electricfish37

Thanks, Nicolette. I'll be there, and will pass the message on to others if I can. If it gets off the ground, I can put up notices in LFS's to generate interest. I hope Wok sees this!

That would be great - I'll be there if you can advise time/date. Cheers, Mike

That's interesting. I'll take you up on the offer of Ramshorns Eric - could you phone me sometime - number as in my PM to you on another subject.

Thanks for the advice. The water is not heated - around 21-23 degrees, so the dwarf corys are probably not an option. I don't like the idea of snails - I've spent months getting rid of the ones that attacked my angel eggs. So I guess sucking up the residue is the answer, together with much smaller and more frequent feeds. I did not realise they would eat algae - there is plenty of that in the tank, so I might try cutting down the food drastically.

I too have a large number of fry, about 5 days old now. I am feeding them on finely ground dry food and that seems to be ok. My only problem is that inevitably much of the fine food sinks to the bottom uneaten, and seems to be creating small gas bubbles as it rots away. Can anybody suggest a way of getting rid of it without sucking up the fry, or is there a harmless bottom-feeding fish I could get to do the job without eating the babies? I have left the 6 adult WCMM in there, and they do not seem to be chasing or eating the fry.

Thanks for that, Stella. Now I am going to make sure to avoid overstocking, make very regular water changes, and keep an eye open for any sign of oxygen deprivation - fish gulping at the surface. I have only 4 medium size goldfish in a 3-foot tank, with massive aeration, so I think it should be o.k. I am a recent convert from tropicals, but if I had to float bottles of ice to keep the temperature down, I'd rather go back to the tropicals. I am in Auckland, and will be interested to see what water temperatures I get in the winter - it's an indoors tank.

So, why is it so important to cool the tank? Mine is 24.5 at present, and the Goldfish look happy enough. Plenty of aeration and filtration, and regular water changes. I have previously experimented with a large goldfish in a tropical tank, and at about 28 degrees he seemed happy and lived quite a long time. In nature, fish will swim around in water which varies in temperature quite a lot, and as long as you do not take it to extremes I don't think it is very critical.

Thanks for those 2 suggestions. Maybe I'll get it right next time!

I have a pair of breeding angels which have laid 2 batches of eggs. The first time, a couple of months ago, the eggs were attacked by the large number of small snails in the tank, and I only managed to rear 1 baby. so I cleaned the tank and no longer have any snails in there. 2 days ago the angels laid again, and I immediately removed the parents thinking this would ensure they had the chance to hatch. But within 24 hours, all the eggs were covered in a white mould - looked like cotton wool -so I suppose I've lost that lot. Can anybody tell me what that mould is, and why it occurred? How do I stop it happening again? Is it best to remove the parents? Any advice much appreciated!

I once had 6 in a tank with just a pleco, and after a while one of them had his tail partly nipped off. So you can't be sure by putting them by themselves. I assume the nipped one was the weakest of the lot, but could not be sure. And I never knew whether the nipping was done by one tiger or several. I doubt whether I'll ever try tigers again!

Thanks for the advice. I'm now feeding them alternately on bbs and Liquifry, and they seem quite happy. Not that there seems to be as many as there were - I'm hoping they are just hiding!

My first batch of Angel fry is now free swimming - about 60 I guess. Very exciting, and they look great swimming around in a shoal. I thought I'd lost most of the eggs, especially as the snails got amongst them and were obviously not up to any good. But there the fry were this morning - don't know where they were hiding! I think I should start feeding them bbs soon, which I have never done before except for a trial hatching a couple of days ago. When they hatched, I put them in the aquarium and that seemed to kill them (the bbs, that is!). By next day, there did not seem to be any live bbs in the jar where I hatched them. So, exactly what do I do to be able to feed them to the fry 3 or 4 times a day? Do I need to have 2 or 3 hatching jars, to be able to rotate them and have live bbs available every day? I've also purchased some very fine dry food, but think that will not be o.k. until the fry are a few weeks old. Any advice?

I guess I'd better just buy a proper one! Any suggestions on supplier, model, etc. I just can't stand those small rubber diaphragm types. They seem to be so unreliable, gradually losing pressure, etc.

Does anybody have any experience using a fridge compressor to provide air to airstones,etc.? The advantages seem to me to be: very cheap, very reliable, large capacity, no diaphragms to replace. Disadvantage - they have lubricant, so the air might need to be passed through a water-jar to remove any contaminant. Any suggestions? Thanks, Mike

Hi Simfish, I see you are in Howick area. You might like to attend the meetings of our new East Auckland club next year. January meeting in Chapel Road. If you phone me on 5376002 or 021 772 478 and give me your details, I'll phone a reminder to you a couple of days beforehand. You would be able to get lots of good advice on all fishy matters!