Stella

motion-activated sprinkler system? land mines?

they have put those owls in the trees around palmy's square. It is funny waling through there in winter when the leaves have fallen. There is an owl in the centre, surrounded by a metre-wide bird-free area, then all the birds perched outside of that :lol:

wow, very nice! :happy2:

actually I saw a thing on the 'news' last night about a UFO sighting, and was thinking that aliens are just as likely to look like these critters as anything else. A better photo of the hydra: daphnia successfully ingested!

Some new critters have turned up in my critter tank. :happy2: I thought they were like a furry algae with an umbrella shape, was trying to take some photos of on when the fish swam past and it FLINCHED! They are up to 4mm across and hang from a very very thin thread, very hard to see with the naked eye, but just visible in the first photo. The 'tentacles' are very very soft and floaty. This photo shows one just hanging there, and the second one showed it 'flinching'. They do this extremely fast - blink of an eye. They move like if you stretch your hand out and then suddenly make a fist - the 'tentacles' seem to suck into the centre. Knocking the tank doesn't make them contract, but they do it at other times. I haven't seen anything obvious trigger them, just randomly contract and immediately release, but mostly stay open. For reference: a hydra (eating a daphnia). Quite a different critter. I have absolutely no idea what these things are, anyone got any ideas? :dunno:

I think they just eat decaying matter. The critter tank is like a mini-ecosystem. With mine what I want to create is a whole lot of self-sustaining populations of whatever survives or appears. I chuck in a whole lot of bugs and some will keep on going. The leaf litter and peat decomposition forms the basis of the ecosystem, along with the sunlight creating algae. Snails and daphnia eat them, they get eaten by other things, who get eaten by other things. The diving beetles are the top predator, and these (plus the damselfly larvae) are the only things that can't form self-sustaining populations in there due to lifecycle issues. AH, there might be your problem! Next time gather dead brown leaves that naturally fell off the tree. Also don't use 'fresh' wood or sticks. hehehehe that was your final test, you are now one with of critter people 8)

Hmmm, I am reminded of something a while back, someone here found that dechlorinator chemicals are toxic to crayfish. Crays are curstacea, like copepods, daphnia and shrimp. maybe this was the problem? Did the tank have a cover? Often oil slicks are stuff that has settled from the air onto the water surface. My tanks get dreadful slicks in summer when I am using fans for evaporative cooling - increases the amount of air hitting the surface. I haven't seen slicks from leaves, but I really don't know much about what leaves are safe (probably most). For some reason I can't open your pictures at work (problem at my end not yours), but I think your worm is probably a tubifex worm (or similar). They come out and 'wave' in the water when there is little oxygen. My tank can become a meadow of waving tubifex at times. Put in a bubbler and they are all tucked back into the sediment within 24 hours. I am going to try and repopulate my critter tank today. Really not sure why everything has dissappeared in mine too, all a bit odd. I figure oxygen or water chemistry, but the fish is still pootling around, and some damselfly larvae have hatched. There are so many hiding places I am less inclined to think it could be predation now.

:lol: just my suggestions, which you can take or leave at will. aw no, it is such a cool tank! Stick with it, you will get there

Dobsonfly larvae are awesome I took two home once for my kokopu to eat. The kokopu had been in captivity since they were whitebait so had never had a chance to try dobsonfly larvae before. They sucked them in, spat them out immediately and had nothing further to do with them! It looked like maybe they tasted bad. Beetles covered in native leeches... weird. Sure they were actual leeches and not planaria? Either way I doubt that they could harm the beetles. Their exoskeleton is AMAZINGLY hard (as in 'is this a beeltle or a stone?' hard!) and covered in waxes that make them very slippery and reduces drag in the water. (I pinned one of my huge 1" diving beetles once, was very hard to hold onto, and I had to heat the pin to burn it through the exoskeleton, and still thought the pin would self-destruct before the beetle did. I have seen a photo of big diving beetles for sale elsewhere as food - teeth-breakers! (do another search, overseas diving beetles (Dytiscidae) are popular pets)

Daphnia can die off if they don't have enough food (suspended bacteria/algae) but the leaf litter decomposition should be starting a bloom off. Hydra are very very very tiny, very hard to see, and the tenticles are even tinier. And they are violently green. The moving ones could be planaria (~5-10mm long at most): http://islandwood.org/kids/stream_healt ... arian2.jpg (COOL hydra pic, I had to search down the blog it came from, will read it later) Well done blueether on having the diving beetles arrive! I adore diving beetles (were the point of my first critter tank). They are quite mobile and can fly (as you have noticed!) so a lid will stop them from escaping. They like a bit of ox heart or other meaty goodness. They are quite hungry little guys, but seem to be mostly scavengers as their eyesight seems really bad. Do a search on diving beetle larvae.

