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Hi guys, Anyone have any pearls of wisdom on how to best hatch brineshrimp? The cost of buying the frozen ones is adding up as I just can't seem to let the fish eat any of the babies everyone keeps having :oops: - as a consequence we have a perpetual need for good live food and I have found brineshrimp the best for the littlies. I bought a little tube of eggs from the LFS and followed the instructions and it looks like there are little squiggly things in there, but Im not sure what to do now. The packet says siphon them off and feed to the fish. They are too small surely? Anyhoo, some ideas on what works best from start to finish would be great and much appreciated. Thankees Lisa

For the vacuuming while you change water idea - i went to Bunnings, spent 99c and got a connector that joins two hoses. Joined the hose from the vacuum and the garden hose and run that out the lounge door. Easy peasy starting the syphon - that's what the vacum is designed to do. As for filling, I do the bucket thing - think I will be introducing my shower head to it's new job though!

Just tested the 4ft tank after my betta lady looked a bit off colour - we have a major nitrate problem - off the scale problem. It is redder than the test cards cater for Everything else in the water is fine - no ammonia at all, no nitrates, PH is 6.5. Tank is very heavily planted and has lots of floating plants. Has quite a high fish stock level but has always done so and coped well. Any ideas as to what caused this? Water was fine when I tested not this last weekend but the one before. Tank has been up and running for over 6 months now. Help? Did a 60% water change last night and the nitrate is still through the roof. Fish seem to be coping and my plants are growing very nicely but I dont think we want this to continue. Thanks in advance.

Just to update you, I went and bought two 5 cm clown loaches. They are currently in my four foot tank cleaning up the snails - and doing a wonderful job at it too. Would also have to say they are among the most entertaining little fish. They swim by flapping their fins - looks like they are clapping! They have made friends with our red tail black shark and follow her around creating havoc. Glad I didnt get more than two - I don't think the angels and the siamese fighter would have ever forgiven me! For all that, they don't do any damage - we have a dyonus syandontis (sp?) catfish who does all the plant uprooting. Am currently having an argument with him - I move the plants and the stones around the tank, he moves them back. I replant them where I want them - he digs them up. We kept the snails in the baby tank, there are a heap of little guppies and swordtails in there and the snails clean up their mess. Once babies are bigger, in go the clown loaches though. Thanks for all your help.

Does anyone know anything about how to sex these fellas and breed them? I have had two for about 3 months now and they never had much to do with each other all that time. They were the same size when I got them but now one is long and skinny and very dark and the other is short and fat and quite light. In the last week or so they have started to be together alot. I came home tonight and they are cuddled up together under the fat one's favourite stones on teh side of the tank. They saw me looking and ignored me completely - the skinny one seemingly grooming the fat one with his bristly nose bit. Are we having a love affair or have they finally just found each other in that 250 litres of water? I would dearly love more of these little cuties so any ideas on breeding them would be much appreciated!

Hi all, I have two male bettas and one female. Mr blue/brown male is currently furiously building bubble nests and getting to know Ms black/red female on either side of a divider in what will hopefully turn out to be a breeding tank. I happened across my female through a fish breeder in Christchurch a while back. Little did I know then how hard they are to get. Is there a reason why the shops don't sell them? Or why no one else seems to? And if no one sells them, how am I to get a date for Mr red male who was not particularly pleased when I took his female away to put with Mr blue/brown? Even explaining to him that his red fins just don't match Mr blue/brown's fins only got him sulking harder. So where do female bettas come from? Aside from my bettas which had better be having very rude thoughts in either side of that tank the kitchen, right this minute. :oops: I am aware that breeding won't solve all my problems, even if I should be lucky enough to get the little blighters to adulthood. Still leaves Mr blue/brown with only one girlie, and I'm told they will be much happier when he is outnumbered and completely hen pecked. Ask Mr red and he will tell you one was a whole lot better than what he has now!

Leopard Ctenopoma - animates here in Khandallah in Welly have one of those for sale. Cant remember if it was for $60 or $80 - just know it was more than I was looking to spend at the time! Interesting looking fishie though.

Does anyone know where to get polystyrene sheets to go under fishtanks? I have found somewhere that will sell me them in lots of 10 or so but this isnt really useful to me - though I imagine I will likely need 10 before I am cured of MTS! Am also looking for a sheet that I could use in making a rock wall for the back of my tank? Could use bits and pieces of poly for this I guess? Any ideas would be great.

