spooky

I'm sure we can forgive you. It's not as if none of us have ever make that sort of mistake :-?.

MAF have a PDF file with a list of plants they consider noxious and that you shouldn't be getting, but beyond that what you have already found is the only information I could find on the web about New Zealand aquatic plants when I last looked. Good luck and keep us posted about what you do find out.

I have seen references saying neons grow to 5cm. I don't believe them. It probably started as 1.5 inches, got rounded up to 2 inches and then converted to metric to get 5 cm. I forsee that soon 5cm will get confused with 5 inches, that will get converted back to cm, and then rounded up to 30 cm. Thirty centimeters will become 50 cm on the assumption it was an average size. Someone will correct the mistake, but mistype the c and before you know it we will have 5 m long neon tetras savaging small children who get too close to the rivers edge.

For making a moss wall, try this article. http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/plants/leong_Moss_Wall.html I guide my java moss along the ground by staking the longer bits down with toothpicks.

You missed an `i' at the end of the first link Ballistic. http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2004.cgi

It is disturbingly easy for these things to happen. Many years ago, with a large goldfish tank, I had a siphon hose sitting on top with one end dangling outside the tank. The other end slipped into the water at some point and somehow it started siphoning. Fortunately I noticed before the water dropped below the half-way point. Strangely enough, almost like Bilbo's case, there was just a small damp patch, a centimeter across, beneath the tank. The leakage has been slow enough that it seeped through the carpet and between the floorboards rather than build up. I was lucky, the fish barely noticed. Sorry to hear about your loss Bilbo.

Experimentation has revealed that my Kribensis will come out of the water for food. I don't know how far it will go, that will require further tests. The food in this case was frozen bloodworms, but it has even come out for flake. It's a greedy fish.

I have had my krib eat out of my hand. Not that I would call the way it does it friendly, but they are at least capable of it. About half of my fish recognise when I am in the room and am about to feed them. The other half just notice the first lot and come out. Oddly enough the krib will be right against the glass the moment I walk in the room, but the glass catfish wait until I am in front of the tank before coming out. My skunk loach also comes out the moment I walk in the room, but I think it just follows the kribensis around (that pair have a disturbing relationship).

I had a normal amazon sword which started having problems despite everything else in the tank growing well. The ends of the leaves fell off and I was about to pull it out. Instead I moved it into a clear area in the middle of the tank and out from under the Hygrophilia Diformis which had grown up around it. As a result it has sprouted three new leaves in the past week (after a couple of months of being dormant). My guess is the better light, and less competition from its neighbours helped. OK, so it's not exactly the same plant and not exactly the same problem, but I thought I'd share anyway .

One other good point about Aqua One tanks: they don't skimp on the lighting. This is good, because adding more would be difficult. The light levels are more than good enough for most plants (the limiting factors in my tank are CO2 and nutrients) and there aren't any dark corners in the tank. I might as well balance the good point with a bad one; the rounded corners on the tank are awful to try cleaning with a conventional magnetic algae scraper.

Dawn: The inlet touching the gravel isn't a problem, but it does mean that you can't have the gravel too high around it or else you block it. So you can't slope the gravel up to the back of the tank. As for the cable, it seems to work fine with mine and the two halves of the hood sit as they should. It is snug, an air hose (which is slightly wider than the power cable) get crimped very slightly so that should give you an idea of the size. It may just be a matter of manufacturing variation. Caryl: The filters in the 850 are in little trays that sit below a spray bar. So they can overflow, but then they overflow into a bigger tray (which is the bit that sits on the tank) and that has some large holes down into the tank. I have had the individual trays back up a bit, once to overflowing, but the water all went straight back into the tank. KM: I have found the filters to work quite well with respect to water conditions. Even when I didn't have a lot of plants in it there were very few problems. But I suppose it all depends on what fish you have, how many plants, and how picky you (or the fish) are about these things.

I have an AR850. While I found it good for getting started, most of what you need works right out of the box, but the integrated design gives me some hassles. Access is difficult. To reach the back you have to remove the lighting hood and even then it is a little awkward (and you can't see what you are doing without another light). The inlet for the filter is too low and touches the gravel. Although you could cut the tube down as at least one other person around here has done (can't remember who it was right now). You need to have the water level at least half-way up the pump or it doesn't work properly. Filling the tank right to the top avoid any problems and looks good to. I haven't struck Dawn's cable problem, I feed the cable out between the two sections of the hood. There are some good points: The filters are really easy to deal with. It has a good, strong, current (which may not be a good thing depending on your fish) and the water gets plenty of aeration without the need for air stones or the like. Hope this helps.

Oh yeah ! Actually agro isn't quite the right word. "Very boisterous" might be a better description. My one tends to chase new-comers away from its caves (i.e. all of them) although this tends to settle down after a few days and everyone lives happily ever after. The other thing it does is swim up to a fish, usually my kirbensis, and wiggles around it in very close contact. Not exactly family viewing. The kribensis has learnt to ignore this. On the other hand, it has never bitten any other fish and only chases fish to get them out of its caves. I suspect it is lonely. I didn't actually buy it, it came in a batch of plants from the LFS. Since it was unplanned I have never quite got around to getting it a mate.

The mucking around might also affect the fish. My tank (and the plants) is there for the fish, not the other way around.

