alanmin4304

Mine have a dish of mealworms in the enclosure 24/7 and they don't get as big as that.

He has all the commercial (popular) varieties that are still in the country but it depends on which he has at saleable size. I haven't seen him for a while but he knows how to breed fish including killies.

A separate building to the house is required and the main difference from when I was doing it is that an ante room is required where street clothing can be stored along with washing facilities etc. If you imagine it is a food preparation area then the details are the same. Easy cleaning surfaces etc, no bare wood, polystyrene etc, graded floors which will contain water if tanks break. It will not work to line a garage with insulation and set up tanks. Mine was a purpose built room , heavily insulated and lined with coloursteel sheeting painted with Maf approved antifungal paint. The standard has risen since those days. You also must have a separate freezer for any dead fish and approved disposal of any water which when I did it had to be treated with 50ppm chlorine for 24 hours before discharge to the sewer or to a ground soakage system.

I built a separate fish house with a building consent for importing and quarantine of fish. You need to make sure the building consent is issued for that purpose. In my case they changed it on the application and because I worked for another Council I went in and told them that it was a legal document and they had no right to change it so it was changed back. This use complied with the district plan as a home occupation because I stated on the application that there would be no additional staff --only me and there would be no retail sales from the premises--no traffic problems. I then applied to MAF (now MPI) for a licence to import and quarantine fish. They wanted to inspect the premises (tanks, lights and everything) which they did and I had to get a letter from the Council to say they had no objection. This was a few years ago and I know the structural requirements are a bit tougher but not a lot. The testing regime on certain fish is now a lot tougher and you pay for that. It is highly unlikely that it would be worth your while for one lot of fish. It is likely that established importers will stop bringing in some types of fish for this reason and there are some allowed fish that most importers will not bring in now because of this.

Tell them part time and it goes away.

We don't pay ACC on the basis of it being part time and so many hours a week, but I can't remember how many it is. A phone call will sort that for you.

Importers over time establish a good relationship with certain exporters and freight arrangements. They are in the business of importing fish to make a living and it is not worth their while to import and quarantine fish from unknown countries exporters and freighters. You are not the first to ask this question and I guess will not be the last. The only way is to do it yourself but win lotto first. I say this from experience as in a previous life I imported goldfish and was put through the hoops so much by what was then Maf that I flagged it part way through.

If it is only a few hours a week you don't need to pay ACC.

We get a small refund every year. It depends on wether you are trying to extract every dollar from what you are doing (income) or you are reinvesting and building your assets. The more you make in your day job, the more you are likely to get back from the losses you make in your part time business.

Not much has changed really. Income is income and is liable for income tax. Expenses are expenses and are tax deductable. It never has been the rich that support this country, they spend a lot of energy avoiding paying tax, it is the people working for wages and salaries that pay PAYE that run the country and repair the roads and don't question it. Do you know anyone who went to the boss and said. "I don't think I will pay tax this week". I met a farmer a few years back that told me that he only made 4k that year yet had two boys boarding at Christs College and drove a merc. I replied that I would word that differently. ("Your accountant managed to convince the IRD that you should pay tax on 4k"). Starting a business is free, you just claim a refund from IRD. Starting a company or partnership costs.

If you declare the fish you sell on trademe you can also declare the costs and it s very likely that if you are very honest you will get a refund from IRS. It is not as easy to make a pile of money from breeding and selling fish as many people think.

You buy 220v or use a transformer

You will need to be patient as the first spawns are usually no good.

You usually keep it in the fridge but usually only after opening as they are pact with nitrogen.

I built a fish house many moons ago and put the air pump in the garage next door for a number of reasons. It was noisy, it takes very little energy to heat air compared to water and in a heavily loaded fish room there is usually a lot of ammonia and waste smells and best not to recycle that back through the tanks. Whenever I went into the room I would leave the door open to flush the air for a while.

It is highly unlikely that your tap water is actually pH 6.5 as with the water that acidic it would cause dezincification of brass (all your taps would be dripping), corrosion of copper (your hot water cylinder and any copper pipes would be full of pin holes and water would be running all over the floor) and the phones at the council office would have melted with people ringing up to complain. Water supply authorities keep the water slightly alkaline for this reason. I would suggest you invest in a better pH testing kit.

Nothing wrong with T8s. Incandescence worked pretty well for grandad after he threw away the candles.

Yellow leaves is normally a lack of nitrogen. I sounds like you have good light but poor ferts generally. To get good healthy growth you need a good balance of macro and micro fertilizers, A source of carbon and good light. It seems you may only have the latter.

I have bred them with oak leaves, oak bark, tea bags, peat, and brown water from west coast creeks so they are not that fussy. I found peat the best. The change of pH can bring on velvet so many people add a bit of acriflavine. They are best bred young and regularly and the fry are more sensitive to light than the eggs but best covered with newspaper for a week. The first lot of eggs are usually calcified and no good so be patient. They do best when bred frequently rather than trying to fill the females up with eggs. Live foods like lumbriculus work well for conditioning.

It sounds like the button is for calibrating the thing. You pull the button up and soak it in water of a known temperature, then when the heater is at the same temperature as the water you adjust the heater to that temperature and push the button down. Either that or you turn the knob to adjust the thermostat with the heater.

We have people down here breeding neons in tap water that is about 45 mg/litre hardness expressed as calcium carbonate and pH 7.2 so I would say not at all.

Did you think he was getting crabby?

Furan should cure it. Generally best to not mix meds. Sometimes useful but you need to know exactly what you are doing because it can be risky.

Usually caused by not enough potassium.

Forget the pimefix