Caswal

Sorry, they got sold last night.

Changing the tank on my desk to my first delve into Reef/Salt water. So the little Diamonds need to go. $30 for all 6.

I have kept mine with small pebble substrate, but they like to hang around in the back and plants where it is hard to vacuum. And it has worn their barbels down. My new tank is sand substrate, and has better flow down at the substrate level (so the bacteria should do a better job at breaking down the mulm I can't get to). So they should recover.

I've taken note of your number. You might not want to leave it public on a forum. Just incase some bot snaps it up, and you end up receiving robocalls, and scam txts.

Do the Green and Bronze Cat's shoal up/keep company with the Sterbai? So they don't feel alone? I do want a group of Cory Cat's for my new 300L tank, and it is almost done cycling. But I am down in the Hutt, so it's a bit of a drive. Topic on my new setup: If you still have them in a week or a 2/when my tank has cycled. I will probably come and grab them. But don't hesitate to try and find them a new home first.

Sterbai's get to 5-6.5cm. love my Sterbai's, cute little guys.

You could give one of these a go: http://www.trademe.co.nz/pets-animals/fish/pumps-filters/auction-1169034375.htm They are rebranded SunSun canister filters. You can google reviews of them. People seam to like them for the money. That seller has different sizes, I have bought a couple of aquarium pumps and 120cm LED Lights from them. Might be handy to have as a backup, even if you end up getting another FX5/6.

That's really quite cool. How do you start the siphon, I don't see an air valve at the top?

Hopefully fixed. All came from the same album with the shame sharing settings. Probably the last time I use google photos.

Wow another month has passed since the last update. Had a few things happened which put a hold on progressing on the tank. But getting closer! Added some drift wood, rocks, and some more plants to the tank: I now have just setup the drip system, the water is fed through a custom charcoal container first. To remove the chlorine (tastes much nicer than our normal water now): 3D printer an elbow to allow me to control the water level in the sump: Added bio noodles to the bottom of the sand filter instead of gravel. Got a bigger pump and added some more sand: And finally my Dwarf Gourami waiting for the new tank to be ready:

New Tank is coming along, filled with water, substrate, some plants, some ornaments etc. Sump is plumbed up. Needs a few alterations to be works correctly, but getting there: Sand filter had an issue, my siliconing was not up to snuff, and the bottom started to leak. Causing a little bit of a mess, but all sorted now. Added some blue plastic gem stone things to float around at the top:

Finally managed to get some time to progress on my tank. Got it in position with a custom printed backdrop: All of the overflow plumbing for the sump is done. Just need to finish the return and spraybar. And get myself some black sand for the substrate.

A video of the first proper run of my newly built fluidic sand filter, for my new 350L tank and 100L Sump. This will hopefully give me a heap of space in the sump as most of my filtration will be managed by this. This uses a 110mm PVC End Cap, 110mm Screw cap fittings. 800mmx100mm Clear Acrylic tube, 20mm Anka pipe fittings, 20mm Enduroflex pipe and a few 3D printed parts. Firstly I thought the PVC Drain parts were 100mm, but they are actually 110mm external diameter. Which caused a little dismay when I got the rather expensive 100mm external diameter Clear acrylic piping. So I quickly designed and 3D printed a couple of flanges to take up the slack and silicone them in. To keep the 20mm Enduroflex centered, I printed 2 spoked wheels. With the Enduroflex at the centre and the rim of the wheels against the acrylic. I am using some coarse pebbles at the bottom to stop the sand fully compacting when the filter is stopped. I am using pool filter sand as the media, that I bought at the same time as Pure ammonia for Cloregene in Petone. I have about 2.5kg of sand in the filter currently. Trying to figure out the best way to fill the filter was a challenge. I ended up placing the enduroflex pipe and wheel spokes in first, as trying top get it to settle to the put through the media was impossible. The enduroflex is swiss cheesed for bottom 5-6 cm with a 4mm holes. I used this: https://www.bunnings.co.nz/anka-female-coupling-20mm_p00894396 fitting on the inside of the cap, and as it press fits into the tubing, it gets pushed into the enduroflex when the cap is screwed down. Seams to work pretty well and has a good chaotic motion. Might need about another half a kg or so of media to top it off.

You can make a gallery on imgur.com and link to it.

I am probably going to keep a tank, or slightly smaller tank where I have one now. So will always have the option of keeping them in there. My male gourami does try to makes nests, but doesn't help that they get destroyed/damaged each water change with the change in water levels. The advantage of the new tank is water changes will happen with the sump so the display tank never changes water level. Tank Design Thoughts So I picked up a cheap 2nd hand, 100Lish tank to use as a sump. Also came with plenty of other little odds and sods (airpump, in tank filter pump, test kits, etc). So was pretty happy with the deal. I am most likely going to document and build a fluidized sand filter. Out of 100mm clear acrylic tube, end capped with standard 100mm drain fittings/end caps. Very similar in design to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz0WgaRHcJA around 80cm tall. I will probably also set this up as an exposed piece as I like the look of the cloudy/storm sand look. I have seen that these are both great filtering/converting ammonia to nitrate, but with enough column height also decomposing nitrates as well. But as these are both anaerobic and aerobic processes it is also great at stripping oxygen from your water too. So I probably inject air on the outlet of the filter, and 3D print a gauss like pipe insert to try and break/smash the air bubbles up into small bubbles to increase the surface area as they travel back up the return line to the display tank. As almost all of my filtration will be happening in the FSF, the sump just needs to handle mechanical filtration/polishing, place for heaters, automatic drip water change and overflow/drain. This gives me plenty of space for a good sized refugium or 2. For whatever i feel like/need. So if I am lucky enough to get some fish to spawn, I have somewhere safe with the same water to move them too.

