firestorm

How about this one

YAY, I finally won :thumbs: I will post a pic later tonight, gotta try and find something relatively hard lol.

I can't stand feeling the crunching of the snails between my fingers. I just take a bunch out with my fingers and throw them in a bucket, eventually they dry out and I throw them away. You could use the method of using lettuce in a jar. I can ask some snail enthusiasts in Canada if they have any sources for some assasin snails.

:drool: I sure wouldn't want to give up a fish like that

Could they be a keyhole cichlid-Cleithracara maronii???

If they are shipping the egg clutches I am sure they would be fine for a week, but snails themselves would still need oxygen so without something like a breathable bag, I wouldn't trust them being alive after that long. Have you asked how they will package them?

We use the nutrafin profeeders the rena's, and these types of feeders http://cgi.ebay.ph/PROMO-SALE-REPTILE-FISH...%3A1|240%3A1318. We use a mix of 1mm pellets and flake in the feeders and they seem to work fine with the pellets.

If that were illegal in Alberta I probably would have had fines by now for collecting rain water lol. Canada hardly ever has stupid laws like many states have, and usually the laws from province to province are pretty similar. I think it is absolutely retarded to penalize someone for wanting to recycle, especially when it can be beneficial to the environment.

That would be great Blaine

Wow looks great. It makes a huge difference when the plants fill in :thumbs:

Dwarf plants are great, you could use mosses like java moss as well, tie it to a small rock or small piece of driftwood and it will attach itself. If you need duckweed I have plenty of that haha. Anubias nana might also work well too. It all depends on the look you are going for. I have java moss and anubias nana I could spare a bit from, I also have some cryptocoryne wendtii which is also really nice when it fills in and stays low to the ground. For floating plants I have some riccia that you can either leave floating or tie down to a rock using a type of mesh. Dwarf hairgrass is also another one. You can always use a taller growing plants like pygmy chain swords in the back and some smaller ones like hairgrass as a foreground. I have some dwarf hairgrass that is starting to grow in nicely I might be able to spare a bit from as well. How many wpg do you have?

Looks good. I find that the HC is always the plant to get hit the hardest by algae. Mine also has bad thread algae growing in it, I had to remove most of it manually but wasn't able to get it all because it is so delicate.

Saw some on aquabid, but wanted to check here first to see if I could save the hassle of ordering the stuff from a guy overseas. Anyone have any extras of the stuff they would like to trade or sell? Thanks

Darn, if only I had seen this, that was an easy one :rofl:

Did anyone see the beautiful flowerhorns on display at golds? Did I forget to add my oscar to my list of CA's lol. Just confused, but how is it possible to get a wild caught flowerhorn if they are hybrids? I personally don't like flowerhorns because of their extreme aggression, and I prefer not to waste a large tank on 1 fish alone. As for oscars they are awesome My 11" oscar is one of the best fish I have, they have awesome personalities. Ryan, that cuban is beautiful and for that kind of money it's a steal :thumbs:

Many people have successfully bred their rams in our hard water. Could be like baos said, maybe they just weren't fertilized. I would aim for a target KH of around 100-110 ppm if that's what you are trying to do. I wouldn't let the pH get below 6.5, otherwise you raise the chance of having a pH crash. Do you use anything like CO2 for your plants? If you do you will also want to take this into consideration as it lowers the pH even more. If using CO2, one thing you can do to be safe is to shut it off at night, that way the pH isn't going too low at night. The higher the concentration of CO2 in the water, the lower the pH can go. Remember that the KH buffers the pH, and being we do have such hard water our pH can only go so low. If lowering the KH, it has less buffering capacity, therefore the pH can go alot lower especially with CO2.

