Stella

Excuse me while I covet your driftwood One of the tricks with getting a natural look is thinking about the way things actually work in the wild. I know things come out differently in the photos, but to me the stones you have blend in better with the silica sand, although I do prefer the more natural colour of your new sand. In streams/lakes the larger stones are usually of the same rock as the finer gravel. Also you didn't like the way the sand had settled over the wood. I think that actually made it look more natural. A tanks with all the aquascaping components highly separated makes it look forced. By allowing them to merge they look more real and aged. To make rock placement look natural, I find it is good to sprinkle some gravel over the rocks after partially burying them. Of course the sand lends itself to that so well. You mentioned the possibility to getting it a bit tannined. Check what sort of habitat your fish evolved in, but to me, some native beech leaves sprinkled around in there would look AWESOME and colour the water a little. Looking really good. I think you have a knack for this

I just remembered something. Do you use dechlorinator chemicals or any other water additives? A member here was having koura problems and apparently the dechlorinators are toxic. Probably best to avoid any med or other chemical additives unless you have confirmed with crayfish keepers that they are ok. There is actually a roaring trade in crays overseas, just not koura, obviously. The ground area is a little bit small in that tank for a koura of that size. I would also recommend laying that wood or rock thing on its back to create more caves for him. The more hiding places they have the happier they are. Would probably dig out new caves underneath. Crays are the most enthusiastic landscapers! The 20-30 tank mates were probably becoming fewer over time They love peas, eh! I am sure what you were feeding was fine. And yes, algae wafers are also appreciated by them. Apparently koura eat a combination of vegetable and animal detritus. My understanding is that (to some extent) when they are little they need more animal, and as they get bigger this becomes a smaller proportion of their diet. Apparently the animal material is used for growth and the vegetable material is used for energy. If anyone is interested in learning more: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/conten ... a920468311 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract (if you can't access these, email me and I can send you the .pdf) The lid of that tank will be keeping the heat in, which could be a problem over summer, but 18 degrees isn't bad, just the higher end of ok. Lids are necessary for koura, even just a decent lip all around the top. They can climb quite well or swim backwards with tail flicks, and are quite shrewd at escaping. (This may or may not gross you out, but you can dry out and keep dead koura (or their shells). Just put them on some polystyrene and pin the legs out in a lifelike position. Obviously dead ones can get quite smelly, and cats/ants think they are great. Best done over summer when you can dry them quickly in the sun.)

LOL impressive! I can understand your reaction though. Someone here (Alanmin, Jennifer?) must know what chemicals are in those testers. I think the dumbest thing I have done like that would be emptying a fyke net of a single eel, then leaving it out on the bank while I did a behaviour test using the eel. An hour later I started cleaning up the net and realised there was a great big common bully sitting in it, looking rather pissed off! Not sure how I missed that guy. I put him back in the shallows and he soon swam off, looking perfectly healthy despite spending an hour out of the water.

I am with Ryan on this one. I fail to see how bacteria et al will survive in a little bottle on the shelf. I also fail to see how adding however many mls of water and bacteria of dubious vitality can possibly make any difference to an aquarium where all the surfaces of every piece of glass, rock, leaf and every piece of gravel is covered in bacteria, not to mention living in your filter. Those places are where most of the 'good bacteria' in your tank live, not in the water. Even if you have just done a waterchange, massive scrub AND cleaned the filter (the latter of which should be done as rarely as humanly possible), some bacteria can divide in a matter of minutes. If you have a nice warm tank with lots of nice food (you just stirred everything up with cleaning), the bacteria on the surfaces which you didn't scrub (which will be the majority) will be thanking you for it and merrily self-replicating.

