firestorm

So are these guys naturally found in the wild like that? Or do they cross breed to get them those colors? I was always wondering.

I wonder if somehow crypts are plants like our outdoor plants, in certain seasons they will die off completely then come back again with new growth. Maybe they go through this phase too. Ya never know

Is it a dwarf flag cichlid? I could have sworn it was an apistogramma borelli before you gave the hint.

I have just recently seen those guys in a couple of fish stores, but we looked them up and found they lose alot of their color when they get older. But they are gorgeous little guys. Pretty expensive too. Is the care similar to that of a Jack Dempsey?

That is very true, I didn't realize it before. Thanks for that. We did take him back to a store, and we got a chinese algae eater instead.

Wow that's a very great project. I love how you obviously did so much reading and research into this biotope. I would love to help you out but the only thing I can come up with is for the plants, try out your local garden center, as for the gecko, have you asked a local store that carries reptiles if they can order one for you from somewhere? I know pisces here in Calgary carries a wide variety of reptiles and amphibians, and they will also do special orders on them if they can.

Yeah for a 10 gallon I would just use the ladder. Usually pressurized systems are better for your larger tanks, where the nutrafin system just won't do a sufficient enough job.

Lol, we have talked already but welcome I don't have any live bearers.....only mouthbrooders, and egg layers, so I won't be of much help in that area :P But I am sure there are many of us who can help you in all areas.

Welcome, and yes malawi's are very nice

Welcome For your question on the pictures, I always use a program called Irfanview to edit the pictures, making it so they are only 500 pixels max, then I also zoom out to decrease the picture size. I then save the file, and then go into a program I have called ACDsee32, and there I right click on the file, then I click on the part where it says convert. Once the convert screen pops up I then go to convert to JPEG, and it will pop up another screen where I can adjust the quality, this will make the picture file bigger or smaller, but I usually tend to go with about 95%. Then I click ok. The files are then in JPEG format, and the size of the file is usually less than 100 KB. I then upload these into photobucket. You probably don't have the same programs as me, but I am assuming you will have to convert your picture format to JPEG, since most sites will accept JPEG. If you let us know what other programs you have for editing photos and stuff, someone else may be able to help you in editing it to a smaller size. Other than that if your photobucket won't work, there are other sites you can use, which I am unsure of them, but others may be able to help you out in that area. I hope this helps

I think the styrofoam will be fine for the fish. They use styrofoam boxes to carry fish in all the time from a couple of fish stores we go to. I don't think there is more than one kind of styrofoam, and I don't think it could be anymore toxic than the silicon. I guess you just want to make sure to wash it first and not make sure there are any little styrofoam balls to float free. Very great project, another suggestion is you can buy the little suction cups from any LFS, and try putting the little knobs through part of the mesh to hold it to the side of the tank. Or instead of using fishing line, which can sometimes be very difficult to work with you can probably use thread, but making sure to make multiple layers to prevent the thread from breaking. PS: I will try to get my furry helpers too if I need to make one of these

Yeah, I am kind of past the tetra stage, we just got rid of our bleeding hearts a couple of months ago. It is a 45 gallon long, so the angels might not do as well in it either, and I was wanting to keep them in the 90 gallon. Well I might try and get a book on jurupari's, and see if I can't find some SA species that will get along great with them. And yes I would not add too many fish to that tank, seeing how the jurupari's are already a good 8" right now. I would probably go with fake plants, since the guy we have now is already uprooting many of my ground covers in the 90 lol. I knew it would happen though Thanks, and does anyone know any good books or authors on SA/CA cichlids?

Yeah I always thought plecos were slightly harder to breed in captivity. Great little guys, I don't think I have ever seen any that small before. Can zebra plecos go in tanks with african cichlids? I know my tiger pleco was getting beaten by them and had to take him out.

They both basically hit it dead on. Garlic is supposed to be great, since it has such a strong smell which attracts the fish to it. But we found with our picky discus, we had to soak them in the bloodworm juice to get one of them to start eating. And yes if your fish are healthy, you should be able to starve them for a few days and then they will probably eat just about anything. Then you will want to wean them away from the bloodworms like sam said and feed them straight dry foods. I think feeding them too many bloodworms can cause problems, but we have found the NLS is favored by most of our fish....but we have not had a problem with our fronts eating since day 1. I wish you luck in getting them to eat

Yeah these guys are about full grown already, since they are WC. Maybe I will see about getting 2 females, then the male can choose which one he prefers and I can sell the other one. Well I just picked up a 45 gallon yesterday, I am letting it run empty still, so I have been thinking of putting all the jurupari's in there. So far he seems really mellow, I guess it is his personality, but if I do get some females I won't want to keep them in with the discus since they probably will get a little more aggressive with a female around, just like any cichlid Now I would like to know what other fish I can put in the 45 with them, would the blue acaras do well with them do you think? I just don't want to put fish in with them that are too mellow, or too aggressive. Our blue acaras seem to be pretty calm themselves and are almost full grown. I only want to add a few fish in with them since it is only a 45. Thanks guys for your advice so far And Kevin I am hoping to get that 75 gallon in the next couple of months for my discus, let's hope nothing happens and I won't be able to afford it :thumbs:

Great fish there Kevin, I have seen large discus with similar colors as the one in the second pic, and they are absolutely gorgeous when they get big. You have some really nice discus there I was in golds the other day and they had some snow white discus and some really nice blue diamonds, which should be out of quarantine soon, and of course like always for a decent price. Actually I think Denis had about 5 different types in there last friday when we went in. What size of tank do you have them in right now?

