patrick

Nice tank! What kind of background is that? Homemade?

Thanks

Yes it's carved from styrofoam and then painted with spraypaint.

I know you must be tired of all those marlieri pics, but this one - I could not resist...

Here is an updated picture of my tank. Less green algae and more brown. I have also changed one of the two 6700k daylight bulbs for an actinic.

Those are nice shots Gina, especially the one of the helianthus! Really nice pose.

I love the sexfasciatus! I gotta have some of those one day...

What is fish number 4?

They eat really good too. I have been feeding them NLS small pellets. We have freshly hatched brine shrimp that I will spoil them with tomorrow.

Here are a couple of pics of my new fish

With a small enough bio-load, a large enough tank, plants, and regular water changes, 0ppm is certainly attainable.

I suspect that as your cyps mature you'll be back up to the 5-10 ppm range in due time, which is certainly a very healthy range for any tank.

Yes, the bio-load has been very low, and I am very picky with not feeding too much, and also do 10% water changes 1-2 times a week.

How old is your nitrate tester? I read somewhere that a zero nitrate reading could be an indication that your test kit is past its prime.

Just a thought...

Yes I thought of that as well. I have two kits, but this particular one is only a few weeks old.

The other kit is a few months old and shows the same result.

How many fish do you have in what size tank?

Hornwort is a super plant for eating up the nitrates. Maybe your nitrates are all being used by the hornwort and the vallisneria.

I only had 4 julies and 5 Xeno's. I added 13 small cyps yesterday though but what difference that makes wont be detectable yet for a while I guess. I only have about 4-5 small hornwort. The tank is 75 gallon.

So my Nitrate is now at zero. The highest I ever had was 15ppm and then it dropped to 10 and finally 5. It has been stable at 5 for about a month and a half but a couple of days ago it was non-detectable - 0.

How can this be? It's not like I am complaining, it's great, but still....

I only have a few vallisneria and a couple of hornsworth in the tank. I know anaerobic bacteria takes care of nitrate but they require an oxygen free environment. I am thinking that maybe they have established in the Tufa rocks, just like they would in a SW tank?

Any ideas?

How are you adding them? You should only use browse and upload, don't insert anything on the page. The pictures wont show when you preview but they will show up when you post.

Do the hummingbirds feed on your flowers too? That would be a really awesome pic if you could set your camera on continuous shooting and get a slideshow of the hummingbird flying and feeding.

The bee pic is really great!

They feed from flowers as well, but if there is a feeder nearby they'll go there first. Easy meal in large quantities. They are just like us I guess :smokey:

Here's a couple humming bird pics

Took a couple of shots while strolling around outside

This little bumblebee is trying hard to reach in and get some nectar from the honey suckle flower

I don't know the name of this one

I can't see how it could discolor the water unless it's left uneaten for a long time? I beleive slow growth can be caused by high levels of Nitrate, maybe caused by overfeeding, hence the discolored water.

Yeah, if only 'Jewels from the Rift' was available on DVD somewhere...

I've been watching my multi's do that when others are spawning (mostly the Ps. saulosi); saw them get so excited one time that they released a bunch of eggs, but the cichlids were too busy chasing them away and the other fish in the tank ate up the catfish eggs. I've only had a couple multi fry so far, the coolest was finding 5 synos with no cichlids!

I have been looking for "Jewels from the Rift" as well, I'd take the VHS if there was no other choice but it's impossible to find.

Here's a couple of more julie pics.

Nice fish Gina!

The calvus is my favourite

I was not aware of this...

http://g.msn.com/0VD0/34/64?i=71cd068f-6e7...il&CE=flash

Nice :w00t:

I got a nice suprice when I got home from work. Noticed som free swimming marlieri babies! I am a little bit nervous though since they hang out about 5 inches from the FX5 intake... scary -05-

Need some info on sexing Paracyprichromis nigripinnis. I only have one male showing out of 24 fish. They are breeding size. Was wondering if the dominant male was keeping any others from coloring up. I've looked close but can't find anything that looks like an undeveloped male. Any subtle clues that I might be missing ????

Can you move the male to a different tank for a while to see if one of the "females" turn male?

Great looking tank, but I'd change out the substrate you've got for a fine sand. I use frac sand (I think it's 1/60 th of an inch) and can pick it up for free down here. I've found that my sandsifters did much better once they were on a finer sand and allowed to behave as they would in the wild. They've got a hard time building nests and I've found their behaviour isn't quite the same over larger substrates.

The sand on the left hand side of the tank is about 1/30 - 1/60 of an inch with just a little bit of aragonite mixed in to match. At first I had only aragonite, but when I got the Xenos I moved the aragonite to the right hand side and added the finer sand. It looked stupid though because of the color differenses so I poured a little bit of aragonite on the surface on the left side. You can see some of that sand on the picture of the Xenos. Also keep in mind that those fish are only about 1"- 1.25" in size so the sand particles look bigger then they are!

I do agree however that a different substrate would be better but right now I really don't feel like messing around....