Of my koi swordtail fry that are remaining (16 of them) 7 of them have curved spines.  What causes this?  Is there anything I can do to keep it from happening again with later batches?

Spring is here, my goldfish have survived their first winter outdoors, and surprisingly so have the gambusia!  There seem to be quite a few gambusia still around, which is cool.  I wasn't sure they would survive the winter, but they did.  The water temperature still isn't holding above 55*f, so no feeding yet, but soon:)  Once it is steadily warm, I may add a few small koi and I am very interesting in finding blue bitterlings.  I think I may decide against adding golden orfs, they seem more delicate and seem to need a very large pond to be happy.  I might also try zebra danios and white cloud minnows in the pond and see what happens with them.  I think if I have enough plant cover they will survive being eating by the goldfish and koi. 

I did a water change on my 29 gallon display tank and some of my crypts melted!  I didn't do any bigger than normal of a water changes, so I'm not sure why they melted.  Will they grow back? 

When I switch my tank over to discus I will need a creature to eat hair algae for me.  I usually use siamese algae eaters when I get a hair algae invasion, however they are very active and would not be a good mix with discus.  I knkow that amano shrimp will eat hair algae some and was wondering if they would do OK in the tank conditions that discus need (high temps and lower pH, soft water).  I know that the discus will eat some of the shrimp, but I have had amanos in with angelfish before and most of them figured out how to survive. 

I have a tentative plan for my reef tank, for when I set it up.  I know where I want to put it and everything, but here is my plan so far.

The tank is 120 gallons, reef ready.  It has a corner overflow thing and you can attach different pipes to the return to direct flow.

Power heads.  I will have a few power heads placed around the tank as needed to prevent dead spots and give a good current.  I am going to use maxi jet power heads and attach them to a wave maker.

I intend to have a 40 gallon long be the sump.  I will have a skimmer, a heater and some foam pads set in the sump for mechanical filtration.  I will not have chemical filtration.  The skimmer I am looking at is called the Octopus NW-150.  The reviews on it seem to be good and its not super expensive.   I will get a mag drive pump to run the sump.  I need to do more reading of reviews to pick out a good one.  I also need to do more reading about how fast the water should turn over.

I also want to have a refugium, I am thinking of using 20 gallon for a small refugium.  Is this possible?  Can I divert the water from the overflow into 2 tanks in the bottom, or connect the sump and refugium?  Can I just use part of the 40 gallon as the refugium?  

In the tank, I have read good and bad things about having a substrate, I decided against it.  It seems like it would be easier not to have one.  I am going to smear silicone on the bottom and then put sand on it.  After a few days, you brush away the extra sand.  This gives the look of having a sand bottom, but without the problems.  

For live rock, here i can get well cured live rock with the purple algae on it for $6.99 a pound.  Base rock is $2.99 a pound.  I plan on getting about 80 pounds of base rock and 40 pounds of the cured live rock.  I know the base rock will need to be cured.  Since this tank is new, I am going to let it cure in the tank.  This should cycle it at the same time I believe.  Once it is cured I will do a few big water changes and then buy the nice purple live rock.  A few weeks after i buy the live rock with the purple algae, i will start adding corals and inverts.  I plan on waiting at least a few months before adding any fish.   

So thats the tentative plan so far.  There will probably be some changes as I read more though!

I have been using the EI style of caring for my tank and my plants look amazing!  I really like it.  Infact, my plants are growing really fast, I need to trim some of them every week.  Stem plants seem to show the most affects with EI, but my swords and crypts are looking better than they ever have as well.  My swords have no little holes in them, like they often used to, and my crypts are incredibly full.  I also love having pressurized CO2.  Its nice to kind of hook it up and "forget" about it.  I really like the layout I went with for my 75 gallon.  It looks good and so far the pygmy sunfish really seem to like it.  It has many like bushes of plants and then some slightly open areas between.  One side is sort of thicker planted.  Kind of like the edge of a forest next to a meadow with bushes in it was the look I was going for, and I think I got it fairly close.

I would really like a copper banded butterfly.  From my reading they do best in a reef tank.  I have not really found anything about an appropriate size, but I am guessing that maybe a 120 gallon long would be an ok size.  It sounds like they need to "graze" on aptasia or something like that?  And worms?  So I would assume you need a big enough tank for them to grow in big enough amounts.  I would like to set up a reef tank in 6 months to house a copper banded butterfly, or more, can they live in groups?  I will only house easy corals because I am more into the fish.  I found a used 120 gallon long tank for sale that I am going to buy now because it is a great price from what I have seen and it is reef ready, which I read is good so the filter can be below the tank.  Store prices for the same tank new were $400 more.  I don't want to set it up before I am ready though.  If someone could direct me to some good websites to read about setting up a reef tank, with easy corals, I would be very grateful.  Also, any advice or info would be great.  I am new to fish keeping, much less reef keeping.  I just really want to have one of these fish!  Also, will the tank be ok stored dry for 6 months?  I don't want the silicone to dry or something.

My 2 geriatric goldfish that I had moved outside this past summer seem to be surviving winter.  The winter has been pretty mild, so i guess thats good for the first one.  I see them lazily moving around the bottom of the pond, along with the gambusia schools.  I'm surprised the gambusia are still alive, but they seem to be making it!  I do miss having my goldfish indoors, but they are huge and deserve to be outside in a large body of water.  They are about 15 years old now, I wonder if they potential life span will be greater now that they are outside rather than being indoors.  This coming summer I will add some more goldfish, possibly a couple of Koi, and if I can find them, golden orfs.

The other day I saw at least 3 of my baby killies left in my 60 gallon.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are more.  They are double the size they were when I put them in, and at least one I saw was looking to be a male, its fins were longer and it was starting to get some color.  They are starting to get braver and are venturing out more.  I toss in some frozen baby brine shrimp and rotifers every now and then for them, but also have seen them eating flake food.  It would be pretty cool if they manage to grow up and even breed in the tank.  I don't have any large fish anymore, except for my species uknown peckolita.  The rest of the inhabitants are 9 harlequin rasboras, some characodon lateralis, a few otocinclus and 7 botia kubotai. 

Found an interesting little article about a type of killie that lives in trees when conditions are bad: http://news.mongabay.com/2007/1017-killifish.html