Luke*

Wok where do you get that Agar Agar from? I looked at Pak'n save but could only find Davis Gelatin and Arrowroot thickener.

gorgeous..really cool markings on all, i really love the green as well. how hard are they to breed and pair up? the usual huge tank with heaps of flow is it?

Hey Blue, just takes me to a pic of a right angle fish tank?

Is that a mermaid fish? Rare indeed

I was thinking the same thing as MRSkz. If it's not red (as possibly it is as daniel says maybe the light) then it's just what is usually referred to as a golden or white variety. For example with discus there's white butterfly (pigeon blood with normal eye) and then there's albino (white/pastel with red eye)

Rogan's hit the nail on the head, nice info there. For raising the KH (carbonate hardness) you can get some shell in a stocking and hang it in the tank and storage barrel, or shells, even baking soda (careful with baking soda though this also shoots your pH way up). To prevent pH swings a KH of 6 is perfect, so you don't have to bring it up much. We're lucky in NZ - some water overseas is so hard eggs can't even be fertilised. If you do large daily water changes, the pH will stay relatively constant because so much volume is turning over. See how much your water changes in 24 hrs by setting some in a bucket, test that pH then test the pH straight out of your tank. [edit] don't feel silly about the babies, spawning and raising fish is always exciting

lol @ fish fingers, bit of an ambiguous phrase that one. Billaney that was an extremely quick and lucky breeding of them. Share some more of what you did, BB tank? Did you add peat? Did you just do one water change? I found babies once after doing a one bucket water change every day for a week. I never saw the eggs though so most probably fell prey to other tetras. Did they lay on the glass? Cheers mate

Hey all, tomorrow (Sunday) is the last day of the Craft Show where the Waikato Aquarium Society has set up some display tanks and has an entire tank (with fish, plants, heater etc incl) up for raffle. Very shortly after is the annual auction at Link House, 2 Dawson st, Hamilton East, Hamilton at 6pm Sunday (02/07/06). If you have items for the auction please be there at 5:45pm so we can register auction items. We will have a special helper to to aid with the auctioning and bidding. Look forward to seeing you there.

Simply remove some water and replace with hot water from your hot water cyclinder. Your cylinder will stay hotter longer than your tank and be at a higher temperature, so it won't take much. You may even have your cylinder insulated that will make it more effective. If it hasn't filled recently it should also be chlorine free. Do a bucket once or twice and you'll be right; of course make sure you don't add water that is too hot, especially as it is only 50L. HTH

Ahhh bless New Zealand. Yea we did let some dumb things in though. Statement for the last couple of centuries: "whoops"

Some of the regulators need an additional "needle valve" to reduce the flow enough. I luckily found a dupla regulator designed specifically for tropical aquariums that has a fine point adjuster on the regulator. That cost $170 second hand, $1000 is a bit steep.

A big lesson learnt to always ensure there is a thermometer in each tank. Might have been prevented if that was checked after the first death? I'm guilty too, lost 6 discus due accidentally altering a heater too much that didn't have an indicator on the top as to what temp it was set at. Nothing worse than a) killing fish and b) unnecessarily. Sorry to hear your loss Caryl.

If the plants are in the middle of the tank, the snails will have no way of reaching it. Unless they float or swim over somehow.

This is a must read: http://www.simplydiscus.com/forum/showt ... hp?t=28937. There, daily water changes are highly recommended, and wiping down the sides of the tank and filters daily, as well as starting with 6-10 juveniles from a reputable breeder. That website I must say scared me in to not getting discus for a while, but once you have them they're not that hard. But they do love clean conditions and lots of attention. I think they also love a natural planted environment where they know they can hide if they need to. I've compromised with my barebottom discus tanks and have excess plants from my heavily planted 4 ft community tank weighted down in them. This also helps keep the water free of toxins. It is much easier to observe and treat diseases in a BB (barebottom) tank. At SimplyDiscus.com they all pretty much say they don't use gravel in their tanks because it can harbour diseases, it reduces water quality, and can allow nitrate buildup (growth limiting). They say discus appreciate water quality over planted tanks, they might be right but who knows. In saying that the last time I tested my heavily planted tank for nitrate it was 0ppm (not registering) because the plants used it all. So i'm going to try putting some juvenile discus in and see how they grow, will be an interesting experiment. Oh and most well maintained tanks housing healthy fish won't have any problems with diseases either. I recommend at least a 50% water change per week. If you don't have a lot of plants you can just buy some planted poster paper that you stick on the back of the tank to give the illusion it is planted. Some nice planted discus tanks: http://www.simplydiscus.com/forum/showt ... hp?t=36137 A nice BB example: http://www.simplydiscus.com/library/bre ... bxrt.shtml

snails are fine, actually good because they'll clear up any excess food on the bottom and stop waste accumulating. as the mod alan puts it they clear up the extra food etc and leave it little parcels making it easy to then siphon out and keep the water conditions clean.

Hello, floating plants are a necessity, but the male will certainly appreciate it - and the female. Just pull a few plants up and let them float if nothing else, otherwise riccia and duckweed is perfect, indian fern too; even old leaves. Turn the bubbler off so it doesn't disturb the bubble nest. You can restart it when they hatch, but only have it going lightly. I'd use a small tank with no bubblers or filtration to start (so no babies get sucked up). Goodluck let us know how you get on

I agree fishboi, not that great, but still cool to think you're looking at real live piranhas. Maybe they need more of them, or feed them less often, or more variety.

Hiya Psyc welcome aboard. Great to see more people getting in to discus. Are you coming along this weekend to our club meeting and auction? I'd love to see some pics of your discus can you post some? I'm sure you'll have many more tanks to come

I read in the Herald today "Trail is getting 'otter for Jin", was sighted by a kayaker and live traps are being laid. I looked at the birds eye map of it's journey, I predict I was driving right over the Auckland harbour bridge as it was swimming directly underneath. I think it's heading for Hollywood fish farm for some tasty treats of the exotic Amazonian variety. Well, at least trout are a tasty pest, freshly caught and crumb pan fried...dayam can't beat that. And I discovered discus like eating their eggs too. Nothing like caviar.

wow those are seriously cool. i think it is great to see bigger tanks coming in to production instead of those silly little nano type tanks. And especially if you are able to reduce costs I think there would be a big market for bigger rectangular tanks. The cost goes up so much for bigger tanks as the glass has to get thicker too. ps sharn how many pacu could you fit in the D tank?

We better be careful though, otherwise he might end up sleeping with the fishes

The choice to me was blatently obvious, life is surely a better option than certain death.

The common bristlenose is supposed to be okay, but I've even seen a tiny otocinclus catfish having a go at a discus at the LFS in Tirau when I passed through on Sunday :-?

Yo, how goes it?

Oh yeah cuz if you kill it then they have to buy more from the petshop they can make more money. Idiots. :evil: