alanmin4304

I don't even try to grow it submersed. That is 10x the light I have on mine.

I have a number of whiteworm cultures around the place in various locations and one of them for a while now has produced only very large worms. Yesterday I took some out and they were 95% very small ones so this is an indication that the hot weather is over and the spanish flies are about.

Sounds a bit like me making microworm cultures (or cooking mutton birds) Where would we be without them?

Here is a pic of mine along with a bit of brown algae. There are males only--look better and can't cross. I have golden and choc australe and nigerianus and albino gardneri. Because I don't have many tanks I can keep the females together and the males together, but I only keep strains where I can identify the females. Fundulopanchax will boss australe but are ok if it is a well planted tank and plenty of places to escape to or hide. The pic realy only shows nigerianus because that is what I wanted a pic of but there are chocs (front left) and albino (out of focus at the back) Gold australe are a bit small but will go in later.

It was just as determined to keep loading the wrong picture---but guess who won---sort of.

We got there sort of. Any mod that wants to remove the extraneous, feel free. Hope to get it right next time. Things can only improve.

Tricky lil puter

I have grown this plant emersed but not submersed. When submersed it looks a lot like Sagittaria microfolia but I don't have a pic. It came originally from Amazonian and he may be able to post a pic of submersed growth. Can anyone ID what type of tenellus this is?

The restriction on the importation of fish and plants can be put on Erma but the requirements for quarantine are now under Maf Qual I think (I am sure someone will correct me if need be)

In those days we could send an import poly box of fish airport to airport for $20, I would hate to think what it would cost today (if they would take it)

Sometimes people get away with things. I had a friend with an import business and lots of tanks. many of which were of a good size. His stands were made of galvanised steel pipe and the tanks sat on that with a small strip of poly under the area of contact. The tanks were therefore only supprted front and back by a narrow support area. I freaked when I saw it and told him so. He used this system for a few years without any problems I heard of. There is no way I would have done that. It comes down sometimes to how much risk you want to take. My stands were hot dipped galvanised with 25mm of timber for shelving and 12mm of polystyrene.

Jayci--- I had a purpose built fish house with over 50 tanks 30 years ago. I was breeding angels, tetras, swords,platties,barbs,killies,fighters, gouramies etc. I also did it in conjunction with another guy who had a similar set up and we used to get free food (tubifex worms) The wholesaler we supplied had 125 outlets I believe. I don't think there are any around like that now. There is an economy of scale but the market has changed and the overheads are higher now. People I know who used to wholesale now only sell to their own retail outlets. Many people think there is a packet to be made at it but they overlook the risks and expenses. For example, if you want to stop or realy slow up the importation of angels you would need to have every type available for sale when people want them and have them better and cheaper than imported ones, and you wont get it right so you will have to discount the ones not purchased. Good luck but keep the day job.

I sell fish and sometimes plant and turtles to the petshops. I would expect their markup to be around 150-200%. When I was breeding and selling 50000 fish a year we were selling to a wholesaler (they are the only ones who could take that many) and we would have been getting 10-20 % of the retail price. If I can get rid of a whole spawning of kribs in one go I would rather do that and let the shop make a living, that way they might want the next lot. If you don't think you are getting enough breed more. It is a numbers game and it doesn't cost much more to raise a thousand than a hundred. It also doesn't cost much more to breed good quality fish. The more we can breed the better as I don't think importing will get any easier.

The same as fresh water fish.

They are the people who used to do the approvals and inspections but not now.

When very small I lived at lake Pukake Hydro (at the foot of Mt Cook almost) where the water mains froze 6ft under the ground. Things got better once we moved to Roxburough hydro, there the school only had signs up warning not to touch metal with bare hands or they would get frozen together, along with the signs saying not to play with detonators. This was after some kids froze the skin off their hands or blew them off. Move south for a taste of the real world.

I have two females breeding and one has a darker shell than the other. The strange thing is that the babies are the opposite -- the darker mother has the lighter coloured babies. Don't know what happens as they get older. Yours is a nice looker.

I found them hard to breed and slow to grow as well. I got some from Tim.

Cricket anyone?

It is important that importing is properly controlled because if not, when some nasty fish or disease is introduced every non fishy person will be clammering to have it stopped. I imported goldfish many years ago and the people supervising it then made it so tough that I flagged it. These people are trying to make a living importing and if it gets too tough they will have to flag it. At the moment it seems there are a few prepared to continue and that is good. If you look at the standards required in our freezing works by importing countries and compare that to the domestic standards in that country you can see how much relates to food hygiene and how much to politics. I suspect some of the requirements at present may be similar. I was present at the meeting with importers and Maf prior to the present regulations being promolgated ( I was asked to chair the meeting) and they seemed a reasonable compromise between the desires of Maf and the importers. To the best of my knowledge the Regs are still the same but what we have is different people puting different interpretations on those Regs. I spent most of my working life working with legislation and the words mean what the words say, not what the person who wrote them meant to say or the person who is inforcing them thinks they might mean. What it neads is someone with megabucks to take them on but there are not megabucks in importing fish so it aint gunna happen. I just hope that those doing it are able to hang in there until it settles down.

A kick in the?

The whole approval and inspection control is now being done by a different section of Maf and I believe the problems are coming from highly qualified vets not apple pickers. Premises and proceedures which have been accepted for years are now not being accepted (eg biological filtering at redwood and another premises which has been running for years which has had to make substantial alterations to the premises to get approval again) These people are well qualified but seem to have more interest in having their arm up the rear end of a cow than being involved with tropical fish. The three people I have spoken to (from different facilities) are sure their ultimate aim is to heavily reduce or eliminate importing of fish.