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Penny

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Everything posted by Penny

  1. Aeration and filtration are both working and as far as I can tell, no swim bladder issues, everyone is straight and true....no wonky swimmers! The airstone is tiny though, and the air pump is a small one. The tank is 120 gal 450lt... Should I get a bigger pump too? And a powerhead?
  2. I'm concerned about my mbunas, they're all hanging around at the top and corners and not swimming about as much as normal. I've had the tank set up and running for a month. When I moved it I reused all the substrate and both the canister and internal filters. I added a small airstone. There's lots of surface agitation even before the airstone. They're not gasping or gulping at the surface at all and are eating perfectly well (mix of hikari cichlid excel, staple and repashy) They're all acting the same, I suppose the smaller ones, the two yellow labs and two ice white zebras are a bit more active. I'm just at a bit of a loss as to what's up with them. Temp is holding steady at 26°c and the water parameters are good. No ammonia or nitrites. Nitrates are about 40. Any idea what I can do to make them happier? Oh, and there's no sign of any diseases, they all look perfect
  3. I chop it up into tiny pieces and either rub it all over wet wood or stick it with gorilla glue. i've treated all my mosses the same and they're all monstrously overgrown (but full of shriplets so i don't dare trim it, lest i snip a little guy in half!)
  4. I'm sorry to hear you've been having a rough time... Someone wanted to come and say hello to Pooka (and you, of course!) His name is Big Bad Tyrone and he's absolutely gorgeous 😍 I wouldn't have him if it wasn't for your posts, so thank you. He's a lot of fun already. I'm trying to get him to come to me for food, but he won't yet. Its only been a week though. He is without doubt the boss of the tank. The first pic it their first meeting, they all grouped up to check him out. He just took over the best cave and the previous tank boss, the dark blue and black mbuna just had to suck it up. Sometimes he gets a bit mad, but never at Tyrone. And there he is giving you his best smile!
  5. Aww, bless his heart. i really hope he can recover. you've definitely busted your butt trying to help him and i've learned a lot from your efforts and everyones advice.
  6. I have a 200w and a 150w in there and it's holding the temperature perfectly. Just waiting for my Inkbird controller. I don't think I'll need to add any more but I have a bunch of smaller ones if I need them in the winter Thanks for all your input 👍
  7. @Fish Folk I'm doing a mixed of male and female and see what happens! I'd love to see them have babies. They have been breeding already as there's 3 tiddlers and a couple of smaller fish in there. I'm going to add to the group and refresh the gene pool a bit and let them go at it as they see fit.
  8. I just wanted to share with you my newest fish. After waiting for a hear and a half for a big tank I finally got a 450 lt/120g mbuna setup. It took a huge clean up effort but I think it's looking nice. The fish are way happier in here than in the big hospital tub and coloured up and started posing and interacting with me right away. How could I forget this gorgeous pink fella!?
  9. I'm not sure how @AndEEss! can you give me a shopping list and recipe?! ☺️
  10. Thanks ever so much. Which inkbird controller are you using @Mmiller2001? I've never seen these before but it definitely makes sense. Heaters have always worried me a bit.
  11. how do you guys with big tanks heat them? I bought a complete but old setup with mbuna's... it had all manner of stuff in it but only one 200w heater. I have the canister filter and I'm going to add a powerhead (or 2) for more water movement. Would I be better off with 2 (or more) smaller heaters spread out or one bigger one?
  12. Here's my filterless, heat-resistant tanks. The middle one has red cherry shrimp breeding in it, the outside two are recovering from being over run with cyanobacteria, but will have other shrimp in when I get more plants in there. They've been going for a couple of years now could use some attention, but I like to see it do its thing and just remove the big dead leaves if they make a mess.
  13. I think the sludge in the canister filter of the setup I bought at the weekend is the oldest 'fish thing' i had!
  14. Here's my 2 cents.... all my tanks are planted with tropica plant substrate/aquasoil capped with and it cost a fortune (but in my opinion totally worth it) i did it as recommend on the pack. however, I've been watching a youtuber called MD Fish Tanks and he does a really cool thing which i will definitely do in future. He uses these all plastic mesh laundry bags and half fills them with the aqua soil, zips them up and then just places the pillows wherever he will be planting heaviest. The roots penetrate the bags no problem and end up super stable but no aquasoil makes its way to the surface. It also makes nice stable pads to place large rocks and driftwood on whilst spreading the load. When he breaks down a tank he can just remove the sand/ gravel cap and reuse the bags of soil which are already loaded with bacteria and it makes it super clean and efficient. It looks like he uses about 1/4 of what you'd use if you did it the normal way. And he pops root tabs in the bags too. You can get the bags on amazon. I think its a win win situation. Good luck!
  15. Wonderful song @JettsPapa I adore Guy Clark. Rarely do I need anything more than one man, a guitar, 3 chords and the truth... Perfection! My favourite GC song is probably Dubin Blues
  16. I was wondering if you could share your experiences and/or recommendations for your best holiday (or local to your area) fish experiences. Id love to go diving or visit a super epic aquarium. I live in England but anywhere is an option with the exception of places that i'd need a live vaccine for.
  17. When I did it I did it this way, i think it's Takashi Amanos method. One small tissue culture pot of flame moss has given me unlimited amounts over 5 tanks. I've removed buckets of the stuff! i highly recommend this method for quickly and cheaply covering large areas of wood and rock. I remember the video i watched last year he didn't even glue it, just rubbed the chopped up moss (like he was seasoning a joint of meat!) all over the damp wood and moss grew everywhere. I tried that too and it worked brilliantly. I couldn't find that video unfortunately
  18. Thank you. I wasn't planning on an all male tank, that's part of the reason why I chose mbuna as the females tend to be as brightly coloured as the males ☺️ I'm getting the biggest tank I can at 450 lt/ 120 us gallon. I'll be running 2 large canister filters, a wave maker and airstone. I don't think i'll need to buffer my ph as i have very hard water out of the tap but if i need to I'll add crushed coral. I've been watching loads of videos and reading everything I can, but there's nothing like the advice from the forum
  19. Hi everyone I was wondering what would be your top tips for someone new to keeping Mbunas? Many thanks
  20. Thank you. Maybe he's not really lonely and I'm anthropomorphising again! 😅 The tank just looks a bit bare with just him, even though he's beautiful. I think ember tetras would look great if they're OK with the slightly higher temp William (the ram) likes. Thanks for the suggestions
  21. I got a pair of electric blue rams with the hope that they'd breed. They were in their own heavily planned tank and one of them was thriving and one was always small and never seemed to grow. I saw him eating and the water parameters were always great and stable. I've had them for a year. The little one randomly died so now I just have one. I was wondering if there's anything else I can put in there with him. I worry he'd terrorise a new baby blue ram. He's quite fiesty.
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