Stella

Good points, thanks. Margery's tank is bare, apart from a few sticks that give structure to her web. I liked the idea of her building her own habitat, rather than being invisible in a tank with substrate. Now I am wondering if the peat is probably a really good idea - would make it easier to keep the humidity up over summer. Would also disguise the corpses somewhat... :sick: I keep her in my office which is the coolest room of the house, and have the window open over summer. Have you had yours shed? Do you know what the behaviours are around that time? I have the remains of a previous shedding that I found in her original treehouse. Just the underside of the cephalothorax and the fangs - the fangs are amazing! Could you post a pic of your spiderium? I will post some pics tonight.

So, who else has one? :love: Mine lives in a 30cm cube tank on my desk. I got her in May I think. She sure is getting more active now the weather is warming up! Love the way she charges around. Now, I have a few questions about food and water. What do you feed yours and how often usually? She originally was happy eating mealworms but now they wind up pupating in there! I don't have much of a garden and it is hard to find bugs for her. There is currently a small moth and two slaters wandering around her tank. Perhaps she is too well-fed, despite not having much? How do you stop yours from becoming dehydrated? With water I noticed a few weeks ago that she was moving really strangely - feet tucked under her like a dead spider. I put a drop of water on it and she viciously drank it :lol: (these girls do everything viciously!) So after that I put a lid of water in there and assumed all was well, but the same thing happened yesterday. I guess the lid was hard for her to drink from or something.

Years ago one of my crays got out and I found it in the bedroom (tank was in the lounge) and I couldn't decided if the cat had bailed up the crayfish or the other way around!

hmmm, ok she isn't actually bulging at all, but rather the 'pinecone' scales make her look a bit bulgy on one side. And definitely pinecone scales on one side only. They really are sticking way out. I don't think she is gravid at the moment, and seems otherwise fine. Maybe a little less active, but fins all erect, colour fine.

no ideas? She is still looking the same today.

woo pretty! Fabulous depth and the algae on the walls looks great Is that.... is that a plant?! How did the nesting male bully cope with the move? I really need to get my lounge tank looking better.

woo, progress! Gotta love that black silicone and painted back. Regarding the rocks, here are my thoughts (feel free to disregard at will) The rock on the right looks good because it blends with the gravel, in both colour and texture. The one on the left doesn't really work for the same reasons. When going for natural aquarium design, odd numbers of things seem to look better than even numbers. You clearly noted the trick of half-burying rocks to make them look more natural When next playing with the piece of wood, try propping it up in the corner upsidedown to the way it grew.... hard to describe... try the end on the left up at the water surface, and the branches dangling down. Southern Encounters did that to great effect so it looked like roots coming down into the water. It looks nice where it is, but just looking at the shape that way may work also. I am pretty sure you had plans for a lid? A cray would be out of there and grumpily stomping around your room in no time

Today or yesterday one of my fish developed the dropsy-like pinecone-scales on one side only. She is breathing a little rapidly and her eyes are maybe slightly protrusive (hard to be sure). What would cause this and what do I do about it? Background: Had been a little slack on the waterchanges but recently stepped it up as she started getting little fluffy growths (common in her this time of year - several recent spawns and the temperature rising). The fluffy growths have mostly gone now, after a few good waterchanges. The other fish seem fine.

I had a male upland bully go ballistic when the females decided to lay their eggs with the other male. He started beating the girls up really badly. To give them a break for a while I propped a mirror up against the tank and he went nuts at that instead. Useful trick.

You could also try looking at a local landscaping/gardening place. One of my current tanks is decked out with rounded gravel and sand ($3 for a 20L bag!) and the crayfish can't do extreme landscaping I know you have read all the stuff already, but just be careful with sizing when mixing bullies and crays. Being a bottom-dwelling fish bullies are at greater risk from crays than other fish, but since your tank is on the smaller end of the scale it might not be suitable for other natives. As long as the bullies are the same size or larger than the cray, and there are plenty of caves, things should be ok. You may even find with no fish that the cray is a bit more bold. Crays have SUCH varied personalities, it is all a bit luck-of-the-draw. I thoroughly support the idea of turning your tropical tank to natives :thup: :smot: Great to hear what you thought of the Turangi aquaria! I haven't been up there since the got the lighting installed on all the tanks (the stream and bully tanks were pretty hopeless unlit). Glad to hear the bully tank is looking so good. I was really dubious about the design at the start, but it seems to suit the bullies so well. Putting the rocks in was a NIGHTMARE. The rocks are supported by this giant interlocked plastic structure which took far more engineering than we intended. Then I had to climb inside the tank and perch each stone by hand, with a guy down the bottom telling me where the supporting structure was still visible, as I couldn't see from where I was sitting! Wound up with only two rocks I could perch on and climb out from. Let's just say I am so glad there was a bath in the staff quarters for soaking out those aches!

when they are hatching dad will quickly shimmy over them several times, I guess it helps some of them out. I usually find that they all hatch within 24 hours, in the presence of the father. What are you going to feed them?

I don't think it is rare. Large kokopu would chomp trout and vise versa. So far it is really only the galaxiid species with small adults or lake-rearing species that seem to get really hammered by trout. Blueether, the authors of that study would probably be interested to hear what you are finding! Drop them an email.

wow, impressive photos!

