Stella

Olly - Its for a possible public installation, possibly involving a series of four or five 4ft tanks. Not too keen to say where as it is not definite yet. Need to find funding and all sorts of fun stuff. Just getting ideas at the moment. PeteS - Surprised that polystyrene packs down.... I thought their floating ability would keep them light and fluffy... oh well. TM - there would be some kind of mechanical filtration first to cut down on clogging. Something like a thick layer of filter foam or similar. Good ideas, keep them coming

(I might have some words wrong, still getting used to the terminology, just came across 'bio tower' referring to what I am wanting to do.... )

I am planning out a fairly large trickle filter for a fairly large volume of water. What is a cheap way of filling up a 40 gallon drum with biological filtration media? I have heard of hair rollers (I wouldn't want to know how you would order that many!) and green pot scrubbers (which I suspect would compact down eventually). What about polystyrene balls? Other ideas?

I think you are seriously overestimating how much salt weighs!! 1tsp salt = 6g 1000 x 1/2tsp = 500tsp 500 x 6g = 3kg.... maybe closer?

:oops: Just always happy to help out Freshwater mussels are pretty safe from everything and towards everything. They just close the shell if anyone bothers them. They are however a big risk if they die, as they quickly pollute the water without looking overly dead. A dead mussel is non-responsive (seriously, there is a big difference!) and the lips come apart and don't close up if poked. Just something to be aware of, not something to put you off having them. Freshwater crabs: actual freshwater crabs are about 1cm across and found from Waikato northwards. People often think larger crabs found in streams near the sea are freshwater ones, but really they are brackish ones come for a wander inland. Not sure how they would go living in just freshwater permanently. The real freshwater crabs do make cute pets. I have some in a tiny (20x20cm) bare aquarium with a couple of pebbles to hide under. Anything bigger and they would get lost. Overmedicating on salt is not too much of a worry. 1/2tsp per litre kills whitespot, but double that is the rate to kill a few other things.

Lair I love these stories of what everyone's crays have been up to! My cray has been very well behaved. He lives in the pile of rocks I made for him, exactly in the cave I expected he would be in. He has never damaged a fish, despite all the kokopu spending the lights-off period crammed into the pile of rocks with him! He landscaped for the first time recently, and I have had him for over a year and a half. Suddenly this huge mountain of gravel appeared outside the entrance to his cave! Then it slowly got spread out down the tank. There still appears to be a lot of gravel in the cave, but it is a hell of a lot roomier now. Not sure if he is doing a bit of DIY before he sheds next so that he can actually get out of his cave when he is bigger.

You are right about releasing them back not being a good idea (and more illegal because they are not healthy). Some people have this idea that releasing a sick fish back will get it healthy because conditions are right for them in the stream. Thoroughly irresponsible. (Someone I know of in native fish is like that, claims never to have had a fish die... no they just die in the stream out of sight and cause untold side effects.... :roll: :evil: ) Unfortunately chances are any meds would also kill the daphnia.... New Thought: you could leave the fish in the pond and use salt.... The shrimp will be completely fine. The whitebait have just come out of the sea and goldfish are fine with salt too. The crays I can't make any guarantees about, BUT I have put a serious amount of salt in a tank with a cray in a couple of times, and he was ok. This is the bit you won't like: 1 teaspoon of salt per litre of water...... :lol: I recommend sitting down with a calculator and a weights and measures converter... The good thing is the salt doesn't dissipate or break down or anything like some meds can, so (for your situation) you just need to dump the salt in and leave it for three weeks then slowly remove it with your waterchanges. Chances are the other fish were suitably robust and don't have it, but maybe one or two are lurking. I think it is most sensible for you to do something about it now and know that your system is clean. Make sure future additions are quarantined for two weeks before being added. I have had a koaro in an aquarium once that had some weird thing wrong with it. He wound up covered in whitespots and *none* of the other fish got it because they were not stressed.

:oops: D'oh! must read more carefully next time.... :roll:

did you give up on the cascading tank?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikatotimes/4738194a6004.html Sad that the bearded dragons stolen were on loan to the zoo from a private collector. I guess they would also be harder to identify too. Another reason to microchip!

Caryl, with the title of you thread I kept worrying something had happened and you had got sick of the Fishroom! Very pleased that was not the case.

yeah my Cran's are on my desk, lovely to have them right there to watch! (good procrastination tool ) Though actually.... from my desk I have: Far right: mudfish (3ft tank) Near Right: crabs and shrimp (tiny tank on desk) Near Left: Cran's bullies (2ft tank) Far Left: riffle tank (4ft) And below that: other mudfish (2ft) sigh.... MTS.....

What is it about behind-the-filter-pipe that is missing from your caves? I find they like their caves to be: dark (probably isn't dark behind the pipe) cray-sized (not keen on large open-plan places) with a small entrance-hole The hide in order to not be eaten by bigger things.... Or you could just pile the driftwood around the filter pipe....