A koura found in a natural walking position but very stiff and on its side (looks rigor mortised) is usually very stressed out. They can come right from this if the reason for the stress is sorted. Shedding is a very vulnerable time and they can get stuck, but unless you can see a split in the shell (between body and tail) this is unlikely. I agree with Phoenix that 60L tank sounds small, but it does depend greatly on the ground area dimensions and the size of the koura. When I have seen farmed koura for sale they are pretty big. Were you able to test the water quality? Since the koura was new to the tank it would have been going through a mini-cycle. Any other tank mates?

If you check out a local river you will probably find areas where finer gravel and sand builds up. Gathering gravel from a river can take a bit of picking around to get what you want, but ultimately looks awesome. By having some variation in size, and having larger stones of the same rock type, it winds up looking SO much more natural compared to bought graded gravel/sand. Trust me, you won't regret it Also if it is a small eel it will probably burrow into the gravel and become quite hard to find, but that is what they do. I think natural behaviours should be encourage While you are there, take a look around for some nitella, a native branching algae that looks like a plant and grows like mad in low-light conditions, sucking up nutrients. Do a google image search for it. Not sure why you would want to create land areas for it. While they can come out onto land when motivated, they are fish.

Interesting question On a similar thread about feeding native fish juveniles (whitebait) to aquarium fish, I argued that it was inappropriate because they are a native animal and under serious threat. With the frogs, well they are exotic... However frogs are in really scary decline worldwide (something like 1/3 of all amphibian species are likely to go extinct in a short time). The bell frogs seem to be in decline in NZ too. Now, since they are an exotic species I don't really care that they are in decline here, however they are in greater decline in their homeland, Australia. Also they are unlikely to be having much effect on NZ ecosystems (though I do not know this for sure) and they are definitely not having an impact on native frogs. So given the above, I would disagree with feeding them as live food. Of course culturing anything as live food changes the story somewhat, as then it has no impact on wild stocks.

Is your boss aware of how distorted the round bowl will make everything? Even if it was packed with fish, most of the time the fish will be invisible or warped due to the bend of light passing through water+curves. If you *have* to go with the bowl, mountain minnows or similar sound like a much better option

I assure you it took a LOT of trial and ERROR :oops:

That is the thing, I DON'T do big downloads. If I am not at uni I am online all day - email, here, facebook, etc etc. I download a bunch of scientific .pdfs but no music or movies :lol: Oh, I remember I did do over 1GB once, on a youtube frenzy... Slingshot seems to be focussed on their bundle package, can I get the broadband alone at that price? Though it looks like my rental through Telecom is $50, so there is a small saving with the bundle, but not if I went with their $12 text option (I only text not call). The $2 nationwide calls looks good though!

All of my substrates come straight out of the nearest stream and look wonderfully natural. The easiest way to rinse that much gravel is to put it straight into the aquarium and put the hose in at one end. Use your gravel vacuum to suck the water and cloudiness out. Better still, if you have two hoses, remove the tube from your gravel vac, heat the end of the hose up in hot water and jam it onto your vac and siphon straight down the drain - no bucket-lugging. You will easily see when it is clean. I don't see why you would want to boil it. People seem to have this absolute terror of anything getting into the tank. Most parasites and diseases enter your aquarium on un-quarantined *fish*, and various bacteria and algae are in the water anyway. Boiling gravel would really only achieve warming up some rocks. However if you live in an area with didymo (or even NEAR a region with didymo), spread the gravel out under the sun to dry, and when completely dry leave it for two days. Sorted 8)

And space. Almost run out of (North Island) native species. I don't think I should be allowed to move to the South Island ever.

I have been with InSPire.Net for 4 years, and the service is great but I am starting to wonder about the price, which is about to go up and I am a poor student. What I have: Inspire 256Kbit Bitstream 1GB total monthly traffic throttled to 64Kbit/s over cap $35.00/month. I have never reached the 1GB cap. No idea what my average usage is. Can probably be less, as I have never reached the cap, and now spend much of my online time at home. I can't remember the terminology, but the current setup is via the phonelines to the house, then wireless router to my laptop. Would really appreciate any suggestions. Thanks

Hmm, try removing the pair of breeding adult carp from your filter :lol: :lol: This is a handy trick: 1: remove a little bit of water, just enough to rinse the filter 2: rinse filter and reconnect, BUT remove the outlet pipe from the tank and aim it into a big bucket 3: turn filter on, all the gungy water out of the filter goes straight into the bucket and becomes a water change. You shouldn't need to maintain your filter very often though. Over-cleaning limits the amount of bacteria in the filter, which limits filtration capacity.

