Stella

it is kinda cheating, but there has been some really good info written on crays here, particularly Romeo's post: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=42105&start=15 really cool little guys, can be quite interactive.

nope (hugs) Just make sure you keep treating after the last spot falls (as that site says) and quarantine everything before it goes in your tank and you should be fine in the future

I can't comment on those species, but this is an excellent article on ich: http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml You can totally trust the info (the fishkeeping sites are overflowing with mythinformation!). And it tells you vital things about the lifecycle that most people fail to mention. A bit heavy going in places, but worth its weight in gold.

native bullies.... or a maurauding crayfish

I just use water straight from the tap.... Some people disagree, but it works for me. Chlorine is gone really quick. Blasting it into a bucket direct from the hose can dissipate a lot of the cholorine. Alternatively get a 44 gallon drum, do waterchanges from that and refill after every change. I have no idea what is in Cycle, but my general thoughts are if you want to add chemicals of any sort, don't add a crayfish, and remember your inanga have skin, not scales (ie more absorbent). Personally I will use no chemicals in my tanks that I don't know what is in them. No 'tonics' or 'cures'. They are sensitive to certain ones and I am not going to gamble. Natives are really sensitive to water conditions (particularly galaxiids and torrentfish) but this is more about the keeper slacking off and not doing frequent waterchanges allowing toxins to build up in the tank. Indeed, I would say for any fish, it is the reqularity of maintenance that is important, rather than the 'purity' of the water going in when there is a waterchange.

yeah baby! I loved reading your points, Romeo, apart from laughing my head off at times, I can remember all your posts over time where you made all our discoveries! I do think you have the bulldozer cray from hell. My last cray never so much as nudged a stone,but the ones before that would do a bit of DIY now and then. I find they all have quite different personalities, but I think you have given good advice for anyone - you don't know what sort of cray you will get. :lol: that is totally what they do! Adding to the chemicals thing, Heir found that water conditioners were toxic to crays. If you are going to add any chemical (except salt) remove the cray. Hehehe that is so cute! Not sure where you had that tank, but I find most natives settle reasonably well if they are used to you being around. Particularly if you feed them slowly, then they do associate you with food. Still trying to convince my shortjaw kokopu that I am not the scariest ogre in existence though... BTW *all* crays have terrible eyesight. They do most of their things by smell.

Actually, smaller holes are better. Just the crevaces you get when piling river stones. The reason is large holes are harder to defend against another fish invading or against predators wanting to eat your eggs or you. Some natives like big holes under stones, but not the ones you are getting. The crayfish will both eat stuff and uproot things. Very annoying. Romeo has plants with his, he might be able to give you some tips. I have lemna (duckweed) in some of my tanks. It gives a little it of green, some surface variation and I figure it provides a little surface security for the shadow-lurking fish. Temperature. Anything under 20 degrees. With your chiller I would probably set it at 14/15 degrees, could be lower. They can go much colder (I am doing some public tanks that will have spring water coming in at 10 degrees!).

1: awesome!!! 2: EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! I wonder what it is? Would be interesting to know how long it had been like that.

There is no need to varnish it after oiling it. The oil is the colour enhancer and the protection. If anything the varnish would not stick, and if it did, varnish suffers with water. Seriously, boiled linseed oil is all you need. Stop trying to complicate things (I really need to finish stripping my bedside table and oil it. And do my desk. It should be legal to shoot people buying paint for native timber or oak!)

yay! yes it is. Just grab a rag and rub it on. do several layers on a warm day for maximum penetration of the wood. Dead easy! And apparently the used rag can be explosive when dry....

OAK?! Not allowed to paint that!!! Get some boiled linseed oil and rub it in. Will make it slightly waterproof and it will never get ruined by the water. (smells divine too )

