Stella

a friend read an article recently that mentions an much older source talking about spreading grayling several inches thick on the ground and ploughing them in as fertiliser.... :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: All of 25 years before they were last seen.

I don't think fish would see their own reflection inside the tank. Fish commonly follow people around the outside of the tank. I think the reflections we see are an artefact of us looking into the tank, rather than what the fish is able to see. Then again... if you think about it like your room.... if the outside is lighter than the inside you can see out through the windows. If the inside is brighter than the outside it just looks dark outside and you may get reflections on the window.... Anyone?

I was always intrigued by things that lived in water as a child. Had goldfish as a teen. The native fish thing started through first having goldfish again, then finding them boring, then discovering native fish existed. THEN finding I had something new to research and information was frustratingly sparse..... NEVER set me a challenge

I usually need to turn my filter upside down a few times to get all the bubbles out and get it going quieter...

No dumb questions Many pumps are left on 24/7, also many pumps turned off so the owners/parents/partners/flatmates can sleep.... The only times they MUST be left on is if they are driving filtration equipment or if the tank is so overstocked they would be surface gasping otherwise (which is just a bad idea to begin with...)

oh and these crayfish you get are coming from 'down south'... are they from the South Island? If they are they are possibly the southern cray, a different species to what is in your local streams, and it is very important to stress to people who buy them never to let them go, make them aware that returning them to the shop is an option (if it is...) if they can no longer keep it.

A-town, thanks, that is really useful information! Would you be able to send me one of these info sheets? I will PM you my address. I am writing a book on keeping native fish (and crayfish) in aquaria and that is EXACTLY the sort of info that needs to be in there. :bounce: The paralysis thing may be their standard stress response but in this case to a chemical. When extremely stressed they can go quite stiff and often lie on their sides with their legs in a rigid but 'natural' position. I have seem them come right after a few days. My one did that after we set up the big tank and put him in it, but have been all a bit much for him (and he got himself trapped, which didn't help...). As for temps: If you set up a small desk fan on top of the aquarium (unscrew the stand) so it is facing down onto the water and leave it going 24/7 the evaporation cools the tank. Of course it works best in low humidity, which may not exist in the fish room, but worth a shot.

Hmmm, it is 121x50cm at the base. I wonder what postage from Taurange would be like for a large volume of steel-caged air? :lol:

I would have thought what killed one would kill the other, but there can be differences. I wonder about there not being enough hiding places, now that I see your tank. Crays are really timid (despite appearances) and like many places to hide, not just one nice cave (even though they might have a favourite). A-town, how do you know the chlorine remover is bad for crays?

oh, so thinking like the blocks are the 'piles', timber (you mean like 2x2 or similar?) as 'joists' then ply as the 'floor'?

I am putting together a four foot tank for some fast-water native fish. The tank arrived today (needed to be reassembled and new lids) so now I am thinking about a stand. A friend has the simple concrete-block-plus-board style, which sounds nice and cheap.... I am sure it will look cheap too, but will do for the moment. Now, what sort of board should I use under it? MDF would inevitably swell. Plywood? Am also open to other ideas on how to do this cheaply.

cool! I am semi organised, semi stress-ball.... hopefully it will work on the day

I don't have tropical fish so I don't know anyhting about using heat, but I wonder if it speeds up the lifecycle so much that they don't have time to find a host before they die? At normal tropical temps they need to find a host within two days. I would be kinda surprised if the heat itself killed them (it tends to be other results of heat that kills tings: dehydration, lack of oxygen etc)

