Stella

Awesome! :bounce: THose fry grow fast once they get to a certain size. I have a fry (singular) that hatched in mid-November and seemed to stay the same size for ages. In the last two weeks it has gone from "OMG I can see its fins!!" to getting so big it is showing slight colouration. It is maybe 12mm long. Of course being of a size that can eat a whole lot more helps greatly. And what of the shrimp? Did they survive?

Not a betta-keeper, but just intrigued why you have to keep them separate and time it right? Why not put the two together and let them do it when ready?

:lol: Museeumchick you sound like a great sister to have! I was going to invite you along but the weather looked dodgy then we wound up going quite spontaneously. The common bullies seem much more inclined to hide than the uplands. I think it is a size thing. The uplands are 3-4cm and the commons are 5-6, and i have always found smaller bullies adapt MUCH faster. That goes for all native fish in my experience.

ok so I did some more fish hunting this weekend.... :roll: The first was on Saturday. Went for a walk with a few friends on the Beehive Creek walkway up the Pohangina Valley. The creek pretty much WAS the track, so I had a great time! It was teeming with fry, so obviously there was something non-diadromous there. Eventually managed to find a lovely upland bully, maybe 5cm long. Didn't have any luck with the rest of the stream so on the way back I let the bully go. Then promptly found and caught five more! I only wanted a pair, but as I couldn't tell them apart I took all five home and will return the spares. Now I can tell there are two females and three males. Lovely patterning (orange face spots). Though they might be a little small for what I want. Today we went to the Manawatu River, slightly upstream of the Ashhurst Bridge. It was just the two of us and it seemed to take AGES before we caught anything. Finally I caught a good-sized common bully. After an hour we had a good but small collection of fish: Five large commons One small common two small Cran's 1.6 eels (the 0.6 refers to the eel I caught which escaped as I tried to get it into the jar, twice.... little sod) The river is SERIOUSLY WARM and really algaed and mucky. All signs of low flow and high nutrient and soil run off :evil: :evil: :evil: It is just getting worse and worse. Didn't catch any torrentfish, and I suspect it was the state of the river (I have caught them there before). They have probably found somewhere cooler and cleaner for the moment. Three of the commons came home. Some have really lovely markings. One suspected-male is rather dark, and the other two have quite striking gold flecks along the sides. I am gathering these fish to pad out my kokopu tanks following the Nasty Disease of Dec '08. Bullies are such cool aquarium fish and I want to have a selection so I can watch inter-species interaction, and be able to show visitors what they are like.

oh that is a shame my sympathies

Light is your most likely issue. Old tubes (more than six months old) are known for promoting algae growth. 10-20% per week is pretty low. Planted tanks have a bit more lee-way as the plants can take up some of the nitrate and other nutrients as fertiliser. Ira's idea putting a pre-filter over the filter inlet is a good one. I do that on all my canisters as it means solid muck in not getting into the canister and clogging it up. I rinse it out once a week when I do my waterchanges - and the muck it collects is impressive! Certainly helps to clear the water faster. If you have been doing small waterchanges for so long, it might be an idea to SLOWLY increase the volume of the waterchanges. You don't want to stir up too much or shock the fish too much. It is possible for pockets of muck to be sitting there in the gravel not really affecting the water, then you stir up the tank a lot and release it and kill fish. Or you have fish that are used to living in soup and give them sparkling fresh water and it is too much change. This of course may not be happening in your tank, but always something to bear in mind. Google 'old tank syndrome' for more information

I don't have metro but would feel a bit strange using an antibiotic in that way. FINALLY there was a breakthrough last night! My friend found me some WYRRRMMMS I tied one to a piece of cotton (several times, eventually tied it tight enough so the wyrm couldn't escape!) and taped the cotton to the lid of the tank so the wyrm dangled into the water at kokopu-level. A while later I checked and most of the wyrm was gone! Tied on another one. This one was bigger and saw the kokopu have a number of goes trying to bite bits off. I now see how people could fish for these guys without using hooks!! The kokopu definitely ate some wyrm-bits, and the bullies got another bit that fell. I will try some more wyrms tomorrow night, didn't want to overload its stomach after weeks of no food. Much relieved and feeling more positive about its prognosis! :bounce: (before anyone asks what the hell I am talking about, it is much more fun rolling the RRRR in worm )

Wow, and it still looks fairly thickly planted in the 'after' shot! Indeed it looks like a very nice tank I just lose my fish in piles of rocks... :roll:

