Stella

Have a poke around on here: http://www.niwa.cri.nz/rc/freshwater/fi ... fishfinder You will quickly be able to see from the distribution maps if they are in the area. You will also be able to narrow down the types of bully in the lake. I am not too good on the various pesky introduced fish, doesn't sound like a native one unfortunately. A quick search shows rudd looking like an overweight dull silver goldfish with red fins.... Not slim with a red head. Slim, silver fish that school... of the natives there are inanga and the more silver smelt, but they don't have red heads.

The REAL filtration is bacterial action on chemicals in the water, NOT breakdown of solid wastes. With other types of filter, you don't want the solid wastes clogging up the filter media, so you try to stop as much of that getting to the filter media as possible. I always felt this was true for undergravel filters. You should gravel vac out the solid wastes otherwise with enough time it will clog and render it useless. MatthewY, air-driven uplifts move more water than you would expect. I saw a fascinating article once about it where someone calculated it against commonly-used small powerheads. The reason they seem not to move much is because the water is not coming out of a small hole with directional force.

ps melafix and tonic are unlikely to do a whole lot. Furan is very good but expensive, salt is also great, speed is of the essence and salt tends to live in your cupboard.

ok, it definitely sounds like columnaris. Get the sick fish the hell out of the tank with other fish. Yes it is infectious. Very. But the other fish will hopefully be ok if you then: Do a big waterchange on the main tank. Add 1tsp of salt per litre to that tank. If the tank is huge do some calculations: 1tsp of salt = 6.6g 100tsp of salt (ie for 100lt water) = 660g 660g = er.... check the weights and measures part of your Edmonds cookbook to figure out the cup measure.... DISSOLVE the salt first. Add in thirds over a couple of hours. Don't worry about if the salt has iodine or 'anti-caking agents'. The is no science behind warnings not to use it in aquaria. Aquarium salt is much chunkier and therefore there is a different weight of salt per teaspoon. PLain table salt is a couple of bucks from the supermarket for a kg. Treat the sick fish with the same dosage in another tank (if it is still alive, sounds like an acute stage which usually kills within 24 hours). Do 50% waterchanges every couple of days making sure you replace the salt removed. If there are no symptoms after a week, stop adding salt when you do waterchanges and it will slowly decrease back to nothing. Now, columnaris is in the water all the time anyway, it is an opportunistic bacteria. There was something stressing your fish's immune system to make it vulnerable. This could be anything wrong with the tank. Usually water quality (as with most disease) but can be any number of things. THis needs to be fixed. Won't fix the fish but disease outbreak is a symptom of something else being wrong. ***NOTE: I have no idea what a 'jewel' is, please check it is ok with salt before using it. Check other species in your tank too*** Best of luck.

The whirlpool effect will happen anyway, having the inlet at the other end just makes it slightly less. It kinda winds up with different levels of current at different areas, some fast, some slow, some left, some right, allows the fish to choose the level of current they want. I still think a two-foot tank is a bit small to do it properly, but it is definitely do-able, just a bit more swirly. As I said in the other thread, turnover of 16-20 times total volume per hour is recommended. Sand might get blown about a bit. Though I haven't tried it.

Hire a police dog and handler Hope you find him soon, must be a horrible feeling!

We were. I am 29 and at primary school there was that school savings thing (which I wasn't part of, didn't have pocket money) and then all through secondary school there were bits about the evils of HP and credit cards etc. But of course the moment everyone left school they discovered the wonders of 'free money' through HP, credit cards, overdrafts etc. It was scary seeing just how much debt people were in for no good reason. Many people lived at the ends of their credit cards. Though I wonder now, how much of that was from student loan issues? For most people going to uni then, you lived off your student loan, you had to borrow to eat, and then it had market interest rates. I could see that I was still going to be paying for the baked beans I ate decades ago. It made borrowing to live a compulsory lifestyle. (And before anyone thinks we should have just got part time jobs, people did, and they were failing papers because of it) Agreed with everyone saying parents aren't taking responsibility for their kids. Also agreeing with Alanmin saying it has always been that way. The difference now is parents expect teachers t oraise the kids.

It really does help planning the replacement when this happens! Option 1: Newts are very cool intially but very very very very slow. How they survived evolution I do not know! Option 2: Totally! :bounce: Tank is pretty small to do much with when it comes to fish. I have tried doing fast flowing water in a 2foot and you wind up with a massive whirlpool. Do-able though. You really only want a few little fish in that. Remember hillstream loaches have a higher oxygen requirement than other tropical fish (because of the fast flowing habitat they come from) so have fewer than you would expect. A rule of thumb for fast-flowing tanks is a MINIMUM total volume turnover of 16-20 times each hour. My riffle tank has 32 times an hour Option 3: I don't know those fish.

I heard of one of the clubs getting together and testing all their test kits on the same water. Some kits were ten years past the expiry date, some were bought yesterday, different brands etc. They all came out bang on

Oh ok so you don't have the filter material in when you backflow it? I am always amazed how 'cruddy' the walls of the inlet pipe get. It doesn't get blocked, more like a brown biofilm scunge.

