Advice On Moving A Tank Please

[Akasha72]

I don't want to start a new thread so thought I'd put it here!!! I've just had a zip over to one of my lfs' - something told me to go, just a gut feeling and all that - and guess what they'd got!! One remaining melini cory and it looks like a female too. I snapped her up straight away so I've now upped my number to 4 ... wohoo!
 
Time for a sig update now

 

[frapadoodle]

There is joy in Mudville! Congrats on the new Cory.

I agree about the carpet in the water closet. We have some commercial carpet tiles I got from a job. Cut em to fit and lay em down in winter. I don't have a choice about my home repairs. My landlord said he doesn't want to do it, so starting next month I no longer pay him rent, take over all repairs, work for him on Saturdays for another year, and he deeds the place to me.

 

[Akasha72]

sounds good to me Mr Doodles!! I wish my landlord was like that! They want me to put in all the hard work keeping the place nice but still pay them rent for the privilege! 
At least if I move I pack up and take everything with me - carpets included

ooooh the new melini is a girl!! She's found one of my boys and he's already inviting spawning with her!! Wohoo!!

 

[frapadoodle]

Well you know what they say Girls need a reason, Guys just need a place.
Good to hear it's a girl. Can't wait to see baby pics of new fry.

 

[Vethian]

This is a bit of good news!  The carpet looks good.  The tank seems to have survived.  You found a new Melini!  Im excited for you!

 

[Tooombsy]

The carpet looks great whens the party? lol
I bet you're relieved that it is all over now, time to relax and enjoy the new room
Sounds like the fish are all happy too, they must have all enjoyed their little vacation

 

[Akasha72]

Hi everyone ... thanks! I was so excited when I saw the lone melini. 1: I got to increase my number and 2: it got her out of a tank all on her own and in with some friends of her own kind = win win. She actually seem to prefer hanging out with the panda's though ... but I've said it before with the melini - I would not be surprised to find they are related in some way
 
As for parties ... no way am I risking any one spilling anything on this carpet! I keep looking at it and thinking "wow" ... it just looks so expensive and it cost £300 all in so not that expensive really. And the sound-proofing underlay seems to be working. My noisy neighbour was being noisy last night - I could hardly hear him in the living room but I could hear everything in the bedroom. Time to go shopping for sound proof underlay for the bedroom now!! 

 

[thrujenseyes]

Woo Hoo!!!  Finally some good news!!
 
The carpet looks great!  I love the color!

 

[Akasha72]

yeah, after the trauma of the last couple of weeks I need a break!! 
 
I've just been to my lfs and picked up my new harlequins too. I've got them in my little 30 litre though as the fish in the next tank had gone down with whitespot over night. All their tanks are seperately filtered so the chances these harlequins are harbouring anything is tiny but I'm not going to risk it for the sake of a week in a seperate tank
 
Things are looking up at last in the fishy department!

 

[thrujenseyes]

Oh crud...
I assume "white spot" is what I Remeber as ich?
I've seen people here talking about white spot and figured it must go by that these days?!
I do remember dealing with that was never fun but maybe in the last 15 or so years since I dealt with it in my cichlid tank...things are different now?!

Good luck!!!

 

[Akasha72]

yeah we call it white spot in the U.K, you seem to call it Ich in America. It's all the same thing. It's more often a stress reaction and so these fish only arrived on Tuesday so it's nothing unusual to see white spot popping up here and there. Some fish seem to cope better with stress than others. These little harlequins seem unaffected by it but I'm not risking my entire tank until I'm sure

 

[thrujenseyes]

Ah I see Akasha, thanks for the explanation.  I figured it was the same thing.
 
Hope your babies are good in no time!!

 

[Akasha72]

they've just wolfed down flake food so there's nothing wrong with their appetites!

 

[Byron]

I was so excited when I saw the lone melini.  1: I got to increase my number and 2: it got her out of a tank all on her own and in with some friends of her own kind = win win. She actually seem to prefer hanging out with the panda's though ... but I've said it before with the melini - I would not be surprised to find they are related in some way
 

 
I saw this observation a couple times in this thread, so I’ll provide some background which may be of interest, since your observation is assuredly a valid one.
 
