On 2005-03-13, Ozdude wrote:
Patience grasshopper. I know this frustration. It happened on my first tank,
many months ago, and I bit the bullet and bought two Paradise Fish and a CAE
(without water tests and full of ignorance). The female died within a
fortnight and the male a few days later after the CAE lunged onto his side
and made a nice big hole in him - he was already weak from chemical
poisoning I suspect.

Sorry to hear about that. I didn't see that, as I read only what my
ISP had retained for the group, going back just a couple of months
(which was still quite a few messages). I'm glad to hear that it's
going better after the recent setback.

Once this tank is going, you can use it to seed all further tanks and thus
not go through this waiting game. Also consider this - this is probably the
only time you have to display this patience in your life, so it's not really
*that* hard - just frustrating at the time

Indeed -- but we found Bio-Spira, so I think that we'll be stocking
soon, once we figure out what we want in it for sure.