davidP

Be very carefull of starting a syndicate with your best friends unless you are extremely confident in your friendships. Nothing tests friendships more than money (OK, so maybe sleeping with his wife would test it more, but you get the idea). And read 'The Syndicate' series of books by Mark Cunningham

Sorry if this has been posted before - I've not been on much recently. Anyway, I thought this was worth passing on : Don't do this at home kids

The thing about putting normal fish in an ornamental ond is the buggers camoflage themseves to match the pond colour fairly quickly. I've got a couple of commons in my pond that despite being 9 to 12 inches long I very seldom see - I actually see the tench more!

I saw my two crucians for the first time in over 2 years last week. They haven't grown much compared to the other fish, but I managed to net one and they're beautiful little fish

Nope, and there certainly haven't been any Brit teams for many years (if indeed ever). There's normally a couple of Brits in the race, but not this year since David Millar admitted taking EPO and got banned.

Barley straw certainly works on lakes so no reason why it shouldn't work in a small pond. Be aware however that the cost of a barley straw pad at an aquarist shop will cost you almost as much as a whole bale from a animal feed shop - the markup is extortionate. There are some non-chemical poducts available that claim to help cause the algae to clump and hence sink. I've used one called Pond-Zyme and it certainly appears to work, but I have a pump & filter going 24 hours. If you're going to use it in an unfiltered pond I'd go very easy in the applications as you don't want all the algae to drop dead all at once. If this happens, when the algae starts to break down it can cause a massive deoxygenation of the water. I've seen this happen on a lake after a major thunderstorm (cold water influx seemed to kill all the algae) and within 4 days we had to mount a massive reoxygenation of the water. The guy from the EA actually thought his meter wasn't working because the oxygen level was so low! So if you go this route then be prepared to do some pond cleaning at the same time.

I had a session about a fortnight ago during all that really hot weather where despite the pump going flat out the fish were all gathered under the pump outflow and gasping at the surface. What I did was get an aerator pump and put a couple of airstones into the pond. The difference was astonishing - within 30 minutes the fish were feeding like crazy and were more active than they had been in a month. What I've also done since is buy a new pump and a pressurised filter. When I install them I'll make sure there's a really good jet of water back into the pond to keep a good water movement going at all times. I'll leave the aerator going as well as they realy seem to like it.

Yup, definitely bee eaters - little bee eaters I think (Merops pusillus) [ 27. June 2004, 08:05 PM: Message edited by: davidP ]

[asbestos underwear mode]

chub hybrids???

Click Me MP3 Note: this was written in 2002 I think, certainly not for this tournament [ 25. June 2004, 07:13 PM: Message edited by: davidP ]

Elton, it's totally standard for them to ask for money as it gives them options later should they want to change their aproach. I'm just surprised that they came up with an amount straight away as it's obviously not based on any kind of reality.

Great news, but it doesn't say when - we need to know these things!

Cateye AU 100 is legal, and very good (local bike police use them)

There used to be a machine I remember from my youth called an Argocat. It was a 6 wheel amphibious vehicle - saw them on Tomorrow's World several times and the Army dfinitely use them. Have a look at www.argocat.co.uk