midgetwaiter

Mudskipper ain't going to be too happy in FW.

June 2006 TFH has 2 articles on breeding them. If you can't find a copy you can have mine.

Don't be too hard on yourself Kevin. If we did a little survey of experienced aquarium keepers around here 75% of us would admit to doing this despite knowing better and 24% of the others are probably lying. Keeping a Q tank cycled all the time is going to be a b*tch, I prefer to either keep a sponge filter going in the display I can move more or sure I have some extra bio media stuffed somewhere. Sorry you have a rough one.

The melafix / pimafix combo won't effect the bio filter. What did it was rinsing out the sponge which I'm guessing you probably did under the tap. Don't do that. It's a very common mistake for newer fish keepers to make and almost always results in wacky nitrite levels. For whatever reason the nitrite munching colonies are easier to knock back than the ammonia eaters. If you must rinse you sponge make sure you do it in water taken from the tank or tap water that has been treated to remove chlorine. Take it easy with this, it seems counter intuitive but keeping your sponge too clean can get you in big trouble, you need that gunky bio film on there. In the mean time if you notice any distress with your fish you do some water changes and add a couple tea spoons of salt to the water, this helps block the effect of the nitrite on the fishes blood and makes it easier for them to breathe.

I'm wondering if there is a way for me to setup some kind of auto responder on my PM box, I don't want people thinking I'm ignoring them if I can't reply for a while.

This works good, I've done it a bunch of times over the years. Use a piece of MDF or plywood on top of the blocks and put some styro on the wood. If your floor is off by quite a bit you can use styro in between the blocks and the wood as well. I've got 6 or so extra blocks I'm not using, you can have them if you come and pick them up.

He looks good Jonah. Mine's got the damn ick again.

A mogul socket desk lamp? I think you are mistaken. Mogul is used to describe the large sockets used for most SE metal halide bulbs, regular size sockets like in your house are E36 or standard base sockets. If you need a mogul base lamp we have some envirolight 6500k ones at Riverfront. If you just need a standard socket you can try a Philips Daylight (~4100k) from Home Depot or either the Evirolight 6500k or Hagen 6700k. I use the Philips myself, cheap and they work reasonably well but do look pretty yellow. The Envirolights are much better but just under $20 each.

Hey I could use some of that for my turtle tank. Let me know when you have some to get rid of!

Zoo Med makes a floating turtle dock that would serve your purpose. It has two vertical plastic holders that attach to the side of the tank with suction cups holding the dock to the side but allowing it to move up and down the the water level. It's make of some kind of high density styro and is shaped and painted to look like rock. I was worried about it being becoming an algae pad but it's been pretty good so far. I don't remember what it cost but it wasn't too expensive. You really want your water level to be about half full and be careful about cords and things. If the mudskipper can climb them it will and it's no fun chasing them around the living room. http://www.zoomed.com/html/docks.php

Not that any remembers my initial question :P but I asked about the water changes just because this tank's at work I thought if I can get away without them then I will. In your case that is understandable. I prefer water changes but I have seen plenty of examples where they have not been done so it will probably work out for you.

Ahh you were talking about the bio/hydro reactor thing, I didn't want to reply earlier because I wasn't sure and I'm not familiar with the literature you were talking about. It seems like an interesting idea but it's not exactly revolutionary. Hydroponic veggie filters are a old trick, like 20 years old. The new principle applied here is twofold, the media creating an anaerobic root zone and the reactor concentrating the stuff you want to uptake in that zone. I question the effectiveness of this anaerobic zone as I can't see how it can be anaerobic and still maintain the flow that you need to provide decent filtration for a 50 or so gallon tank. If we surmise that it uses a comparatively low flow rate in order to preserve the anaerobic quality then I don't see how it will effectively concentrate the mulm and such that we want the roots to take up. So it summary, it's cute but I don't see it being a lot more effective than using floating plants for the same purpose or just sticking a pothos stem in the sponge on an Aquaclear. I don't really get the aversion to water changes anyway. I setup one of my puffer tanks low tech with sponge filters and floating plants about a year ago. In spite of the massive fish load I have never been able to detect nitrate in the the water. I still do water changes though as the fish seem to be more active (for lurker puffer species) and happier with fresh water. For most people it's worth it to invest in a python style device, I can do a 50% change on that tank in all of 10 minutes.

I've had a few customers try the same thing and end up in trouble, one had her pH go up to 10.3. Put it in a bucket and leave for a couple weeks then test the water.

So what exactly were you looking for with that request then? Usually I am the one being pedantic, this is refreshing. It was exactly a request, more like rhetorical device used to enforce the point I was trying to make. My point is this, you take several common plants and animals someone comes in contact with regularly, most of which are hybridized in some manner and that they accept without thinking about. You then compare it what they say about some hybrid aquarium fish and you have a breakdown of logic. What makes the fish so special? Chris talked about the tomatoes he grows, great that he is interested in doing this but given his description you have to admit they'd be a cruddy solution to a put a slice of something on my sandwich problem. If somebody wants to maintain a line of fish in the same manner that's fine but maybe some hybrids are a better solution to the pretty, interesting fish for my aquarium problem. Accepting one situation and using the "natural is the only way to go" rhetoric that some people use in this debate for another is, IMO, hypocrisy. You have the right to maintain a pure strain just like I have the right to enjoy a blood parrot. A poster supporting the "culling" of people who breed parrots is pretty silly and it's not like he's the only person I have ever seen do that. I'm saying, that argument is a pile of poop and this is why.

Curious - where do you get the figure of 3 outlets? To tell you the truth I don't remember. I did a search and like Trooper says it some places the number of outlets protected on the load side are limited by code. I think that I got the information from the instructions that came with the last one I installed, I remember trying to figure out how many were on the load side of my circuit just before I installed it. I can't confirm that though I can't find the instructions. Could be that I picked it up from something somebody told me or that I read somewhere but I'm usually pretty careful about passing stuff like that on, maybe not careful enough though.

Too literal, of course I am aware these thing exist.

Tighten your belt Chris, your hypocrisy is showing and as a zoologist I know you know better. Humanity has been intentionally hybridizing livestock, pets, crops and any number of other things for thousands of years. Show me a "wild" strain of wheat, tomato, dog, cat, guppy, betta, swordtail, molly, cow, horse, etc. I can respect the goals of the current cichlids enthusiast's group think on the subject, keeping wild strains pure is a fine goal but the rhetoric is appalling. Right in this thread Froggie advocated the "culling" of somebody who breeds Blood Parrots but completely ignores the original post's bulldog example. Would you advocate the "culling" of the person who created the bulldog breed? How about the Egyptian that bred cold resistant wheat 3000 years ago? Do you ever eat something with flour in it? How about somebody who breeds the swordtails or bettas he gets from the LFS, they're propagating a hybrid after all. Hell I've done it, fancy goldfish too, I guesss I'm on the cull list huh? Maybe getting that militant about parrot cichlids seems a little silly now?

Most of the GFCI outlets you can get will protect 3 outlets that are on the same circuit.

Wow Tim those guys are really nice. I'm trying to think of all the precautions I would take if I had something that valuable to protect. I heard from a friend at Enmax that they are going to be doing some winterizing of power lines in the next little while so you might want to be on the lookout for power outages. If you want to PM me your address I can ask him if you would be affected. Of course if there is usually somebody home during they day I suppose you would be alright, does your wife stay at home? I'd worry about pets too, you don't have a big dog do you? :ph43r: Seriously though, very nice.

It stands for Ground Fault Circuit Interrupt. It is a device (power bar, circuit breaker, outlet) that can sense the amount of current flowing from the hot wire to the neutral wire and if it finds that the current going out on the hot wire is more than the current on the neutral wire it shuts off the circuit. You can find them in your house on outdoor outlets or sometimes in bathrooms. Consider a scenario where a heater cracks and the elements are exposed to the water. The water is now a conductor, because there is no path to ground nothing happens but if you stick your hand into the water the current now has a path to ground through you. In a non GFCI situation you will continue to conduct the current until you max the breaker (usually 15 amps) and you are not a happy person. With a GFCI that is working correctly the current that is going through you will be sensed by the device and it will interrupt the circuit, you'll get a little shock maybe but nothing serious. There is also a device people use called a ground probe. This is basically a wire that sits in your water and provides a path to ground in case there is any current introduced. It can protect you as well because even if you stick your hand into the electrified water the ground probe will provide a better path to the ground than you will and will take most of the current. Having a ground probe in the aquarium with a leaky electrical device might not be the best for your fish though, without the ground all you have is potential, with it you have current. If used along with a GFCI the ground probe is a better idea, as soon as a device starts to leak electricity the probe will ground it out and the GFCI will trip. Most people don't use GFCI unfortunately. Even if you don't feel up to putting a new outlet in yourself you can buy power bars and extension cords with them built in, it's cheap insurance. If anyone is interested the Canadian Tire in Shaughnessy had a bunch of beige GFCI outlets in a discount bin for $3 when I was there a couple weeks ago. They usually cost ~$20.

Why do I always miss the good stuff? Stupid flu.

Ahh good point about the oxygen levels, I didn't consider that. Just so everyone else can follow what he's getting at here a modest increase in temperature can still cause you problems. As a liquid heats up it's capacity to keep dissolved gases in solution diminishes (Boil's Law). If we have a case where there is an increase in temperature from 80 to 85 the heat won't get the fish but the oxygen level in the water will decrease significantly. If this happens on a tank that is filtered by a couple of canisters that are not setup to provide some surface agitation and also contains some large fish that are not accustomed to lower oxygen levels you're in trouble.

This is the old Tronic heater that Hagen has been selling for ever. I'm not sure if they did any design changes for the new brand or not, doesn't look like they changed much. As per some of the other comments, it's not the new heaters that worry me as much but the ones that fail after time. If you have a 250 watt heater in your 50 gal that locks on it doesn't take long for things to get bad. Say I check the temp before I go to work and it fails just after I leave. If I'm not home for 10 hours that's enough time for it to kill something. On my tank full of feeder guppies, no biggie. On the tank with my clam and impossible to replace frogfish, very biggie. This smells a bit funny to me, either the "small" heaters were still too big and one of them did the damage or the person had bad enough luck that both heaters failed at the same time. The chances of that are incredibly slim.

The best heater is 2 little ones. If you take a look around you can find stories of any heater locking on and casing trouble, it's the nature of the devices to fail that way. If you need 100 watts get 2 50s or use a controller to monitor the heater. You are going to just about double your cost either way but for many of us that have stood there watching a prized fish get poached it seems like a small thing.

jeebuz that's quite an interesting site. Click the mega tank link on the left side.