Stella

Congratulations Heidy!!!

Of course, it is part of their lifecycle, they change as they grow. Successful breeding in tanks is probably a little more tricky as they have an estuarine phase, but some seem to do it. I haven't and I don't know how.

Yep, native shrimps start off as males and grow up to be females (they saw the light This is called 'protandry' literally meaning 'first-male', only the NZ shrimp does this.

I use garden peat (the big yellow bags) as the substrate in my mudfish tanks, with a layer of leaf litter over the top to make it a bit more wetland-like and create more hiding places. Works brilliantly! Organic substrate tanks are just SOOO easy to look after. One tank of peat has been going for four years. THe tannins are much less now, but still there.

Possibly, inanga are a better fish for ponds - more visible being pelagic and schooling. In this case it probably depends on the design of the pond, but inanga are probably as fast if not faster than the goldfish.

Thanks guys!! I am so happy with it. Am at the freshwater sciences conference and getting lots of interest and good feedback. A few have commented at how thorough it looks. I hadn't thought about it like that, but it really does cover so much of what you need to know and what you might wonder about. (Zev, I think that drawing somehow morphed into a freakishly happy cross between a mudfish and a bully, but clearly it did the trick

Not done it yet. I will hopefully find someone at uni to help me, hopefully in the vet dept. Haven't asked around yet. You can be assured there will be a full write-up and photos when I do it

Alternatively there are a whole suite of interesting native aquatic plants There are a few articles online about them in aquaria, one here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/index.php?PG=NIWAPlant There is a really good book on them by Coffey and Clayton (out of print but check out your library)

hahaha true! hmm, has it's head been pulled off, making the pinochio nose?

Really interesting paper on it here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/l40w8667r75ug82p/ "The freshwater aquarium trade as a vector for incidental invertebrate fauna". NZ-based. Also got other papers on wild spread. If you are interested and can't access it, I can email you a .pdf. Of course ballast is a problem, that is not being argued. Just because x is worse than y does not make x acceptable. But that depends on what system you are talking about. If the Colorado potato beetle arrived (for example), that would have dramatic consequences on the a whole variety of crops and the economies involved. The native fish won't care. It would matter to the fish if an exotic disease or carnivorous fish, but the potato-growers won't care. Perhaps subsidied by the tax payers then?

Whoops, I should have quoted you Hovmoller. Sorry!

I think it is a robber/assassin fly (Family: Asilidae). The adults eat insects, while the larvae live in rotting wood or in soil. 5000 species worldwide, 20 in NZ (6 threatened species) (I HIGHLY recommend Andrew Crowe's Which New Zealand Insect) I would say the one on the right is the female, and in the later picture her eggs have grown more. Maybe...?

Sigh, there are SOME idiot cyclists, and many who play by the rules and ride defensively. There are SOME idiot car drivers, and many who play by the rules and drive defensively. In order to avoid accidents with the few genuine idiots, ALL road users need to assume that they are invisible, and everyone else is out to kill them. Both activities are very risky, and probably the most risky thing that we do on a daily basis. Stop blaming the other! There are times when each is at fault. As Suphew said: there is a problem, how can we make things better? I say this as a paranoid pedestrian, cyclist, ex-motorcyclist and car driver.

Because the system is working and the nasties are (generally) getting caught. The hobby import system is accidentally introducing zooplankton to NZ, diseases are much smaller than that.

The sentence before those was "The car driver’s exposure was on all occasions the highest for benzene and the first or second highest for particulates compared to the other modes." Car > road cyclist > path cyclist. What they don't mention in the abstract is where their train and bus data fitted in. I think in this paper the paths were 2m from the road and ran along the road, so there was a distance decay effect happening.

Actually a public aquarium I am working on is using a similar idea - disguising a standpipe in a fibreglass piece of 'driftwood'. I am not involved in the design, but I think it is going to protrude out of the water. I think the 'branch' was to have long cracks in it, and the water flow through that at the height of the top of the standpipe the standpipe, so it simultaneously acts as a fish filter. I don't think this one exists yet, but it has probably been done before. Try doing a google on disguising standpipes. (OMG riverine upsidedown catfish sound awesome! Must find a photo...)

