slightly OT - anyone have aquariums?

[White Rabbit]

I keep tropical fish and one thing to keep in mind is that the bigger the tank is the less you have to clean it. I find smaller tanks harder to handle.

[kinetic (Steve)]

I think the best description of the air mass that hovers over
my suburb would be an aquarium.
Saturn for the last few mornings has been terrible.
This morning was about the best.

I'm a total failure when it comes to keeping fish
We had some Neons I think they are called, for the kids.

We would start out with about 12...2 weeks later down to maybe
10, and lose one or two like clockwork until they were all gone.
The aquarium place near us said my water sample was fine,
we regularly changed 1/3rd of the water, never overfed them.

Filtration was ok...we could'nt work out what was doing in
the fish.
The girl at the shop said the fish were a fairly hardy fish.

After several 'dozen' tries I think I found the culprit.
The 'fish tank use only' bucket was the same bucket that
I occassionally used to sweep up leaves etc on the back verandah.
I also used ant granules around the verandah in summer.
Apparently Boron in Ant poison is extremely harmful to fish, and even a
trace of it left in a rinsed out bucket is enough to make fish get sick.

We gave up keeping fish a few years back.
A friend of mine has a huge tropical tank and he has things spot on.
He has Discus and rare types he says are worth $100s per fish!

Steve

[bert (Brett)]

Do your self a favour and get cichlids. I have tried most but they seem to be the hardiest of the tropical fish.

I have had most tropical fish (except discus waaaaay too much work) and the cichlids are very colourful, active, interesting breeders and extremely hardy. They do not mix with many smaller tropicals though. My advice:

Get the biggest canister filter you can.

Get 2 larger bristlenose catfish (they clean your tank for you).

When setting up a tank try to get some water from somebody elses tank, it has bacteria that you want to prevent new tank syndrome (ammonia and nitrite poisoning).

Cichlids are pretty tolerant to ph changes, my town water supply is the perfect ph, so I dont have to check the PH anymore, it always right.

To answer the question about betta's (siamese fighters) males only have the longer fins, the females are quite boring. They are tolerant to cold water but they dont move much when they are cold. They also breathe air so they do not need a lot of water around them (to absorb O2), but they must have access to air above.

My .02c

Kids love fish, my tank is like a tourist attraction to kids!

Brett