HummingBird

Perhaps Evil has more light, fertilizer and co2/other carbon source than you?

My guy was in a tank with guppies and corydoras for a while, he was fine with the guppies but took out all but two of the cories, eventually I moved him to a 4ft tank with a full sized Oscar, they seemed alright together but one day I found him dead. Not sure how he died, there weren't any noticeable wounds but I have to wonder if he pushed the Oscar and got pushed back. Ah well, these things happen. His name, for the record, was Alfred.

I had one that got to around 15cm eventually, he was my first fish. He was an absolute terror, he killed his tank mate the first week I had him and many more fish after that, but I couldn't bring myself to get rid of him because I was attached to him.

hahah yeah, but ten years ago they were a bit more lax about these things 8)

What he means by "red tail cats" is the Redtail Catfish. They can get over 4ft long eventually...

It's also important to add some baking soda to the co2 mixture to boost the water hardness so your pH doesn't fluctuate. There are plenty of recipes online if you google it.

I use two of them on different tanks, they're worth it just for the ladder diffuser.

JBL novotabs are good because they have some roughage too, but shrimp pellets etc would be fine too.

I think you'll find that if you feed a high(er) protein diet, his poos will be less unsightly.

Just make sure you don't have any bubbles trapped in the hairs on your arm - with little fish, their nibbling on them can be cute, but with larger ones it can be painful.

I don't think they're allowed in NZ unfortunately.

Yeah I've got some awesome looking top & bottom swords that I got off StevesKillies

Maybe it's not the thermostat that's bs, but your thermometer. Both are commonly inaccurate, though.

Think about it - do you want them to learn that food = little, wriggling white things?

By make your own filters, you mean a sump right? If so, most submersible pumps that are used for that purpose are going to be pretty silent, especially since they'll be in a cabinet too. Eheim's probably the best though.

They don't eat BBA. Most other types they will.

I think the death of the fish would have been from an ammonia spike as a result of all the dieing hair algae. At least, my experience corroborates this theory - I've lost 50+ baby GBA's and a breeding harem to the phenomena before.

I feed live food regularly and my guppy tanks are teeming with babies.

Hahah, I wondered if you guys would bring that up. I don't have any, of course, I was just speaking hypothetically.

Water Hyacinth is also excellent at leeching nutrients from the water column.

Yeah, I think what Cam meant by "breed" was the whole process, including raising the babies to adulthood. Another fish not mentioned is the Jewel cichlid, which is also (in my experience) insanely easy to breed. At one point I had a 4 foot tank with two pairs of breeding convicts in it and they'd each claimed half the tank as territory. I put four jewels in and they weren't allowed to deviate from the exact of the tank, the convicts were that controlling - but, after being in the tank for a few days, they actually spawned too, right there on the underside of a log in the exact middle of the tank. I sucked the convict and jewel eggs out and raised them all together, it was pretty cool. sharn, you say some people think convicts are hard to breed - have they ever even kept a male and a female together before? Seriously, I've never heard anyone say that before, the most common problem I hear is people not being able to stop them breeding. I work at Jansens, and even when we get them in at 4-5cm, they breed after like a day of being in our tanks.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying warren, thanks.

Probably Convicts for egg layers, and White Cloud Mountain Minnows for egg scatterers.

That's a good point reef, I do actually add nitrate to my planted tanks in the form of potassium nitrate.

You can use resins that remove nitrate as well, but the safest and most effective method is to just plant heavily and stock lightly. I don't let any of my tanks get over 10ppm nitrate (I don't do weekly water changes either, it's usually biweekly or longer) and in fact my more heavily planted ones stay at 0 no matter how long I leave them.