Midas

That would be ok if the drain was only 3 feet away. 3 feet would get me to about the middle of the lounge room floor. I've got probably about 10 metres to the drain from the furtherest tank.

Rob, have you still got your pair of Blue Acara's? My tanks and whats in them currently: 5ft 500L 1 Red devil - Amphilophus labiatum? - Arthur 2 Jaguar cichlid - Jack and Jill 1 Jack Dempsey - Norm 1 Pleco - one eyed 1 Green terror - Betsy 1 texas cichlid small - Spike 5 fat Tinfoil barbs - eat out of house and home 5 Convict cichlids - Wal, Stimpy, Fatso, Dopey and Knotso 4ft 220L 1 Midas cichlid- Amphilophus citrinellum - Homer 3ft 160L 1 fat Severum - Steve 1 Moonlight gourami 1 Snakeskin gourami 1 Golden opaline gourami 1 serpae tetra 1 black ghost knife fish 1 Green terror - smallish 1 Brasiliensis 2 Keyhole cichlids 1 Bristlenose catfish 2.5 ft 80L 1 baby Keyhole cichlid 4 neon dwarf rainbowfish 1 leopard pleco 50 L hexy 3 kuhli loaches - current wereabouts all known 2 bronze corydoras 1 bristlenose catfish with attitude 1 black angelfish 1 pencilfish - good survivor 1 upsidedown catfish planted with java fern 2ft 50L cold water 1 veiled comet - Tim 1 other goldfish - Jonah

I've had a Via Aqua 750 for over a year now on my Midas Cichlids' tank and it is doing a good job also. I would defintely but another if the price was right. It puts out more flow than my 404. However my 404 filter has issues as it has never come close to its rated flow of 1200 l/hr, even with a new head unit. I would definitely not recommend buying any of the Fluval 04 series unless they are the newer MSF series of 04's (mine is one of the original 404's, I got it cheap without realising at the time). My 403 and my 404 sit beside one another and are packed roughly the same. The 403 would do nearly twice the flow of the 404. They were a good design as far as filtration goes those Fluval 03's, just a pity they are so hard to clean out.

Sounds like it was a good buy for $25. Do Sonic have a website?

how much did it cost and what was its air output rating?

What type of air pump are you saying is silent? I have never seen a piston pump in operation and these may be silent, but all the vibrating ones I have tried from $5 to $50 are definitely not silent even if the box says they are. To me it is false advertising, if something is stated to be silent then it should make no noise, not even a peep. The more reliable statement on the box to me is what decibel level they emit at a given distance. What types and makes of air pump would you regard as 'silent'? and how much did you pay for them?

silent air pump? isn't that a contradiction?

Do you mean the 'T' shaped piece that does the sucking? This is what I bought. It was being sold by 'Lee's aquarium & pet products' and was called a 'Super Pump', also had 'The Ultimate' written on it in quite a big font. They were blue in colour. The two fish shops that I have looked for them in both had them (Wet Pets in Palmy Nth and Mokia Pet supplies here near Hawera). So I wouldn't have thought that they would be too hard to find. Something interesting I discovered from the writing on the super pump itself (rather than the packaging) was that it had actually been made by a different company called 'Blue Magic'. This company makes water beds and the device is used to help drain the water out of water beds. I genarally don't have to worry about sucking up fish as they are all too big to fit up the pipe. With the smaller tanks (with the smaller fish that could get sucked up) there is less than a bucketful of water to be changed so I still use the shorter gravel siphon. I think the only fish I have ever sucked up was some convict fry.

Has anyone had much experience with Altolamprologus compressiceps? I am looking at setting up a L. Tanganyika tank and was just after some info from people with experience in keeping these fish in NZ.

I now have a device that does the equivalent job of the phython and it cost less than $20 new. I noticed in a couple of pet shops that they had these super pump things. The one I saw was marketed by Lees aquarium and pet products (some American company I think). These were selling for about $15 dollars. They were being sold as a replacement part for part of something equivalent to the python system. However this part is the bit that does all the work, the rest is just piping, which I already had. This bit can suck water along a pipe but using water flowing through a venturi to create the suction. Normally during water changes I empty the tanks using a gravel siphon with a short tube and constantly run backwards and forwards with buckets. This is a pain especially since I seem to have more and more tanks to change as time goes on and often results in water on the floor etc. So more recently I have tried attaching a longer hose (10m+) to the gravel siphon so I can cut out the buckets and goe straight to the drain. However this causes the suck from the gravel siphon to diminish to a near useless level and the flow of water drops significantly. Draining 100L+ out of a tank then takes a long time. So I bought one of these 'super pump' things and some fittings from the Wharehouse that enabled me to connect it to my piping (all up just less than $20). This then provided extra suck (and water flow) back up to what I was used to with a short tubed gravel siphon. Now I don't have to run around with buckets spilling water everywhere. It just goes straight down the drain. To fill my tanks I filter cold water put through a water filter (an activated carbon filter, like the kicthen ones only can provide much better flow rate) as we do have chlorine in the water here and a lot of it from the taste of it. Therefore cutting out buckets completely from my water changes and saving much time and effort in the process.

proboscis?