I recently followed advice to get rid of snails and brought two clown loaches. They are about 2.5 - 3 cms long - small little guys yet. One is in permanent hiding - still after 5 days - I havent found a body or seen a dead fishie, so Im assuming he is still with us. (I pulled the entire 4ft tank apart the second morning and found him hiding, have left him be since). The other is quite convivial - active and moving around the tank and eating. He is very pale however, almost a pale yellow between his black stipes which are as dark as they should be. I had thought clown loaches were quite orange. Is his paleness a sign he isnt doing well? Or just that he is young? The water is in good shape and the only semi agressive fish in with him is a ghost knife - and he is a bit big and too fast for her to munch on, she prefers black neons anyways! :roll:

We brought our fishes to Welly from Christchurch by car. Took us about nine and a half hours to get here, about an hour after that before we had the tank set up for the fishes. We put as few fish as possible in each bag (they had all come from the same tank) half filled with water from the tank. We filled the other half with air from our pump. For the fishes that have labyrinth (sp) organs (ie Bettas, cory cats etc) we reduced the water and increased the air. We packed them in a polystyrene chilly bin, all the bags togther with a towel around the outside to buffer them. They all arrived fine - the water had only lost about three or four degrees and my understanding is that tropical fish will handle this slow decrease in temperature well, as long as they are brought back up just as gradually. Our cory cat is very temperature sensitive - he goes quiet and sulks if the tank gets too cold - and he came through it all fine. The other way, of course, is to look for a company that specialises in shipping tropical fish. I know there is a company like that in CHristchurch (Polarcold or something similar?). Have a look in the yellow pages. Third way is to get one of those small poly chilly bins, get a heat pack (I've heard of wheat bags working well for this as long as they are well wrapped and not heated too hot) and send em by courier. Hope this helps

Is it possible to use driftwood from a beach in a freshwater tank? I realise that it will have a high salt content due to much venturing on (or under) the open waves, but was wondering if it's possible to soak this out? Or some other treatment that will draw it out of the wood? Found some really cool pieces on the beach today that I would love to put in my tank but don't want dead fishies as a result... :lol:

In our little 40cm tank we got snails along with a fish we brought (only explanation unless they can spontaneously combust into life ). We thought when we got the big tank this was a good time to get rid of the multiplying little blighters. So we left the tank empty and the stones as dry as possible for about six weeks. When we set the tank up again, we boiled the stones for about five minutes before putting them in the tank and setting it up. No luck, ten days later we have little round friends again. :evil: Anyone got any ideas on how to rid ourselves of our unwanted and annoying little guests? Are there freshwater tropical fish that eat them? I had seen snail traps on trademe but had heard they didnt work too well. I really don't want them in the other tanks so am being careful about transferring them unwittingly, but the two preggie swordtails in there will have to come back into the big tank once their babies arrive. If I bring them, minus water, will the snails come too? Any hints much appreciated.

Does anyone know how to train a Ghost Knife to eat out of your hand? Can find lots of people mentioning it on the net, but no hints how to convince the fishie to want to do it. Have had my BGK for a few weeks now, finally found him/her a hidiehole he likes - but he is very shy about being around hands in the water. Lots of activity from him, but he stays away from me. Even when the other fish are nibbling my fingers, he stays away. Any hints appreciated.

Sorry to hear your William died. We had similar problems with our male betta and our gouramis. In the end we put it down to dropsy - though it took us two deaths before we worked that out. All the fish developed a fungal infection which blew up with fluffy white stuff which dropped off and left a hole. Their bellies started to swell and they eventually got the pinecone scales and started with white stringy poopies. I'm not sure whether the fungal infection made them vulnerable to the dropsy or whether it was linked. We had the two deaths some months apart and ended up putting the last two gouramis down because they were a mess and only getting worse. Hardest thing I have had to do for a long time. Nothing seemed to help - we tried melafix and fungal stuff and all sorts with no results. That was when we gave up and put the last two out of their pain. Good news though, it appears to be gone from our tanks (fingers so crossed they are in knots!). My condolences for William - rest in peace Silas and his gourami mates.

Hi everyone. My 4' tank was doing fine then I put a couple of extra plants in and - whompah! - the water turned into the deep dark lagoon. We thought this was due to insufficient filtration so we went out and brought a eheim ecco cannester filter. We left the old filter running as well as the new one and thought this would clean out the yicky water. No such luck. The water is now moving much better but the water is still cloudy and slightly green. It cleared a little temporarily then went as icky as before. Next step was to try testing the water - everything is where it should be apart from a slightly high ammonia at 0.25. (nitrate = 5, nitrite = 0, ph 7.4). We tried an algae rid solution by masterpet this morning and still no change. The fish seem happy - we just cant see them very well. We have had a few new fish over the last few days but the tank has been up and running for a month now with regular water changes. Please help - I want to SEE my fishes again! They prolly dont want to see me and are quite happy but that's just tough Who pays the power bills round here? Hehe. :roll: