Shai

About a year ago I bought this GBR from another hobbyist who swore it was female. He said he had purchased two female and one male GBR, and the male had mated once with this fish, then ultimately rejected her for the other female. The rejected female was being picked on by the other two so he had to get rid of her. Well, I've never seen a pink belly on my GBR, but then, I've never had another GBR in the tank with it. I want to get this fish a mate, so I Googled sexing so that when I was at the LFS I could more accurately pick out a good male. But having read up on sexing GBRs, now I'm not sure if my female is actually female! From my reading it seems you can look for these traits: - females have the pink belly when spawning - females will have black stripes on the leading edge of the pelvic fins (this may or may not be accurate) - females will have blue shine over their black dot - females will have a rounded dorsal fin - males have more yellow and little or no pink on the chest/belly - males do not have black stripes on the leading edge of the pelvic fins (again, may or may not be accurate) - males do not have blue shine on their black dot - males have unrounded dorsal fin and the first, second, and possibly third rays on this fin are longer From this pic it seems she has traits of both genders. The dorsal fin has both longer rays at the front and some rounding at the back. The black dot has some blue shine on it, but only a little. There is black on the pectoral fins. There seems to be a lot of yellow in the chest/belly area, but I don't know if this is just because the fish has never gone into spawning mode in my tank. I searched for pictures on Google as well and some of the pairs I found showed females with pink bellies and longer dorsal fins! Here is a video of the fish. (Apparently I need to clean the glass on my aquarium.) Can anyone help me figure this out? http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=um5-whZ4OLE

Are HOBs really bad for CO2 drive off? (Seems that way from the thread.) I have two AC70s on my 55g and one AC70 on my 33g and while the plant growth is OK it's not stellar--though I'm not injecting CO2 in either tank (have plans to for the 55). When the tanks are full I get the rolling effect on the surface (no splashing) but in the summer even with tight-fitting glass tops the evaporation can still get ahead of the water changes. : \ Couldn't the same problem exist using a cannister? I guess I don't understand how they work. : ) For some reason cannister filters have always seemed a bit intimidating to me. And aren't they quite a bit more expensive than HOBs?

Yay! Thanks. : )

All of the resources that have been posted in this thread (where to buy/order dry ferts, the calculators, etc) are excellent. It would be a shame to lose the thread to the depths of the forum. Could we please sticky this, or have a sticky created with the resources listed in them?

I have to agree with everyone else regarding increasing the numbers of the fish you already have. If you aren't interested in that...PM'd.

The half-eaten fish photo is great! The little fish looks much bigger in that pic compared to the others. : )

What brand of timer do you guys use? I have had trouble finding something reliable. In the last few years I've gone through at least three timers on two tanks because the timers give out or jam. The last ones I tried were so-called "heavy duty" timers meant for large kitchen appliances.

Excellent tutorial and photos. The tank is really going to look stunning when it's finished! You make it look really easy. : )

Thanks steven! I'm really happy with her--on another board I visit people were like, "you're going to have so many problems keeping a GBR in such hard water" etc etc but she's proven to be really hardy (*knock on wood*). I just need to find her a boyfriend.

You could also...add more snails! Specifically, the snail-eating-snail, Anentome helena. It's becoming more widely available and apparently will eat a snail or two a day (but not ones bigger than itself, so specialty sails like nerites would be safe) and it won't eradicate the problem population, but will keep it in check. Apparently it's not very prolific either, so it won't create a population problem of its own.

Here's another one: http://animal-world.com/encyclo/information/calculate.htm

A couple from me!

I've been doing a lot of reading and I also have similar threads posted on other forums. The amount of conflicting information is very frustrating. Some people tell me the list is fine, others say I should pear it down, still other people say it's a complete disaster... Other people tell me to go back to an earlier iteration, saying there's no reason I can't have Pseudotropheus saulosi because they have "great temperament"... Yarg. So for now I think I'll put this on the back burner until I feel more confident and knowledgable about these particular fish, and keep the ones I already have instead. But thanks for everyone's help! It's something I will definitely try in the future.

It is a very cool idea. But wouldn't it just suck to have a fish death in the overpass... You'd probably have to take the whole thing apart to get the body out. : (

: ) Everyone is being really helpful. There are so many cichlids to choose from! The more reading I do the more fish I come across that I like. It seems to me that one can't always have a single-lake tank. Everything I've read about Victorians so far says they really can't be kept together in a given tank because they'll crossbreed, which is a huge no-no. So if I want to keep a Vic I also need to find fish from somewhere else. My first choice Vic is still the "Ruby Greens". Since Patrick indicated they were too soft for the other "mildly aggressive" cichlids I listed previously, I Googled "peaceful cichlids" and found some helpful results. So how about this rough plan? Haplochromis sp. "Ruby Green" AND Labidochromis caeruleus (Kakusa) – Electric Yellow Lab AND Melanochromis cyaneorhabdos - Maingano AND Aulonocara (Rubescens) - Ruby Red Peacock OR Aulonocara stuartgranti (Cobue) OR Aulonocara hueseri - Midnight Peacock AND Synodontis petricola Would this be too many individual groups? I was assuming 1M/3F of each of the first four plus 3 synos, which would be 19 fish total. None of these fish are larger than 5". My first choice of the Aulonocara are the Ruby Reds. Also, when I read about M. cyaneorhabdos they were often listed as a "mildly aggressive" species--would they be too much for the others?

While I'm still debating about the cichlids, can anyone tell me if it is safe to get a pair of the petricolas, given the general temperament and type of cichlid I'm looking at? There are some petricolas currently advertised on the site so it would be a great opportunity to get them while they're available.

Great feedback, thanks! Mostly I'm looking for lots of color. "Ruby Green" was definitely my first pick from the Vics for that reason, and with P. saulosi it would have been like getting two colors for the price of one species! I will look up the other fish mentioned, but are there any other recommendations that fall under what I'm looking for? I don't think I'm ready for an all-male tank but I don't want to end up with a lot of silver-drab-looking females either, or too much of one color (=monochrome tank).

I'm taking the plunge and going to try cichlids! Based on feedback I've already had over at cichlid-forum.com I have a rough plan started but more advice is always useful. I haven't had any comments yet about numbers. The plan is to put these fish in my existing 55g in place of the stock I currently have. Haplochromis sp. "Ruby Green" OR Haplochromis sp. "Dayglow" OR Pundamilia nyererei (Makobe Is.) AND Pseudotropheus saulosi OR Pseudotropheus socolofi AND Synodontis petricola (pair?) All feedback appreciated!

I am looking at African cichlids. The nice people over at cichlid-forum.com have been giving me some input and helping me narrow down my choices but I will certainly put up a post in the cichlid section here--more feedback and advice is always useful.

In the interests of not getting into trouble let's not have any more posts about who wants to buy or trade for my fish. I was mostly speaking tongue-in-cheek. Shortly (maybe in a day or two, or earlier if I can) I'll put a proper post up in the Buy and Sell forum with all the details about what I have and what I'm looking to get so that it is fair for everyone. Thanks for the interest though!! I'm looking forward to trying cichlids though. I'm doing a bit of research now on what I might want to keep. So many choices with cichlids!! Even if they are more of a challenge due to the aggression I think the challenge itself will be good for me. In certain respects the fish I've been keeping have maybe been too easy. ^^;

So in the end I never actually did this. Life went ahead and interfered so I left my 55g the way it was. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't tear down the tank. For starters, more careful measuring of my rainbows leads me to believe they wouldn't have been happy in the 33g after all. But moreso, I recently realized the problem with the tank being overwhelming was not really the tank at all, but my job. My job has forced me to give up a lot of fun things this year and the aquarium would have been another casualty. So I decided, the hell with that, it's not fair to me to give up anything else. My life is changing again now, and circumstances in my working life are changing, so I'm going to continue with this theme in the hobby. Patrick has been posting such wonderful photos lately that I've decided to change the tank and start fresh--and try cichlids! Anybody wanna buy some rainbows?

What part of the hardware store did you find the pink sheets of styrofoam in? I went to Rona today and couldn't find anything except extremely large sheets of white and blue styrofoam (we're talking sheets about half the length of my house). The thickness was great but the length was ridiculous. I might have to go elsewhere; I didn't like their tile selection either. : \

Awesome fish. Great pictures too! In my experience people tend to go "eww" at plecos ("suckerfish") so it's really refreshing to see such colorful specimens--shows that they are great, beautiful fish.

My thinking was that I wanted to avoid styrofoam so that I wouldn't have buoyancy issues. But if I'm going to silicone it to the tank anyway I guess that won't be a problem. So where can I get a block of styrofoam that is 36"L x 4"W x 2"H? Actually, it would have to be slightly less than those dimensions to accommodate the thickness of the tile itself.

I have a question on this topic. Let's say you want to use tile in a portion of the tank but raise it off the bottom, like in this picture: If all the edges where the tile meets the tank (walls and bottom) are properly siliconed, the "no fish" zone in the picture should be dry and only contain air. If this is the case, you wouldn't have to worry about any built-up gas or crud, correct? Is siliconing it a suitable workaround to trying to find a material to fill in the "no fish" zone area?