Luke*

lol (or the new version... lollie)

Yes you can inbreed with fish, if you're line breeding good fish, defects won't show up for a very long time, if it's bad fish...... after a few they'll get bad. Yea i'm keen on them! There use to be a couple in Hamiton who had actually bred them.

I'd buy one or two

Gutting...those are some wicked fish. Have to settle for snowball and golden nugget plecos...nothing wrong with them

Lookin' good nice work man. Very keen to see the following results.

Always a nice surprise to come home and find your discus breeding Ronnie, looking great, love the spots on those leopards Spotted discus very very popular at the moment.

Yeah you can try formalin for gill flukes. Your LFS should have it.

hey DJ, you can buy 40kg (i think) of brightwater (dark grey stone) for $25 from Hollywood Fish farm in Auckland. Most LFS gravel is pretty pricey for the quantity aye, like expensive laterite in those small packs lol.

I've used black pool filter sand, but it does say on the side "fine grade." Have had no worries using it in corydora only tanks and with discus. Looks nice but I just use a little so it doesn't compress. It was about $10 for 15kg.

I have the ViaAqua750 which I'm pretty sure is now the CF1200 Aqua One (rebranded). Good points: goes perfectly, zero noise, has gone for about 3 years straight, straight forward and easy to use, huge biological capacity Not so good points: average flow rate (is a heavily planted tank though), can be hard to 'get going', or prime, don't seem to be able to get replacement parts..I broke the intake piece of plastic, luckily the ehiem piece fits Hope this helps

I think it would look even better if it was all clear, and wider/taller pipe too. I always thought when I was young that a tank with a cylindrical pipe joining the two tanks together would be awesome (just straight across so cut into the glass, not over the top that is).

I had a big female glowlight go white in colour, i guess you would call it cloudy, but I'm adament it was just old age, as she had always been a good breeder but she was big and old. Water conditions were good. Do you know how old yours was? Rapid breathing maybe flukes? How do the others look? Have you checked for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH?

Wicked PJ did the plants help? Did you do anything special like a water change with rain water to get them breeding? Or did they do it all on their own? Are they in a barebotttom 2 foot? Reason I ask is I'm trying to get some going at the moment, once they did lay but I only ever saw a few egg shells, the parents or other cories ate the eggs (tis a cory only tank).

DiverJohn the bulb I got with it came with it, I was told it's about 6500k and that would be pretty accurate I'd say because it's a nice white light colour that looks natural. Sharn my understanding is that MH bulbs last about one year. So if you did buy the more expensive fluro bulbs at $20 each, that's $60/6months = $120/year which is even more than what the MH bulb (approx $100) would cost you per year! Ant, no worries lots of good info there and interesting e.g champagne yeast lasts a lot longer than brewers so you get more CO2 out of it before having to change the mix. Also that baking soda has no impact over CO2 production, it has proven to have survived in high acid and alkaline situations (people use to think and some still do think that the acid kills the yeast, not true, it is the alcohol that does)

Sharn your fluros would work out cheaper as MH bulbs are $80-100 each usually, but 186w would be really nice for that tank and get some awesome results you wouldn't get with just the fluros. Depends if you want to go low-tech or high-tech as aquatic gardeners call it. I.e high-tech is high light/CO2/nutrients/growth or low-tech is vice versa. Below is the link I was mentioning earlier about the factors that are most important for plant growth. As you will see max CO2 and light gets the best growth; they've cleverly worked out a growth points system too. So max CO2/light gets 14.8, max light and moderate CO2 gets 6.5, and moderate light max CO2 gets 4.1. Whichever there is a lack of the plant must spend more resources focusing on it. When it is abundant that is when it can just concentrate on growing. http://www.qsl.net/w2wdx/aquaria/diyco2.html (first graph, about 1/8th of the way down). Further down is also a calculation for working out how much CO2 is in your tank and the desired range. There's also a lot of info on producing CO2 and different methods for creating DIY CO2 diffusion into your tank. Hope you all find it useful.

I would not treat if nothing is wrong, especially with sensitive clowns. Don't fix what ain't broke, sounds like it has cost you 2 clowns and 2 poor clowns their lives.

Mine often swim in the corner of the tank nose up like that, but not 'all' day. Do you have shrimp pellets to feed them with?

Yeah they'll go great together, they are much more confident in bigger groups. Pandas can be particularly shy too.

MH is the way to really get your plants cranking. For example, in my tank with pressurised CO2, the plants don't off-gas/pearl O2 with the fluro tubes until evening when the lights have been on a long time. If I put the 400w MH on it doesn't off-gas O2 straight away but it does it hours sooner and the bubbles are much more proficient, meaning the growth is much better and the greater mass of bubbles are really neat to see. MH power is the only way to really get ground cover plants going nuts too, but this does depend on the depth of the tank. In summary you can get away with fluros fine and have good growth, but MH IMO is much more effective.

I'd go for the 250w, this way the plants spend less energy trying to get light, and more trying to get CO2 and other nutrients which can be added. I saw a great graph of this on the net, I'll try and find it. Like Warren said everything is important but it goes like this in order of importance: Light CO2 Iron Other nutrients, PO4, NO3, K etc (macro/micro) 1W / litre is not overkill, I'd say that's target. Any aqua scaping contest will show many tanks that have way over 1W/litre particularly in the smaller tank range.

I have one of these too and just create siphon by sucking the water down the intake into the filter, then you shove the end on to the filter and tighten it with the little nut on it. When it's all back together sometimes it helps to get it going by lifting the tubes vertically.

I was told by my trusted LFS that will survive outside during the winter, that's Hamilton too that sometimes gets below freezing in the thick of winter.

Hi Paul, welcome Selling 100 fish is good going, what have you mainly sold/bred? I am from Tauranga but live in Hamilton at present. I've got 10 tanks in my room and not sure how many fish lol.

I got a few of these outside in a bucket wish some plants and access to rain too. Just wondering if they are not noted for eating their fry, and soon it was said there should be tonnes of them, does this mean they will just grow up with their parents...or is it best to remove them once you can see them? What sort of foods are best to condition also?

Flourish Excel double dose Start with normal dose for a day or two so your fish can get use to it