suphew

Pretty sure you'll find there are more than just 4 similar fish that are common in NZ. I don't have time to check again now, but was looking them up on wikifish recently and I'm sure there were 5 types, and that didn't include the obviously different ones like the "Golden Algae eater"

We seem to live in the generation of "it's some one else's responsibility". It's going in your tank, it's going to be your problem if you buy the wrong fish, why shouldn't it be your responsibility to have reasonable idea what your buying? Sure if the LFS deliberately misleads you "no that Oscar will be fine in that 20l tank with some goldfish" then thats one thing, but using an less common name, come on. Take a step back and look at the whole pet shop, what you are saying is that either the LFS should only let you buy fish from the one person they have working there that knows everything there is to know about every type of fish and can 100% positively identify and sex every one, ditto the cats section, dog, bird, and small animal. Or that every staff member in the shop should know everything about every single animal and product thats in there? A big ask when the average retail wage is properly $15 an hour. Or maybe they should have a big disclaimer up on the door stating they can't confirm the type, breed, sex, or age, of any live stock in store and that staff have been instructed to not risk misleading customers by identifying any animal of any type. :nilly:

Firstly because no matter what they are labeled someone will alway be confused and someone else will always think they know a "better" common name. By using the importers listed name, the LFS can get rid of annoying guys that "know more" by falling back on the importers list and suggesting if they have an issue with the name they can go take it up with the importer. And secondly because although you think SAE or Sterbai might be the better common name with-in your circle of fish keepers it's just as likely that amongst another group of fish keepers somewhere else in the country or world it's something completely different. There is no winning if you try to use "correct common names"

At least two of your responders so far are the fish guys from LFS's

Fishbase.org

I'm not really sure what the problem is? Your really talking about shades of gray, what might be the "common, common name" to you is quite likely the "uncommon, common name" to some one else. And this is the reason LFS's use the name on the importers list, no matter what they call them some one is going to know better and tell them the "correct common name", at least this way they can fall back to common point for naming. If you want more "common common names", then you have to have a consistent, correct, referable naming scheme. In other words your reinventing the scientific naming system.

T5's have more watts for the same length of tube (typically about 20-25% more) and are more efficient so each of those watts give off more light and creates less heat. T5's also usually have electronic ballasts, a lot of T8's still have magnetic ballast's so the gear that makes the lights go wastes less power. They are also smaller so on marine or high tech planted tanks you can fit more lights in that same space.

It's unlikely to be things breaking down causing gas, there is too much water flow for gas to stay in there and the highly oxygenated water doesn't encourage the type of bacteria that releases gases. Canister filters are designed with the motor as the last part, which means the whole canister and all the plumbing before the outlet is under negative pressure. Basically if there is a leak it will suck air in rather than leak water out. You should check all your hoses and seal and maybe put a little silicon lubricant on the seals.

A convict will destroy most plants. Green algae on the glass is pretty normal, it's just the nutrients in the tank, you could try feeding less or doing bigger water changes but it's unlikely you'll get rid of it. Maybe try a Bristle nose and see if if gets on with the convict.

Do some research on the 'berlin method' this is how 99.9% of marine tanks are run now days. In simple terms you need just live rock and a skimmer. Every thing else is an addition to address a specific problem that you may or may not have depending on what you keep and how you run the tank. Your nitrate processer for example is only needed if you have high nitrate levels. This is only going to happen if you have a high bioload, low amount of live rock, and rubbish skimmer, it also assumes you need a low nitrate level which you may not, a fish only or softie tank for example doesn't require overly low nitrate.

Believe it or not if your keen there are already organisations up and down the whole country that have collected driftwood you can buy, they have other stuff too, fish food, fish, tanks....

Sounds like your on the right track, but forget about the canister, nitrate processor, and UV, use the money you save to buy a better skimmer or lights.

The rough on tanks thing is a myth started when wave boxes first came out. You can get a similar affect with out using a box but it wont work anywhere near as well. It's a bit like saying T8's will give the same affect as halides, true, but only actually enough for a small % of marine tanks. Also it's actually very difficult to get cheap DC pump, don't be confused by cheap low voltage AC pumps.

Theres no doubt the electricity cost are higher on marine but not as much higher as you would think. The biggest cost for fresh water is heating, with most marine the lighting heats the tank enough that you don't need to heat the water so to a large degree the light and heating cancel each other out, after that it's just the difference in powering the pumps (which also help to heat the water).

The LPH rating is popular at the moment but only tells a small part of the story when it come to filters, particularly when you consider the higher quality ehiems will probably keep pumping under load where as the cheaper pumps tend to loose pressure far more quickly. Really we should all be measuring filter capacity by of volume and quality of media, the tank turn over doesn't really matter so long as it's not stupidly low and the filters turn over is enough for the media volume. Breeding tanks a often better with small filters, air powered ones are ideal, canister filters tend to suck up fry.

Yeah I use a DIY copy of the Tunze wave box. They work really well, but you need a DC pump like the Tunze an AC pump will kill itself with all the starting and stopping.

I'm not sure why you want to change from 2 good quality filters to a single cheap filter? There are many reasons 2 are better then one, more filtration, redundancy, option to move filter to another tank, you can give one filter a good clean with out needing to worry about crashing the tank, and I'm sure many more reasons.

The jebo filter system is an over head trickle type system so stuffing extra stuff into it wont help with changing the flow. Blocking off the little side outlet from the pump will help reduce the flow in the tank, there is quite a jet of water from there. To reduce the flow in the pump you could either wrap some filter wool round the bottom intake pipe (which would look pretty ugly) or on the intake side of the pump (just below the impella you could restrict the flow, something like a little bit of icecream container cut into a half circle and jammed in there would do the job.

I assume you know most fresh water fish are also wild caught and if anything the impact is higher since there is a far smaller market for marines the the collection has far tighter controls.

Or because the marketing is better, or the pricing, or the dealer network, or historic shopping habits (check out how many fords vs holdens are sold in the rest of the world). Or it could just be because the performance vehicle market is pretty limited and ford just doesn't bother spending a whole lot of energy on it. I'd say that people liking HSV's more could have very little to do with the numbers.

Doing a quick google on "Nissan limited addition" gives me a, 40th anniversary 370z, Limited edition GT-R SpecV, Murano Limited edition. Hyundai gives me a Sonata limited edition, Genesis Coupe, Coupe TSIII. VW do anniversary limited addition golfs, special addition beetles........ Who could forget the limited edition Brock Commodore or the Focus RS500. Again google gives up a number of Ford limited additions. Fiesta sports, Territory's, Focus And sports cars, F50 349 made, McLaren F1 106 made, both worth many time more now than when they were made. Do you really think they couldn't have sold far more of these if they wanted to?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPherson_strut

You sell cars and you haven't heard of limited addition runs that pretty much all car company's do? Then of course there are all the sports and exotic manufacturer's like Lamborghini and Bentley that limit and number all their cars to keep the prices high.

You can't run T5 tubes off T8 gear, you need to replace every thing, it's not just a matter of changing the end it fit.

LFS's sell lick proof coverings for animal wounds, they are a tan colored thick sticky pad. Not sure if they work cause they taste bad of just because they are lick proof. If you can't find one locally you welcome to PM me and I organise one for you.