alanmin4304

I agree, I was just trying to decide about the pic.

Sorry, I didn't read your question properly. You can't glue it so you will have to make a pressure connection as suggested earlier. It bleeds a plastisizing agent that stops the glue bonding.

You can get a fitting with a back nut to connect the polythene to and a thread the other end tp screw into a PVC fitting. You cannot glue polythene successfully with anything, even RTV. It is the connection used to join the alkathene to the Sanitary plumbing at the foundation line and is available from a plumbing supplies shop.

Polythene is not a sanitary plumbing material and relies on pressure fittings where as PVC is solvent welded. You would need to make a pressure connection and that is why it is not approved for sanitary plumbing as it has a propensity to leak.

We don't serve black eyes here.

Sorry to scare you I actually am only repeating what I had heard and have never tried. I have some growing emersed which came in with other plants. If you want a small amount to get you started PM me with your postal address and you can have a bit for $4.30 fastpost

It is a native but is not easy to convert to submersed growth.

Echinodorus amazonicus springs to my tiny mind

I keep them at about 22 degrees and spawn them at about 20 degrees, then store the eggs at 22 in spawning water with a drop of methylene blue

Dropping the temperature a couple of degrees encourages them to spawn I think

Class A & B were under the old Noxious weeds Act I think

Fish will handle a considerable drop then rise in temperature provided it happens very slowly. If you give the fish a couple of hours to get used to new temperatures and water conditions on arrival they will usually handle it OK.

Keep the onions well away from your tank or the Minister of Finance will be trying to bring in a fart tax on fish. All hail Kyoto

I don't know what the pH is but the Council water will be slightly alkali and the rainwater with peat slightly acid. The change to acid soft peaty water encourages spawning but they are quite happy in the tap water. I feed only a range of live food so they get pretty well conditioned before spawning. I try to keep them in the most simple but productive way. I don't get any more complicated than I need to keep then healthy and breeding.

I keep them in regular Christchurch tap water which has a hardness around 45ppm then breed them in rainwater with peat water added.

I had some for a couple of years in a goldfish pond and they grew from about 20mm to 70mm. They were not happy chappies. They like cold clean heavily oxygenated water and I don't think you would be doing them any favours by keeping them without that. ps Mine have probably been caught and eaten from the Waimakariri from whence they came

Are you storing them in water?

My australe golds are still a bit young but I am getting Woks choks breeding OK. I keep the males and females seperate and spawn them in pairs in peaty rain water with a mop (otherwise bare tanks) for a couple of days every two weeks. I found with trios one was laying while the other was eating eggs. I am having success with gardneri gold and albino in trios with the same technique.

No one seems to do it, but I used to keep the male and female nothos seperate then spawn them in trios every weak or fortnight on sand. If you put sand through a seive and keep the fine sand that passes through you can tip the whole small tank (sand and water through the same net) and and all you catch is the eggs. This way you can count the eggs and determine your actual hatch rate. Store them in peat as normal but it is hard to see how many eggs you have when mixed in peat. I used peaty rain water in the tanks.

When I was visited by biosecurity they were only interested in the one plant I described that had been bought on Trademe. They would be aware of everyone who had bought that plant and I suspect would have had a visit also. When I had none of that plant alive they had no more interest and I have heard no more from them. I have also been contacted by the local Regional Council about what is permitted and not permitted aquatic plant (from selling plants on Trademe). When they were assured that I only had permitted plant I heard no more from them.

Mrs Nature has been very kind to Nothos. They hatch wet and I found a 10% hatch after drying and another 10% a month later etc. They have some pretty good survival mechanisms (apart from their propensity to get velvet) They are also extremely quick developers.

This would be about the process for importing plants. As a bit of an aside does anyone have a link to a list of aquatic plants permitted to be imported at present. The bumph involved in getting approval for new species would probably make it cost prohibitive

The flying fox is different-- has a gold line above the black line

There were three people I know of in Christchurch who used to import but the permitted list was very short. Barclaya, crypts and aponogeton were permitted as I recall. Echinodorus were not permitted and the only ones available then were tenellus, magdalenensis, horizontalis, amazonicus and cordifolius. There are probably three times that now around. The permitted list may have changed. There was a far greater range of crypts available then that seem to have disappeared. I think the plants were treated with alum and particularly crypts didn't like it much.

There are a lot of plants about now that were not about 30 years ago. To my knowledge they are not permited to be imported and they did not drop out of the sky. I think there is a lesson to be learned here by all of us.