spooky

In January my house is undergoing major renovations. Fortunately the tank is away from the construction area. Unfortunately all the wiring in the house needs to be replaced, so serious power outages are going to occur. I am not yet sure of the timetable for this devastation, but I am starting to lay plans already in the event that I can't get any power to the tank as it stands (which may yet be a possibility). I have one 100L tank that will be affected by this. My plan is to get hold of my old tank and gear (old = ten years in storage) and set that up at a relatives house. The tank is apparently OK and the filtration should also be OK or easily repairable (undergravel filters and an internal filter, the later having had very little use). Lighting will not be good (essentially two incandescant bulbs). I have some questions: I intend leaving the plants behind. I know from experience they will survive a few days without light, but is the additional knock of a few days without heat going to be a problem ? Assume a broad range of plants, all healthy and growing well. Will the fish be OK with the poor lighting ? I don't trust the old lighting hood at all and would prefer not to use it, will they be happy enough with only daylight from the windows ? Obviously I'm going to start off the temporary tank with some of the water from the main tank and transfer some of the hardier ones across to get it cycling. However, I can't afford to spend weeks slowly building the population up the way I would when populating a tank normally. Any suggestions ? (There are about twenty fish.) When going back the other way, I assume that the main tank will effectively need to be cycled again, but I assume that it shouldn't take as long because there should still be a decent population of bacteria. Is it reasonable to assume that it can be done quicker the other way ? I'll be testing the water, but I'd like to be able to reassure the rellies about how long this tank is going to be hanging around there place. On top of this I'll be going on my honeymoon in the middle of it all. Can I make life more difficult for myself ?

Many, many, years ago I looked after some. Not very successfully, so I'll only comment on the bits I think I got right. They survive happily in cold water and I imagine their requirements for water changes/filtration are similar to other fish. Feeding them was a bit of a pain (swearing removed). I had some meat I was meant to feed them (I forget what type, but it was raw meat) and then had to encourage them to eat it. Unfortunately they are a "wait until it swims past and grab it" sort of creature, so I recall waving the meat on a skewer in front of it's face hoping it would grab it. This didn't always work. I really hope that there is a better way of feeding them. Fortunately, like fish, they don't need a lot of food. They can grow quite large (20-30cm ?) so base your tank size on that sort of length using whatever the formula is for goldfish.

So what is a severum-convict crossbreed called ? Severict ? Converum ?

I was under the impression that the albino cory is usually the albino form of the bronze cory so I would imagine they'd be fine. Admittedly I've never tried it myself. Have the loaches just started hassling the corys or has it been an on-going thing ? My skunk loach has this bad habit of chasing every cave-loving fish that gets added to the tank for the first 24 hours. After that some sort of agreement is reached and everything is fine. Well, it still hassles the kribensis, but that particular kribensis is evil and deserves everything it gets.

The fish with the reputation for sucking onto the side of large flat fish is the Oto, not the SAE. They're quite good except that, as the original article noted, a small percentage of them become "attack otos". I'm with you, suphew, on the bristlenoses. Not an elegant fish, but plenty of personality.

Suphew, you are right, water does absorb more in the red (the sea is blue after all). I still don't understand why this might bring about a difference between plants and algae. I suppose that the plants have a bigger surface area near the surface (their leaves) and so can take advantage of the red light while algae on surfaces near the bottom is stuck with only blue, so a red light might benefit plants over algae. Unfortunately both seem to grow well at all levels in my tank .

It shouldn't make any difference what colour light it is should it ? Chlorophyll is the most common photosynthetic agent in both plants and algae and shouldn't suddenly change it's properties from one to the other should it ?. You are right about the plants absorbing in both the red and the blue. That should be obvious since the plants are green. My opinion on lighting is to throw as much in as you can reasonably afford (up front costs and power bill). If you want to do plants then it will probably be things like CO2 and trace elements (iron) that limit plant growth but without the light they go nowhere. Just don't forget to give the fish some shade (good plant growth will do this).