What a neat place! Thank you for sharing A friend of mine has been there, I would just love to go. So the fish were easily spotted? Lots of them were out during the day or were they a little few and far between? Much cooler than albatross anyway It certainly seems like the presence of trout changes their behaviour to being more secretive.

Actually driving is worst. The top two results on google scholar (paper titles in the quote box, main results in bold): Quite surprising, but makes sense when you think about where the intake is for car ventilation.

I forgot to say she is now in the freezer awaiting dissection to figure out what she died from. In a way I can't describe, it feels respectful. As a friend of mine said: "You're SUCH a biologist!" :lol: Thanks for the condolences.

On Saturday my favourite and oldest fish died, my giant kokopu Maxine. I think it was an intestinal blockage, or maybe something to do with the small anal prolapse she developed a year ago when she released eggs. Definitely swollen and sore in that area when she died. She was fine the night before, then lost bouyancy and was freaking out a bit, and died shortly after. At least it was quick. She was 24cm total length. (This picture is a year old, but she was in lovely condition then, and difficult to photograph otherwise) I had had her for nearly four years, since she was a post-whitebait. Not sure if this photo was her, but you get the idea! There is two years difference between these two photos.....! That is a lot of ox heart. AND she was probably stunted due to a couple of weird health issues. Poor girl, I will miss her greeting me when I come home at night. She was one seriously difficult, grumpy fish.

I keep hearing that palmy drivers are really bad when it comes to cyclists, but I have actually been impressed at how good they are at giving way to cyclists, and allowing them into the appropriate lane at roundabouts. Worst I have had was being severely cut off by another cyclist.

Hi Peter, thanks so much for taking me out, it was great fun! My net still stinks of smelt...! I didn't get any photos. The fish were so small it is hard work. Love you growing shrimp eyes! And interesting seeing the eel trying to get over. I do remember those photos of your koaro out of the water. Really neat finding some doing that in the wild. It is ringing bells for a conversation I had a little while ago with a lecturer, I will ask about it. A decent fish pass really should go on that weir. I might have a talk to some people and get back to you with a cunning idea

Algae/biofilms/periphyton/bacteria etc. Basically if you have an established tank growing a little algae the shrimp should never need feeding.

A lot of people love the Robocan, claiming it is 'natural', but a toxic chemical is a toxic chemical, whether it originated in a plant or not. I can't bear the thought of ordinary fly-spray let alone something fumigating my house constantly! Actually, the use of robocans will probably increase the speed with which various species become evolve resistance to pyrethrin (and possibly also synthetic pyrethroids). It is however listed on Wikipedia as being the "the safest of all insecticides for use on food plants" but can be toxic to fish. Pyrethroids are causing major problems building up in waterways overseas, and pyrethroid resistance is partly behind the resurgence in bedbugs worldwide. Just my thoughts on the matter, do as you will.

Hi there, That size tank is on the small side for many natives - the ground area is so important for them. Too many fish in a small ground area will lead to lots of aggression. However it can be a nice 'intimate' size for some bullies, especially if you have it somewhere where you will spend a lot of time there and get them really tame. I had a tank that size with a couple of Cran's bullies on my desk, they were really neat to watch It wasn't a particularly attractive tank (I didn't put in the effort) but I got to know those little dudes really well. Maybe two pairs of <6cm bullies, or one pair of bigger ones, though I do find that the small ones are easier to adjust to captivity, and it is satisfying to watch them grow. Choose a species that you really like, and have them all the same. Redfins are the most dramatically, but non-diadromous Cran's are really attractive (orange not red) and can successfully breed in freshwater. Bluegills are smaller and totally cute, but they are fastwater fish and it may be tricky keeping the temperature down in such a small tank. Although males tend to be the more colourful and active sex, avoid having more males than females. Alternatively a single cray would work (I wouldn't have bullies in a tank that size with a cray - om nom nom!) and they are very entertaining pets. Make sure you have plans for keeping the temperature down over summer. Small tanks can fluctuate wildly, and reach higher temperatures, both of which are really bad for natives.