me love fishy

If its clear jelly on plants with white dots in it then I would say snails eggs.

You could try trade me as a cheaper option for plants and fish.

Good luck finding any hot sun at this time of year though

Good luck with your tank Rozski, there is so much to choose from. My personal opinion is to not worry about the CO2 set up for now and see how it goes. I don't have one in my four foot tank and manage to grow plants just fine.

otos are good at cleaning plants and they are only small, so if your tank isn't that big they would be ideal.

stargazer do you drink this water?

I would still probably get another couple of females if your tank is big enough, and ensure they have places they can hide, mine like to hide in my java fern if they are being harrassed.

I like bristlenose, otos and siamese algae eaters. I also have an algae eater which I think is a chinese algae eater, it is not the golden variety but it is motled grey. It doesn't eat algae and is very territorial and will kill any fish with rounded bodies.( Well I suspect it is him) Had to "put down" a harlequin rasbora because it had half of its tail ripped off and the cae is my main suspect.

i heard as a rule of thumb that an external cannister filter should filter through 3 times the volume of your tank in an hour, so for example if your tank holds 200 litres look for a filter that can filter at least 600 litres per hour. all the best with your tank, please post some photos once you have it set up.

how is your fish Jollillolli?

All the best with it Milet I was going to say if you have a separate shower and bath, you could always soak the wood in the bath, that's how where I put mine to leach the tannins out of it.

I'd probably just keep the male without females in that size tank and add some cardinals, neons or harlequin rasboras and a bristlenose. Your male will think he is king of the tank!

You've been away? Just kidding freakyfish, welcome back

do the fish cope okay with the ice? are there issues with oxygen getting into the water?

I think they are kind of cute though, do they hide all the time or are they out and about alot?

I checked our water last night and this morning and it was around 8 degrees both times and we didn't have a frost this morning. So that's quite cold really, quite a bit colder than 14 degrees. I think I just get overly worried that it will stress my fishies and somebody told me when I first started fishkeeping to make water changes the same temp as their tank water. I do a 30-40% water change every two weeks, sometimes more often if I think it needs it. that's why I use the pump I got from Mike's fishing cos it fits to our kitchen mixer, so I can make the water around the same temp, but everyone has their own preferences. But there are other benefits to this pump as I already mentioned and it does cut back the time water changes take with a bucket and jug, which is what I used to use, which was another reason I wanted to buy it, it basically solved all my probs regarding water changes for around $25.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I will try prazi initially and see if it works. Discusguru I think one of my butterly rams has some internal parasites because he has a sunken belly, won't eat, his colouration is a lot darker than the other rams and he is not moving as fast as them, he is starting to get that lollypop look ie head too big for body as body is too skinny as well. I have been putting melafix in the water just to try and keep him in reasonable condition until I can get some worming treatment. My other fish appear to be fine though. We have been renovating so it could be the noise or paint fumes or plaster dust that might have stressed him out and caused him to get sick, that is my theory anyway. I was a bit bummed when I discovered they don't sell cure-ex anymore as I have used this before to successfully rid a bristlenose of worms.

i will check our water temperature tomorrow morning and let you know how cold it is, but there is a fair difference between getting down to 8 degrees at night and that being the high for the day! So I would expect our water to be colder anyway and further south to be even colder than ours, especially in central otago. I have noticed this difference in temperature of water, because whenever I am up in the north island I end up running the tap for about 5 mins before I realise it isn't going to get any colder before I have a drink of water. and i agree with TGWH that a drop of around 7 degrees in a tank is quite alot, it also means your heaters have to work harder to get the temperature back up.

DavidR our water is alot colder down here, I notice you are in Auckland. There is another reason I find this pump brilliant and that is that the suction is good enough to do a good gravel vac without having to worry if the hose goes up over things and back down again and with the stop valve I have added along the hose I can stop and start the suction easily. All you do to start it siphoning is connect the pump to the tap and turn on the cold tap with the pump set to empty and it will keep pumping out water.

I bought one of those pumps from Mike's fishing and it is great. I have used it to gravel vac as well as refill and it takes so much less time now. I had to get a metal adaptor as the plastic one didn't quite fit properly to my kitchen tap, but he had those in stock anyway. I just bought a length of hose and some adaptors from bunnings and I also got a valve so I can stop it sucking without running to the tap and attached it all together It used to take me about and hour or so to do water changes in my 4 foot tank and it now takes me about 30 minutes.

Thanks for that Hummingbird, I will go to animates in the weekend and see if I can get it from there as they have a vet, either that or go to our cats' vet.

Hi can someone please tell me what the best treatment for internal parasites is. I used to use cure-ex but they don't sell it anymore, I heard from somewhere that formulin would work, anyone know a readily available treatment that will work?

my homemade nets, made out of old coat hangers (straightened) and the mesh off the outside of some old shoulder pads. They are great and more manouevrable than the ones I bought from the LFS and longer. An old eftpos card for algae removal a toothbrush for getting into tricky places in ornaments and cleaning my small filter. And my claw on a pole thing, for grabbing plants etc and replanting I call it the pteradactyl.

wooden hood rocks or wood

I gravel vac everytime I do a waterchange which is usually once a fortnight, or if I notice the tank is starting to look a bit dirty.