Brown algae is common in new tanks. I believe it will go away on it's own, but another solution is to put in some otos. Three of them should be able to clear a tank that size of brown algae in about 48 hours. They're also reasonable against other kind of algae and are a small and inoffensive fish.

I personally haven't found a website with both good info and good pictures, but try these for lists of fish. http://www.aquahobby.com/e_gallery.php (with comments from people who have kept the fish) http://www.webcityof.com/mifftitl.htm (lots of info, but very techinical, small pictures) http://www.fishindex.com/library/ http://fish.mongabay.com/fish.htm (indexed by latin name unfortunately, no pictures) If you have a fish name you can also just google for it and that will often turn up a lot of useful info and pictures. You will also discover that for some species there is a lot of contradictory information. These sites have a lot of good general info, but few pictures: http://www.thekrib.com/ http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/index.html The FAQ on thekrib.com has a list of fish to avoid and fish that are easy. A final note about the angel vs. neon issue. If the angels are small then they won't be going after the neons much yet. Cardinal tetras are a similar fish to neons and are slightly larger, I've seen a lot of people keep them with angels, they might be worth a try (although I've never tried it).

You do realise that the angels and the clown loaches will both grow quite large ? Did you also realise that neons are the natural prey of angel fish ? Anyway, enough of the negatives. Neither angels or clown loaches will be too bad about terrorising other fish and they are generally big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves. So here's a list of commonly available, peaceful fish: Livebearers like guppies, platties and swordtails will be fine (just remember they breed easily). Most tetras, except neons, should also be fine. Danios and rasboras are also generally good community fish. Gouramis are usually OK. They don't tend to be violent, but can respond aggressively to other aggressive fish. Loaches can be OK, but you probably don't need any more since you have the clowns (and some can grow reasonably large). Catfish: Corys are good. Otos are good (and eat algae). Same with Bristlenoses. Anything else either gets large or carniverous. Glass catfish are an exception, they tend to be peaceful, but they need to be in a group and can be picky about food. Barbs can be problematic, especially tiger barbs. The various "sharks" are usually OK, although all can grow large and often don't get along with others of their own kind. Red-tailed black sharks are an example of a fish that should be either kept as a single specimen or in a large aquarium. Cichlids in generally are no-go for a community. The rams and other dwarf cichlids are OK, but after that the most community minded is the kribensis and even they can turn into little psychopaths. Avoid puffer-fish. They look cute, but get nasty.

It's the wrong way around ! The gravel is meant to slope down towards your fish-watching sofa

The two obvious answers are silicon, just like you would for stopping bits of rock falling, or tying them together with fishing line. I'm not sure nails or screws would be a good idea, especially not when they start to corrode.

The disturbed surface gives a greater surface area to the water. The larger the surface the more gas (of any kind) can be exchanged. Also, the oxygen within the bubbles dissolves into the water. That also depends on surface area, so you want lots of small bubbles rather than a few big ones. It also helps with the circulation of the water so that the stuff (oxygen, CO2, whatever) gets distributed evenly. It has nothing to do with surface tension.

The sunlight through the window won't have much UV at all. Glass is very good at blocking UV. Probably the UV was killing the algae.

Sorry, should have also added to the fertilisation advice that it isn't necessary immediately, the plants usually come with a good supply of trace elements. Restocking the trace elements is one of the main reasons I use fertiliser (the fish are there to provide the other stuff). To get rid of the algae turn off the lights for a couple of days. Neither the plants nor the fish will notice, but it will knock the algae back. Also shorten the length of the day if it much over 10 hours. The theory is that the algae gets more out of a longer day than the plants do. I've never been sure if this is correct, but it works for me. Get more plants anyway, the fish will love you for it (right up to the point where they can't swim for lack of space).

I have to agree with the suggestion to use fertiliser. I just use a weekly dose of liquid fertiliser (I forget which brand, something I brought from the pet store, avoid anything with phosphate in it) and the results are good. Plenty of light is also useful, but keep the length of time it is on down. I have found that if the light is on for much more than ten hours a day it encourages algae growth. I also use a home-made CO2 system, but this is over the top and probably not worth the effort unless you are really, really, serious about plant growth. Also, don't be afraid to move the plants around and to prune them when necessary. They handle it well.

