Luke*

Thanks for all the great advice guys appreciate it. Will also need a few powerful heaters and bubbler for aeration to age the water but I'm getting there slowly. Wouldn't be able to handle doing that many buckets too often

Wow that's cool they'll breed in something so small, makes sense about the food/effort. Then again I did breed albino glowlights in a 3gal (10.8 litre) tank once, all the eggs fungused though. Goodluck with the glowlights Steve slack

It's just as easy to vacuum the gravel when doing a water change so why not? All their waste is in there so the fish appreciate cleaner all round tank and water as opposed to just some fresh water that will be dirtied by the deitritus in the bottom of the tank sooner.

Yeah it would be for 50% daily/bidaily water changes. So that's 3300 litre/hour is it?

For pumping about 150L from trash can (aged water holder) to tank (head height about 156cm in a few minutes (assuming this won't cause too much flow distress to the fish) what size pump (litre/gallon/hour) would I need? Cheers

10 litre? that's small. Lemon tetras are also easy to breed, rummy noses I have found easy too. I'd start with glowlights though. Separate males and females, condition on live/frozen food for about 2 weeks, put female in spawning tank half hour before male, check in morning for eggs. Allow about 48 hrs to hatch. For a few days they'll feed off their egg sack then start feeding them infusoria, liquifry, baby brine shrimp.

I have red clay as the base for my tank (bout 1-2cm) then gravel on top (4-5cm front, 7-8cm back). Under gravel heating certainly helps and there is some ideas on DIY under gravel heating in the DIY section at the moment. It seems the idea is more to provide a flow of water through the roots than actual heating. You could use sand, cheap from pool shops, only use an inch (2.5cm) though to prevent pockets of toxic gases (anaerobic bacteria, i.e no water flow). It's really more about the fertilisation, light, CO2 than substrate so just get something you like then try and get the other factors right.

Neon tetra disease doesn't have a known cure. What do you mean 10 days? Since treating the formalin? If the fish are happy enough and you've done a 30% water change I'd treat now.

Yeah they're slimmer and don't have the height from top to bottom. I like them because they're so easy to sex and thus separate...condition...spawn...hmm damn gonna have to get some again soon.

Yeah they hang out together fine. And the boys like to fight over the girls.

Hey was a great day thanks to all who had their tanks on display and all the organising

I feed small amounts twice a day. I tend to think this is more natural and thus better than large feeds every couple of days or so; and the fish don't get so bloated.

Small price to pay for the best catfish in the world Also if you can produce and raise the fry it would work out a nice lil investment.

Firstly thanks for all that info Caryl, that's worth saving. Shelley what your neons have is quite common and it's actually air trapped inside from when they eat the flake off the water surface and gulp tiny amounts of air down with it. This makes the fish look horribly sick/bloated but will come right within 24 hours once it has cleared it. You could add a small amount of epsom salt which acts as a laxative or better prevent the situation by taking some flake between two (clean) fingers and dip it underwater, this way they don't actually need to come to surface to eat it and don't risk swallowing air. Always a good idea to separate sick looking fish immediately however to a quarantine tank that has exactly the same water parameters as the tank they've come from to avoid possible infection of other fish especially in the case of neon tetra disease which is easily spread. I still believe that neons if held in good conditions will last 3 years. They are sometimes fragile and when inducting into a new tank this should be done slowly over an hour. Often they'll go pale and die but this could be due to a number of reasons not necessarily NTD but look for all the symptons as Caryl as listed.

Hmm I wish, maybe on some super special after a huge shipment has arrived? I got 9 for about $60 a year or so ago (one for free, thanks Jansens ) Man if they were $4 I'd get 50. From memory it's around end of year/summer shipments usually come in - at least for clown loaches as these all pretty much come from the wild like cardinals. Dogmatix can you verify seeings as you work at Jansens???

How hard do you think it would be to find a mate for it Kim? Do you have any possibilities lined up??

$4 Cardinals???

It's begging for a partner and we're begging for the fry

You can use hard boiled egg yolk, liquifry 1 or 2 sold at LFS, finely crushed flake, microworms, baby brine shrimp. There's also quite a few new products coming out specifically for baby fish such as tetras so that's good to see. It's best for them to be raised by parents though as that's the natural process. Hope this helps.

Discus will do best by themselves, but they will do fine with cories and tetras such as glowlights and cardinals. They're quite slow like the discus and the colours make awesome compliments. Avoid plecos/whiptails as they can suck on to the slime on the sides of discus. Cheers

I used a food processor to mince up some ox heart. Don't forget to do a water change afterwards also as it fouls your water pretty quick. You can also lace with some garlic as a parasite preventative and freeze it.

Whoa that's a good stretch, i'd like a 6 ft+ tank to do that with some of them in. This one was a good 15cm altho I didn't measure it exactly. It's cool how thick/high their bodies get. Sigh i've learned my lesson about getting a fish out of tank in which others don't look so good.

Hey Plecs thanks for the advice, it died last night unfortunately. Sux as was the biggest one i'd ever see in real life. Could've been old age. I tried a little salt and methylene blue/malkon as a last resort but was too far gone. Also did 50% water change the day before it died. Oh well happens aye.

Ah damn! thanks for the reply tho..

Hey I've got this large clown recently and unfortunately he's covered in what looks like white slime, has rapid breathing, and his tail seems to have a few sores on it. Any urgent help/medication ideas appreciated.