d'oh :oops: thanks oeminx. The reply box wouldn't let me scroll that far back. Ok, a search tells me that the dimensions are 98 W x 60 H x 47 D (cm). Sounds likes a good floor area and of course the larger the volume the more stable the conditions. Good It is deeper than I would normally go for, as most of the action happens on the ground. I would throw in a few more inanga to try and fill up the vertical space. Get six and the schooling behaviour will look more obvious. Also find some nice pieces of wood to add vertical interest and complexity and a ponga frond at the back. The ponga will slowly go brown (we are talking several months here) and it doesn't really rot, but it helps fill in the space and gives background and a different texture. Plants are usually used for this purpose but I don't recommend them in native tanks. Several reasons: 1 your crayfish will destroy them 2 no algae eaters means they will get revolting in no time 3 as you get used to looking at their natural habitat you willsee there are few plants where the fish are, as there is too much current or too little light. If there are plants, most likely they are invasive exotics. With the crayfish, you can try having several together, but with the caveat that it may not work (someone will likely get harrassed or eaten). While people can and do keep several together, I would rather not get people's hopes up and have them watch one pet kill the other. With the ground area in your tank you could try two and see how you go. Just make sure you have a seriously complex habitat - a serious volume of river rocks and lots of hiding places - and keep them well fed. Crays can be an issue with the bullies though, they can also get eaten, especially males that are nesting. I find crays over 7cm long (body length: head to tail) become more of a threat. Small crays are preferred, as is matching your cray-size to your bully size. If the bullies are smaller than the cray you are more likely to have trouble. Similarly make sure your bullies are similar sizes. They are territorial and small ones (especially small males) can get harrassed.

Hi Gretchen and welcome! Awesome choice of tank-type Looks like a good choice of first natives. Bullies and inanga are reasonably robust and adjust with minimal fuss. Redfins are stunning and the behaviours of bullies are fabulous to watch. How big is your tank? The ground area is the most important size. Regarding algae, there really isn't much you can do about it in a native tank. Just get used to the idea. I use algae in my tank for two purposes: 1: a small amount makes the stones look 'aged' and real. 2: if it starts getting longer it is telling me I am not doing enough water changes. The pet shop will want to sell you all sorts of things to clean up algae. I swear by an unused eftpos-style card for the glass (it can't pick up grit and scratch it) and a bath mitt for the rocks! Torrentfish are awesome but I find they can be a bit sensitive and need a bit more TLC. The fish you have picked are a great start Actually I think bullies are much more active than them. What plans do you have for cooling over summer? Yeah, my book is done, and pre-printing :bounce:

why would you have a cat door in the security screen? When not just a hole, then fit the cat door to the house door? I also saw a cat door fitted into the side of a (wooden) house once. It opened onto the hallway from the back deck. Cat doors in doors and windows might be the easy place to install, but can prove to be a security risk.

Peter, The book is done! Ask Zev how the formatting is going Hmm, my heart is cold and hard, your heart is dry cardboard... I wonder which is worse? I am sure there are heaps of bugs in your pond, and those solar lights may well attract extra ones. Ew, I hope I never have an inanga that splits! I may start recommending that if people get a very gravid one, they try stripping it and putting the eggs in the water so the pheromones do their thing on the others. (stop the book, I want to make an addition! ) Hmm,the fry were 1cm when you saw them... IIRC you found them in the pond some time after you put the fish/plants in, is that right? If it was a long time, like a couple of months, they could actually have hatched in the pond...

Should be fine. I imagine the minnows would be too small to do much to the shrimp (and there would be no threat vice versa). Native shrimp are *very* sensitive to low oxygen levels. Hence the need to have them fairly cool, but also with a low stocking density. If you have a good source of shrimp, I would advise just getting a few to begin with and see how things go. Later on add more. You should need to feed them. They just eat algae and tiny invisible biofilms on submerged surfaces.

actually, everyone else's fish breeding at the moment does not necessarily support the idea that light is the fertility 'switch'. Your fish are presumably also under constant day length (especially if you have an electric timer on your lights) AND constant temperature (if you heater is decent). So why aquarium fish should have a spring spawning season is a little weird. What cues *are* they using? My kokopu had shorter days because of the broken timer, but she was also feeling increasing temperature with spring (bearing in mind that my fish are coldwater fish so there is no constant temp from artificial heating). If temperature was the cue, it would certainly not be now that she should be reproductively active, rather it would be timed with the decreasing temperature of autumn.