If there were any clear bite-marks in the fighters tail that could give you a clue. Match the size of the bite mark to the jaw of the fish. When my tiger barbs started loosing bits of tail it was very obvious that it was the kirbensis just from that alone.

When I tried to open the image link directly (right click -> view image in firefox) I got an error message, so I just cut the end off the URL and went to http://www.msnusers.com/FaysMarineTank/ There are now a pile of pictures under the pictures link so if you go to http://www.msnusers.com/FaysMarineTank/shoebox.msnw you get a whole pile of nice pictures which I assume is what Fay was trying to show us. The picture size in MSN looks just fine to me, so no need to resize.

They're in a protected part of the MSN Groups account (documents rather than pictures ? I don't know how this works). Which is a shame, because the picture here: http://www.msnusers.com/FaysMarineTank/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=5 looks quite good.

Skunk loaches and most of the botiinae family have the snail-eating reputation too. My skunk loach hasn't eradicated the snails in my tank, but I've never seen a snail in the tank that's grown beyond a few millimeters either, so I can't really say if the reputation is deserved. It doesn't matter though, even if it doesn't eat the snails you won't regret buying a loach, they're fun.

One of those two statements is good advice.

Ira, your electronics is confused. When any electronic devices are strung in series the voltage is split between and if they are all the same then it is split evenly. You may also be having vague memories of a common high-school electronics problem about whether to wire light bulbs in series of parallel. Light bulbs are not the same as LEDs and the result is different. So here is the complete, but long-winded (and hopefully understandable) explanation: First remember the the brightness is roughly proportional to both current and voltage. Secondly remember that a light bulb is just a glorified resistor and as the voltage increases so does the current. (Ohm's Law for those who haven't blacked out their memory of high-school science). This is not true for LEDs. An ideal LED doesn't let any current flow beneath it's threshold voltage and lets any current flow at the threshold voltage. So, ideally, the voltage is limited to that threshold voltage, no matter how much more current you put in. Obviously this isn't true, however the voltage increases a lot more slowly than the current and it's easiest to just think that the voltage is at the threshold voltage when it is glowing. Ohm's Law does not apply to LEDs, so we won't mention Ohm's law again. In a string of light bulbs in series the current through them all is identical (it flows from one to the next) but the voltage is spread across all of them. In parallel you have the same (but higher) voltage across each of them, but the current is split. It turns out though that the increase in current from having a lower resistance beats the decrease from splitting it up. This is a common high-school electricity problem that you are possibly remembering from you dim dark past. So for a given voltage you want to run light bulbs in parallel. For LEDs in parallel you only have the fixed voltage drop across the LED (the rest is used up across the resistor) and the current is still split. Whereas is series you use up the voltage a bit at a time as it goes across each LED and they all get the same full current (the last little bit of power is dropped across the resistor). So you end up with more brightness from LEDs in series, although you can only keep stringing them together while you have enough voltage for them all. Furthermore, in parallel (assuming a common resistor) the LED's voltage is limited to just above the threshold voltage of the LED with the lowest threshold. This means that an LED with a high threshold won't turn on properly and will be dim.

Not very well. You can really only scrape with the edge. On the other hand my bristlenose likes it in the rounded corner so I get some help. With respect to overflows, the Aqua One AR series have quite well designed filters and the overflow goes straight back into the tank. It has all sorts of other quirks, but none that are as serious as spraying water all over the floor (I leave that to my cat and the water-change bucket).

The only way to not suck at soldering is practise. But if it glows you must have done it right !

I'm not a pro, but I will say why I purchased the integrated setup: convenience. I didn't have to go to a lot of effort to get a hood, or decent lighting or a decent filter and make sure it all fits together. Next time, because this tank had provided me with a bit of experience, I would go for a custom setup. The custom setup is always better, but it costs you more in time and effort (but probably not money).