Stella

borneo suckers? I am reasonably sure they are cold water...

Yep, it has been removed. I am surprised how quick they were! I reported it at 8:45pm and they de-listed it at 11:10pm! What surprises me is they managed to confirm what I had said.... It is so hard trying to find accurate information on that topic... Here is their (generated) response: Thanks for reporting the listing for: FRESHWATER CRAYFISH The Trade Me Customer Support Team have reviewed the listing and has deemed that it is in breach of our terms and conditions. As a result the listing has been removed from the site. Thank you for bringing this listing to our attention and making Trade Me a better place to buy and sell.

Anyone doing the Aquatics course through Mahurangi Tech...?

some are available in shops from farms. I believe Mahurangi Tech is selling some to the aquarium trade legitimately. I saw some big ones in a shop in Auckland for $25!!!! Apparently a lot of the freshwater mussels in pet shops are not legitimate. They are also native. That is merely what I was told from a friend at Mahurangi, he read my book and suggested I add that footnote and presumably he knows what he is talking about.... would be good to know more though.

well I guess that is another option... :oops:

ah ha, thanks, I found it. I put in a report that it is illegal to sell them, will see what Trademe does. Hopefully I don't piss off someone from here, but hey, it is wrong, and they would definitely eat each other (and probably get shaken to pieces) if posted.

I learned recently that there is a way of testing bacteria that divides them into two groups: gram positive and gram negative. Conveniently most pathogens are in one group and non-pathogens are in the other, so to kill the baddies and not the goodies you use something that kills that group only Some meds are broad spectrum and kill the lot. It is a bit like with blood types, each blood type can be divided into Rh (rhesus) positive or negative. That means it clots or not if mixed with an rhesus monkey blood extract.... Technically doesn't mean a whole lot, but very useful in practise. If I have something wrong in my understanding please let me know, just heard this recently but seems useful for understanding fish meds and if they kill your filter as well.

This has been covered several times. You do not need a permit to gather them, bag limit 50 per day (good luck trying to find that many!) You may not gather crayfish from the taupo or rotorua (?) areas. These belong to the local maori. You do not need a permit to keep them in aquaria. You do need a permit to release them back. Actually.... not sure if this covers crays, definitely the law for native fish, the idea is to prevent the spread of disease. You may not move anything from one waterway to another, you can only put things back exactly where they came from. And finally in answer to your question: Yes you need a permit to farm them AND you need a permit to sell them, food or aquarium trade Sorry, I don't know this unmentionable site.... could you please PM it to me if there is a reason it can't be posted here? I assume that is still legal...

Hi Caryl, Thanks for looking! That banded kokopu article sounds interesting. What is it called and who by? If I asked REALLY nicely could you send me a photocopy? :bounce: Is there any sort of searchable catalogue to find out if there are other native fish articles? Thanks heaps

Thanks but that is completely different in all respects.... sorry. Great article though. I keep meaning to get my printed version ring-bound. I wonder how the National Library works? Apparently they have copies of everything.... can you get photocopies of articles? Now that could be very useful.... Oooh they do have the bulletin! It was produced by the NZ Aquarium Society... Hang on: (society/publication/years) NZ Aquarium Society, NZ Aquarium Bulletin, 1938-1953 NZ Federation of Aquarium Societies, NZ Aquatic World, 1953-1973 NZ Federation of Aquarium Societies Inc, NZ Aquatic World, 1973-1996 NZ Federation of Aquarium Societies Inc, NZ Aquarium World, 1996-present Well well well, the things you learn! Am currently writing the section in my book on mudfish. It started well but is now driving me mad. It was good doing proper creative writing again, as opposed to just editing past writing, and the words are good..... just I am starting to get bogged down in wanting to include every scrap of information known to man and not quite knowing where to stop or how to structure it....

I saw an interesting article I would like to get hold of, it is rather old.... All I know is this (from a bibliography) Davidson, M.M.: The New Zealand mudfish (Neochanna apoda). The New Zealand Aquarium Bulletin: 12:33 1951 Has anyone heard of this bulletin? Thanks

I have trouble keeping plants alive in my tanks (not enough light, no algae eaters etc) so I have given up. This is fine, there are few plants in the native streams my fish are from. But you do get a little sick of looking at a tank of rocks.... I was recently given the tip of using ponga branches! Apparently they stay green for a month then slowly turn brown. They can stay submerged for a very long time, seems they don't decompose readily in water. It looks great and provides a bit of greenery and hiding places without the bulk of a large pile of stones. I have only just put this one in, will be interesting watching how it goes.

actually that is not particularly accurate. It is in very controlled applications but hard to do properly at home. Tap water contains all sorts of things that slightly alter the temperatures at which water boils. Ice water (water with a whole lot of ice in it, not a block of ice or near-frozen water) is frequently colder than 0 degrees as ice is colder when it is melting.... And if you plunge a glass thermometer into ice or boiling water you will probably break it well before it can register a temperature.

Unfortunately more thermometers are out in some manner. I really want a decent *accurate* one but they seem to be very difficult to find. I have one which is supposed to be a scientific one for use in labs, but my other thermometers are all closer in temp to each other and the sci one is 2-3 degrees cooler, so now I have no idea which one to trust.

Malachite green and formalin are two meds that are best mixed. They work on their own but they work better in conjunction. They are pretty nasty chemicals but they do work very well. Melafix is indeed a tea tree oil preparation. Don't be tempted to use normal tea tree oil, it is a special type. This med is known for making the fish freak out and appear distressed initially, and it will make the water froth somewhat at the surface. This is normal. I would not mix them. Or indeed any other meds. If one med is supposed to kill whitespot then it will kill it. Add another med and as Allan said: potentially toxic soup.