The usual reason for needing to add fertiliser is if the plants are lacking in trace elements (iron being the one all the aquarium fertilisers advertise). When the plants are new they have a good stock of them, so for now there is no need for fertiliser. If you have very few fish in the tank then nitrates may also be a problem, but this is also unlikely if I remember your plans correctly. So for now don't do anything. You may want to add fertiliser later if: a) They start developing brown patches (I'm thinking of leaves here, I don't know how to describe it with grassier plants) develop holes, etc. This is a sign of a nutrient or trace-element deficiency. b) You really want more growth, You will find they do an initial growth spurt and then slow down, you may become disatisfied after that. However there are two other things which may be missing: light and CO2. Being a small, and therefore reasonably shallow tank, light shouldn't be a big problem. CO2 is relatively simple, but by that stage it is a sign you are beginning to get obsessive. Another word of warning: I have found that some plants just refuse to grow while those around them are growing a centimeter a day. Rather than try and figure out why I have just replaced them with plants that like my tank. A new plant is cheaper than a bottle of fertiliser.

Warren: Thanks. I had already found most of it, so I'm glad I'm not missing too much. Plecs: Around here Otos aren't always available, but even when they are they tend to be unobtrusive and hard to notice. Especially when kept in a tank full of mollies as they tend to be at the LFS.

Sorry about the shark recommendation, not a good move, I was trying to visualise something with a third of the volume of my AR850 and managed to over-estimate. It was the classic mistake of forgetting that while I have 100 litres of water, the actual tank volume is greater than that. Now I've looked up the tank size, stay small.

The tetra with the red eye is a red-eyed tetra. Which might seem simple enough, but just to confuse you I have also seen them called yellow-banded tetras because of the yellow band that borders the black band across the base of the tail. The Latin name is Moenkhausia Sanctaefilomenae, unambigious, but unpronounceable too. I haven't kept any in recent times, but they are meant to be reasonably hardy fish. Don't know about flag fish. There is more than one fish commonly called a silver dollar (according to my references anyway). One grows quite large, the other is a largish, but more normal sized tetra. Just looking at the data I wouldn't recommend either for your tank (but your pet store may not be selling either of the ones in my book). You might also want to look at the smaller rasbora, like harlequins. Or possibly danios. Barbs can be trouble, although the cherry barbs are both small and placid (tiger barbs are just trouble). For feature fish, things I have had experience with that might suit your tank: One of the smaller loaches (not a clown loach, they grow large). They are bottom dwellers, but have plenty of personality (well, my skunk loach does ayway). A small gourami would also be nice. Maybe a sword-tail. A red-tailed black shark might fit, but they can be picky about their tank mates (mine hates tiger barbs). You look as though you have figured most of it out. Although, since it is a smaller tank, I might recommend Otos rather than a bristlenose for algae eating purposes. Just because they are a smaller fish. Having said that, a bristlenose is a far more amusing fish to watch (assuming it isn't hiding). Some other comments: I restarted with an aqua-one tank too (although a larger one) and they are great for this purpose because you get decent lighting and filtration without having to think about it (there are enough other things to worry about starting out again). The only real problems I have are getting good access to the back of the tank without taking the filter off and seeing what I am doing once I have taken the lights off (again, to get better access). Another thing you may want to try is adding plants. As Dawn has pointed out, large snails and plants are not necessarily compatible, but plants offer some advantages. They give places for the fish to hide in. They also help with the water quality (as long as you don't have too many dead leaves floating around). The Aqua-one tank will have good enough lighting for the plants, but if you want good growth life gets more complicated (fertiliser, CO2 addition, etc. etc.). When stocking my tank I got some plants whenever I got fish. Some plants didn't grow well, some I decided I didn't like, but others did grow and those are the ones I kept.

What is the very bare, stalk-like plant in the middle at the back (also visible behind the discus in the first and thrid pictures) ?

I found keeping the lights off for a couple of days knocked it back. After that I shorten the period the lights are on and made sure the plants grew well (added CO2, fertiliser). Ths hasn't rid me of it completely, but it definitely improved the situation. Of course I cut back to 10 hours/day with the same lights (I have the same tank) so there is probably not a lot more you can do in that direction. The canonical way to beat algae is to have the plants out-compete it, but it seems they are getting all they could need. Is it possible you are over-fertilising?

I was thinking in terms of time rather than number of fish. In the end it is the product of the two (and what it has been historically if there is not filtration/aeration). Well that should solve any ammonia or lack of oxygen problems . How about filling it with water from the good tanks ? Then you start off knowing that the water is not contaminated. Good luck.

I'm not sure I understand the situation correctly, but I would have thought that without a filter or any other high-surface area places for bacteria to build up then ammonia levels would rise rather quickly. Of course gasping at the surface is also a sign of a lack of oxygen in the water. I'm not sure what you should be able to get away with in these situations, but I suspect you have found the limit the hard way. Maybe a water change at day four from here on in.

One thing that immediately struck me looking at these circuits is that they will all work, but are hopelessly overbuilt. OK, the computer-controlled switch isn't but it could probably benefit from an opto-isolator to keep the 12V away from the PC's parallel port. As for the temperature controller, the controllers we use for our lasers are just as complicated and they are PID controllers that regulate the current through the heater to stabilise the temperature to a few thousandths of a degree. The CO2 controller has the same problem (the circuit does essentially the same thing as the temperature controller). These circuits aren't wrong, but it seems they could be made a whole lot simpler.

It is quite possible the thermostat on offer is overkill. We used to have these really nice ones where I worked in the states. They let you set all sorts of parameters, had a digital display, could regulate the current rather than just being on/off and so on. They cost about $100 US and are completely over the top for a fish tank. They weren't water-proof either, which is why I know how much they cost. On the other hand, if they were wired correctly, the temperature would be constant to well within 0.1C. You can almost certainly find something cheaper that is more suited to your needs Shae.

I use a teaspoon of yeast, half a cup of sugar and 750 ml of warm water with the sugar well dissolved. It lasts me three weeks to a month, I haven't ever tried to optimise this mix since it works fine for my system. Exact results depend on the temperature of the bottle, how much of the CO2 dissolves in the water and what the phase of the moon is.