Yeah it has done pretty good in both of my tanks. So I will probably take a look at a fert containing potassium, since the link given above said they like a small dosage of it. Thanks for all your help guys

Thanks for the link werner, it should help alot.

Yeah I live right in calgary, so we are not using well water or anything. I have tested the parameters of the tap and we don't have any ammonia or nitrites in our tap water, which is probably a good thing. That is what I thought about using just partial, and it will be alot cheaper than having to use full RO water and having to add chemicals back in. All I am planning is to thin out like you said werner, which makes the most sense. I will let you know when I get my RO system hooked up and I can do all my experimental values, then I will post it here so that it may help someone else if they also have the same type of question. Thanks again guys and thanks Mandy for your values, I guess I will know if I ever have to use well water

I kind of figured the parent leaves will probably stay the same, and yes they are producing many children, just like my fish are doing lol. I will try and test the nitrates then, and I know we tried to keep the phosphates down low because we recently had an brush algae outbreak (BBA) which we then double dosed on did spot treatments on our plants with the flourish excel. As well we had added phosphate removers to the filter to help get rid of the problem. I do see the children doing well in our grow out tanks that I just tossed them in, and they don't get a heck of alot of lighting. Are they good with lower levels of CO2? I did have them in our well planted tank which has CO2 being added in, but also has higher lighting. So I moved them into my african tank last night which we don't supplement with CO2, only relying on the fish and the excel to help with that. They might grow better in that tank since we have less plants so therefore more nitrates and phosphates. I will look at the levels later and see if I will need to buy some nitrate additive, and since the BBA is almost gone, I will take the phosphate removers out as well. Thanks guys

Lol yeah I think I was mistaking the pH for KH when it comes to distilled and RO water. Wow guys I cannot believe all the helpful information you provided me with. I am in chemistry but didn't know exactly every chemical reaction the different types of water will undergo, since they tend to not focus alot on just water I will re test all the sample water today, and see what my readings are then. The distilled water is in a jug that sits out on the counter, so I don't know what's going on there. Once I get the RO unit all hooked up I will test out everything to see what I will need to do to the water to stabalize it. I don't really want to go much lower than 7 for my pH, actually neutral is more of what I am looking for. So werner, do you have to add anything back to your RO/tap combination to get it where you want it? I have read before that by using parts of each it should prevent me from having to add back alot of the minerals and chemicals to get my parameters to where I want them. Thanks again guys, this info is very helpful, and I am sure there will be others who can learn alot from this as well as me :thumbs:

So we had bought some java ferns from pisces a while back, they seem to grow daughter plants quite well, but the mother leaves are still spotted with brown. What kind of nutrient are they lacking or getting to much of to do this? We use the flourish excel and every now and then the comprehensive and iron. How can I prevent the baby plants getting brown spots as well? And they do prefer low lights, am I right? We don't have them in the substrate, but wedged into some rockwork, since the last one we had the roots had rotted due to being in the gravel. Any other suggestions to help keep them healthy and reproduce? Thanks, I am open to any suggestions

I do believe there is basically only one kind of peat you can get, but I could be wrong. Try to stay away from ones that are not pure peat, you don't want to be adding things to your tank you don't want. I have actually seen the laterite at many stores now that you have caught my attention with it. But it is very very expensive, more than just buying the fluorite or peat. Besides that it looked more like gravel, so it may be harder to make into balls, but since I don't know how it reacts when wet I can't be certain. I wish you luck on your find, and the ice cube idea is great, I never would have thought of that myself

Yes I am very familiar with alot of the chemical parts of things, I am in chemistry 30 right now and know alot about pH and pOH values. There are many acids that can be lower then a pH of 1, but they have to be very concentrated, as well with bases or alkalines, some can be over 14. A pH of 7 is neutral, and we are hoping to at least get ours down to a value of about 7.2-7.0. And yes our water here is very hard with a high KH. I am just wondering if it would be impossible to do partial tap to RO with it, and hope that I don't get all kinds of pH fluctuations because of it. I already have the RO/DI system which is my first step, I really wish I had it all hooked up because it would really help me in determining exactly what I will do. I will be doing many tests with the water before adding anything to my tank, just so I can determine the best route and combination to prevent having pH swings in my tank, definitely don't want that happening. I know that the KH will buffer the pH from going too low, and have learned the hard way from this when we first tried to lower pH without lowering KH too. I actually didn't realize that the boiled water was more concentrated with minerals, but it does make sense. My boyfriend was the one who read that boiled water would make a lower pH and KH, but I think he got that mixed up with distilled water. So if anyone else knows a good ratio I could try in my experiment, of tap to RO, it would be beneficial, though I have read on threads that having a ratio of 10 parts tap to 1 part RO will be good. I guess that all depends on the beginning point of how high the KH and pH is to begin with. Which is why I will be running my experiments using buckets of water first I am just not sure why my pH test kit was reading the distilled at a very high pH, I can understand about the boiled water. Maybe I need to invest in a more accurate tester in the form of a meter.

Welcome So by 1 fish per tank, do you mean you have each of your fish in their own tanks? That would be a very nice thing to do. I am hoping my salvini pair will breed soon, so if you want any females for your male of those as well, I think we could work something out