CUNNING!!! I think I have one of those sticks, I might give it a go. Save freezing my arm off in the cold water

I used to use EFTPOS cards till it turned out I was simply selectively breeding the algae to be lower-growing and hang on tighter to the glass (I am serious!). Now I use razor blades - the type with the metal over one end so you don't slice yourself. I used to use cloth, filter wool etc, but it just picks up grit and scratches the hell out of the tank. A bath mitt is great on the rocks. It holds on to YOU and you can scrub all the places you can reach with your fingers.

For much the same reason that alcohol and tobacco are legal, despite causing huge social and medical damage: history and voters. Ah but the difference lies in the origin. Whitebait are taken from nature with little regard to what is sustainable or even what whitebait do if they don't get fried. Each whitebaiter is fishing in competition with his neighbour to get the greater share of a limited natural resource which he does nothing to help sustain. If I breed guppies or mealworms as live food, it is in my best interests to make sure the culture is self-sustaining. When a natural resource is collectively owned it is almost doomed to be overharvested becasue of people's short-term selfish gain. This is known as the Tragedy of the Commons. From Wikipedia:

Exactly. Whitespot CANNOT come from nowhere, and they CANNOT live long-term off a host. Dennis, there can be no question as to what happened to your tank: 1: there was low-level infection with whitespot, probably in the gills so you couldn't see it 2: the fish were otherwise healthy, so the whitespot could not cause a major outbreak 3: the fish were stressed by the drop in temperature 4: whitespot outbreak. And unless you thoroughly treat your aquarium, maintaining the treatment for several lifecycles, your aquarium goes back to #1, and you will get an outbreak the next time the fish stress enough to become susceptible. The infection in the gills is fairly harmless, because it is at a very low level. Your fish looked healthy before the quake, right? But at least one of them had at least one parasite in their gills for the past however long.

I can't see the videos to know what you are talking about (graphics driver problem) I use Lemna in my tanks to dim things. Lots of people complain about it growing too fast and getting everywhere, but I find it really convenient. Recently I got some Azolla. Really pretty stuff (from above anyway) and seems to be growing well. However it doesn't like surface water movement.

+1

Bleach is used at a rate of 8 drops per litre to render water safe for drinking purposes (used in the army). Eels...... what?! Nope, they are like any other fish.

WOW

Wow, what an attitude! That completely sucks, but glad you are making the best of it. Glad the fish are ok! I do still hope I can meet you and your fish in late November when I am down there for a conference

YOU LUCKY BASTARD!!!! envy envy envy envy envy envy I am so excited for you! I can't want to come down later in the year and check out this site with you

Sorry, this is completely inaccurate. If the free-swimming stage does not find a host within a few days (time length is dictated by temperature) it will die. There is absolutely no inert stage that can survive long periods off the host. Whitespot can lurk undetected for long periods at low levels, infecting the gills of fish. But when the fish get stressed their immunity is lowered and then the parasite can get a foothold more easily on the fish and things go nuts. However, once eliminated from an aquarium, it will only resurface if it is reintroduced on fish, or on plants etc that are harbouring the encysted stage. There is a problem where people do not medicated for long enough to kill the last of the free-swimmers. This occurs where people use treatment directions intended for tropical temperatures, or when people stop medicating when they see the last spot fall off (rather than until after the last spot must have encysted and the swimmers hatched out). From the excellent (and actually science-based) Skeptical Aquarist site: This page on whitespot should be considered required reading for all fishkeepers: http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml