ajbroome

Caryl and Rob both wonder... > ... just what managed to part you from your hard earned cash? and... > ... Which shop actually had something so spectacular that Andrew > forked out cash???? Well, as you have seen, I *did* buy some killies in Wet Pets. However, I went in there with the full intention of buying some fluorescent tubes and some filter floss so the killies were just and extra amount to add to the VISA bill ;-) On top of that, I cleared away a bookcase on Sunday so I now have room to set up a community tank in the house so it looks like I'll be buying non-killie fish at some stage in the future. Once I've got some concrete blocks to use as a stand, painted the intended tank black on the back, sorted out some heating and lighting and so on and so on... Andrew, shaking his head and wondering why...

Ira said... > Yeah, I'm using rainwater, so very little buffering. Can you tell me why you're using rain water? It often causes more trouble than it's worth for most applications. Of course, some people don't have the option but if that were the case for me then I'd look at using some sort of mineral suppliment which are commercially available... Andrew.

Folks, While at Wet Pets on saturday I saw some Blue Panchax (Aplocheilus panchax) for sale. These will have been imported but are quite easy to breed. I bought two pair and they've settled in nicely. Andrew.

Midas said... > I disagree with your statement about the tank water temperature > differing from that of the room temperature due to density > differences. Yep, you're right there. Given time, the whole room will settle out at around 25C assuming decent insulation so it doesn't matter whether you're heating the room as a unit (where the tanks suck heat from the air) or if you're heating the tanks (either via hot water, an individual heater, or undertank heating wire) in which case the room will suck heat from the tanks. Water may be a degree or two cooler than the surrounding air due to evaporative cooling but in a warm humid fishroom this is less significant than in a cool dry room. It takes about as many watts to heat a given quantity of water either way since you're doing the same job. The only advantage I can see to using the hot water methods is that the rate you're charged for water heating is usually less than for your household electricity. However I would expect the setting up costs to be quite high... I'd be inclined to heat the room (probably a suitably protected fan heater at the bottom of the room). All things being equal you'll find the upper tanks will be warmer than the lower ones. If you're using any sort of artificial lighting then that will add to the heat in the room as well. In the summer I expect your biggest problem will be keeping things cool enough for some fish rather than the reverse. A lot of fish are typically kept much warmer than they need and this can shorten their lifespans and interrupt breeding significantly. This also means they eat more, excrete more and therefore put more load on your filter system, at the same time as there is less oxygen in the water to power the bugs that do some of the biological purification for you... Anyway, just my thoughts. I use undertank heating extensively but haven't decided how I'm going to heat my fishroom yet. I suspect I will just put heatpads (since I've got them already) under some of the tanks and leave the rest to equilibrate with the room. Andrew, who spent actual money in a fishshop on saturday...

Bruce said... > I suspect these ones are coming through the Killie Fish > mailing list though If you mean AUNZZA then there are a few SPAM messages coming in from time to time. Unfortunately because there isn't much actual traffic at the moment, the SPAM to good content ratio is kinda high :-( Andrew.

Bruce, Handed out copies of the guff e-mailled to me, at the last PNAS meeting and further copies will go in with the next newsletter hopefully. At this stage, at least 3 people from PN are planning on attending. Andrew.

Kluyu said... > That triggerplant link is great. I have saved the link & will > now share it with other plant enthusiasts. Feel free. Anybody is invited to join the mailing list too. > We have a few "carnivorous" plants in this area, but the are > generally of the pitcher plant type. Yep, mostly Sarracenia alata (which occurs right across into Alabama). Have you seen: http://www.carnivorousplantsoftexas.org/index.html Andrew.

Ira, Caryl is right, the rules are the same no matter where the fish are being imported from. BTW: I've always wanted one of the shell dwellers too, so if you ever get any - count me in ;-) Andrew.

Mitch said... > ...but on two recent occassions I have received e-mails > purporting to come from fnzas members... There has been at least one nasty virus that I feel is being (accidentily, no doubt) distributed from someone in the FNZAS. To make matters worse (for me especially), it's one that 'spoofs' the senders address to hide it's real source and since my name often appears at the top of people address book (starting with a 'a' as it does) there was a period when a lot of virus containing e-mail appeared to be coming from me (both my work address and my home one). I'm convinced that I was not the source in either case... but looking at the messages I was getting back, it did appear to be from someone who regularly mails FNZAS people (one of the reasons I feel it wasn't coming from me is that I got messages from a lot of people but the only ones I knew were FNZAS people, not any of the others in my address book). Anyway, it's a nasty piece of work but can be avoided using the usual techniques and cleaned up using good anti-virus software. Use GOOGLE to search on the name of the virus and you should be able to find a cure. Andrew.

Ira, Aren't you using straight rainwater? This suggests you'll have no buffering capacity in your water and it'll be prone to wild pH shifts with minimal change in chemistry. There are ways of dealing with this... Andrew.

Rob said... > ... assuming an average stocking level for a tank with only > a few live plants what volume turnover would people > recommend? I know 'it depends' is a dreadful answer, but one factor to include in your calculations is how often you're able/prepared to change water. There'd a huge filter load if you weren't diluting the dissolved wastes significantly on a regular basis. Arguably, if you're changing water often enough, the filter can be quite small since it only has to remove particulate matter and isn't required to do much biological filtration... Just my thoughts. Andrew.

Dogmatix, Often young cichlid parents will eat their first few batches of fry. You can try removing the male or els putting some relatively harmless, surface dwelling, 'dither fish' in the tank to give the adults something to guard against. This sometimes brings out their natural behaviour... If you aren't all that interested in seeing the parental care aspect of cichlid breeding then it's relatively easy to either remove both parents or siphon out the fry. Either way, raising the fry isn't too tricky if you can supply lots of brineshrimp nauplii and good water quality. Once you've got a batch or two 'on the go' you can bet the parents will look after all their subsequent spawnings and you'll end up with squillions of little cichlids that hardly anybody wants ;-) Having said this, these are one fish I want to keep in my new fishroom so will be on the lookout for some good ones at some stage. Good luck, Andrew.

Goldie said... > I was lucky enough to be there at feeding time, 10am, when > the diver went in to feed them. WOW. Well worth seeing. There's a good place to see eels being fed in the lower North Island. Nga Manu, the bird and wildlife sanctuary between Levin and Wellington. The eels climb right out of the water onto a big rock where the food is placed. Good place to take easily scared tourists ;-) The have a decent reptile display there too... Andrew.

Benny said... > They must have moved it . Yep. > It used to be in the on the opposite side of the big tank Sure was. > ... and you got pay a couple of bucks and they fed it, right? Dunno about that. I'm not in there very often, although it's getting more and more regular lately... > How big is it anyway? I'd say up towards 4ft. Not especially huge but a good size. Andrew.

Benny said... > do you know what conditions they keep the eel in? Last time I was in there, about the weekend before last, the eel was in the really big tank with the Pacu etc. The one that used to have the red-tailled catfish in... As far as I know it's a regular tropical tank. Not that I'm convinced that's best for the eel. Andrew.

Caryl said... > ... I have 6 years worth of them in my bookshelf. Haven't > bought any for about 12 months though - our magazine bill > was getting a little over the top ... I know what you mean. I have a vast collection of fish magazines which I just moved inside, out of the garage. Probably about 10 years each worth of PFK, FAMA, AFM, A&P as well as various issues of other more obscure ones, including some from the 50s and 60s. Then there are the many years of TFH magazines, right back to when they were the half sized ones... I've stopped getting them all now too. :-( They make good reading though. A lot of the techniques have changed and there have been many modifications to fish names too but a lot of the basics still apply and the history is interesting. Andrew, off topic again.

Ira, And you didn't get in touch to come visit? I'm hurt... ;-) Andrew.

Chris said... > Moorish Idol (zanlus Canescens) Banner fish or poor mans > moorish (Heniochus Acuminatus) and yes I still have one and > have had this for 10 months now. I'm sorry, I don't understand the above sentence. BTW: As a matter of interest, while Z. canescens is in common use too, apparently Z. cornutus has priority although both names were first used in 1758 to refer to the same fish. Unless you believe in 'page priority' which I don't think anyone does... ;-) As far as 'ease of keeping' goes, many marine fish used to be available in very bad condition (possibly from cyanide used during collecting) and as such never adapted to an aquarium diet. This *can* be the reason some fish are regarded as being difficult. Good healthy specimens with a proper appetite may be much easier to maintain. Or not. > So much for not getting personal too eh. If this is refering to me, I understand it even less. Andrew.

