending on what you make it from you may also have forgotten cross-bracing.

The only problem with a light meter is that it won't tell you what the intensity at the photosynthetic wavelengths is (not without a filter at any rate). As a footnote: A black-body at 14000K would have a peak wavelength at 200nm - well into the UV (visible light is roughly 750-400nm). It wouldn't be any good for plants, fish or passing humans.

You are right, but I was trying to keep it simple (although maybe four paragraphs wasn't simple). WIth a new fish tank the most likely problem is ammonia/nitrites/high nitrates. In my opinion a water change is unlikely to upset water parameters, then again I live in a hard water area and things like pH absolutely refuse to shift no matter what stupid things I do.

Doing it a week after introducing the fish should be fine as long as you didn't put too many in. Watch them carefully, if they start to show signs of distress, e.g. clamped fins, gasping at the surface, change the water sooner. After that 20% once a week should be OK. It depends on your filters, whether you have a lot of plants, how much you feed and that sort of things. Once again, if the fish get distressed, increase the frequency (or amount) of the water changes. Also remember to add fish slowly, a few a week after things have settled down (the settling in period can take several weeks). This allows the bacteria that process the fish waste to adapt to the new levels without poisoning your fish with excess ammonia. Ideally you test the levels of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, but by just taking things slowly and keeping an eye on your fish you should do everything right anyway. The problem with tap water is that it often has chlorine in it. Leaving it to stand for a few days lets the chlorine react away. The alternative it to either use a non-chlorinated source (e.g. rainwater) or to use a dechlorining agent ("water ager") which you buy from the pet store. Water that has been left to stand is better, but water ager is one of the few chemicals that I feel comfortable using. As for temperature, ideally it should be the same temperatur, but it shouldn't matter for small water changes. Rainwater cools the water slightly in their natural habitat so it isn't a big issue. You don't want it too cold though, so if you aged it outside during winter you should let it come up to room temperature in a warm room. I avoid the problem by using warm water and water ager.

One of the local stores down here has one set up as a marine (actually it was the next size of tank down). Originally they has a single reef fish in it and have now switched it to seahorses. It is not at all clear that this lot know how to do marine stuff properly though. Certainly no corals or anemones.

My individual male krib has caused a lot of trouble, even without the encouragement of a mate. As a result my community tank is now contains only fish that are either fast or inconspicuous. This is probably just a particularly bad individual, but they certainly have the potential for causing chaos.

I have to say you have done very well to make a nice looking tank with articles I would consider "tacky" (blue gravel?! ). Having more plants is good, but not essential. They provide a place for fish to hide and help with filtration. BTW that fish in front of the orange rock is an angel fish. Good luck and keep an eye on the water quality.

Brian, if the plant growth has slowed you might also want to look at adding fertiliser. The plants generally come pre-loaded with trace elements, but if these aren't present in your aquarium then growth will start to slow down after a month or so as their internal store of trace elements runs out. I find I don't get decent growth without fertilizer and CO2, but neither should be necessary. Light is necessary though, but only about 8 hours a day. Of course if you shorten the lighting cycle, you then have to try and synchronise the shorter hours with when you are home to enjoy it.

Less light (shorter duration, not fewer tubes) and more plants would be the long-term solution. Try keeping the lights off for a few days to knock it back a bit (any plants won't care). You could also check for excessive phosphate levels, but I've never done that (and the only solution is to feed less and remove the phosphates when you do water changes). That is the conventional wisdom backed up by good scientific reasoning, but I should point out that my algae problems finally went away when I added more fish, started feeding more and did fewer water changes . :-?

The way to deal with excess nitrate is simply more water changes. This time it might be a better idea to reduce the number of chemicals you add and avoid other changes. You will need to dechlorinate the water, and using chemicals for that is probably OK if you are in a hurry to bring nitrates down. Letting the water stand for a day would be better though. With so much going on it is hard to figure out exactly what might have been the problem. Hopefully someone with a bit better disease knowledge can spot what was wrong with the swordtail. One detail you haven't supplied is what the fish load is like. For reading the tests, use good light and try tilting the vial of liquid with respect to the light to get a better match with the colour scale. Oh yeah, and rather than algae rid chemicals, try reducing the light period in the tank. Turning the lights off for a couple of days can knock back a bad outbreak. The fish don't mind lack of light nearly as much as algae rid.

The flower-pots have been breeding nicely too :-)

Rather than risking your nice bettas finding out if you got it right, why not put your least-favourite live-bearers in there for a week and see what happens? Everything you have done should speed up the cycling process, but how much do you want to risk? Not that I'm an expert at this sort of thing, just paranoid.

Glass catfish grow theirs back too (there is only so many times that they can sneak up on another fish and prod them before they get a violent response). I was under the impression that rough substrate (like Alan has) irreparably damages corys. It may just be that the whiskers don't get a chance to grow back before they're worn down again.

Aqua, if you really want some pm me your address, etc. You may have to wait a month though, between recent pruning and liberating some specimens to see how they go floating, I don't have a lot to spare right now. That said, h. diformis is the plant that grows best in my tank and I am continuously propagating it. I will definitely have more in the future, so if you, or anyone else, wants some and are prepared to wait, contact me.

Must give it a try then, I've got more than enough to experiment with.

Wouldn't h. diformis tend to anchor itself pretty quickly? My experience with the plant (which I haven't tried to use as a floater) is that it sends out lots of long roots that dig in and become very thick when they hit the gravel. It also has a tendency to grow sideways for a while to give the roots a new place to anchor, I have one that is rooted both sides of a large rock because of this. That said, it certainly provides the desired effect of lots of bushy leaves at surface level, even when planted. Unfortunately it tends to be sold in the emersed form (as hummingbird discovered) and has to grow into the immersed form.

If my memory is correct then they are reasonably aggressive predators. This memory is rather old and of something I read in a book as opposed to personally observed, so its accuracy is questionable. Leave it in that container you photographed it in. If, after a while, all the daphnia are gone and it looks plumper then that might give you an indication of its intentions.

I can't help you much, but I don't think the mixture of freshwater crays and fish is a good thing. I have recollections of a friends pond many years ago where they put crays and goldfish in together, the goldfish didn't last more than a week. The crays were the number one suspect..

Assuming everything is level the extra thickness won't harm (unless you get to a ridiculous height). It's just like a matress, you can easily have one too thin to be comfortable, but after a while extra thickness makes no difference until you find it difficult to get into bed.

Loaches are a little more resiliant than most fish to being out of water, so if it is still alive it will probably be fine. I think the sensitivity of loaches to medication is due to a lack of scales. So be careful. Good luck.

My skunk loach happily feeds from the surface. Although this is in part driven by me not being very good about keeping the bottom feeders well fed (and the fact that the bristlenose monopolises anything that hits the bottom). Splitting the food works. I drop one half in at the usual place and wait for the boisterous fish to go for it (i.e. about five seconds). Once they are happily occupied drop the other half in at the other end of the tank. The fish that are holding back will then get a chance with the new lot. Failing that, just use food that disperses quickly (mix the frozen food with warm water to melt it and make it slushy).

I was up on a high country station recently and a lot of the tarns up there had all sorts of interesting plants growing in them. If I'd had a plastic bag with me, and hadn't known that they wouldn't get planted for a week, I would have grabbed some there and then. I suspect all you need is a reasonably still, reasonably shallow area of water.