Stella

Names can be tricky... how about Big One and Small One? I had Rufus and Ruby redfin for a while, then Rufus II, who was a total wuss and didn't live up to his predecessor. Ian the Inanga Ronnie and Reggie Cray Joe Common Maxine the giant kokopu. And far more unnamed fish than named ones! It is funny how sometimes a name sticks and other times you forget immediately. Nice looking fish

Yeah, we should try to get kraken on the list. It can't be too hard.

Just reading the stuff about insurance claims: please don't feel tempted to falisfy your claim to get more. I knew a guy who claimed a few more cds were in his car when it got broken into than there actually were. He had a falling out with a guy who then told the insurance company. He now can't get insurance - house, contents, car etc. So not worth it.

yes, should be crawling with them! Reember perched culverts and other bad barriers downstream will stop many things travelling upstream. If the only fish present at a site are non-diadromous or good climbers (eels, koaro) then that might be the problem. Though bandeds are also very good climbers.... Banded streams tend to be: less than 2m wide bush-covered lots of large hiding places, especially undercut banks and woody debris.

I have had a pair each of commons, redfins and Cran's in a 120x35cm base, and in a 60x30cm I had two pairs of Cran's, both seemed to work quite well, only the Cran's tank needed more hidey-holes. They were all 5-6cm. Also had two pairs of uplands in a 60x30cm base, 4-5cm fish length, which was a better size. It depends on what species you like and what sizes you want. Obviously small fish grow, so also what length of time you think this tank will be set up for. Also small fish adjust to captivity easier (I avoid taking anyone over 6cm when it comes to bullies, with good food they grow well). Species-wise, any can be kept together, apart from bluegills as they are so small and slender and easily out-competed. Giant giant bullies can be a problem as they eat/harrass others. Had a problem at Turangi recently where the 4 unexpectedly enormous giant bullies ate 26 inanga in three days. Not entirely sure how they fitted them all in!

Sorry I was trying to race against the leechblock clock before it banned me from the site for another hour, didn't read your message properly! You could try a few small ones and see how they go, but they can't really show their schooling behaviours in that length.

again, very nice! You have a good eye for rock layout 60x30x30 is pretty small. You could have a small number of bullies (at 5-6cm long I would have only 4). It is a bit short for inanga to look good.

an outdoor spa pool with a cover cost us about $40 per month to heat. Of course that is much warmer than tropical, but the cover helped a lot. Something like a spa pool (insulated sides) in a greenhouse, and with solar water heating, could work.

(I can never remember how to embed videos, can someone remind me? thanks)

LOL you sure got in quick! The formal opening was yesterday. It is really at the start of the settling in period - it is physically done, but we need to bump up some of the stocking rates, sort out the lighting, and generally figure out how on earth it is all going to work. But the major part of the work is done, and it looks like you got to see some fish! I have a whole lot of photos to sift through and upload, but for now, here is a video of the kokopu tank, taken the day after the fish were added:

a dark male redfin bully 8)

Yeah, good point Ally. My laptop was needing a serious upgrade of RAM and harddisk space but that was looking expensive and a risky investment for something that might die soon anyway. Eventually I decided to buy a secondhand desktop PC for at home (circa 2007 but with KICKASS specs compared to my laptop, and a big LCD screen, trademe $300). Doubled my laptop RAM for $50 and have now stripped back all my programs and documents to needed-for-school-only so the poor thing has some room to work. The laptop now lives at uni locked to my desk. Maybe saving the laptop for an alternative purpose may work for you?

I am sure there are plenty of charities that would happily take older computers. Not sure about facilities for recycling electronics in NZ. Apparently if they were to start mining the rubbish dumps in Japan they would have higher outputs of a variety of metals than many major mines. It is feasible and will start eventually. Waterlogged - maybe you could sell it for a little pocket money, but not hundreds. It might be worth more in feel-good points to give it away to a friend or relative (or charity). That said, I am nursing along a 7 year old laptop, was higher spec when new, a few years ago I trebled the harddrive capacity to 80GB and recently doubled the RAM to 1GB. It is slow but functional as a secondary computer for school. I will be happy if it survives another year but not expecting it to.

Mine have the standard nail+bentmetal whassit, but are straight into the gib, not the internal framing. (I gave up tapping away on walls when I figured my chances of successfully hitting a dwang were about as good as luck) Good to hear yours stayed up. A couple of wads of blu-tac behind the lower corners should defy the crooked gods.

Yes, I have a couple of framed pictures above my tank, I really ought to move them, it doesn't look safe to me. (and not a particularly aesthetically pleasing arrangement either)

Thanks for the link, Trilobite, very good.

Bad stuff happens sometimes, you can't protect yourself from everything. Are you also thinking of selling your bookshelves, television, fridge etc for the same reasons? You could even remove the glass from your windows, take doors off their hinges so they don't get jammed, take down all your pictures... I mean this gently and with respect: please don't panic yourself over unlikely future possibilities, you are only making the present more difficult for yourself. Hugs.

(go to the original link and mouseover for the best line ever: http://www.xkcd.com/867/

oh them! I saw one recently, beautiful spiders http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/resea ... p?Bu_ID=57 http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/ResearchAtTeP ... etweb.aspx I am planning on getting a pet tunnelweb spider soon :happy1:

The good thing with spiders in/around your house is that they eat other insects coming into your house - free insect control without chemicals! The extra good thing about web-building spiders is they stay in predictable places. I would take spiders over flies and mosquitoes any day.

Easy: cut and plonk 8) They brown off over a few weeks but remain structurally sound for many months. I tend to use them along the back of the tank to fill vertical space and provide texture, in pieces on the gravel (or amongst leaf litter in a peat tank) to indicate what I am imagining is in the canopy over the stream, or in a hospital/quarantine tank to provide easy cover for the fish without taking up space. I only know about using generic 'ponga'/tree fern (they are a heap of species that I can't tell apart) but I haven't tried other fersn, bracken etc.

Inanga or smelt, or both? You see the fish in the centre of the photo, angled at about 11'o'clock, its tail is forked, which is a smelt feature. inanga have square tails. Actually looking at the head shape (smelt are finer from above) I would hazard that there are five smelt and two inanga in the photo. (side-view is easier, smelt have scales) Don't have high hopes for the smelt, they often roll and die in the early days. Fingers crossed though. Just try to keep them nice and cold and avoid stressing them. I came home with 25 flounder (~3cm average, one 10cm) last night and 64 dwarf galaxias today! I am not sure on the legal status of taking undersized flounder for the aquarium (commercial/recreational minimum size is 25cm, and chances are that applies to us too, which is bigger than you want in the average tank). I needed these for a public aquarium project and had a DOC permit. Pretty amazing fish, both species! Manawatu estuary is amazing at night.

Donna, you are an amazing woman I bet things are quiet without the click-click of turtles in their tanks. Sending hugs.

Donna, was that ALL of your turtles?! Fabulous that it was possible to ship them out, will take a bit of pressure off you I am sure.