I always find it funny that people complain about the weather during spring as being 'unseasonably' 'orrible. The problem is we are brought up with the fantasy that spring is about the weather getting sunny and warm and dry and full of baby birds and gambolling lambs. NO! Spring is about WIND blowing the baby birds out of the nests to splatter on footpaths! RAIN and late FROSTS to drown and freeze the lambs! You were lied to as a child. Spring is a nasty season.

yes. It is pretty much everywhere. In the wild many individuals have some level of 'parasite loading'. Usually this does not affect them dramatically. It is not particularly useful for a parasite to kill its host, unless said parasite no longer has a use for the host. (Think 'Alien': the host has to live long enough to incubate the parasite, if the host dies too soon, so does the parasite) In the wild (without man-made interference) the hosts should be suitably healthy and conditions are stable that they do not get really 'sick' from them. (your body comes into contact with lots of pathogens each day, most do not take hold, some have colonies on you but do not make you sick, but if you get run down: WHAMMO!) Back to fish with whitespot: if a fish does get run down and gets whitespot, when the spots mature and fall off (prior to making all the infectious free-swimmers) they will be carried off downstream. THere is also a MUCH larger volume of water and therefore a much lower chance of a fish coming into contact with some/many free-swimmers. In an aquarium they are sitting ducks if one fish has one spot, as one spot produces hundreds of free-swimemrs. I have seen fish in the wild with whitespot. 1- a bully with 10-20. Surprising number. Something must have been up. 2- trapped mudfish for my aquarium came in with about five spots each. Despite the stress of captivity, all the spots fell off and nothing more came of it. I blame the peat substrate... maybe it killed them or buried them?? 3- whitebait with whitespot. They had probably been swimming about in the estuary for a while, freshsaltfreshsalt etc, stressful. There is another visible parasite i have seen on native fish. Is part of a lifecycle, just lives inside the muscles of the fish for a while, then passes out for the next stage, doesn't adversely affect or re-infect the fish. More information that you needed to know?

Thanks for the photos. Looks like lots of good hiding places! The pond itself looks great, I can't see any big problems stemming from your set-up. I would be worried about temperatures over summer. Even if that fence is on the northern side, the sun will peep over it and that pond would heat very fast. Shade sail? (I forgot that I had photos on nzfreshwater! very very old.... that list has a lot to blame for my native fish obsession, just a shame that it isn't very active now) So what happened to the bullies? Did they die or you released them? That many koura could lead to a lot of risk for the bullies (someone on nzfreshwater likened a cray in an aquarium to sleeping with an axe-murderer under the bed). I lost three small male bullies one spring to a koura as I suspect they started nesting and were easier to corner. (midwater fish are safer, but bullies live on the bottom) Is whitespot still visibly present? How long since the bullies... evaporated? Whitespot can linger undetected for several cycles in the gills of fish. Do you think you should treat the fish just to be sure the system is clean? I would love to have a pond neat that you can see them moving around

All good thinking, esp topical at the moment. I am surprised how cheap the microchipping is! Is that the cost for any pets? I would totally do that if I had a cat or other pet. (Somehow I don't think people will be breaking into my house to steal my fish!) Navarre, at least the licking would slow potential burgulars down, and he might manage to accidentally trip them over....!

OK, there is no actual Palmy club in any form. But there have been a few threads recently with a whole bunch of palmy people saying we should meet up. I am not making any proposals, just making a thread so we can get talking about doing something, probably one-off for the moment. So, what ideas are there? Someone was talking about a hood-making thing... Or we could do a tank crawl... or just meet somewhere for the hell of it. Or something else?

yeah, lots of forums work differently. Always a learning process figuring out each one (or learning your first one!)

You really don't need to start a whole new thread informing everyone everyone that you have posted on another thread.... Most people get emailed when a new post is made on a thread to which they have already posted. And when people come to the site all the threads with recent posts are up the top of the list.

I was talking recently with someone who has a huge and very successful locust setup. No matter what he tries he can't successfully breed from Biosuppliers locusts but he can from others. He wonders if they treat them so they are infertile. Would be interesed to know what others have found with them.

awww I think its CUTE!

Duckweed. Lemna sp. Can withstand a little bit of current but not so great with surface turbulence (like bubbles etc). Little round leaf 'platelets' and roots that hang down. Long if no current, short if current. Provides surface cover for lurking fish. Lots of people loathe it but I love it. Usual hates: fast growing and hard to eradicate. I just scoop most of it out each fortnight (takes excess nutrient out too!) and eradication is just a matter of being thorough.

Cool, thank you! I have never tried dried bloodworm, so am looking forward to it

Do you know exactly how many fish you have in the pond and/or is it possible to catch them all? If you were to remove all the fish into some kind of quarantine facility you will: - be able to treat exactly without over or undermedicating, because you would know the exact literage. - not risk killing crustaceans or have other adverse effects on the pond itself. - you would be able to keep tabs on when the last spots fell of the last fish much more accurately, and then know when it is safe to stop medicating (I recommend two weeks later in this case) - If you got every single fish the pond would be completely rid of whitespot in two weeks (extra time due to colder outside water just to be sure) I wouldn't worry too much about chlorine, in a pond you wouldn't be doing enormous water changes, would you? Most of it would dissipate if you blast it in from the hose on the spray setting. Algae. There are other ways than chemicals. Cheaper and better for the pond. What sort of algae is causing the problems? Any chance of a photo of the pond? Partly curiosity partly for other ideas