African_Fever

That's somewhat disappointing about them only being 28 watt bulbs from Rob. I was hoping that his were the 54/56 watt bulbs (I grew up with him and we both got into fish together years ago so he usually treats me pretty well). Ty and I noticed quite the difference between the two in our travels (even before we realized that there was a difference). Thanks for the reflector tip, I'll have to check it out next time I'm in the Hat.

Ty, NO I believe is normal output, VHO is very high output. As far as reflectors go, I've done some looking around the web and have found DIY information. Seems that some people use a reflective mylar (the one thread got it from a hobby supply store as a chrome wing coating for airplanes) and others use a mirrored acrylic. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with either of these, or building some other reflector. I know white paint works well and is simple, but wouldn't something actually reflective make a bigger difference?

This may be a dumb question but do you have other johanni?

Oxygen really isn't necessary at all for shipping, it just seems to make people think that they're doing more. When I was at Stuart's in Malawi we used oxygen but I asked Stuart about it, and he said that when fish die in a bag it's b/c the water became fouled and the ammonia spiked (or the it got too hot/cold), not that the fish run out of oxygen. We had some fish returned to us after 4 days b/c the airlines screwed up, and had less than ~30% losses - pretty good for 72 hours in a bag. There was still oxygen in all the bags. I guess that Stuart had tried the old 'match trick' with fish bags in the past, and the match still flared up after 3 or 4 days (indicating high oxygen content). If you follow the above advice you'll be fine. Thanks for the bit on not feeding Rick, I forgot to add that (when shipping in Malawi we'd try to not feed for at least 4 days). Best of luck!

I've been using an Eheim 2215 for almost 10 years and never a problem. I'd highly recommend Eheim to anyone who can afford it (wish I could afford one for the new tank).

Fish are much easier and generally more hardy than most people getting into the hobby tend to believe. When I was in the Hat I used to regularly come to Calgary, pick up fish first thing in the morning, then leave them in their bags all day and go shopping before driving back to the Hat. The fish were regularly in their bags for ~8 hours, and that was just with LFS packing. The most important thing is to make sure that there's more air than water, usually 1/3 water, 2/3 air. Just keep them in a cooler and they should be fine for at least 12 hours. Use the largest bags you can find. If you're looking to buy some fish from the auction, it might be an idea to get some large bags for yourself ahead of time and bring up a bit of your own water. Depending on how the fish you buy are packed, you may want to leave them or put them in your larger bags with some new, clean water. I imagine there'll be a ton of people with experience at the auction who would be willing to give you a hand (I'll be there and do what I can). It's really easy to do. Good luck!

Rahim, if you're interested in some in Calgary, they had some at Riverfront last week if you can pull yourself away from Gold's. I think they were $15 each, could've been less.

Thanks Andy, actually it does make sense. The only plants I'll probably grow in the 120 will be crypts and vals, and I seem to be able to just about grow them in the dark (the crypts anyways). Thanks again.

Ok, DoctorJ got me really thinking about this again, and it's something that I've been wondering about for a while. I've got two screw in flourescents, I think each at 6 or 7 watts. This makes 14-16 watts total. Plants grow 100% better under this than 2 regular 15 or even 25 watt incandescents on a 20 gallon (according to normal belief it show grow better under the incandescent b/c of more watts per gallon). I know that the flourescents are equivalent to ~60 watt incandescents, but shouldn't there be some kind of conversion scale here or am I missing something? I've actually contemplated finding some incandescent fixtures and replacing my flourescents b/c in a standard 48" hood with two fixtures you'd have 4 bulbs, with an equivalent of 240 incandescent watts (if using 6/7 watt flours. = 60 watt incandescent, if you can find the 100 watt equivalents, that's 400 watts!!!), when a single bulb fixture in flourescents (what is used in 99% of them out there) may have a total of 40 watts. I know the spectrum is different and yada yada yada, but simple fact is all plants I've ever grown under the screw in flourescents grew like never before, with no CO2 or additives of any kind. I'm planning on building a hood for a newly acquired 120 and will definitely be including a number of incandescent fixtures along with the flourescents (you never know if I'll got crazy and try an Amano setup). If someone could enlighten me as to this, it would be much appreciated. I know the fish look different under both types of lights, but the plants grow so well under the screw in flourescents that it's hard to resist. Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.

I've used them in my old incandescent hoods and find they work amazing. I've never actually looked to see the spectrum or anything like that, I was more concerned with which ones would actually fit in the hood (since some are rather bulky). All the ones I've used have made my plants grow like crazy, just ask Ty.

Glad everything's happy in the new tank. Looks great!