Thanks for the offer Macka but at this stage I would have to say no. Haven't really got any room to spare at the moment.

Thanks for the link Benny was having trouble finding the pics amoungst the mass of stuff on webshots. Nice fish Macka. Did you manage to raise many of the Oscar fry?

I'm surprised one of the other fish didn't try to eat it if it was flapping around, mine would have for sure. I have had two fish that have had eyes ripped out by other fish, a kissing gourami and more recently a pleco which I posted about earlier. The pleco seems fine with only one eye. Not so the kissing gourami though, had to put it down as it seemed extremly distressed, swimming around in circles near the water surface. I thought that freezing fish to death was not good practice? Isn't a more sudden way of death more humane? e.g. sharp object through the head?

how big were their red devils?

I doubt if you could buy one here for a resonable price but apparently they are not too bad to DIY. I have thought about making one for myself before but have only recently set up a tank that is big enough to be worthy of the effort. Here are a few links I have found: http://www.sydneycichlid.com/diyfbf.html http://www.fishlinkcentral.com/articles/article023.htm http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/filtersdiy/

I would have thought normally that they would be able to eat bees, but I could be wrong. I wouldn't feed my fish dead insects from inside though, as they may have been killed via insecticides, which would be bad for the fish.

I don't really have to worry as it is not my only white worm culture and I'm not too worried if these other worms disappear as I haven't a use for them really at the moment, my fish are too big.

Thanks Rob, I think you are right Rob as the worms I isolated don't seem to be doing that well in the microworm type culture. The ones in with the white worms are still going great guns. I think I'll just let the two cultures co-exist, they seem to be doing ok together.

Just wondering if anyone has ever had microworms appear in their whiteworm culture before? I seem to have what appears to be quite a lot of microworms in my whiteworm culture. Initially I thought that they were just baby whiteworms. I took some out and try to culture them as per Rob's article on the FNZAS site. They seem to be multiplying without getting any bigger so I think that they are microworms or something similar.

I agree, just get a Midas Cichlid instead, they are pretty cool fish . However, it is not unlikely that alot of red devil/Midas cichlids for sale are now cross breeds between A. citrinellum (Midas cichlid) and A. labiatum (Red Devil) as it is fairly difficult to tell the difference with fish kept in captivity and these two have probably been interbreed in captivity for some time. However this is probably not too bad as they are so similar and closely related. They may actually hybrise in nature too in some situations when one or other of the species is low in numbers. Therefore making the ID even more difficult. A Trimac would be cool to have though. Has anyone ever seen these in NZ before?

I'm using a "AquaClear, Powerhead 201" in a hexy tank to drive the undergravel filter. It seems to work quite well. I think all powerheads are sold as separate units, then you just have to attach them to the top of the undergravel riser stem (which may or may not be easy depending on the adapers that the powerhead comes with). My one is adjustable and the only noise it makes is a sucking/gurgling noise if you have the air incorporation venturi open too far. Otherwise it is silent. Even with this sucking noise it is still much quiter than the humm that comes with using an air pump to drive the undergravel. They have other larger models too, 301, 401 etc. Not sure of the flow rates each one does however the 201's do about 400-500 LpH apparently. As far as price goes I think mine was about $40-50. I would definitely recommend using one of these for an undergravel. If I had the $$ I would think about converting all my undergravels to using powerheads.

My tin foil barbs do this also. Wasn't sure what it was either, but I didn't think anything was wrong with them, just some kind of normal behaviour I think.

I've been giving mine bits of carrot, which they seem to devour over the course of a week. I had a bit more of a poke around and there seem to be a few small worms so perhaps these are the next generation coming through. I've got mine in the bottom of a 10L bucket with some plastic shade cloth over the top held on by a rubber band. I also have cut out a round piece of newspaper which I have sat on top of the oatmeal mixture which is about 10-15cm deep. When I feed them the carrot I place it on top of the newspaper. I read on the net about someone using a similar system which apparently worked well for them. Rob & Ira, do you find that all your fish eat the meal worms? I was talking to someone the other day who said their fish didn't like them.

I'm starting up a meal worm culture at the moment. I got some beetles and some larve from someone elses culture and now I seem to have a lot of beetles and not many larve (except a few small ones). Does anyone know how long the life cycle of the meal worm is off the top of their head? I'm just trying to work out how long its going to take to get a decent amount of meal worms.