sand is great and very easy to clean/ We use sandpit playsand, which we get from hardware/landscaping stores (they're cheaper than buying at petshop). Best was to clean sand b4 adding to your tank is to put some in pillowcase and run water thru it till sand water runs clear, may take several washes. Our sand height varies between 1-2cm, depending on how much our axies have snuffled round in during the night.
Hidey hole/cave/log/pvc or plastic pipe/container or claypot or pipe, just so they can hide away if need be.
Yes you can still use a siphon, just give it a wee shake and most of it falls back down anyway. When we do a waterchange and if there is any sand residue in the bucket of tank water, we throw out the tank water (gosh our flowers are flourishing!), out and if there is a lot of sand it just gets put back into tank (no hardship really)
Forgot to mention buy a turkey baster if you can! It works great for spot cleaning those poos and uneaten or regurgitated food, saves having to pull out the siphon daily!
Water conditioners/agers/dechlorinators pretty much same as what you buy for your fish, I use stress coat sometimes but we also used another brand aqua something; as long as it removes the chloramine and chlorine from tap water. We don't use any other treatments in our tank since they've been cycled (and we were newcomers to cycling, took a while to get our heads round it but we got there in the end!)
7cm sounds like could be a young one (poss. 2-3months), if you can see their innards (as hubby calls them) insides that's the approx age! The skin is translucent but as it grows and ages the skin becomes more solid (used to be quite cute seeing their organ/s).
At about that young, we fed ours about once or twice a day small amounts. (If you overfeed they will regurgitate their food, not all the time, sometimes they will just look like they've blown up in the stomach from overeating!, they can be gluttons or as others put "opportunistic" feeders).
Some people feed it frozen bloodworm cubes (our local petshop doesn't have them) but we have always fed ours a staple of earthworms (if they're too long you can cut them in pieces); and occasional oxheart or oxliver strips as treats (which are pretty cheap to buy - just cut off the fatty bits). If you don't have access to garden worms then some people buy them from a baitshop. Very easy to start a wormfarm (and cheap) if you buy them this way.
Yes frozen bottles of dechlorinated water (don't use straight tapwater in case bottle bursts it can kill your axie - this happened to aussie axie owner) probably need to keep couple in freezer (don't overfill due to expansion) and rotate as necessary. Also, if you can get a fan or pedestal fan (great as you can change angle and height much easier)and direct airflow to tank water surface that will also help cool it down!
Um, I also forgot to say, welcome to the forum, and sorry for long post!
(Message edited by kapo on August 08, 2006)