Another great sand that I use in most of my tanks now is frac sand, used by the oil and gas industry for fracturing wells. It's a silica sand, and comes in a number of different sizes. If you know someone in the industry they should know where you can get ahold of it. It is almost always VERY clean already as their use of it demands that there be no other particles in it, and size is very consistent too (I've usually just dumped it in the tank and with an hour the filter has cleared the water). Best of all, it's always been free in my experience! (they do look at your strange when you walk up and ask for two 5-gallon pails of it from their semiload/hopper though).

Garhan, I've had my A. crispus up to that stage in the past, but that's kind of where I became unsure of what to do next to get seeds, and I'm sure chloeclose will be the same.

I can see the use for one of them though, I've actually kind of been looking for one for a while now and was unsure of how well they worked. I find that in my 77 bowfront with a sand substrate I'm never able to completely get all the waste out of the rocks; I'll syphon the tank, but when I pour the water back in there's quite a bit of waste that is knocked out of the rocks. I've even used powerheads before cleaning and directed them at the rocks to knock the waste out first, but there is always some that remains until I pour the new water in (plus the fish stirring it up doesn't help either). It would be great to be able to suck out the waste with something else before doing the water change, do the change, and then suck it out again after more waste has been spread around by the new water poured in.

Does anyone know of anywhere to get black sand for cheap? I don't imagine pool filter sand comes in black?

Fighting for dominance. He who breaks off first loses.

And an advantage to the Met. estherae 'Red zebra' (if you get the real ones) is that males and females are sexable at birth. malawi-luver has some of the true forms in F2 I think.

In going with an mbuna tank you'll have two basic options; large groups of 2-4 species, or small groups of more species. I personally prefer larger groups, and would probably try to get away with 3 groups of ~10 fish. If you decide to go that route, at least 3 males of each species is best as it spreads the aggression out more evenly among them. In a setup such as this you'll often end up having males of the same species sparring amongst themselves more than males of different species (so all the dominant males won't just gang up on one male). I find large groups look much better rather than a rainbow tank (you can go to any LFS if you want to see a rainbow tank as their 'cichlid show tank'), and your fish will often show better colour as there's always a subdominant male trying to take over if the dominant ever slacks off (in my 77 I've got subdominants that will often show colour as good as the dominant). If you go with smaller groups, try one male and at least three females of each species you pick, and you may get as many as 6 species in, though I'd doubt that every male would have enough of a territory to really show his colours, and I think there'd also be a lot more fighting in your tank. Try not to get fish where the dominant males have similar colours (ie. b/b barring in the afra's and zebra's), otherwise they'll fight more than if the colour was more different. I hope this helps. Good luck with your decisions. Other than similar colours with the afra's/zebra's, I don't really see any problems with your mix. Welcome to the dark continent! :beer:

I believe that there's actually multiple flowers on each stalk. Mine flowered and it's a 4-6" stalk that is above the water with probably 50-100 tiny flowers on it. I'm pretty sure that you can cross-pollinate these using the fine brush as Oxquo had said. Hopefully you do get a second flower off the plant, but I never had two flowers at the same time. My understanding is that once pollinated they will begin forming seeds which drop into the aquarium. Not sure if there's any easy way to collect these or not. Keep us posted! I'd love some seeds as well!

Has anyone here ever bred bristlenose plecos before? I've read tons about it on the web so pointing me there isn't going to help. Just looking for someone with local experience and/or some good stock as it's difficult to actually find a couple of the same species at most places. Thanks for the help.

It may open underwater, buy my guess is that it would probably rot pretty quickly, and there'd be no way to get seeds. Any way you can guide it towards an opening in your top somewhere?

I've Aponogeton's flower in the past too, I believe mine were all crispus. The flowers are quite neat looking, getting to almost 4" above the water! I never had any luck getting seeds, but hopefully you will. I think you're supposed to use a fine paintbrush to try to polinate it, but after that I don't know what to do (it's been a while).

Could also add a 'Tips' section, with little tips that people have found or discovered over years in the hobby that would be useful to others. ie. Placing a sponge over the intake of a filter to both increase biological filtration and time between cleanings as well as helping to stop sand from getting sucked in as much (unlcess your fish like to pile sand on the sponge as mine are doing right now!). I know everyone who's been in the hobby has their own tips, and I know a lot of them could come in pretty useful for a lot of the 'newer' people to the hobby. Just a thought.

Malawi Luver - just a simple digital camera, a Canon S30 with a dive case. Took a lot of photos, roughly 100 per dive, but got maybe 10 good ones per dive. Most of it was due to my case fogging up more than anything, I really had trouble with that. I would've had a lot more good pictures but I couldn't get the camera to stop fogging up. Finally figured it out at the end. The fish were pretty easy to photograph, they're always interested in you and when diving they don't take off at all like they do when snorkelling. I've got some more pics on a disc that I hope to work on this week and post. I'll let everyone know when they're up.

Thanks guys, just finished the last round of 'updates'. Will hopefully have some more dive photos posted for next weekend. Kyle