Stu, Evolvefish is a favourite site of mine! My first order: Car emblems: evolvefish, darwinfish, isis Buttons: "oops I forgot to have children" "sorry I haven't been to church, I was practising witchcraft and becoming a lesbian" Vinyl cutout sticker: evolvefish Cloth patch: evolvefish Metal lapel pin: evolvefish. Yes I had noticed your avatar I haven't put my emblems on a car yet. Isis is on my motorcycle. I wanted her as a representation of how I felt as a bikerchick: woman with wings! I got the evolvefish to put on when I eventually get my full license. Unfortunately I lost the lapel pin, it broke off somehow. The "oops I forgot to have children" one gets the most comments of all my badges on my bag (which includes a few darwin ones courtesy of the Auckland museum)

Think about if you would allow your dog inside. Over winter you are going to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark. It is nice now in summer, the idea of coming home with long light hours to play with your dog, but over winter when it is dark and wet it is a lot less enticing... Good suggestion about googling separation axniety etc The other thing to think about, if your dog suddenly got sick and required a lot of vet attention, do you have the money saved to cope with that? I like the idea of getting a cat again someday, but I know right now I can not spare the money that is required at various times. Before when I was working and had the money I felt a bit bad about hardly being home (cats DO like attention, and if you aren't able to give it, why get a cat in the first place?) and not having a flat suitable for a cat door.

YEp, still got the Lemna I like it, provides a bit of surface cover. Only got it in tanks that are modeled after slow-water habitats. I was poking about in a stream today and to our utter astonishment we found Lemna growing up a rock wall dripping with water, and Azolla (the reddish floating fern one) growing on a rock like a moss or liverwort! Lemna needs to be thinned back dramatically when it threatens to take over.

Nope, they are brand new, not retro. It is my bid on the copy of On the Origin of Species Spoon, I think you will find it is possible to talk about evolution without it turning to religion, but not about intelligent design....

So Realale, are you not going to clear up the confusion???

My one remaining kokopu who survived the Big Nasty Internal Infection of Dec '08, which killed off his four tankmates, refuses to eat or show any interest in food. Seriously it has been something like three weeks now and he is losing weight. The one bit of fin that got eaten away by the infection (not a huge bit) started to grow back but has stopped. Initially he was out swimming constantly, now he is lurking under a rock, presumably getting low on energy. He DOESN'T look sick, there are no signs of anything wrong apart from not eating. He even accidentally got a mossie larva in his mouth and spat it back out. When sick he got the works, including Furan-2, salt and malachite and formalin. I wasn't too worried initially, as the mudfish did the same after they got mal-form treatment, but this is getting ridiculous. Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. (This fish is 20cm and supposed to be very fat)

Anyone know if this wonderfully useless cool thing is available in NZ anywhere? Am totally getting into Darwin and evolution right now. Need to find a copy of On the Origin of Species. :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Forest and Bird have some awesome projects going on in Auckland. (I am involved with F&B down here) Also contact your local DOC office, they are always on the lookout for vollunteers to do some pretty neat things outdoors and dirty

Thanks very much Caryl, I shall delete it from my list Shame it no longer exists though.

There are various tropical scaleless fish, clowns for instance. Try searching if ferts cause problems for them. I really can't imagine scaled fish are able to squeeze much out past their scales, they have other, much easier, ways of eliminating waste! Crays can be sensitive to some chemicals (eg dechlorinators). It is possible that no one actually knows if ferts are safe for our native crays or not. Probably the only way of guessing this is to search for information on exotic crayfish. On the other hand the ferts should be taken up quickly by the plants (hence the need to apply regularly) and should be organic chemicals that would be in natural waterbodies anyway... The big problem (and a huge part of why I am writing my book) is that there is virtually no available information on how to keep native fish, with the excpetion of this forum and a few very basic sites. It is pretty much trial-and-error for every individual keeper at the moment. I had the joy of discovering that while all native diadromous galaxiids are fine with malachite and formalin, their cousins, the (threatened) mudfish, are killed by it. Dixon (I think) found that dechlorinators are poisonous to crays. Ok they were not hte first times these things were discovered but at least they will be in the book now. Over time this body of knowledge will be built up as more and more people keep them and spread their experiences. It drives me mad sometimes that I don't have many resources to go to for info, especially when guessing could be a matter of life or death for a fish, but we are somewhat stuck with that for the time being.