Are you sure it is the hydra? My critter tank has had hydra for ages, but in very low numbers. (A freshwater anenome, how cool is that!) Though my tank is now a wasteland - very little alive, even the snails have vanshed! I am blaming the damselfly larvae I put in recently, despite not having seen any since. It is all very weird. Even the tubifex are gone.

Which is very true. The thing is torrentfish are bottom-dwellers, they are not bouyant and struggle to stay up in the water column. The poly would take up most of the tank for this to work. Also the inanga naturally want to be high in the water, you are trying to convince them to go low. Working with nature is easier than against it I will definitely keep that in mind! Always good to meet other natives people

oh, and TANK ENVY!!! :sick:

yay for geeks! Hmmm, I would suggest the other way actually. Inanga are midwater fish that prefer less current, torrentfish are bottom-dwellers. You want it slower at the top and faster at the bottom (although the current isn't really necessary as such, but will bring out their behaviours) If you put the pump outlet low down in the tank, literally just above the substrate, and aimed horizontally it will suit the torrentfish perfectly. The volume of water above that is where the current will dissipate, and create places for inanga to hang out drift feeding. A big piece of driftwood that works well horizontally could create a small physical buffer between the 'layers' of habitat (and to fill in some of the vertical space). one of my tanks is 50 high and 45 wide (front to back). I find it a stretch getting my arm to the back-bottom. When your tank is in place check your reach, and make sure anything you might need to access and tweak is actually accessible.

my understanding is that you are not allowed to keep 'sports' fish, coarse fish or anything else controlled by Fish & Game. Certain noxious species (eg koi) are not classified as noxoius but as sports fish in the Waikato etc becuase they are established and impossible to eradicate in those areas. All you can have to do with any of these pest species anywhere is kill them. You cannot: posess, move, sell, breed, purchase etc them. Only kill them. If you happen to have them in a pond on your property, DOC would be more interested in eradicating them from the pond than prosecuting you, but if you are moving/selling etc them, they will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Basically in NZ if it is in the wild and bigger than 20cm it is an exotic sports or pest fish, either way, there are many laws around what you can and can't do with them, and pond/aquarium transfer is pretty much out, for extremely good reasons. Oh, but if you want to catch/kill/eat/feed the cat a *native* fish, you can do what you like, with any gear you like, without needing a license. Crazy :nilly: :evil:

every now and then people sell pretty big goldfish on trademe (clearing out a pond or similar) though be really careful not to buy koi, the fines and jail are pretty serious. I don't think there are any other carp apart from goldfish that are legal/available. Mullet are wanderers, can be fine in freshwater, but not sure of the details. You could probably do with heading to your local library and getting all the books out by R.M. McDowall, preferably the big 1990 one

:lol:

banded kokopu. Probably not very visible though. I don't know anything about them (or the legalities) ... but what about mullet? As always, temperature is the critical thing, if your pond is in the shade natives would probably be ok.

er... yeah, trout too. :oops:

urgh, water weasels! You are unlikely to have much luck with that one. Requires some serious permits from DOC and MinFish, and $$ and suitable waterways. I seriously doubt that it could be done as a private thing. If trout aren't there already it is likely not good trout habitat. If trout are there it will be worse habitat for the natives that are supposed to be there.

:lol: will bear that in mind!

They adore peas! Try them with various (uncooked) vegies and see what they like. Mine also got ox heart and earthworms (both being what I was feeding the fish) and will happily munch any sinking fish food. They are expert escape artists, so make sure there is a lid. Preacher is right about the temperature and lunch issues. With your stream, you could simply take to doing regular feedings at the same spot and get to know the locals Ox heart is good for this (cheap and easy, butmake sure you are careful to cut off all the fat).

Hmmm, now here is a rather interesting issue that we don't normally think about with collecting aquatic plants. It turns out that this one is a nationally threatened native moss, Fissidens berteroi: An aquatic ecologist friend of mine spotted this and emailed me to respond (as he can't seem to access his account). He said he is "not overly sure what the legalities are. But I'm sure collection is at the very least frowned on." Now, ironically it may also be frowned upon (well, is actually illegal) to put your bit back, as it is illegal to put any aquatic organism into a waterway (even the one it came from) without a permit, due to risk of introducing unexpected things into the waterway. Hopefully my friend will come up with some more info

Welcome! There is a fair bit in the archives here about koura. Being in the far north you might also want to look into cooling tanks! Mine have been getting far too arm today. Keeping them is legal, and they can breed in captivity (if they don't eat eat other first!). Actually farming them would take a bunch of permits and red tape. There are two koura farms in NZ I think.

but you can put the water it was boiled in into the tank... I microwave my peat - turn it into a wet mud, then microwave in a glass dish (won't stain). I gave 5L of very thick peat mud 10 minutes in the microwave and it pretty much all sunk. However, for making the water very dark, as stocking-full is unlikely to have much impact. Fresh peat as a thick substrate will result in a rich yellow/brown between waterchanges.