alanmin4304

They will do best on live food as suggested.

If the egg is OK you will see the eyes in it soon, if not it will probably fungus.

I understand that they are nitrogen fixers. I assume the bacteria fix it and the algae uses it

Hope is good. Hope for some more as it is a bit hard to breed from one fish. It will give you a practice run for when you get serious.

You don't have to use meth blue. All it does realy is stop any fungus on infertile eggs spreading to good eggs and ruining them. If you only have one it will be good or not. Just leave it and good luck.

It is not about quarantine but politics a lot of the time and it is not only us either--- Most of the requirements in the meat industry for meat exports is not about hygiene but raising the cost of production to nearer the heavily inflated costs in Europe. A lot of the restrictions with fish are claimed to be about whirling disease (because they think it will be bad for salmon hatcheries) but it is indemic in many wild fish anyway. That was maf's excuse for stopping the movement of live tubifex worms to the north island years ago. What worries me is that there are some good reasons for quarantine and import restrictions but stupid reasoning makes people think it is all stupid---and it is not.

The pet shop should have methylene blue cheaper than the vet.

They don't eat plastic plants

My point was that importers pay a lot of money to maf to inspect the fish that are imorted. When I imported gold fish I bought $200 worth and the freight was about the same. In 6 weeks I had 7 inspections each time by different staff and two staff each time costing $140. When an importer pays good money I think they are entitled to have the inspections carried out by someone who knows what they are doing. The importer should also know what is allowed and what is not. Both contribute the only difference is that we pay maf.

About two years after I had a domestic with maf, threw a hissy and gave importing away I got a letter from maf saying my quarantine facility was still listed in the gazette and did I wish to continue importing sheep and goats otherwise they would remove it from the gazette. I was that pissed off with them that I burned it. I wish I had kept it now--- it could have been fun importing sheep and goats into a residential area with maf approval.

I have never used salt on killies. Others may have.

The lack of nitrate may be a factor. I have it in one tank with no fish where an element went mad and cooked the plants so there would have been a lot of dead organics. I have removed all I can and treated with S.A.T. and it seems to be working. Have also treated a tank with killies (sensitive wee darlings) which was grossly overun with plants and when emptied out a bit found the blue/green smellies. The fish are all right at the moment ---will let you know.

It was a few years back now, but I asked a senior Maf guy about why they banned importing turtles and when he said salmonella I TOLD HIM IT WAS PORKIES and he got all upset and said they would consider importing eggs (which could also carry salmonella). He also said they would consider importing goldfish eggs after they had banned the importation of them. They use the arguement of parrot fever (psittacosis) against importing parrots. When I was investigating a case of psittacosis years ago (and had been asked by the Medical Officer of Health to destroy the parrots in the shop the birds had come from)I was advised by the vet treating the parrots that it was indemic in the wild pidgeon population in Christchurch (just like salmonella is in the sparrow population). I think a lot of these decisions have more to do with politics than public health. The main problem would be the horrendous cost involved in meeting maf requirements which I think often have little to do with the requirements for quarantine and more to do with hidden agendas. My experience with maf over importing goldfish has made me a little cynical---as you can no doubt tell.

They used to use a penny or copper wool shavings at the turn of the century to treat velvet and white spot and leave it in there until the snails tried to climb out of the water. The problem is that it will disolve in direct proportion to the acidity and you have no idea what conentration of copper ions you have in solution. When I treated killies with 1/6 concentration of chelated copper sulphate I thought I was starting at a safe dose---not so. The question was " How sensitive are killies?" and the answer is "Very sensitive to copper." I would use quinine or mepacrine to treat velvet now.

In my opinion it demonstrates how slack Maf are when inspecting imported fish. They charge enough to do the inspections and should send someone that knows what they are doing. They wouldn't send a plant expert to inspect a sheep (or maybe they would)

It is a bacteria that acts symbiotically with an algae as I understand. Also can be red (my friend had a large growth over the top of his giant goldfish pond and it floated on the top during the day and disappeared at night---I assume because of it producing gas during daylight hours).

S.A.T. works for me but have no fish in the tank so can't comment on safety for them. Antibiotics are getting harder to get, my vet thru a hissy when I asked a couple of weeks ago.

It is all about how much I guess. I killed a few hundred almost instantly with 1/6 of the normal dose of chelated copper sulphate trying to treat velvet.

Getting back to the subject. Killies are very sensitive to copper and malachite green.

Too petrified to jump?

Most killies like live food and will only eat flake if they are hungry and there is nothing else.

They tend to hover and will stay in the same place for a while. They don't like strong light either and I find do better in a well planted tank.

Someone posted an idea a while ago which I thought was good--- Put a heap of daphnia in the tank in a net. The only challenge might be fish sucking them out through the net.

They work best when they are 3/4 full of gunge

green water is single cell algae and very small. It would normally take a very fine filter (like diatomaceous earth) to remove it with filtration---down to about one micron.