john1

Hi Here is an interesting article for new and experienced fishkeepers. http://home.iprimus.com.au/john1/nitrit ... nglish.htm John

Hi Hier in Australia there were some shops selling the Flugal 150 Bucks cheaper than others. That shows you the mark-up. Rip off I meant. John

Hi Shilo A little hint on drilling plastic, perspex etc. Never use a new drill. It will either bite into it and crack it, or go to quickly in. If you are using a new drill then make the cutting edge blunt by using a fine file. The same principal applies to brass, copper etc. I am a fitter and turner by trade. I learned a few secrets in my time. John

Hi Caryl The brush with that flexible hose is the only way to clean it. But a little bit more work on a ribbed hose. That is the reason I changed it to an Eheim hose. 4 times as expensive as an ordinary run of the mill plastic hose, but it fits perfectly into the valve without using clamps. It most cases, where "convinient" valves are attached to the cannisters, the hoses are the one most neglected. John

Hi Ira The waterflow is ok. It is the rubbish which adheres to/into the ribs!!!! John

Hy Caryl I always though the "new" hoses were ribbed. If you go to Hagen's site you can see in the manual that there are 2 types, smooth and ribbed. I happen to have the useless one. Ribbed. The original idea of a ribbes in hoses is, you can adjust (bend) it easier over the tank top. John

Hi Robert I have a Flugal 204. Very disappointed. I am not sure what you mean by "where it goes in". I think you mean the inlet-hose. In which case you are perfectly right. The new Fluvals have ribbed hoses. Total crap. Changed the inlet hose to an expensive Eheim one. Much better. But how many clean their Fluval and "don't clean the inlet hose?" Many or most. And that is where the most crap gets trapped. Every time I thoroughly clean the cannister and subsequently restarted it, an enormous amount of white "crap" came back into the tank. Very annoying. The only way to keep the tank clean, after cleaning the fluval, is to take both hoses off and use a brush. A type of bottlebrush made for the purpose of cleaning hoses. The real problem lies with the "convenient shutoff valve". It lulls users into a false sense of security. "Just shut the valve off, take off the cannister and clean it" .And leave a lot of dirt inside the ribbed hose!!!. Should I ever buy another cannister, which I doubt, definately not a Flugal. Only Eheim. John

Hi leeves I was wrong with "just swooshing it around". I did not know what was in it and for what purpose. Now someone mentioned your tank is a 600 litre one. In that case, 40 to 80 liters of aquariumwater makes no difference at all. You might as well start with freshwater. You also didn't mention the distance. A Flugal's biological system could be kept alive for a few hours in the open and with established water for much longer. But the removal and subsequent re-installation of an u/g filter is another story. Caryl says you should pick up as much "muck" as possible. Right. But have you ever moved an u/g filter? It is murder. Then reinstalling it again, more murder. It would take a long time to clear the tank. You would almost have to use a DIATOM filter to clear it. But that negates the purpose of bacteria keeping, muck keeping. If you want to be serious, ask the LFS if you could hire one of his tanks for a while,to keep the fish for a while, paying a fee of course, then re-setup you tank. When everything is OK, then get your fish and put them in a clean AND established tank. John

Hi Ira The Idea of home-prepared food is not always cheapness. Yes it is cheaper pound for pound. But it is the quality. How many people you know put ALL that in their fish' diet? Very few. John

Hi Ira You critisize that abovementioned recipe without really knowing what you are talking about. You can feed your fish chicken liver and beefheart for the rest of your life. Nobody's stopping you. But I can also see by that answer you were not in the army. There you get ration packs. A normal healthy adult cannot eat one in 24 hrs. There is so much in them. So what would people like you do, eat the chocolate, jam, maybe the chewy and trow the rest away because you are full and you know tomorrow you get another lot. If you were capable of reading between line you would realize it is not about the frozen mysis shrimp, frozen brine shrimp. It is about variety .Think. Lets assume one does NOT make homeprepared food. You give your fish one block of mysis, then flakes maybe somthing else. thats for days on end. The idea of this particular recipe is, like the army ration, bit of everything nutritious. You should not throw away the uneaten ration pack,rather eat a bit of everything. .But I will have to rename it for the Ira's of this world. It has been renamed from home-made to home-prepared food. whoever likes it, can use it. But you Ira, feed your fish chickenliver, beefheart. They are probably used to it anyway. John

