dan_from_nz

Hi mork and mindy I too am from Palmerston North, Wet Pets is good Peter in particular is very helpfull, or Tracey at Animates is also helpfull, I don't know if Animates have any guppies and am suprised Wet Pets don't have any normally they have lots.

Cheers bill can never have to much DIY info

what about a small cheep power head in the return compartment of the sump pointing toward the outlet hole, this may just pressurise the compartment enough to squeze water into the impellor shaft removing the air blockage

there are devices for slow power down and power up for electronics that hold large quantities os electric potential energy (don't ask me what they are it has been about 5 years scince i was told) our science teacher gave us a demonstration (accidentally) by unplugging somthing from the mains supply and getting a shock and explained how they had to power down, I think it had somthing to do with capasiters you could talk to an electrician, Or there must be somthing like a 60 second surge timer to stop the pump firing up for 60 seconds if there was a power outage or power surge but the problem with this would be constant slight micro surge could turn your pump on and off repetitavely

What about 1 90 degree bend with a join going straight up (like a stand pipe but instead of a 180 degree bend a 90 this wouldn't reduce flow too much and a pipe running straight up (to where you would have your air syphon hole) that way air would naturally rise and you wouldn't need 2 180 degree bends

after writing that i don't know if it will work as it is air bubbles mixed in to the water and i think it would just flow through with the natural syphoning of the water, unless you can pressurise the system so the air does rise to the system

can you put an s-bend in the pipping to avoid the air blocking getting down to the pump? I.E. as it is sucking air in while still reverse syphoning if it goes down the tube and comes to a vertical s-bend (like under any sink) the air will naturally raise to the top of the s-bend while the water flows below, untill a ful syphon is created

Be carefull taking advise from the lfs alot of staff don't know what they are talking about and guess so that you dont realise they dont know what they are talking about. what area are you from, if you talk to someone on here in your area they will probably be able to sugest a good lfs (local fish store) Good luck Daniel

just talked to them someone is going to start breeding them, but was told a minimum of $500 with a minimum purchase unless i wait for them to be bred

although don't hollywood just buy of brooklands

hell for 280 they would be worth the drive to auckland to get one or two

yes the addition of salt does effect the ph, and i assume the gh as well is it mould or is it fin rot? as the death and fin rot could both be side effects of stress and any change in the conditions would not help this

RO/DI units filter with carbon isnt it rare to get a carbon filter that dosn't leech phosphates???

Interesting, Are you going to test you activated carbon, and/or asw mix???? would be interesting to know

did you take the time acclimatizing them?

melafix clears moth fungus,

the more frequent the water changes the better, you just need to make sure that the water you are adding is very similar in paramaters to the water you are taking out, and that you dont take too much water out the comlicated thing is that it not not simply a lieal equation it is logarithmic as when you do water changes (asumming you are doing a gravel vac when changing water) you are also taking out your benificial bacteria. It is logarithmic as bacteria multiply exptentially to put it in a practical scence if you water change was normally 20l a week you could to 15l twice a week. This would be good for benificial bacteria and lower amonia if you were to go to daily water changes you could get away with 7-8l a day godd luck daniel

As pegasus said glass would be much better I had a terrerium for frogs and just used an all glass aquarium and put a narrow holled mesh over the top this kept a relatively high humidity and still let some air flow through

Yeah would be good to meet up, if you could pm me when you are going out next

I forget if it has been discussed or not yet but there are some fish that hate! saltwater I think Bristlenoses are one but you should probably list the fish you have and the people on here will tell you weather or not it is ok to add salt

Pies do you know where it is good to get nsw from in wellington at the moment when i get nsw i go to the rock pools in between paikok and pukerua bay it seems pretty clear and fine but am unsure of what polutants are / could be there

clownfish are also only immune to some annenomies, if you get the wrong one it will still gobble up your clown I dont know weather or not these annenomies are brought into New Zealand or not

Every topic regarding price seems to talk about Margins and Business models The problem with this is you are skipping cash flow and target market. the problem is without the apropriate target market size who care what your gross margin is your chashflow is nothing. e.g. My father has a wine cellar, he buy's labels for his many many bottles of wine. He tried to buy more bottles but found that they have closed down. The labels that cost $2 to print sold for $20 (900% profit) how did this company close down? Simple how many people in New Zealand have wine cellars? How many bottles of wine do these cellars hold? & more importantly, what is the turnover rate of the bottles in the cellar? once listing these out it becomes obvious that a wine worth putting a label on sits and doesn't get drunk therefore the label doesn't get replaced. This company closed down because turnover no matter what the profit margin couldn't get high enough. Next point "If you arn't moving ahead you are moving backward" without retailers it will be much more difficult to grow your market, without a retailer it gets expotentially more difficult to maximise your target market. To back these up I will once again reference to personall experience 1) The company I was untill recently managing sold for $700k +sov turnover 1,000,000 - 1,300,000 gross margin 50% (gross profit $500,000) net profit before drawings $300,000 +/- $100,000 2) a liquor company newly established cost $500,000 gross margin 15% (at best some products run loss leaders ie they are sold at a loss to get people into the store) now to justify sepending $500,000 on a company that has a 15% gross margin turnover must be incredably high (lets not forget the law of the risk/return relationship as gross margin goes down net profit must go up to achieve the same going concern selling price) As I say concentrate on all areas of the business as was mentioned in the previous thread about this subject economies of scale I New Zealand these can't be achieved not in respect to freight prices, not in respect to market size and certinatly not in respect to turnover we need retailers to expend the market before a wholesale direct system could be justified. In terms of freshwater I am more than happy to pay retail prices I am lucky enough to have a good LFS that helped me out free of charge while I was starting up, even when all I had was a 2 foot tank the owner himself put ample time into me even though i wasn't even spending enough to justify his time. I feel in all fareness I owe them somthing what he was doing was investing it is what any smart business person does and now that I spend larger amounts of money I spend it with him. Fair enough i think.

Reserved at least yes but when was it reserved as you only have 20 days to incorperate it, Hell I have a company name reserved and I dont even intend on starting up the company (completely different industry) it only costs 10 dollars and can be done for any number of reasons eg, proving to the ird your current company is investigating a different industry to justify spending mony on a hobby not trying to upset anyone just wanted to put my 5 cents worth in

As breakaway said philips do a 6500k tube and this easaly good enough for freshwater plants, In my tank I have Two 10,000k and One 6500k. My tank & hood came with 1 10000k and 2 6500k but as i already had a 10000k i thought i mias well use this expencive bulbe up. I do like to look of the 10,000k it is a brighter white where as the 6,500k is more of a green white but I wouldnt say it is worth 4-5 times the price, Also algea only prospers under the extreme light wavelengths (from what I have read) this means that algea growth wil be worst under the blue and red lights (although another book I read said that it is the red light and the further you go toward the blue scale to less algea can live) under both the 6500k and 10,000k lights i have had little algea trouble, haven't tried to grow plants as my gluttenous angels enjoy pulling them up if I dont feed them enough