I could get in touch with the stream controller (Ross) here but I think he has his hands full at the moment trying to get irrigation water to the farmers. The Bjelke Petersen dam is only about 8% full and at current usage they predict it will be down to 1% by the end of June if the catchment areas don't get rain. The amazing thing is that they are not stopping irrigation now to keep water for the towns who are fed from the dam. Even Ross has bought tanks to collect his own water at his house in town but of course unless it rains they will be pretty useless. January 1996 was the last time the dam was full, 10 years ago!

Now you've got me thinking (as always), considering the dam is so low and there is no clean water running in, wouldn't that mean that the bacteria that are already in there would be...umm...can't think of the word but I mean the result would be more bacteria per ml of water? Maybe that's part of the problem. The dam feeds a weir upstream via a pipeline and that weir feeds our creek even though we live almost at the foot of the dam wall - all very complicated. I use a 50:50 mix of creek water and rain water for the tanks.

One good thing. It's probably not a herbicide because nothing much is growing at the moment.

I have on hand some very strong H2O2 that I bought to add to the goats drinking water years ago. It is 35% as opposed to the 3% that you usually buy in shops. Have you any idea what strength to use it at (I will look it up but you might have an answer way quicker than I can find one)? I will be putting carbon in the filters this afternoon to remove the medication anyway. It is a 3 day treatment and repeat every 3 days if symptoms persist. So far all is still good so I'd really like to remove the treatment. I may hold off until tomorrow though and do a water change then as well because I've been painting today and dont' want to risk contaminating their water with paint flecks on top of everything else.

On to the seahorses. My ultimate goal with my saltwater tank is a mandarin or two. I see they are often just called Mandarin fish now. I know I have to wait at least a year to get one and then I started thinking about the seahorse tank and realized it would be the perfect place for mandarins as well. My favourite petshop would never sell me one unless it was eating well but I also want a good supply of copepods for them too. I found a video clip on the net from a guy who put the food for the mandarin in a glass jar and lay it on the bottom of the tank so that the other fish can't get to the food. He found he had to use a very small jar or the bigger fish had worked out how to fan the jar so that the food would come out :)  The video shows the mandarins going in to their "restaurant" totally oblivious to the tangs etc hanging around the entrance.

Is there anything that can be added to RO water to make it usable in a freshwater tank? I have an RO unit for the salt water tank's water and you just add marine salt. It would be so easy if I could do something similar for the FW fish.