Pegasus said... > The Heniochus acuminatus (Moorish Idol) is classed as one > of the easiest Marine Fish to keep... David said... > they also say that they are very hard yo keep... I've never kept marine fish and *even* I know that the true Moorish Idol (Zanclus cornutus) is generally considered to be very difficult to keep alive in captivity for extended periods. The fish that mimic it, Heniochus, is more like the other commonly kept butterfly type fish and much easier if it's basic requirements are met... See: http://www.aquahobby.com/marine/moorish.html vs http://www.exotictropicals.com/encyclo/ ... niocbw.htm That's the curse of common names. However, doing some research before ranting is never a bad idea... I have no idea which species Jansens has at the moment. Difficult, rare fish are often more expensive that easy common ones though. Andrew, not even sure why he was reading this group...

Chris said... > ... this tank was made of 20 ml glass a friend of mine had it > made for him by a guy in Auck and it was for a marine tank. Oh, it's all do-able, I'm just not sure it's a very good idea for most uses. With marine fish you're usually not trying to grow plants so that helps... > The litreage would be around the 650 mark which would effectively > equate to 650 kgs of weight making it quite a hefty tank. Bearing in mind that anything made out of 20mm glass is *damn* heavy on it's own without counting the weight of water, let alone rocks and so forth... and a stand strong enough to support the weight. Not sure I'd want to live under it... I've moved a lot of tanks over the last 2 months (like 70 or 80) and I'm thankful that most of them were small enough to only need one person. Even the couple of tanks I have that are made from 10mm glass (all between 4 and 5 foot) are *heavy*... Andrew.

Andrew22 said... > about 1.4m long by 90cm high and 50cm back I agree with Rob, the depth will get you. Deep tanks sound good in theory but, in my experience, are a pain in the neck. Once you get past 60cm they're a curse to light properly which can exclude the use of live plants and the depth also makes them a curse to work on without climbing in the tank to reach the bottom. Also, that'd be a lot of weight to have in an upstairs apartment. I'd go for something 4ft x 18 or 20 inches deep x 20 or 24 inches wide. The weight it better spread, it's easier to light properly and you can actually reach the bottom to pick up the inevitable dropped magnetic algae scrapers and such ;-) YMMV, of course... Andrew.

Zeta said... > my fish really aren't doing as well as I would like. Mild finrot, > rampant fin-nipping.. What kinds of fish under what conditions? The above could be a normal response to envirinmental or behavioural conditions... > ... my angels seem to get these black spots Black spots can be part of the natural pigmentation on healthy 'wild type' or 'silver' angels. The spots are masked on darker varieties and absent from 'albinos' or 'golds'... > Should I be alarmed? Judging by the photo, I wouldn't be. Tell us more about the other fish... Andrew.

Rob said... > If you feed only white worms you'll get obese fish and there > is a risk of their liver being damaged. Can you point me to a reference for that Rob? I've heard it said time and time again but never by anyone who has actually seen it happen and can directly attribute the symptoms with the food source. Not saying that it's right or wrong, but I've fed generations of killies on just whiteworms and brineshrimp without any problems that I'd associate with the diet. Of course, variety is much better that monotony especially with regard to diet... As well all know, correlation is not causation... ;-) Andrew.

Bruce, Seems the Palmerston North club hasn't received any info on the upcoming big weekend. Maybe you don't have the latest postal address for us? Anyway, can you send me the details, to my home at: 15 Rata Street, Palmerston North and I'll make sure people see it at the meeting on Wednesday. PNAS is looking at making the trip and will want to get on top of it soon so we can organise accomodation and so forth. Several of us will be there and are looking forward to it. Thanks, in advance, Andrew.

Pegasus said... > ... if you type "Stylidium" into your browser you get 56 locacations > of this nice looking plant, many with great pics, and some showing it > flowering If you use GOOGLE then you'll get more like 950. I grow S. graminifolium (http://farrer.csu.edu.au/ASGAP/jpg/s-gram.jpg). Have a look at: http://www.triggerplants.org They're not common in cultivation in NZ. I know of 3 people with them, including myself... I got interested after seeing so many while I was in Western Australia last year. I run a YAHOO group for people interested in the little blighters. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stylidium/ Andrew, waaaay off topic...