Carriej

Thankyou caryl, KM.

just a plastic toy one, it fires plastic bbs. I wanted to borrow my mates one and he offered me one that is gas powered and fires metal bbs, or this one. I went for the 2nd option

I have a bb gun. it wont hurt the cat, I have fired it point blank into my hand to test that, but it will give it a fright and hopefully keep it out of my house.

Not it rocks, just it is a rock, actually, I'll change it......

Nice site. I have bookmarked it. I knew that it could be tranferred via cannibalism. I thought it was worms rather that bacteria... but now I know I have already reccomended how to treat the tank to him, and that site backs up my recommendations, but I definately wanted to be sure. Thankyou. Tristan

We caught our neighbors cat fishing in our livebearer tank the other day. the tank only has a half lid and I havent got around to redoing lid. I have about 10 or so tanks that need some attention with silicone and glass. I am going to buy a collar and bell today, and ask the neighbor if she would be willing to put it on her cat, so I will know if it comes into the house.

I forgot to mention why lids are so important. the fry need the air above the tank to be approximately the same temperature as the water or they will chill when breathing from the surface, especially when they labarynth organs are developing.

No worries. Tanks are always cheap if you buy second hand. trade me is not always cheap, as there are alot of people watching, but try the papers (buy sell and exchange, or its north island equivalent) there is usually one or two bargains a week. we have been given alot of our tanks, a friend works at a petshop, and people bring in mice/rats in tanks that they dont want anymore. they sell the rodents, and we reseal the tank and use it for fish.

I have read that plecs will get up to six foot in the wild as well. If oscars can get up to 12" in a big tank, I see no reason that they couldn't get alot bigger in the wild, they live for a long time. not sure about 2 foot, but the only way to be sure is to go to bali, and poke around a bit. I doubt that they are guppies, if they are in the wild they are probably a pest fish (gambusia) and it will be illegal to have them. if you did get some, you could get yourself into trouble if the wrong person saw them.

Hi. One of my customers has had a problem with dropsy. I have told him to destroy the fish in question, to try to reduce the chance of it spreading. (he did not have a quarantine tank) I am pretty sure that there is no way to treat dropsy. unfortuneately he wanted me to be able to tell him the causes, and I did not feel confident enough in my knowledge to try to explain what the causes were. I believe that dropsy is caused by a parisite infection. and can be spread by contact with other fish, especially if the others fish eat the infected fish, either before of after it dies, but I am not too sure what triggers it off in the first place. Can someone please help me to clear up this little knowledge gap, because I have asked him to call me again at the weekend, as I promised to research it for him. Thankyou Tristan

When I was deep sea fishing I used to work with a guy who lives in Indonesia. he has rivers running through his property where the plecs are commonly up to six foot, he sees clown loaches over a foot long and he occasionally goes fishing for oscar, a good table oscar can rach up to two foot, enough to feed the family, although not his family cause he has got something like 24 kids, no more than two of them to the same mother....... He reckons that clown loaches taste ok, and oscars are pretty good, but a big spitroasted plec was a real treat and made a great centrepiece at a smorgasboard.

This is what has worked for me for breeding my anabantoids, I have had sucessful spawns of cobalt blue dwarf gouramis, honey gouramis, pearl gouramis, and opaline gouramis. I have recent aquired golden gouramis, and expect to have no problems with spawning them too. I use live food, bloodworms and a couple of feeds of flake a day to condition the fish. when the female is getting well rounded with eggs, I take her and the male and put them in a quiet room to spawn I generally use a bare bottomed 18 inch or a 2 foot tank. the tank will have a plant or some king of hidey hole for the female, and a sponge filter. I use fresh water but do not wash the stones or the filter, as the gouramis seem to like to spawn in slightly grubby water. I put enough floating plants that they are covering thehalf of the tank opposite to the filter. the heater (set at 26oC) must be runniing from the top surface to the bottom, or the water will stratify when you turn off the filter. After a day or so, turn off the filter. and stay out of the room, this will give them the calm water and the privacy that they seem to like to spawn. the male, if he has not started already, should begin to build a bubble nest among the floating plants. if you have no luck the fist day, do a water change, and then boost the heater to 28oC How big a nest will depend on each fish. generally the bigger the nest the bigger the hatch rate, but this is only a hunch I have and is not scientific. If he has not started to build his nest within a day or so, start over with a different location. the main problem with gouramis is that external stimuli can distract them from breeding. Once they have bred immediately remove the female.The male will become very protective of his nest and eggs, and will attempt to drive her away, in a small tank this is not always possible, which is why she will need somewhere to hide. now you need to watch the eggs. he will mouth and tend the eggs fo a couple of days, but once the eggs have tails it is time to pull him out, as his instincts start to wear off once he sees moving fry, and he is probably hungry by this time, as the males will not take much time to eat while tending the eggs. after about 3 days of being free swimming the fry will have used up their yolk saks and will need to be fed. you can use boiled egg yolk squeezings, or liquid fry food as well as microworms for the first week and move them onto baby brine shrimp and very fine powder flake in the second feed fish 3 feeds of live food and two of flake daily this will help them to grow faster and attain brighter colours. my female cobalt blue dwarfs are just as bright as the males, and can only be sexed by shape and finnage. Water changes need to be done twice weekly, but remember that gouramis do like their water a little grubby, so it is not as critical to do water changes as with some other fish. More important is to remove any uneaten food so a small siphon with an airling tube should be done once a day. after the third week their labarynth organs (the things they use to breath air from the surface) should develop, and you will experience a bit of a dieoff, as a few will fail to make the transition. after the labarynth organ has developed, however, it is all downhill as the fry are now alot tougher. They will need room to grow. so if you do not have bigger (lidded) tanks to move them into, or split them up you will have to begin to cull, as you can only have so many in a small space. It is easy to do, or we have found it so, and the cobalts you breed will be brighter, and tougher that their parents. Bred cobalts will have a much greater life expectancy than imported ones, as imports usually carry parasites in them that can overwhelm the fish if they get stressed. If you wish to try, good luck and feel free to ask me for any advice if yoiu need it, but remember that this is just what works for me, so feel free to, in fact I reccomend you to get a 2nd opinion.

