Clownfish

fungun

hmmm, ive got a cichlid tank and a planted tank but am awful tempted by that nemo tank as a starter....then once its up and running i could....

actually as i write this, i just realise my wife would kill me

gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh

vibe666

fungun wrote: »

hmmm, ive got a cichlid tank and a planted tank but am awful tempted by that nemo tank as a starter....then once its up and running i could....

actually as i write this, i just realise my wife would kill me

gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh

better to ask for forgiveness than permission. :pac:

Cerocco

vibe666 wrote: »

peppermint shrimp sounds like a good (and natural) plan, so i've mailed seahorse to see if i can order some online as i'm not really in a position to be driving out there at the minute with the baby so sick.

fingers crossed.

does anyone know how long it will take after they are dead and gone before the water will be safe (i.e. no more stingers in it) for the seahorses?

also, i'm assuming the mushroom thing isn't a stone cold killer as well?

Well I zapped the aptaisia last weekend and put 2 new seahorses in the tank on Friday. I did a water change. And they are happy enough.

To be honest and you might want to do some research to prove me wrong but with the size of the aptaisia you may need to zap it. Call Kealan and have a quick chat or e-mail seahorse and ask the question. I have heard people use lemon juice but when I spoke with Kealan he kinda dismissed the idea. All I know for sure is they are a real pest in the tank and difficult to get rid of. I'm still spying the odd one but zap it straight away. FYI peppermint shrimp in SA €15

vibe666

thanks Cerocco, i mailed them earlier so hopefully they will come back with the easiest solution soon.

Sleepy

I really hadn't realised you could run a marine tank without a skimmer... Thought you didn't need a filter for a marine setup due to the live sand/coral acting as one too!

I think I'd be in the same boat as yourself though fungun, have a wedding to pay for next year but if a marine setup was to appear in our house in the meantime, it might get cancelled!

vibe666

Sleepy wrote: »

I really hadn't realised you could run a marine tank without a skimmer... Thought you didn't need a filter for a marine setup due to the live sand/coral acting as one too!

I think I'd be in the same boat as yourself though fungun, have a wedding to pay for next year but if a marine setup was to appear in our house in the meantime, it might get cancelled!

yeah, i didn't know you could run one without a skimmer either.

one thing they did say was that once the tank was established, that i could swap out the filter media that came with the external filter and then fill it with crushed live rock and effectively have it as a small sump.

Sleepy

I'm getting bad ideas now...

The price of a wedding would buy a beautiful marine set-up! Then again, anyone know if Seahorse do Wedding Lists?

fungun

my son said to me over the weekend that when he is rich he would get me a tank the size of a swimming pool so that i could swim with my fish.

My wife was like 'thats ridiculous, they dont come that big'.....i was like 'that would be.....amazing' :cool:


well sleepy, if you invite people from here they might get you fishie presents :P

Sleepy

To Mrs Fungun: oh yes they do!

Silverfish

Is that all to convert to marine?

I've a 110L here that's just got 30 apple snails in it. Might be moving those guys on fairly shortly. Though it's on Mr Silverfish's end of the sofa so I can't have lovely fire shrimp

I'm just going to ask for SHA vouchers instead of wedding presents. We're currently okay for kettles and toasters anyway.

vibe666

pretty much.

of course you can go the whole hog with sumps and skimmers and all the other high tech gubbins, but if you have a look around seahorse, they have quite a few smaller marine tanks (and one or two bigger ones) with nothing much more complicated than you'd find in a regular tropical tank keeping things ticking over nicely.

Cookie_Monster

Silverfish wrote: »

Is that all to convert to marine?

I've a 110L here that's just got 30 apple snails in it. Might be moving those guys on fairly shortly. Though it's on Mr Silverfish's end of the sofa so I can't have lovely fire shrimp
.

To go slightly OT, what are apple snails like to keep? what they eat, do they harm plants etc?

I have hankerings to pick up a new tank down here...

vibe666

just noticed that my anemone has uprooted himself and moved about 2 inches, which was somewhat of a surprise since i didn't know they could move at all.

i also noticed when i turned the light on this morning to feed the clowns that i also seem to have some kind of small black slug/cucumber type thing slithering around in there on the rocks, although he soon slipped out of view when the light came on.

i guess they really do mean it when they call it 'live' sand! :pac:

who knows what else will appear over time.

fungun

is it a worry though, if some of that stuff can actually kill your fish..... :S

hmmm, i feel like a kid at the mo, i want, i want, i want!!!

Silverfish

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

To go slightly OT, what are apple snails like to keep? what they eat, do they harm plants etc?

I have hankerings to pick up a new tank down here...

Kinda pointless. Just like big roaming blobs of snot. Breed like mad, these are babies that I kept from one batch. There's a few types of apple snails, some eat plants and some don't, mine leave the plants alone but I've heard of people having apple snails munch through all theirs. I've been feeding these guys lettuce, flake food, algae wafers and pellets.

The coloured ones are nice to look at though.

vibe666

but what do they taste like? :pac:

Silverfish

vibe666 wrote: »

but what do they taste like? :pac:

Not too bad, actually.

vibe666

there you go, problem solved!

kylith

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

To go slightly OT, what are apple snails like to keep? what they eat, do they harm plants etc?

I have hankerings to pick up a new tank down here...

I find mine fascinating to watch. So far it hasn't eaten any of my plants, including the cabomba. He's cleaned the glass beautifully and is very fond of sinking algae pellets. I only got one, so I won't have to deal with being overrun.

fungun

do the snails eat the really poxy green spots that you really need to scrub to get off, they are the ones i hate!

although the curved front on my vision450 looks great, it means those magnet cleaners are even crappier

Silverfish

fungun wrote: »

do the snails eat the really poxy green spots that you really need to scrub to get off, they are the ones i hate!

although the curved front on my vision450 looks great, it means those magnet cleaners are even crappier

Nerite snails will. I've a few of those, they keep the tank SPOTLESS. Crazy little things, for the size of them. Much more effective than our plec ever was.

kylith

Silverfish wrote: »

Nerite snails will. I've a few of those, they keep the tank SPOTLESS. Crazy little things, for the size of them. Much more effective than our plec ever was.

+1 My nerites have even cleared up my diatom problem.

Cerocco

I have high nitrate 20ppm at the mo but doing water changes every week to get it down. As a result im getting rapid growth of a rusty colour whispy algae growing on the rock. do you think that those nerite snails would help get rid of it? :rolleyes:

Sleepy

You can do water changes daily Cerocco, less light or a blackout for a few days should help with the algae.

fungun

seems like nerites get eaten by loaches/cichlids so wont work in either of my tanks

Silverfish

fungun wrote: »

seems like nerites get eaten by loaches/cichlids so wont work in either of my tanks

My kribensis leave mine alone, and Mrs Krib is a right narky bitch. Still not worth the risk. Maybe try some horned nerites? Might be more tricky for them. I'm trying to order a batch of them at the moment, so if I have any luck I'll let you know.

fungun

from what i read, even the cichlids wont necessarily eat them, but they will try to, so really stress the snail out, often managing to damage its shell and/or eyes.

Hmm, i have to say there is a part of me that cant believe Im worried about stressing a snail.

vibe666

Cerocco wrote: »

Oh ment to say if you go onto YouTube and type aptaisia you can see vids of them being zapped, it's quite helpful

i actually saw a tip on one of those youtube video's that you could use lemon juice, so i got a small hypodermic with a needle from my local chemist for €2 (after a slightly odd conversation trying to explain that i wasn't a druggie and it was for my fish tank), i squeezed half a lemon and filtered the juice through a piece of kitchen paper and then gave the little bugger a bit of a squirt (literally about 2-3 drops) right into his pie hole with the tip of the needle and he didn't like it one bit!

he was folded in on himself, literally bubbling away for about 5 minutes and all that is left now is a little crumpled heap with a couple of dead tentacles hanging off it that looks like someone set fire to it, so i'm pretty sure it's dead.

the only thing now, is that I do have a lot of what I can only describe as ginger troll hair (remember the dolls from the 80's/90's?) growing quite rapidly on my rocks. is it something to be worried about, or is it normal?