Hi leeves Fill it 3/4 with water and a hanful of ordinary washing powder. Swoosh it around a few times, let it stand for an hour or so, then wash with the same water and a scouring pad. Rinse it once more thoroughly then let dry. John

Hi all -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Try this one From an Austrian Forum I quote the author "All my fish eat it and it is for smallest to the largest of fishes" The end product is a very highly nutritious and good quality fishfood. One portion every 2 to 3 days is sufficient. And in-between normal food. Utensils: -mincer with small holes( Bamix or the like will work, but not as well -a piece of wood or tin, the size of an A4 sheet -a fine sieve (or a nylon stocking) -big knife or pizza cutter Ingredience: (some are still in german (latin) but should not be a problem to most) 300g Mysis shrimps, frozen 200g artemia, frozen 100g cyclops, frozen 100g waterfleas, frozen 2 soup spoons flake food 10 drops of vitamins 100 g salmon, fresh or frozen 100g lettuce 100g spinach, frozen 15g sweet paprika gelatine for 150 ml water How to make it: Thaw Mysis shrimps, Artemia, Cyclops and waterfleas. Put Mysis shrimps, Artemia, and Waterleas In a fine meshed sieve (home made from fabric or nylonstocking) Rinse well and stand until most of the water has gone. blanche salmon, spinach, and lettuce, then mince the three items Put in flakefood, vitamin drops, cyclops and paprika mix with wooden spoon etc. then add Mysis shrimps, artemia and waterfleas, mix as well Add the gelatine according to instruction on the box Make the lot 5mm high and put on tin, wood etc put in fridge to make it solid-like use knife or pizza-roller to cut portions halfway the thickness to aid in breaking it apart when frozen Or you can put it into freezetray like containers. Once done, freeze the lot. Should make 1 kg of frozen food. you can make the quantities smaller if you like, as long as the proportion is correct Good luck. John

Hi Bill Apology I meant the bacteria, whatever amount is exposed to 30000 times more oxygen That should make more sense. 30000 bacteria would probably fit on the tip of a needle. Because it is a true wet/dry filter and the biowheel has an enormous surface area, it is exposed to more oxygen than a cannister filter. Sorry about the mix up. :oops: John

Hi Warren Read the second one. Must be older than the lastest filters. Regarding Hang on filter not being able to be used because of the flange. Right with the old type of filter, like TETRA etc. I just bought a twin Bio-Wheel Penguin filter Model 330. I went to the LFS and asked the guy to take it out to see if it fits that lip on the back. And it does. Just. Thats the reason I bought it and also it has baskets like cannister filters. So cheap to populate with whatever medium you like. According to the specs. it holds 30000 times more bacteria than conventional cannisters etc. John PS Interesting reading just the same

Hi Midas Tried for the last half hour. No luck. Found only one in Egland. 13 english pounds. Have to as the LFS for name of supplier. John

Hi Midas I think it was around the $25 mark and one outlet is suffient for at least 2 -3 riserstems with stones. Lost the box with the info. But I can find out if you wish. Will ring the LFS tomorrow and get back to you. John

Hi Ira It is a Sonic 9902. with 2 outlets. John

Hi Midas I bought a silent one. Asked the LFS to demonstrate. I had to hold it directly to my ear to hear it. I mean actually touching my ear. You can not hear it one inch away!!!! John