Ill type something up in the anabantoids section.

I once heard it summed up something like this, (although the were actually talking about a cat) according to the mind of a guppy, anything in the world can be classified into four categorys. Thing you can: A) Mate with B) Eat C) Run away from And if it doesent fit into the first three categories then D)It is a Rock

Well done, great find. I hope you are planning to breed her. Do you want to know our methods for breeding?

My daughter comes up with some great names for the fish. We used to own a golden apple snail called Beanbag. Our first two male fighters were called Ticket and Tag Our silver shark used to be called Twitch. We have a clown loach called Beano. and for some reason we have a pearl gourami who is called Frog?

Just to restart an old thread.... I use crossstich mesh from the craft store. its stiff enough that it will support itself easily, and has nice size holes for filtration. used to use bought ones, but was never happy about the tiny sizo of the holes.

when I am doing maintenance on my guppy tank the guppies try to eat the hair on my arms.... not that I would call that being friendly, guppies are just kind of dumb.

The colloidal silver I have is 7ppm and I get it for...... um......... about $15 :-? +postage for a 500 ml bottle. I am not recommending colloidal silver(in other words, don't blame me!) but if anyone really wants to know I can PM them the email contact for the guy I got it from. (may take me a couple of days to dig it out....) The bottle says: all natural biocide with know antibiotic properties.... can't see how healthy bacteria would be sustained in this mix, but I obviously have a different supplier

I have heard that in some of the commercial betta breeding establishments thailand they do a 100% water change daily, but they keep the fish in 1.5 litre jars.

Not long after we got into the hobby, the first fish we ever tried to breed were siamese fighters. we had 2 males and 2 females and put them on each side of a divided 2 foot and dropped the water level. the siamese males forgot about the females and spent the whole time displaying at each other. we mucked around for a while trying to block their view of each other, but ended up leaving them in the tank with 4 inches of water for too long and had an ammonia spike. I reacted by filling the tank up to about 1.5 Cm from the top of the divider, and during the night one of the males jumped over into the other side and the next morning I had one dead male and one bald male, who had to be put down. The 2nd dumb mistake we made, was we cleared out our discus tank, and sent the discus off to live with a friend. the discus tank had a peat bottom, and we decided that it was about the right PH for breeding neons. my wife and I discussed turning the temperature down, and both assumed the other was going to do it. When we introduced our nicely fattened and prepared mature neons, that we had spent 4 months growing up and getting ready to breed from, they all, bar 2 males were found dead the next morning. our third dumb mistake, was when we got 10 baby convicts given to us. they wew only about 3/4 cm when we got them and so we dropped them in the community tank, and completely forgot about them. a few weeks later we began to get a series of seemingly unexplaiable deaths, and it wasn't until we were examining our tank closely and discovered our forgotten convicts, who were still only 1 1/2 cm long, were knocking off fish 3 and 4 times their size, so we quickly found them a new home.

Siamese fighters are generally a very friendly fish, But will not always fare well in a community aquarium.

generally they are less showy than the males, and that would put alot of customers off buying, so shops don't like to stock them. But what I was trying to say was that when I started to search for female dwarfs, and I placed an order at a couple of my LFS they got rejected by the wholesalers.

I find that all of the dwarf gouramis will get along fine, unless a female is introduced. then all of the males will begin to scrap over her. this is not normally a problem, as the females are very difficult to get. they are not sold in petstores, and speculation on why this may be is likely to get me into trouble.

Hi modern angl I second (or third or fourth) the opinion that the bigger the better. larger tanks are easier to maintain. It would be a great idea to go to the BBQ as it will give you a chance to meet alot of people who are in the trade. I wish I could go, but I live in CHCH. Take a pen and paper and try to get a few contacts, especially of people who may be breeding fish. You will get fish cheaper, and generally healthier from breeders than you ever will at the stores. and you will get great advise from a breeder when you pick up the fish, a breeder will always wan't his or her fish to do well in their new home, wheras some stores don't care, as long as they get paid. Try to learn as much about any species of fish as you can before you buy it. it is often surprising which fish are incompatable. The best tip that anyone could ever give regarding tropical fish and fishtanks, is always try to get a 2nd opinion. Anything beyond the very basics of fishkeeping is subject to opinion, and what works for one tank, may not work for another. this especially applies to pet stores or anyone who is trying to sell you something