alanmin4304

I only clean them when the flow is being restricted and sometimes that only means cleaning the input hose.

How did everyone get on with that latest shake?

A friend who breeds locusts and crickets and has many escape when very small retrieves them using a domestic vacuum cleaner with a ladies stocking over the end and held in place with a strong rubber band---she swears most survive.

We used to catch them with a torch on a dark night. Their eyes show up.

I hope you don't have all those meds in there at the same time. Wunder tonic contains a mixture of treatments that will work on most things but I would do a good water change to get rid of the stuff that is in there. If whitspot looks like the fish is sprinkled with salt then velvet looks like it is sprinkled with pepper. Not always easy to see but the easiest way is in the dark at night with a torch. If it doesn't look like it is sprinkled with pepper then you are dealing with something else. There is a type of velvet that we used to call encapsulated velvet. The velvet that you see on the fish is not what you can treat, it is the vegetative form that emerges from what you see. Sometimes they are reluctant to do this but can be encouraged by raisig the temperature. One of the ingredients of wunder tonic is quinine which will kill the vegetative form, however, so should furan and copper if used at the right dosage. If you use too much copper you will end up with a sterile corpse.

Nice pics. Typical Echinodorus sp. behaviour. Obviously likes the way it is being looked after.

Welcome

Doesn't look like columnaris to me either but hard to tell from the pics what it might be.

They are lucky with the location. They will either be that hi from da erb that they wont be able to breed or they will all fall down the bottomless sink hole and be lost forever. I have newts but give me native frogs any day.

They don't do well in acid water or low calcium either. Generally I think snails are feeding on uneaten food so their food source is outside of the enclosed system. Their waste increases the bioload but like most things in an aquarium it is all about balance. Snails added to fry tanks make the waste easier to siphon off but baby corries do the same thing and have more value at the end. You pays ya pennies and takes ya pick.

moderaters on stanby?

When I send reptiles I use a solid ventilated plastic box inside and stuck to a polybox (with double sided cellotape). I am thinking of lining the polybox with a plastic bag stuck with double tape then tied at the top with the plastic box stuck to the inside of the plastic bag. I could then place a 40 hour heatpad on top of the plastic bag and it would give off heat but be isolated from the oxygen in the bag. Unfortunately I won't have reptiles to try the idea on until xmas when I will not need a heatpack.You want to do the experiment?

Swim bladder problems are often terminal. I would be making a hole in the compost heap I think.

Tonic should control most secondary problems. Good conditions and patience I guess.

Be aware that heat packs use oxygen to generate heat. They are OK with fish because they are in a bag and seperated from the pack. When using them to send reptiles I used to make a hole in the lid of a polybox and place the pack under the hole and the oxygen came from outside. Now I don't use them because the couriers wont take reptiles if they spot stuff like that. I think you can get them up to 40 hours and they would be OK if you could isolate them some how.

I have never had a lep try to bite me but I have had them head butt my hand.

It depends what you want. Beardies bask so you will see more of them during the day. Leps are active dawn and dusk and spend most of the time in a hide.

If you like pork order a piece of neck from the butcher. They call it a number of things--collar and choke. They roll it in with the boned out shoulder so you usualy have to order it. Slice into steaks and marinade overnight with soy sauce, ginger, garlic and brown sugar then grill.

LA da maaaan

I breed them as well as bearded dragons but will not have either available until around xmas. Leps are easier than dragons as they need less space and don't need UV lights. Both do well on live insects and need more variety than just mealworms. Suggest you start breeding locusts and or crickets if you are serious about becoming an owner---buying food can get expensive and some people feed only mealworms because they are cheaper and easier to breed but in my view a variety of live food is best. They come up periodically on trademe but not so much at this time of year. If you are half handy you can build a reptile enclosure yourself for a lot less than buying from animates. An even cheaper option would be to look at getting a permit to keep NZ native geckos---they require even less space and no heating. Good luck.

I thought of that but that would not do what I am after. Will just have to save the pennies and wait a while longer. Can get by in the mean time.

More than 10 squares and closer to the boundary than the height of the building and therefore needs a building consent.

The lack of the norties is noted and you are thanked for your self control. I have just received a quote to build what is virtually a lined and insulated shed to breed reptiles in and with all the rubbish going down here after the quakes the quote was about twice what I thought so it will not be happening for a long while yet. I felt the same way. The consent fees are out of this world and they wanted full engineering investigations and report plus PC sums on a lot more just in case. As an aside, there was a great looking two story house with a "widows watch" type external stairway a few houses from us that has been demolished in the last few weeks because of quake damage. The locality is changing all the time and some great houses are going. We are still here and the house next door was built around 1860 and will remain. Hope your mother's project turns out OK.

When Maf was Maf they made plenty of noises about banning axies but put in the too hard basket I guess.

They come from Mexico where there are low levals of iodine in the environment (like NZ). Iodine is required to produce thyroxin which is the hormone required to stimulate metamorphosis. Feeding iodine or sheep thyroid gland is the usual way to get them to morph. They have evolved to reproduce in the juvenile state and have no need to morph and usually die an early and nasty death if artifically encouraged to---so not advised for that reason. Upsetting MPI can end up with you getting free board and lodgings at her majesty's pleasure and massive fines. Not to mention the entertainment you may provide for other inmates.