There were earlier classifications of the “cory” species, but that proposed by Hoedeman in 1952 was later widely accepted and subsequent phylogenetic analysis has supported much of Hoedeman’s classification.  [Phylogenetics was unknown in Hoedeman’s day, and it was only after the discovery of DNA in the 1970’s that genetic analysis of fish species became relevant and basic to taxonomy.]  Hoedeman divided the family Callichthyidae into two subfamilies, the Corydoradinae (containing the genera Aspidoras, Brochis, and Corydoras) and Callichthyinae (remaining genera).  The Corydoradinae was subdivided into two tribes, Aspidoradidi (Aspidoras) and Corydoradidi (Corydoras and Brochis).
 
Nijssen & Isbrucker, who themselves described roughly 40% of the 160 valid species in the family, published several studies (1970, 1971, 1976, 1980, 1983) on this family, but only the 1970 and 1980 studies proposed taxonomic groupings of the Corydoras species.  They stated (1986) that their proposed groups of Corydoras species did not reflect the phylogenetic relationships within that genus.  The first major phylogenetic analysis of the relationships among the genera in the subfamily Coradoradinae was carried out by Reis (1993, 1997, 1998) and he corroborated the monophyly of Hoedeman’s classification respecting the family, subfamilies, and tribes.  He further confirmed Brochis as monophyletic, but Corydoras he suggested was paraphyletic. 
 
Some definitions to help here: Monophyletic refers to a taxon group where all members are descended from the same ancestor, and all ancestors are included.  Paraphyletic means descended from a common evolutionary ancestor or ancestral group, but not including all the descended groups.  Polyphyletic means the members in the taxon are derived from more than one common evolutionary ancestor or ancestral group, and therefore are not suitable for placement in the same taxon.
 
Marcelo Britto (2003) investigated the subfamily and found the monophyly of the subfamily is well supported, as are those of two included genera, Aspidoras and Brochis.  However, the monophyly of Corydoras, as traditionally defined, is not corroborated, with some of currently included species being more closely related to Aspidoras or Brochis than to nominal congeners.  These conclusions contrast with a previous hypothesis, which considered Brochis and Corydoras as forming a monophyletic assemblage, with Aspidoras as its sister-group.  A clade composed of Aspidoras and the species currently assigned to Corydoras, C. barbatus, C. macropterus, C. prionotus and Corydoras sp. A, was recognized.  Britto resurrected the genus Scleromystax for these Corydoras species, and he synonymised the three Brochis species into Corydoras; both reclassifications have been accepted.  He also proposed a new classification to accommodate the monophyletic groups determined by his study.  Subsequent studies by Alexandrou et al (2011) and Alexandrou & Taylor (2012) also prove that Corydoras is not a monophyletic assemblage, and nine distinct lineages are suggested.  Further phylogenetic analysis will eventually determine the new classification.
 
Which at long last brings us to your C. panda and C. melini, as these two species along with 48 other described species and a number of undescribed “C” species are suggested as forming a monophyletic grouping.  Some of the other species in this assemblage (and thus very closely related) may interest you: C. habrosus, C. julii, C. adolfoi, C. sterbai to name a few of the more common ones.  Alexandrou & Taylor (2011) suggest that this assemblage may take the genus name Hoplosoma with C. punctatus as the type species.  [Type species refers to the species that has the characteristics defining the genus, and which all other species in the genus must share.] 
 
It will be obvious that there are similarities in the patterning of some of these, and that takes us into mimicry.  But another lengthy explanation will have to wait.

 

[Akasha72]

wow ... lots of big words there Byron ... I may need to read that through a few more times! 
 
Please don't think I'm thick, I'm just not comfortable with big words that I struggle to pronounce lol
 
 
So the long and the short of it - in easy to understand terms - is that several cory species are related (my panda's and melini being one of them) and then there's another different type of cory which also has other types related to them ... have I understood that right?
 
I'm guessing (if I've got that right) that that is why my mixed bunch hang out in different groups. My bronze lot tend to keep themselves to themselves - only really interacting with the others at feeding time or in times of stress. My melini's think they are panda's - although the other night when the panda's were spawning the melini wern't trying to muscle in, they were playing though - it would seem the concerns about inter-breeding are unfounded. And my peppered are more than happy to hang out with both the panda's and the melini's. Could it be that the peppered are from the same 'group' as panda's and melini?
 
 
Trying not to get confused or confuse anyone else either lol