Thanks Smidey, I have brown algae problems and I noticed they were not present when I have had similar tanks without lighting. What you say finally answers that question. Now to find the answer to the question that your answer raises...

No, they are both chemical. One is called by a chemical name, one is called by a brand name. One is extracted from a plant and I am not quite sure what the other one is made from. It is still a chemical. No matter how 'natural' something is, it is still chemicals within it that are the active part. Indeed the less refined (and therefore closer to the 'natural' origin something is, the more random other chemicals there are in it. Which is more natural, salt or sodium chloride? Would you rather eat a whole lot of foxglove or take one heart pill? Same chemical, different name or different level of extraction.

well gee sorry for being so dumb! I promise never to do it again.

My inanga died last night in peculiar circumstances and I am interested to know if anyone can shed some light on it. He had looked a little pale (literally) over the previous two days. Then in the afternoon he seemed a bit wobbly and more pale. His eyes seemed a little bulgy but as always you can never remember quite what 'normal' is when 'abnormal' presents itself. He was loitering near the surface and getting less stable. That evening his balance was way off and I noticed his fins seemed to be paralysed. Never clamped shut, they were naturally erect but were unable to move. The fish was waving its head about as if something was irritating or hurting it. Its gills were sticking out and breathing was sporadic, never gulping or fast. In half an hour of these symptoms the fish died. No external signs of disease whatsoever. Any clues? The other fish are happy as larry. I have no concerns about them. Oh, the coolest thing.... I looked closely at it when I removed it from the tank, poked it a bit.... FISH HAVE TONGUES!!!!!!!

'cept I am not actually a member.... pete is part of that 'we' not me....

It would be cool to do something like that for the torries and bluegills (and koaro *when* I get some again!). I imagine it would need to be quite long and shallow (as you say) to get the right sort of flow, and definitely have it draining into a reservoir and returning to the pump. I think in a tank of water the flow bouncing off the ends and doing the whirlpool thing kinda baffles it. Then again if it was really kick-ass flow you would never see the fish.... There is a 10 foot tank at massey I so want to get my hands on to do a similar thing with.... It would be long enough to get some uber flow at one end and quiet areas at the other. I could have torries and bluegills and koaro and inanga and all the other bullies and small kokopu and and and.... !

I have decided to get a portable air conditioner for my office/fishroom to keep everyone cold enough! Should cool me down a bit too Bliss....! THough I have another week to wait for it to arrive.... poor me! :lol:

Ira and Doch, what sort of fish do you have in your fast current tanks? This morning I was saying to my friend that now the current is right the torrentfish are spending all their time hiding (expected behaviour, not that the current is too strong). He then pointed out that there were two fish sitting on rocks in the front.... damn they are well camouflaged! Fenriswolf, you say about it being strange not having mid-water fish. In a way we are conditioned to the idea that the main fish in a tank swim in the midwater and there might be a few low/ground level and maybe a few high level ones. We are also conditioned to the idea that they should be bright and showy, or if not they should be large. I went through bit of a mind-set change going from goldfish (iridescent and bright) to native fish (small and grey/brown mostly). The activity of them totally made up for the lack of colours and you start to see so much depth when before they looked plain that it makes the traditional bright fish seem unnecessarily gaudy! Also a lot of the native fish hang out on the bottom of the tank. I thought that would make for a rather dull, empty looking tank, but it really doesn't. They are so active and interesting it doesn't matter where they hang out! From what little I saw of borneo suckers they are so active a tank of them alone would be interesting. How big do they get?

Personally I would reconsider the combination of fish.... you have very-fast-water fish combined with slow-swimming still-water fish and some fast-swimming still-water fish. No matter what the tank is like it is not going to suit everyone, and possibly stress them. That aside, a fast river tank sounds fun to create Borneo suckers are so cute, I get tempted to have them in my tank as there are no native algae eaters.... I am just such a damned native fish purist.... I assume you have seen this: http://www.loaches.com/articles/a-river-runs-through-it I am working on a riffle tank for my native torrentfish and bluegill bullies. Think of a braided gravelly river, no plants, and some areas of SERIOUS flow. I would love to do a big riffle tank but am restricted at the moment to a 60x30x30cm. Then again the pumps required to get that flow in a big tank would be massive.... The tank has gravel substrate with a number of large rocks making caves as they like to hide, but also to hide the pumps and to baffle the flow to make areas of slightly quieter water. I didn't have a pump for the first week, then I put this tiny pump that does 300lt/hr. Would you believe the fish would take turns to sit 1cm away from the outlet VIBRATING in the current! it was insane! So obviously they needed even more current. Last night I found another pump that does 540lt/hr and added that, so the total turnover is 840 litres per hour in a 40 litre volume!!! So now the torrentfish are doing what I would expect... hiding from the flow.... kinda boring but it is what they do! Not a great deal is known about torrentfish, but it is believed that they leave the riffles at night to feed in the quieter pools above and below the riffle. One person I was talking to who had these had the pump on a timer so it switched off in the evenings and back on in the mornings. He found they did indeed come out more then. I don't know if your borneo suckers have a similar cycle or if they stay in the rapids all the time. So, the moral of the story is you will need WAAAAY bigger pumps than you ever imagined would be necessary! A torrentfish

I am coming to the conference with some friends. They have been before but I still feel very hazy about what to expect. I hear it is an AGM plus socialising, rather than talks and learning?