Hi Midas Some airpumps make that much noise that I can hear it from the lounge room right back into the computer room. I can't even watch TV. There are silent ones and NOISY ones Midas. It depends on quality. So there is no contradiction. I am talking about a vibrator type. Just listen to an electric razor. Same noise with cheap airpumps. John

Hi Goldie My mollies are thriving. But, as Pegasus suggested, I should sell them. Believe it or not, I cannot even give them away. A LFS offered 20 cents per mollie. I would spend 3 times that amount on petrol. I said to a guy here in OZ he can have as many as he likes, he can even choose the best. Sailfins etc. He replied "can you deliver them to me?" There you go. If I were in the mollie breeding business, I would be bankrupt by now. Either you breed as a hobby, or you have to breed "Hard-to-breed-types". Which are easy to sell to any LFS. John

Hi Caryl Ordinary Grolux lights, like Ira suggested are actually not bad for growing. The big marijuana plants testify to that. BUT, you may be right with the algae problem. In my mollie tank with no plants, there is not one square inch NOT covered in algae. A real eyesore. Mind you, it is good for plant-liking mollies. John

Hi Goldie I don't know about NZ, but here one is advised to by an u/g filter as big as the tank.There is one LFS, I have never seen that before, that shows you even I don't know everything, Have small pieces of under gravel plates. They can be added like a Lego set. So you can add as many as your tank can hold. As far as I know the bigger the better. It should almost cover the entire bottom. Hi Caryl This was not really meant for you. You would get away with a much smaller one due to the fact you have state of the art cannisters. Your tank has been taken care of by them. John

Hi Goldie You will be surprised to hear that the"sibling rivalry" between NZ and Australia is not as great as the VICTORIA v. NSW. Goes back to the time before NZ was settled by whites. Now you learned another useless bit of info from Einsteins grandson :lol: John

Hi Caryl You are probably right. It is unfortunate that somd LFS don't educate people a bit more. They sell a complete outfit to a newcomer and expect them to anderstand all. Some people by a tank etc. without prior knowledge. But to some LFS's a quick sale is more important than the customer. Here in Australia we use a word "thingamibob", which could be anything. It is used by people who don't know the terminology. Can you imagine someone comes to you for help. He/she says "the thingamibob on the right is bigger than the thingamibob on the left." You would not know what he/she is talking about. everyone has a right to start a new hobby. And not everyone is conversent with certain terms/names. So it is firstly up to the person who sells the equipment, to inform the customer of all the names, terms etc. And that is what we are her for. To help others who might not be as fortunate as we are regarding terms, names etc. But for some reason there are people who are affraid to ask simple questions. No one should be ashamed of ignorance. Everyone started once. You, I and even Pegasus. Pegasus knows a hell of a lot But even he knew nothing before he started. No one is born with an Einstein brain. I mean I was, but that is another story :lol: Frequent a few german speaking forums. I am totally lost with their terminology. A few words which I did not know, I either misspellt, wrong terminology, I haven't written german in nearly 40 years, they said"Don't worry" , "say it in english, we are also eager to learn your lingo". It will take me a long time to understand the technical terms in german. So, we all learn something new everyday. John

Hi all aussie hating NZ ers So you should. The underarm incident was and still is unforgivable. At least I will not forgive. By the way, I am Austrian. Back to the fruitflies. We also have patrols for fruitflies. But not for NZ or any other one. From certain australian states only. Certain species of any variety can wreak havoc. Take the cane toad for instance. Un-outwipable. Someone introduced a hundred years ago a then beautyful flower. It is known as "Patterson's curse" and declared a noxious weed. A real pest. I've got it in my frontyard. Next, the carp, a delicacy and sought after fish in europe. But a pest in Australia. It eats all the roots from the riverbank. So subsequently creating havoc too. But, so do some NZ ers in Australia also Sometimes, customs rules can go overboard, but, one cannot be too careful. So, if any of you are interested in possums, I have a couple in my roof. John