alextret

What is currently the best way to ship fish by courier post? Who would take them? What are the rules?

It's a 150 liter tank. The model is rated for the tank size (do not remember the exact model). The tank has 3 neons, 6 rasboras, 3 adult corys, and about 15 small adolescent corys. Also from 0 to 2 small algae eaters (ocyclo...). I had three, but one died, apparently because of the filtration problem. The fate of the other two is unclear - may be dead, may be hiding. And one guppy I really don't want (it escape when I was hunting them down). There are plants, so numbers of small fishes are difficult to confirm. I'm feeding them mainly whitewarms, which I am growing on spirulina flakes.

It has a large sponge in the top chamber, then some (very small number of) white round things in the middle chamber, and then some smaller size media (like short sticks) in the bottom chamber. Also, there is a thin sponge on top of each chamber, including the first one. I do not measure water chemistry, but I have an impression that if I do not clean the filter often enough (e.g. once in one-two months), fishes become fuzzy, and I even lost a couple. After I wash the sponges in tank water, fishes get to normal again.

I have a Jebo canister filter that has a large sponge in the upper chamber. I have an impression that if I do not clean the filter often enough, it gets clogged, and than the filter more fouls the water than cleans it. I did not have such a problem with an undergravel filter. Would it be a good idea to remove all sponges and to replace them with other media?

I take it DoC stands for "Department of Concervation". But, where is it physically?

Feeding bronze cory fry My bronze cories spawned. I did not have a spare cycled tank at hand, so I put eggs into a floating trap, and now there are little fishes in it. I have a fishless pond in the yard, so I catch whatever I get from it with a fine mesh and pour it into the floating trap. It has some daphnia in it and very small moving creatures I can not see very well. Also, I put some algae in the trap, and little cories are hanging out on the algae. Is this approach to feeding them likely to work? In particular, I am not sure if enough of the feed stays in the trap (there is a filter in the tank, so there is a bit of a current).

Hi, Stella, Where did you go whitebaiting? Is it difficult to get there?

Staying with salt, is there a cheaper alternative to red sea salt? I tried asking about atificial sea water mix, but with no success.

Is it OK to use supermarket sea salt in a brackish tank? I mean, of the type that says "no additives".

I make 30% changes using water straight from an outside pond in Palmerston North, with no ill effects.

>Where do you see that mudfish are protected and thus illegal to keep? Some vague recollection, probably not accurate. That's why I put a question mark next to it.

>What dates are whitebait season? This is given on one of the Government's web sites. I do not have a url at hand, but if you google, you should find it. I had an impression that it is somewhat different from year to year. >Unwanted Organisms (Biosecurity Act 1993) Legal terminology is so confusing. So, it looks like "noxious" fish are not "unwanted" (so the fine for keeping them is smaller). Are "unwanted" the ones illegally imported? So, it looks like there are the following categories: unwanted - pyrania? noxious - koi not noxious, but not allowed for import - WCM not noxious and allowed for import - guppy game - trout (can't keep them without a permit) native that are not game and not protected - inanga native that are not game but are protected - mud fish? (can't keep them without a permit) Are there any natives that are "game"? I take it that strictly speaking, to designate something as "native that are not game and not protected" one needs to exclude other possibilities, for which the membership is given explicitly in relevant documents. I take it one can catch almost anything in a whitebait net (no-one checks one by one who they are), and eat it with no legal repercussions. But if you grow it and it turns out to be protected, you might be in trouble (?).

Whatever the legalities, I think that a good practice would be never to release anything into a natural waterway, particularly for "feel good" reasons. Imagine the scenario: your fancy guppies have a new bug with which they just arrived from Singapore, you use the same net to handle them as you use to handle inanga, inanga gets the bug, you put inanga back into the waterway you took it from, now, the bug is in the waterway ... Regarding the legalities of taking fish out of a waterway, I believe that the legalities involved in catching whitebait are well understood. Hence, taking them out of a waterway in whitebait season is not an issue at all, for as long as you follow the regulations regarding whitebait (and, basically, do what other people do). There is a degree of uncertainty as to whether one is allowed to keep them in a tank rather than frying them.

I believe that the legal status may depend on whether it is whitebait season or not.

I kept native schrimp in a species tank for about a year, and now it appears that some of them are egg-laden. I'd be quite keen to try to breed them, which means that I need to switch to brackish conditions. Any tips on how best to do it? I'm thinking of keeping some sort of a vessel with water of the target salinity, and mixing it with normal water for water changes, changing the proportion gradually. Also, I wonder if the adults are going to eat the young (if there will be any). Normally, they are quite docile, and happily coexist with two different types of daphnias. Now, daphnias will have to go, of course - I do not think they like brackish water.