It is not the FISH that have the issue with it when it comes to cleaning out filters. It is the BACTERIA that live in them that get killed off.

Freshwater and different, but not tropical: native fish! yeah I am biased....

Supasi, I doubt it is the wood. I guess your wood is outside and in the sun? Probably bubbles of gas created by the various biofilms/algae/bacteria etc and the effects of the warm water. Brown water/tannins are not a problem. More an aesthetic thing, some people like it, some don't. I am still sticking with the most likely option: more water changes

But if you are using chlorinated tap water you potentially kill or at least rather knock back the bacteria! This is why I am wondering how Alanmin does it, I would be surprised if he used mains pressure.

I put a sponge filter sponge over the inlet of my canister filter, stops all the muck going into the filter and clogging it. I just removed the sponge and rinse it every week when I do the waterchanges. Ideally the filter should hardly ever need cleaning.

I used to work for a dentist. Of course people always complain about the cost of dentistry without considering the exorbitant cost of materials, equipment etc. My dentist would OFTEN drop the price down from what the computer would automatically charge, especially if people had been polite/interesting or were obviously struggling financially. The silly thing was he never told the patient and the discount didn't show up on the automatically created invoices. If the patient got a bill for say... $200, they complain about dentistry being so expensive. If the patient got a bill for $200 and were told that the dentist had discounted it for them they would always be really appreciative. Makes no actual difference to the amount the patient paid, but the patient goes away happy that they paid less.

ox heart rocks. I am a huge fan of it for fish food. Though i still haven't tried shrimp, but I struggle to believe there is more to them that water...! Why is the tank only half full? It can be good to try and slow down and escaping eel, but filling the tank up would help with the temperature. A half-filled two-foot tank will fluctuate wildly with temperature in most situations. All native fish require cold water, which is bit of a struggle at the moment. Eels can probably withstand 22 degrees ok but you should get very worried if it gets more than that. So true what HaNs and Romeo are saying about them escaping. Even if the gap doesn't look big enough for an eel to get through it will.

How?

a fairly good indicator of needing a waterchange. As is pretty much everything :roll: When in doubt, do a waterchange. .... and when everything is going well, do a waterchange! :lol:

Well done! I really struggle to get eels to feed in captivity, and consequently take them back... That diet should be fine. Assuming you know it is VITAL to cut all fat off the heart meat? They can't process it and it clogs the liver. They have DOUBLED in three weeks to 8cm? Really? Eels are incredibly slow growing. A two-foot eel is about twenty years old. Sounds like you have things going pretty well Romeo, eels don't really eat rotting filth. Well, ok, they do, but the natural diet is largely aquatic and terrestrial insects, small fish, small animals that fall in, and yes an element of carnivorous scavenging, but mostly the other options.

AWESOME! Looks like you had great success!! The first photo is probably Dolomedes aquaticus, water spider in the same family as the nursery web spider. Neat little critters that will surf down the stream to escape you. I love the photo of the kids by the stream! Very good record of the day The third photo could be a banded kokopu. It is kinda hard to tell but I think a shortjaw of that size would be more mottled. The bands are there along the lateral line but fade out pretty significantly top and bottom. Undoubtedly a kokopu and definitely not a giant kokopu. The fourth photo is definitely a banded kokopu. I would say much larger and older as the bands are finer and more concentrated towards the tail. Also notice how the fish is much broader. Definitely older and bigger. Fish in the net also looks rather bandedy.... Number seven is also a banded.... The eighth photo of the pair of fish could well be inanga. Partly there are no markings, partly the darker head patch, but also they are long and thin, whereas small bandeds like this are much shorter and often yellower (but any fish lightens with stress and buckets). It is one thing to look at the fish for an ID, but looking at the habitat is extremely important. The photos clearly show slow medium-width streams with forest cover and organic stuff in the water (leaves and soil) and the water is probably a bit amber with tannin. Spot on for banded kokopu. Shortjaws would be in fast flowing, clear streams with lots of big rocks and big hiding places between the rocks. Bandeds are not on the threatened species list, but probably close. Shortjaw and giant kokopu are on it, gradual decline category. Anyway, VERY special fish to see on your first spotlighting trip! Bandeds were one of my last fish to see in the wild. :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

big pond snail? Is there patterning on the shell or all one colour?

er.... were there any symptoms? We could be guessing till the cows come home.

really? I thought everyone was born knowing the word 'gravid'? Max, look closely at the gill covers of your fish. If you see small raised white spots on them they are boys. If a male is fat it is a health problem, if there are no white spots there is a good chance it might be a gravid (ie full of eggs, also 'ripe') female. Is it safe to assume they all have the same general body-shape otherwise? As in single-tail and streamlined body, or double-tail and short rounded body? Goldfish tend to cannibalise their eggs, so dense plants help with concealing them or you can remove them to another tank for hatching. Oh, just rereading your post, by 'only a few months old' do you mean the fish or the tank? I think goldfish less than 5cm do not spawn. (note: goldfish are ALWAYS hungry! )

Ah well, very good reason to keep them apart!!