Thanks David, I just want to know the reasoning behind the advice/opinions. Behind the text of the internet it's hard to determine if it is advice or an opinion. My better half wants more variety of tetras. Going to be quite a while before the tank is ready so plenty if time to bargain with her. Again, I'll ask the reasoning behind this? Why one bristlenose? Will post up some pictures of plans soon.

Is there a reason for this beyond aesthetics?

Hi All, I started fish keeping back in March/April with a 100L Tall tank, as a good solid start in the hobby. I read the bigger the tank you can get away with the better. And 100L was about as big as I could squeeze in my initial space. And stocking with some cory's, tetra's and a dwarf gourami seemed a good place to start. I have lined up a new space in the house, and just bought a 300-350L tank for a good price off trademe. (Dimensions 153Lx43Dx53H cm). The tank will be planted. The new spot is a big tricky to build for (will be explained as I document along the project), but has a couple of advantages, it has a great spot to keep a sump, aiming for 60L-80L. May use the Blueplanet cheap 65L tank from Animates as the basis. It has Access to the kitchen sink through an internal wall that I can cut access through. So I can setup an automatic drain/fill system to the sump for water changes. No more buckets for me! As well as the other sump benefits of hidden filters, heaters, refugium etc. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is stocking a tank link this. I am after building a community tank (although I may partition the tank if needed), and have become quite attach to my little 'Napolean' Dwarf Gourami. He does needsa couple of females to distract him. But would be great to have a few larger eye catching fish. Using trusty aqadvisor I have built this up as an initial stocking. Thoughts, opinions, options?

The 3 corys are super skittish after their buddy died. I probably need to get 1 or 2 more to keep them happy and with company. How long until yours are ready JJWooble? Or are you not willing to ship them? One does have a white spot infront of its dorsal fin ontop of it's body. But whether it always had that, and my paranoia has made me notice, or it's a missing scale. I'll keep an eye on it, and it was happily eating last night. I do love watching the corys, they are more like little fish dog spaniels, foraging around etc.

Only the usual dash to refill their bladder/intestine thing they have. No more than before I added the co2. I also assume that as the ph hasn't changed, the co2 is still pretty low. I'll do a 20% water change tonight, they are about due.

Sorry was in a rush and in my phone, I meant 0 nitrites and 0 ammonia. I cycled the tank for a month and then stocked it with 5 tetras. After cycling/adding fish I have never seen any levels of ammonia or nitrites. Nitrates have not been over 20ppm, but didn't have time to test it this morning. The ph always sits at 7.8 from the tap and left in the tank. Testing the water from the local fish shop it's 7.4. I'll leave a bucket of it out, but I doubt it'll drop. I have 5 tetras in the tank, and the others all seam fine. Eating etc. I saw the other 3 Cory's eating from a food pellet I gave them last night. I do have a co2 generator (fermentor) rigged to the tank. But that hasn't nudged the ph down. (wasn't the aim, just wanted some carbon for the plants)

Hi all, Got up this morning, checked the tank and one of my 4 sterbais was dead at the bottom of the tank. I added 2 on the 7th and 2 on the 11th. They had all looked happy. Tested the water, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrates, ph 7.8 (which it always is). I removed the fish and it looked fine. No marks, spots, etc. Should I be worried, was it a dud? Unfortunately I'm out all day today. So hopefully all is well until I get back.

I've asked them via their facebook page (claims an average of 1 hour reply, but not today), that his product seams to work by out competing algae by providing large amounts of beneficial bacteria to your tank/pond etc. And as stated, reduces nitrate, phosphates etc. But what happens to these products? What does it produce/make as a by product?

How do you plan to get the cube off the trailer? 1000L is a tonne after all or do you have a tripper trailer and just slide it off? Also be careful withing towing it. If there are no baffles in the tank, the water can start to slop side to side and build up oscillations leading it to tipping/weird pulling/pushing forces. All tankers have baffles to stop this: http://www.nationaltruckcenter.com/images/1-ISOMETRIC VIEW.jpg And looks like there are purpose built hollow balls to stop this for cubic meter sized tanks: http://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2013/20131218ag/AU9885.JPG This probably isn't much of an issue if the tank is completely full as the water has nowhere to move/slop. I have no idea if holding seawater for long term, removed from the sea would cause some of the organisms to bloom with what nutrients are in the water and nothing to keep them in check? Could use a UV sterilizer used for sterilizing rain water to clean the water? My gut feeling tells me removing 1000L of water from the ecology of the sea, and letting it sit that it would go stagnant from something consuming dead and dieing plankton/micro-organisms. But I have no idea about this, and be completely talking out of my ass.

Don't know about sand/pebbles from the wild. But I did have a brief go and keeping some ants. And the advice for soil there was to bake it in the oven at a low temperature (90-120 degrees C). To kill off any unwanted bacteria/fungi/pathogens. I don't know if this is a done thing for aquariums though?