HummingBird

40W of light for a ~250L tank is well below the recommended amount so you definitely don't have to worry about it being too much. If anything, too little.

Spent most of today building the stand for the tank, the stand is about 1.15m tall so the tank'll be roughly at eye level. When the tank's on there there'll be a piece of wood on top as well to distribute the weight. Eventually I'll put some paneling on the sides too so it'll look nicer.

Yeah, I don't really care if it's on all the time or not, it'll still take the same number of watts to keep it at temperature.

According to the seachem website though, flourish excel is only "active" for 24 hours anyways.

Yeah it depends on a lot of things, your amount of light, amount of fertiliser, and the coarseness of the wood. If you just tuck it into cracks like suggested it'll stick eventually, no matter the circumstance.

I thought reflection was the effect that was generally gone for in a light hood?

It might just be a case of not enough light. My chain swords didn't go too well till I got another 30W on my 3ft (90W in total) and it's a lot shorter than yours.

How many watts of light do you have in the swords tank, and how big's the tank?

If they're stem plants, yes they will. The bottom parts will sprout new tips too, so you'll double the number of plants you have with each cutting.

http://www.aquahobby.com/e_garden.php is good too.

To siphon water I normally just run the siphon hose out the window/door and into the garden - more nitrates for the garden, less for the fish

There isn't really such a thing. The worst that will happen is that they'll crowd each other out for light and as such the lower plants/lower parts of the stems (if they're stemmed plants) will be bare/dying from lack of light. The rate of growth would probably slow down too, if you don't add fertilizer. I use PMDD - it's cheap, and a batch lasts almost forever. The recipe for it is here. Hopefully Plantman will post some pictures of his tanks in here, so you can see what "a lot of plants" really means

Can I ask, how big are your Silver Dollars, Loopy?

Great going Loopy Best of luck raising them

Don't double post.

Rather than explain it myself, I've copied this from another fish forum that I visit: 1. Salt is something that helps under certain circumstances (injury, some infections), but only under medicinal doses, which are much higher than most aquarists would use as a "tonic". 2. Salt used at medicinal dosages will mess up the osmotic processes of (non brackish) freshwater fish over the long term, and should only be used for short periods (a few weeks at most) for treatment of specific conditions. 3. It really does not matter what salt you use. Table salt will work, even if it is iodized. The iodine concentrations in table salt will not be harmful to your fish over the short term. 4. Some fish, particularly scaleless fish are particularly sensitive to salt and special care should be taken when treating problems with these fish. Generally, the dosages will need to be lower. 5. "Tonic" dosages, in other words dosages much lower than medicinal dosages used continuously, will not benefit your fish, and can cause potential problems if you are not very careful about keeping up with your dosing schedule. Salt does not evaporate. The only way it leaves your tank is through water changes. Keeping salt levels constant requires knowledge, recordkeeping, and consistancy. For these reasons, I strongly recommend against its use as a tonic. 6. In most cases, your tap water has plenty of minerals/electrolytes/etc. for your fish. Bottom line: unless you have brackish species, don't add salt to your water.

I've only bought one 300W heater so far for my new ~580L tank. It's a stainless steel one (I'll be keeping Oscars), and I'm going to see how it goes with just the one before I consider getting another.

I'm looking to get rid of my oto, I'm pretty sure it's been eating the leaves of my hygrophilia. I'd take $10 for him. Pickup would be from highland park.

No worries - let me know how it goes. I'd like to go down sometime and try and catch a few, I'd need to set up a new tank for that of course...oh how tempting.

Here're the directions I was given: "The swamp is at Tokaanu at the very south end on Lake Taupo. You can't miss it really as the road runs right alongside it. There is a big real estate for sale sign there. Follow highway 41 from Turangi. If you get to the Waihi turnoff you have gone a hundred meters or so too far. There are heaps of blackberry bushes around it. I find the best way to catch them is to use a minnow trap (or bait catcher) and attach it to a long rope. That way you can simply chuck it in from afar and go off to have a coffee while they catch themselves." and a nice little map that I took a screenshot of:

Hard to say if you can keep your current fish - it depends on the type of bigger fish that you get. The glass thickness depends on the height of the tank, too.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I'll go with just three oscars, given my filtration capacity and the mentioned potential problems with bullying if I had four (and five doesn't seem like a viable option). I'm also planning to put a Eheim 2010 internal filter in the tank to initially seed the tank and also increase circulation long term (basically just acting as a powerhead) - supposedly it can put out up to 500 lph so that'll help filtration wise too. I hadn't considered Silver Dollars as a potential tankmate, but now that it's mentioned I'm definitely interested. I've never seen them in real life, only pictures on the net, so I'll have to have a look round a few pet stores and see what they're like.

Dwarf Gourami or Giant? Your title and text are different. You wouldn't really want anything less than 800L for the Giant variety. The Dwarf kind can settle for a little less

I'm looking to get a mega piece of driftwood for my new tank. Obviously the west coast is the better location, but can anyone suggest the best beach around Auckland for good specimens?

If it's organic, apple snails will eat it.