Over the past 36 hours my giant kokopu has been laying eggs in my aquarium! She had been off her food for a few weeks and I was getting a bit worried. Strangely she still looked rather full (though kokopu are big, fat fish anyway) and I was worried maybe the mealworms I had been feeding her were not agreeing with her. Then yesterday morning I noticed she was sitting on the ground outside her usual daytime hiding hole, making me more worried something was really wrong. Then in the evening I realised there were eggs in the tank where she had been sitting! I had absolutely no idea she was female (they are sexually monomorphic) and equally no idea she was gravid (I thought the egg mass would be lower down their body). So she has slowly been laying for 36 hours. Just sitting on the substrate, very slowly releasing eggs. They are slightly demersal and sticky, so they form small masses stuck to the stones. I assume things would happen a bit faster if there was a male with her. note white mass below her vent Normally kokopu breed in autumn during floods. They wriggle into the vegetated stream edges newly inundated with water and spawn there. As the floodwaters retreat the eggs are stranded. They rely on the flood returning in a few weeks and submerging the eggs which stimulates them to hatch. The fry are then (usually) washed downstream to the sea where they grow and return a few months as whitebait in spring. Note: spawning happens in autumn....! I have done a bit in my uni papers this semester on seasonality and how day length regulates fertility and reproductive cycles. As the days lengthen or shorten (according to species etc) the reproductive system switches on and starts doing its thing. This fish is in fairly constant day-length because of the aquarium lights. However a good few weeks ago the timer died, so the 'days' have been shortening (ie I forget to turn it on until much later if at all). Not sure how long it takes for a fish to become ripe, and not sure how long ago the timer died, so this may or may not have had an effect. So I figure either: She is 'free running' due to artificial lighting and her reproductive system switched on naturally, without being tied to seasonal changes. OR The death of the electric timer and shortening 'days' switched on her reproductive system, as would happen naturally with the shortening days in autumn. Either way I am most intrigued as I always assumed seasonal spawning in fish was a temperature thing. If it is indeed regulated by day length, it is an interesting to note that this fish is mostly nocturnal and spends its days lurking under logs or rocks in dark swampy streams. There must be enough light reaching the fish to be able to be used for cycle regulation. (here endeth the thinking-out-loud biology lesson!)

Thanks for the update! The pond is looking great, will look even better as all those native plants around the edges grow up and fill in! And what beautiful fat fish! Obviously something in there is keeping them really well fed 8-10cm for the inanga in a year is not unexpected under good conditions. They are technically only annuals in the wild, dying after spawning but they can't spawn in captive conditions. I heard an interesting story last year: a guy had a bunch of inanga in a tank and one died from being egg-bound. When he retrieved her the eggs came out freely, so he squirted them into the tank for the other fish to eat. The next day he found eggs from the other fish all over the show! Obviously the pheromones prompted them to release the eggs in a way that they normally can't. The massive bully looks like a gravid female. The boy with the orange stripe *could* be a Cran's. Always hard to guess side-on. (I can't remember if we identified your bullies before) If they are Cran's, the fry do not need to go to sea, so you could have a self-sustaining population! Over summer look in the shallows for tiny fish Looking awesome!

put the black background back and never clean it again I never clean mine, creates a background that matches the tank. Or get a background the same colour as your algae

hmm, 10cm does seem a little small for a kokopu of that age - most intriguing!! Have a look at night, they might be easier to catch then

are you sure you are not trying to fight chemistry? Where have you seen this before in freshwater?

Hello Becky, I doubt inanga would live that long. They usually only live a year in the wild (dying after spawning). In captivity they cannot spawn so can live longer. I had one die of old age at 3, but saw another aged 5 years! It is possibly a different sort of galaxiid. There are five species that make up the whitebait run, and in your are a there is probably a good chance of them being the banded or maybe giant kokopu. Bandeds get to about 25cm and have vertical stripes down the sides. Giants can get to 30-40cm and are spotted. Both have a quite dark body with paler or yellow markings. If you can get me some photos I can give you an ID. If you can catch one in a net and get a side-on photo that would be great. I would also love to see some photos of the pond! (note:I have a slight obsession with native fish) As for putting them back: technically illegal without a permit, as supasi says: disease issues. Also, these fish have been out of that sort of environment for almost their entire lives and it may be hard for them to readjust.

There is even a type of carnivorous plant that digests vegetable matter...... ie a HERBIVOROUS plant! That seems even wronger.... There are 12 species of carnivorous plant native to NZ, either Drosera (sticky) or Utricularia (aquatic).

The leaves don't die each time, but they do have a limit to the number of times an individual leaf can close. Also if well-fed or over stimulated (small children) they will close slower. You could get a nice big nepenthes or sarracenia (different types of carnivorous plant) and feed frogs to it