Ferryman's 3ft construction

Neons are known fin-nippers. The bigger the school, the less the chances of them picking on any fish. But once they settle, they tend to leave each other alone and just school together.

Chinese Algae Eaters are a BIG no-no. They only eat algae when young and then become aggressive when older and start harrassing other fish in the tank.

What you should get is a Siamese Algae Eater. There are a number of fish that LFS sell that look similar, and also they are labeled incorrectly. I have seen Siamese Flying Fox, Chinese Algae Eater, False Siamese Algae Eater, True Siamese Algae Eater, Flying Fox...

What you want is the true SAE and out of all those fish it is the only one with a single pair of barbels. Forget about other things like the black stripe extending through the tail, a gold sheen, etc. Those markings are difficult to distinguish unless you compare all of them side by side. Look at the barbels.

It is a peaceful fish, gets to about 15cm after 5 years, so not for small tanks. But only eats algae. They can become lazy if you feed heavily and there are a lot of food left over for them to scavenge. They are much better than otos in my opinion.

Otos are, in my experience, useless. I have them, and mine are always fat because they do eat the algae. The only thing is they are so small that they just don't cope. You probably need 1 per 10 litres to make a dent in the algae. They are also pretty sensitive and sometimes just seem to die for no apparent reason. They are also sensitive to Flourish Excel, so try not to use that product if you have otos.

But the above is just my opinion.

Regards
L

 

If the tank is not completely cycled and you don't have a test kit yet, stay clear from adding any more fish. Wait for tank to stabilize, make sure your filtration is up to scratch, bio filer and water change routine is set, otherwise you will continue to lose a lot of fish, and hair as you will go into panic mode every other day

 

Get a school of OTO's - about 10 - and they will handle all your algae..

 

Otos Rule!!!
I have 2 that sleep on the top of a leaf at night, looks really cool.

 

Exclusive Pets in Centurion has SAE's at the moment. Or at least they had on Friday morning, so they might be sold out by now, their stock moves quite quickly. That's also where I got my Otos. Pet Stop also sometimes has SAE's if you're interested.

 

6 extra inmates, ...i know, i couldn't help myself.

I actually just went to enquire about the testing kit today at petstop, honest, but after they said moolis hasn't been to the supplier yet i went browsing, (wanted to check for cories, only 2 peppereds) and then i one again stopped at the tank with the danios... Albino Zebra danios, long finned variety... they're so puurdy... so i decided to get rid of more money (even though the petrol price is going up by 36 cents per liter by midnight tonight and i still had to fill up the beetle...)

So i had the guy catch me 6 long finned ones, he acidently caught 1 shortfin, which he then had to catch IN THE BAG and put it back...

I couldn't help laughing at the poor guy, they put up quite a struggle not to get caught, and its hillarious as they're in a small tank, and he's got a HUGE net, pmpl... they are FAST

 

Congrats on you new "inmates"...hehe

 

Piccy

here's a piccy just before i started acclimatising them.

I knew fotos later would be hecticly hard to get right...

 

Real Beauties there

 

thanks
One gave me a flippin big scare tonight.
counted only 5, couldnt for the life of me find the other :ninja dust:

so i looked all over for it, no sign, just when i was ready to go check the garden outside where i threw the water change out, i noticed something white stuck behind my powerhead...!!!

Panic state, switched off the powerhead and pulled it away from the glass and the little idiot swam free and back to the others. flippet!!! sigh, stupid little bagger gave me quite a fright, thought i somehow chucked it out, or it was dead or stuck under a rock or something... its doing fine now, no damage, hopefully lesson learned...

 

Hope so
nothing worse than finding a dead fish behind the filter

 

Yep. it must have wiggled its way into THE tightest, smallest spot in the whole tank, but that was when it was still new to the environment, haven't seen them go near the powerhead again, they stay close to the top swimming in the streams created by the two opposing HOB's, they dive every now and then and chase each other around, or one goes chasing after a tetra for a while, then returns to the hurd

Some more piccies of the tank

It seems the right hand side is Tha hood for the neons, and the left, by the roman pillars is where its at if you're a glowlight, the top currents are for the danios

middleground sometimes hosts all the tetras schooling together, the neons like swimming around in the fine bubble spray at the back of the tank, where an airline feeds into the 600l/h power head's outlet spout

...

Its fun watching them, now all i need is some live food to add to the cheap Marltons flakes and the TetraPrima

 

Tank looks good - just a hint for something purely aesthetic - if you use the black bait, elastic cotton to tie your moss onto your wood, it does not stand out like the normal elastic bands...

 

Lol. Thanks zaf. I got those elastics from work, dont have any (dark or not) at home. I do have fishline somewhere, just dunno where. I'll go look

 

Ferryman has the wait been worth it :bigsmile: :bigsmile:

 

Jipjip

Wanna know what sucks? I cracked open the tetraprima stuff i bought, decided to feed them something nice today... (and the tin says mid-level and bottom feeding fish)... little did i know that mid-level fish apparently are bottom feeders as well, cause this stuff sank like a rock... soooooo, now i gotto gravel vac all the bloody food granules up... (or get a cory or two of coarse)... most probably gonna vac it though.

And i wanna get me some better food than the el-cheapo marlton flakes, dunno about live food yet, dunno where i'm gonna put the stuff, or does one buy one bag, feed one bag? that sounds wasteful...

 

Don't worry about the quality of the Marlton's flakes, these fish would not be eating like kings every day in the wild anyway (maybe just get other foods to add variety to their diet eventually). So if you skip a day or two in the feeding schedule they'll do some hunting for leftovers and you won't need to vac your sand all that regularly. It'll also keep them slim, you don't want obese fish

I usually feed my fish on weekdays and skip weekends. So they'll get some Vipagran on Friday morning and some algae wafers on Sunday night.

 

thanks for the tip, the tetraprima was supposed to be the VARIETY untill i could afford better stuff, guess i now atleast have some food for corys when i finally get some, i vac'd all the granules off the substrate quickly, none of the high-ploi tetras or danios wanted to eat off the floor... klein bliksempies

 

Now we have ourselves a great power outage. . . Thanks eskom. . Anyone have advice on anything that needs being done during a power outage?

 

bettery operated air pump with airstone and thats about it....