Ah I see. Yeah I do have CO2 running, but not quite enough for the tank size so I dose with a bit of excel too. My CO2 could be running low which could be the problem.......thanks

Wai's carries fw fish? I heard they only carried sw.....I could be wrong though since I have never been there. There is also Elite aquatics, but they are in the south somewhere. I never realised this before, but we have all the good LFS's at this end of the city :thumbs: I agree that BA's doesn't always have the greatest looking stock. Their discus look very sad, thin and stunted. I feel like telling them they need to be taking better care of them if they want to have any chance of selling them, especially when they have competition from other stores that do sell beautiful discus. They have alot of disease in their tanks, but that's what happens when everything is run on a central filtration system.

I find when you don't have a pair, or a subdominant male they are not very beautiful, but usually when you have a pair they stay a deeper red with blue speckles most of the time. And when they are in breeding dress they turn a gorgeous red. Female not in breeding dress

Shane, if you want sand, Homedepot or Rona should be selling playsand in their stores soon. It is harder to find in winter because it's more of a seasonal thing. I prefer the quikrete brand, I believe I bought it from HD, because I found there was alot less rinsing than the target brand, and sand is usually only 5-6$ a bag. Besides that most africans prefer sand over gravel. African cichlids like mbuna from lake malawi will probably munch on plants you put in, most tangs are better for not. I would have to say either pick haps/peacocks or mbuna from malawi if going that route. Many people find that they don't tend to work out together in the long run. You can get many colorful dwarf mbuna that stay 3-4" like salousi, polits, cynotilapia species, etc. I actually have a female cyno chimate holding I have to strip tonight, she has been holding about 30 days now. With malawi's you will typically want to keep a ratio of 1M:3-4F, and when choosing species you have to be careful to choose ones where the males and females do not have the same color and patterns, or you could increase chances of cross breeding. In a 45 I would only go with up to 3 different species max, if going with mbuna. Haps and peacocks will probably prefer a larger tank, although many people keep their peacocks in tanks that size and smaller. In a 45 I also think you would be best going with tanginyikans. Although they are typically not as colorful, they come in really cool shapes and sizes and are more diverse looking than malawi's. Currently I keep a nice little colony of tangs in my 55 gallon, soon will be moving into a 75. Will you be at the meeting tomorrow night? I checked out a book on tangs from the last meeting, when I bring it back you should see about checking it out and looking through it. Or if you like planted tanks you can always try SA cichlids

I keep my ocellatus in a separate 10 gallon, but typically they can go with other fish that won't eat them up. Just a word of advice if going for ocellatus, give them a nice deep layer of sand with at least 2-3 shells per fish, but not too many. It is fun to watch them completely bury their shells in the sand, and leave just a little hole at the top for them to go through. That's how they hide from predators as well. They can be very territorial, I have even been bit by one before from sticking my arm in the tank lol......although it more or less startled and didn't hurt. They will attack fish much larger than them. As for some of the others I don't have any experience with them.

I have a few CA cichlids, a jaguar, a pair of JD's, a firemouth, and a breeding pair of convicts. I agree that you don't see many CA's anymore, and that everyone has africans.

UV's are awesome, they will also help if you happen to get green dust algae in your tank. It is just when you need to replace the bulb when it is a pain and can be a real expense. I suggest when the algae bloom clears to shut off the UV, otherwise you will find yourself buying a new bulb more often than you should have to. I would mainly only use them for problems like that, or when I would start to see signs of gill flukes. That reminds me, I need to go and get a replacement bulb for mine............

What kind of shrimp are they? I also have had shrimp disappear with no signs of their bodies, and my tank was less heavily planted than yours. Some of them are probably hiding but it could be that some of them have died off as well. When shrimp shed their outter layer, they are vulnerable for a while until their new exoskeleton grows harder, so it could be they might have been eaten as well. I have had black skirt tetras and killi fish eat some good sized shrimp up before, I don't think your neons would be the culprits but the catfish it wouldn't surprise me.

It almost looks like a silky white color on some of the leaves on the top side, the actual leaves are not turning white, so it could be kinda like a film on top. Connie, I am using a fine gravel with some seachem fluorite mixed in with it. My plan is to possibly get another bag of fluorite and mix more of it in the gravel.