Looks like you have done a wonderful amount of research, Mikey! Most impressed. Looking forward to seeing how this comes together.

I need a bit of advice on saprolegnia, have a definite diagnosis on this following autopsy and presumably microscopy. This is for native mudfish (a threatened scaleless species), so malachite green is OUT (it kills them). I also don't know if any other standard fish meds are safe or not. I only know that salt definitely works. Is salt (sodium chloride) at 6-7ppt going to nail the sap? What would you use against sap on other scaleless sensitive species, eg clown loaches?

Yes, definitely a giant kokopu Giants change quite a lot when they are small, there are several stages that their patterning goes through. The below point are how I tell them apart: Giants start out with a random |.|..|.|. pattern along the lateral line. Over time they lengthen vertically. Then the lines start to break up into spots, and eventually more spots seem to grow through from deep within the skin. Tis a beautiful transformation to watch. Banded on the other hand start with sort of short vertical *narrow* dashes along the side ||||||| Like with the giant they elongate at a certain stage, but on the banded they get even longer. As they get bigger the stripes tend to congregate in the tail area and fade out elsewhere. One trick with kokopu is to look at the *edge* of the stripes: Giant: clear sharp edge all the way around the spots/stripes. Does not get blurry toward the top and bottom. Banded: stripes are clear along the centre of the body and fade out top and bottom Shortjaw: at around 7-10cm long they have vertical stripes. First they are amber and later they become brown, before fading out and being replaced by the adult mottling. The main clue with these stripes is that they have a blurry edge *all the way around* the stripe. (Yes the jaw is the easier indicator, but I find they are often hard to roll over enough to see the jaw clearly.) Nice tail bite. Looks like it is growing back well though. Amazingly robust little fish, they heal so fast!

Could add in a visit to the National Trout Centre, just south of Turangi, to see their fabulous new native aquaria? 10 tanks, the smallest is 1.5m long and the longest is a 7m stream down the centre of the building! Includes most of the native species in the North Island. There are threads here with photos, do a search

Or dad.... they do that. I guess with picking off the dead eggs they accidentally grab a live one and find they taste good. I have often found dad will eat the first batch, but get the point after that.

definitely: :spop: You could let the father take care of them until they are nearly ready to hatch (the eyes get really obvious) then transfer them to a fry tank. I think the eyes are first visible at nearly two weeks, then hatch a week later (temp dependent).

:oops: thanks Ok, the diadromous ones are further classified as 'obligate' and 'facultative'. Obligate Biology. restricted to a particular condition of life, as certain organisms that can survive only in the absence of oxygen: obligate anaerobe (opposed to facultative). So these guys MUST go to sea. Redfin, bluegill, giant bullies Facultative Biology. having the capacity to live under more than one specific set of environmental conditions, as a plant that can lead either a parasitic or a nonparasitic life or a bacterium that can live with or without air (opposed to obligate). only common bullies, in some places (fry food seems to be the critical factor), and it becomes a selection pressure so the population quickly evolves to suit a non-diadromous lifecycle. I guess Cran's and uplands would be described as obligate non-diadromous... but that classification is fairly redundant. (alternatively, the short answer would have been "only common bullies can produce landlocked population, and only under the right conditions")

In Tutaenui stream.... for those of you with a puerile sense of humour :lol: :roll: Very cool to have a new record of them! Apparently Horizons Regional Council does annual surveys of known mudfish sites and also tries looking in new potential places each year, which is how this lot got found.

"ooooh I love the night life! I got to spotlight In Preacher's pond oh yeah yeah!!!" :happy1: (apologies Alicia Bridges)

Upland and Cran's bully fry don't need to go to sea, so they are easy to breed in aquaria. Common bullies from a non-diadromous population (eg a lake) should also be easy to raise in freshwater because they have evolved to not go to sea. In this case the eggs will be big (2.5mm length), rather than the usual diadromous common bully egg size (1mm). That doesn't sound like much of a difference but when you see them it is really obvious! Diadromous parents can't alter the physiology of the fry just because they can't reach the sea from their aquarium, this is an evolved trait with many changes required, including which season they breed in. The reason for the egg-size difference betwen diadromous and non-diadromous fish is the difference in food availability and risk to fry. Females are only so big and can only invest a certain proportion of resources into reproduction, but the size and number of eggs can vary to suit the risk etc. The diadromous lifecycle is fraught with risk, so it is better to spread that by having more eggs per clutch. The zooplankton in the sea that the fry feed off is at a much higher density than in freshwater, so it doesn't matter if they fry are small, there is plenty for them to eat so they will grow fast. However for non-diadromous fish, the zooplankton in freshwater is less and larger, so the fry need to be bigger to be able to cope. There is also less risk to the fry, so it is better to have fewer larger fry to give them a head-start. There isn't much zooplankton in streams, which is partly why so many of our fish are diadromous. Those that are not diadromous tend to have smaller adult sizes, which is related to not swimming in a sea of food when they were fry. (not that they are 'stunted', but rather evolved to suit this situation.) Where diadromous species have formed landlocked population it tends to involve rearing within lakes where the zooplankton levels are higher.

:happy2:

Awesome!! Good job. (you need to update the photos on your pond thread So none of the bully fry survived? Too many bigger mouths I suppose.