HummingBird

yeah it's surface area that matters, not total litreage.

Like the swords. I used to have some albino guppies just like the ones in your pictures, too.

Welcome back Caper! Sorry to hear about your cat - all good things, eh? You'll become addicted to fish again soon enough though

Yeah java fern just up and dies if you do water changes too often. It loves nitrates.

So they can fit in and no bigger...they love to cram themselves into tight places.

I've never had daphnia with anything like that on them. Mine are normal right now. Try treating a few of them in another tank with meth blue or melafix.

lol my cat's done a similar thing before, she always sits on the light of one of my tanks and she leaped up only to find that the lid wasn't there.

There's a season for it? lol. In my past experience with wcmm's, it's harder to stop them breeding than it is to start.

It should be ok as long as they aren't breeding. If the bristlenose has a hiding place or two (that only it can fit in) it should be ok in any case.

The same way you'd cycle any tank

Don't really think so - you want the newly born daphnia and I don't know if they'd be caught in their nets when they preserve them. In any case I don't know how you'd seperate them. This is what you want

As mentioned in this topic, plecos can survive in ponds quite happily.

As Tsarmina says water fleas aka Daphnia are excellent. The adults are too big for the axolotl babies to eat (now) but they'll inevitably give birth when they're in the tank, and the babies can eat the newborn daphnia. It's a plus that you don't have to manually feed them all the time too. Of course the adult Daphnia will eventually die from lack of food, but that'll take days or even weeks, and they're a dime a dozen in any case. Green water is good too.

I've used them fine for breeding cichlids before - they love them. I've just bought one of these - it hasn't arrived yet but I'm hopeful that my bristlenose will respond well to it.

Awesome to hear Tsarmina! I just got some WCMM today, they're living in a paddling pool in the back yard with a bunch of java moss - I'm hoping they'll behave like yours did One of mine's got a bent spine too, I considered culling him but couldn't bring myself to do it, after all he'll probably grow up with a great personality right?

Yeah plecos can live in an unheated tank inside or even in pond all year round, you just need to acclimatise them. Summer's the best time to put them in, obviously, so it gets colder slowly as the seasons change, but if you change the temperature slowly enough you can put them in any time.

Melafix should do the trick.

Your tank sounds perfect. The death probably wasn't a problem with your setup, most likely one of the thirteen new ones was on it's way out when you brought it home. If not that then possibly it's just old age. I would only really start to worry if more start dropping.

What are the floating plants that you're going to buy? I've found that Indian fern is fine with a lot of water flow, at least.

Indian Fern is a good one, it's leaf thickness varies depending on the light conditions but it usually looks something like this http://images.trademe.co.nz/photoserver/25/36255725_full.jpg

yeah check the water parameters - ammonia, nitrite, etc.

I think (hope?) there's an extra one in there Alan...11 buckets is probably more than a ~60 litre tank holds altogether

I've lost bristlenoses this way too, but usually I've only had them jump out when they've been stressed (eg. they're new to the tank, the water parameters are off, etc). But then again, maybe the ones I've got are just unadventurous.

Yeah if the fish are little enough backswimmers (a different species than waterboatmen but they look almost identical - boatmen are vegetarians where as they're predators) will eat them. Mossie larvae is an excellent food, not least of all because it's free. Here's a cool pic I took one time of a young guppy just discovering some that were hiding in some floating plants.. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/hummingbird42/2ft%20Guppys%20Swordtails/Mossylarvae.jpg?t=1173607528

I've never had a problem with common plecos eating plants at all. Uprooting, yes, but that's just because they're so huge they can't help it