This page should be read by anyone with a remote possibility of ever having fish with ich (ie all fishkeepers ) http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml The whole site is excellent, if involved, but if you understand the details of how things work, you will be much more able to avoid or fix problems. A quote: Particularly resistant fishes can remain asymptomatic through several cycles of infestation and can act as "carriers" of Ich. What happens is, the free-swimming tomites attach most easily to the gills. The rest of the fishes' skin is protected by a sturdier mucus coating that's constantly renewed, sloughing off all kinds of minute organisms that might settle out. Trophonts that are newly-attached to the epidermis are invisibly small. So a "carrier" fish is simply one that is invisibly carrying Ich, perhaps on its gills. There is no "dormant" independent, long-term encysted life stage separate from a host fish for Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. This is useful to know. You will often hear to the contrary. Dr. Peter Burgess, who took Ichthyophthirius multifiliis as his Ph.D. subject at Plymouth University, mentioned among Ich "old wives' tales" that "It's present in all aquariums." "What utter rubbish" noted Dr. Burgess (in the Nov 2001 Practical Fishkeeping). Brits don't mince words.

If it is just one species which has been affected you could try taking those ones out and treating them in a hospital tank. There would still be a risk that the other fish may get it, though all risk should be gone if none appear after two weeks. Ich is incredibly annoying. Recently I lost a whole tank of fish to it. Didn't quite get on top of it the first time around and the second infection was so heavy it just wiped them out.

Ya WHAT?! Don't you dare. What a horrible way to go. Put it in a plastic bag and dash it against something hard repeatedly. (You can just throw it without the bag, but I find it is cleaner and less disturbing to use the bag.) Also ich is really contagious, although this is the only tank at the moment with it, be careful not to spread it. Use different equipment for that tank.

The easy reason why the ich keeps coming back is because it was never fully got rid of in the first place. Ich is ONLY killable when it is free-swimming. That is a tiny part of the lifecycle. Lifecycle: visible ich on fish (unkillable) ich falls to gravel and matures (unkillable) ich releases hundreds of freeswimming ich KILLABLE!!! swimmers latch on to fish, so tiny they are invisible (unkillable) So you see if you stop treating when you no longer see any spots, the last spots to fall are safe from your meds. You need to wait AT LEAST one week after the last spot fell off before you stop treating. Also malachite green and formalin are usually used in conjunction, being stronger together than when used separately. The rate is one drop of each med per litre.

or of native coldwater shrimp 'adjusting' to tropical temperatures.

Nice markings How long is he? They can be keen excavators until they have just the right hiding spots, they they stop.

oooh george, are you going native? :bounce: what have you got in your terrarium?

Shrimp eat such tiny amounts that I would be surprised if they needed supplementary feeding. Even that many shrimp. They are so small they can eat things you can't see. They would probably even recycle snail poo..... Thankfully they are see-through so you can tell if they are eating I have heard they like spirulina powder, but it seems like overkill....

contact your local DOC office, or do a bit of searching and find someone at MAF who does noxious fish. If you can do that, go nuts It would be very interesting to have the legality cleared up properly for others here

addition: I THINK it may be legal to use them as fish food if you KILL them on site. Take a bucket of icewater and put them in that immediately (or throw them hard at the ground, but it takes a while for 200...) I would only recommend that if you confirmed it with DOC first and it was from a place they can't easily be removed from (an open waterway like a stream).

They are a noxious pest, simply having them is illegal. Distributing them is even more illegal... The thing is they spread so easily. Imagine a flood coming through, washing them into a waterway (including via stormwater) and spreading them to yet another area. They are really nasty little fish. The idea of putting some comets in there to clear them out is good... but they may destroy the comets first... just be sure, do a bit of research and get rid of the 'ORRIBLE LITTLE BLIGHTERS! Other fish also make good live food but are not invading our streams and killing our native fish.

That was a neat thing to watch! Rather tacky special effects but cool seeing it, especially as it was in NZ. I started bouncing when I saw Dave Cooper on it, obviously back when he had Jansens, but then seeing Paul Woodard with his native fish - COOL! I stayed with him for a week in January. The fishroom was getting totally re-done (lined, closed in and air cond being installed) and there were hardly any fish when I was there, so it was very cool seeing how it was originally set up. But feeding goldfish to pacu... doesn't really seem necessary, they are vegetarian aren't they????