Stella

:facepalm: shame about your camera!

Funny how that works. There definitely seems to be a correlation between how hungry they are and how much they ate last time, but possible also the regularity of the preceeding feeds. Also the temperature slows them down. Though also I guess like us, we have hungry days and i-actually-forgot-to-eat days. Well I don't even HAVE tanks at the moment, so you are doing better than me already!

looking fantastic!! Neat seeing the growth, regrowth of the tail and changing markings as he gets bigger! I am coming down your way in a little while, will have to call in and see your tanks again

Sodium chloride I use just plain old table salt, there is no basis in the fears that the anti-caking agents have any negative effect, they are at such incredibly low concentrations as to be insignificant.

Yes just nuke the whole tank with salt. Increase the maintenance (water changes) and replace the salt removed each time. Good luck!

It will be difficult to breed them in captivity as they need to be in the estuaries for part of their juvenile lifecycle. Interesting observation about the females dying, F15hguy. I have only taken one female with eggs and she certainly died dramatically soon after (babies gone and all her appendages missing!)

Weird. Try going out at night? They come out at night and their eyes reflect orange, which is a rather convenient way of finding them.

Any net should be ok. The only legal stickies would be the REMOVAL of trout (or fishing for them specifically with non-approved equipment) or fishing for whitebait (the fresh-run type, not the older post-whitebait) specifically with non-approved nets. I certainly find nets with a flat base and square ends (U-shaped) are the most convenient for our sort of fishing - they fit flat against sandy bottoms and can be wedged between stones more easily when trying to catch a spotlighted fish. Though I usually take two nets, one with a flat edge, one with a round edge, just in case.

And take a CAMERA!

ooh glad you have finally seen it! I called in on my way through recently, amazing how an aquarium is a constantly changing environment, even if the contents stay the same. I am so proud of that place, it it totally my 'happy place'

oooooh pretty peritomeum! Thanks for sharing!

I had a quick look at the study, they only had them in those temps for 2-5 days. I wouldn't put much faith in that. (Thanks for the link though! Will download and read it properly)

Looks like an awesome system! Personally I would be less worried about how they would get on together (torries are pretty laid back), but I don't think the temperature is going to work for them. They will probably be fine for a while, but it slowly wears down their immune systems, then they start to get little bits of fluffiness and it is all downhill from there

hey, my old Canon survived this and lived to take the photograph! Sorry :smot:

Thanks One day when I have a job and my current camera drowns....

I still love that tshirt! :happy2:

From what I was reading there are stories of dead and diseased Australian grayling floating downstream, but it couldn't be excluded that they were normal post-spawning deaths or post-spawning infections due to loss of condition. Who knows. It would be cool if one day there are able to 'reintroduce' the Australian grayling here. Could possibly be useful for cleaning up algae and waterweed.

The only (known) extinct freshwater fish in New Zealand (so far). :tears: They started declining pretty quickly after Europeans started settling here, but it is uncertain what caused the decline. Trout, exotic disease, and land-use changes are variously blamed, but the decline happened in untouched places as well. There was concern about their decline from the 1870s and the last sighting was in the 1920s or 30s. In 1956 they were granted full legal protection, meaning that if you see one you cannot molest it in any way. To this day it remains the only native fish with such protection. The other freshwater fish with decent non-molestation orders are introduced salmoniid sportsfish... :an!gry This one was around 30cm (the tail has disintegrated), collected prior to 1908 in the Waikato. They are basically large smelt, in the same family but a different genus. There is an Australian species in the same genus that still exists, and much lifecycle stuff is presumed/confirmed through them. Like smelt they grow at sea then migrate into freshwater in early summer to finish maturing before spawning in late autumn and winter. The smallest recorded in freshwater was 175mm and they commonly grew to ~300mm. It is unsure if they died after spawning or returned to sea, but there were certainly times of the year when they could not be found. The tiny larvae were washed to sea after they hatch. They also apparently smelled like cucumber. One thing that struck me was how deep and solid the body was, but the head was very fine and slender, the gape looked wide but the actual jaws were quite narrow. I am more used to kokopu with broad heads and mouths that could ingest anything. I really didn't know much about them before I met these pickled ones. In hindsight I am quite pleased - I could make observations without knowing what to look for. This photo shows how the lower jaw tucked into the upper jaw. That fringing on the upper jaw is actually a row of long, blunt, close-spaced teeth which close against a horny pad on the outside of the lower jaw. This is apparently a specialisation for scraping algae off rocks, an activity which apparently left quite distinctive marks on the rocks. They also probably at water plants and mosses (and thus a lot of by-catch of invertebrates). It was also possibly to take them with small trout-flies and light tackle in the evenings, so they also actively hunted inverts. Like smelt they were a schooling fish, apparently hanging out in incredibly large schools at times, loitering in deep pools by day then moving into shallower water at night. Maori caught them by driving them downstream into large nets or trenches where they could be trapped. There are records that they not only did not use hooks for grayling (upokokoro) but actively discouraged others from using them. I had to It was at this point that the curator realised JUST how special it was for me to be seeing these pickled fish! There are about 20 pickled grayling in existence. These three were in the Auckland Museum and are kept in a safe, they are that special and irreplaceable. I wanted to photograph them for my next book, which will be A Photographic Guide to Freshwater Fishes of New Zealand in this series http://www.newhollandpublishers.co.nz/list.php?cat=4&sub_cat=14 :happy1:

:roll: saltwater forum Very cool.

GREY MULLET?! Photos or it didn't happen ;P

Congrats on your new critters! Do a search of the archives, koura come up a lot. What is your set-up? Then we can advise on it

Well, you have all given me more reasons to stay single! :cofn:

oooh congratulations! Looks like the koura are loving the moss too :spop:

:facepalm: http://www.azgfd.gov/i_e/ee/documents/c ... otocol.pdf :cofn:

You measure the carapace, which is the head/thorax section. This pdf has a diagram of the bit that you measure on the third page (though it looks more like a shrimp or something, but it gives the right idea). What are you up to? Tracking the growth between moults?