Finbert

Hi and welcome! I've never had cichlids other than angelfish, but there is a whole section of this board devoted to cichlids (scroll down a ways on the home page) and someone can surely help you there. Re. cleaning the fishtank while 8mo pregnant - you'd think that if pregnant women aren't supposed to handle cat poo, there'd be some way you could convince your husband it also applied to fish poo... or not...

My experience is mostly in the form of helping my dad with renovations when I was a kid, plus a couple months in shop in junior high (and I'm not telling how long ago that was, lol!). I think I'm going to let this idea rattle around in my head for a while, because shortly after posting this topic I got a PM offering to sell me an actual aquarium light fixture for cheap, and I only have the one planted tank right now. And don't worry, I wouldn't try anything I didn't think I could do safely, and at no time did I think people here were suggesting that. (I'm thinking my brand of humour didn't come across correctly in my last post)

Will it smoke for long enough that you get a chance to notice, before it bursts into flames? (here I go being Miss Worst Case Scenario again)

I was hoping it would be about that easy! But I'm going to think about Quinn's warning too before I go ahead and try it. Especially since these are second-hand and who knows what has happened to them in their life, and other than looking for things that are obviously broken I wouldn't be able to tell.

So on Kijiji looking under I forget what, I found a used building material resale store offering 48", 4bulb T8 light fixtures for $30. Which is all very nice, but I don't need a fixture put in my ceiling (plus the landlord would flip!), I need something plugged into the wall that I can set on top of the aquarium. Would it be worth my while to buy one and try to convert it into a plug-in unit, and if so, how would I go about it?

Yeah, it's hard for sure. I had to euthanize a couple fish back in the fall, and used the ice method. Then I went and bought some clove oil (it's cheap, and you find it in the first aid area for tooth pain at the drugstore) and haven't had a sick fish since. Probably coincidence, but I'm not complaining! Incidentally, I've read that clove oil may not work so well with anabantids, but there seems to be some controversy. I stumbled across this article, by a biology professor who specializes in fish: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comment...thanize_a_fish/

Only one data point here but: I had some shrimp, and I haven't seen them since I got zebra loaches. Shrimp are very good at hiding, but I'm good at seeing them, so I'm pretty sure they're gone. It could be coincidence too and someone else ate them about that time. On the bright side, my snail population is now manageable.

That's something I've never quite understood about the design of HOB filters (I'm thinking of my Aquaclear here, not familiar with others) - the first thing the water comes in contact with, before any filtration, is the impeller, and the impeller is the part most likely to be damaged/disrupted by getting gunk/crap stuck in it. Would all the filter media be too much of a block on water flow for the impeller to be at the outlet end of the filter instead of the inlet?

It's a shame you can't temperament-test them like you can when you pick out a puppy!

Does he give you trouble with aggression towards other fish? I've read they can be pretty vicious.

I bet you could try Michael's as well - I'm sure there are crafts that present similar problems to planting small plants in fine substrate, which means they probably sell something for it.

I'd like to second the recommendation for zebra loaches. I've had some for a while now, and while they don't bother the other fish, they sure bother the snails. They can only go after the smaller snails (at least at the size mine are right now) but that means that new snails are very unlikely to reach reproductive age. On top of that, they seem to be out and about, hunting and so forth, pretty much all the time, so you actually get to see them, and they're cute in that funny-looking way.

I have some blushing and some albino pearlscale, and they seem to get along fine. Except that there's one who's smaller than the rest and he's getting picked on.

I think I remember there having been a thread here about Henry at Nature's having some kind of foam for sale that you could mould into shape for custom ponds? If so, I wonder if you'd be able to get something like that in Calgary?

Beautiful! I got some of those red ones from Henry a while back, and once they got established they just took off. I got them the size yours appear to be, and now they're about 16" tall.

Just checking - hope your little dudes are back to "normal", whatever that is for those silly critters.

I /like/ snakes but still that many of them gives me The Shivers. Congratulations on your new arrivals!

I'm by no means an expert, but my limited experience with Kuhlis would put this down to normal (=psycho) Kuhli silliness. Mine are also very silly/zippy right after I do a water change, either from the moment I scare the crap out of one by almost siphoning it, or from when the new water starts coming in. They generally settle down in a couple hours.

Well, I thought I was a pretty obsessive lurker, but I've managed to miss the bad seeds too, so clearly the mods are doing something right. Go mods go!

!@#$ not being able to take him as carry-on. You'd think if there's a fish swimming in it, the chances of it being an explosive are pretty slim, but nooo...

I was thinking about this when Pimpdocta complemented me on my new tank, and commented that his umbie tore everything up when he used to live in it. Pimpdocta calls the umbie his baby. On the other hand, if I had a fish that was tearing things up, I'd be looking to find it a new home ASAP. And that made me realize, even though we all do the same(ish) thing here, we're probably doing it for all sorts of different, interesting reasons. For example, I enjoy my bettas mainly for their personalities, and have as much of a relationship with them as a human really can with a fish (which is to say, we're happy to see eachother, I feed them, and they go do their thing). But what I'm finding really rewarding is community tanks. And in there, it's not any one fish that I enjoy, the enjoyment seems to come from having created a little world, and keeping my little world working and seeign how it evolves. How about the rest of you? What is it that you find fulfilling? What is it that got you hooked?

Yeah, but the umbie is pretty sweet! :-)

Thanks! And don't worry, I'm sure there are more bettas in my future.

Thanks Quinn for the good deal on the tank! My original plan was to go with a generally South American environment, but I'm really bad at resisting pretty plants, so it's got pretty much everything that caught my eye at Nature's, plus some echinodorus from jvision. Cardinal Tetras: Julii cory: My "rescue" angelfish - Henry doesn't like destroying fish, but he didn't really want to sell them either, because they have some anomalies with their ventral fins. I don't want to breed them, and they're happy, otherwise healthy, and shiny, so I took them: Did I mention they're shiny? Oto doing its thing: Most of the tank: I'm thinking I'd like to get one or two more angels, some rummy-nose tetras, a bristlenose pleco (the boyfriend wants something with spines, lol), maybe some hatchets, maybe some rams. I have to set a timer for myself in the mornings when I feed them, because otherwise I could probably watch them all day and forget to go to work.

About a month or so ago, I bought a used aquarium including filter media that had been in use for quite a while. It was about 36h before I had time to set the thing up. As far as I can tell, the majority of the bacteria died in that time, but not all of them: I tested it by adding some ammonia, and for a couple days nothing noticeable happened, but then, bam, it was all gone, and every bit I added got converted to nitrate in short order. There was never any nitrite detectable, even the first two days. I was also using Stability, so that probably also helped, but I think the survivors must have also staged a major comeback.