Here we go: From: http://www.limnol.lu.se/limnologen/publ ... er/512.pdf "Trout streams typically had a pH above 6.4 whereas crayfish were found across the whole pH spectrum (4.1-7.9)." "In contrast to some studies, my results did not show any distribution limitations for crayfish other than substratum size in streams without trout. Most crayfish species seem to be negatively affected by acid water of pH <5.5 (summarised in Nyström 2002) and their distribution is limited to habitats with calcium concentrations above 2.0 mg L-1 (Naura and Robinson 1998). In this study, crayfish were caught in streams with pH as low as 4.1, and low calcium concentrations, down to 0.9 mg L-1. Many brown water streams in New Zealand have a naturally low pH due to high concentrations of organic acids, and also high concentrations of aluminium, which is rendered non-toxic through complexation with dissolved organic matter (Collier et al. 1990). Both native crayfish and some native fish species in New Zealand seem to be well adapted to this stream environment (Collier et al. 1990). It is unlikely that pH, by itself, could account for the lower abundance of crayfish in the more circumnatural streams. My opinion is therefore that it is the presence of trout that affects both crayfish and galaxiid abundance in these streams. Smith et al. (1996) showed that water chemistry had relatively little influence on crayfish abundance in Britain and that other factors, like predation, were more important. The distribution of brown trout seems to be limited by pH and calcium concentration, and few fish are found where the pH is below 5.0 and calcium levels are below 1.0 mg L-1 (Hesthagen and Jonsson 2002, 1998). McIntosh (2000b) argued, that there is a possibility that trout will not affect native fishes in some streams, simply because the physical conditions are not suitable for trout. New Zealand brown streams, with low pH and low calcium, can therefore act as “safe” areas for both native crayfish and galaxiids. Waterfalls are known to be barriers for upstream trout migration (Townsend and Crowl 1991) and areas above waterfalls can therefore also act as refuges for galaxiids and crayfish in these streams." (my emphasis) (yes it is a rather painfully large paragraph)

Hey Romeo, that tank is looking great!! Native fish are found in all sorts of acidities, ranging from pH 5-8 and wider beyond that. There MIGHT be something in the crayfish struggling in low pH water, I am not sure. There is probably something findable through scholar.google.com

Yay for nitrogen run-off :roll: Apparently you can use things like watercress to remove nitrates. People plant things like that in sumps to remove it. I don't know much about it, but you could look at having a big tub outside full of it and do waterchanges from there. Not sure if 10ppm is a bad thing or not, sounds rather low. What is the nitrate level of the tank just before you do a waterchange? ((ie does it go up much?) Most fish diseases are in the water anyway (bacterial, fungal). Most parasites require a cycle of different host species and is unlikely to get in with the water.(with the exception if ich/whitespot). They only cause a problem when the fish are immunologically vulnerable. Green algae is usually from too much light or too much nutrient or both. Usually the light. (personally I would love to get some green hairy algae in my tank again, the anchored type). Either way it implies something is unbalanced and it is better to sort the problem than the symptom.

The uv tubes need to be replaced every six months or similar, which can get REALLY expensive. Is your concern about fish diseases entering your system? Or more about your entire watersupply, for humans as well?

Palmerston North, sorry. (I'm keen but I am not traveling to Auckland for one night of spotlighting! :lol: THough I was there last summer for a whole week's worth of it... 8) ) Redfins are really neat wee fish. The females are pretty average (they don't have the red) but the males are stunners. If the stream was alive and well it would be crawling with eels, galaxiids and have a hell of a lot more crays (and everything else). It is a lot better than other streams, but is doing ok. Ironically the water company upstream has contributed to its decline - 'turning off' the stream at times, or backflushing and polluting it with aluminium.

Off the DOC 'Contact Us' page: Emergencies For conservation emergencies telephone: 0800 DOCHOTline (0800 362 468) Conservation Emergencies are: * Conservation-related law enforcement (for example illegal white-baiting, vandalism of huts and tracks, removal of plants from reserves, killing or catching of native wildlife, fishing in marine reserves, disturbing marine mammals) * Sick or injured wildlife * Marine mammal stranding (whales and dolphins only) * Safety Watch (damaged and/or unsafe visitor facilities)

That is obscene! A whole bunch of laws have been broken!! Get in touch with DOC. I can't imagine MAF would be much use in this case