Fishkeepa

Have you considered covering half or all of the tank with a decorative dried fern leaf which you could remove when you want to look at it, or perhaps a rim on three sides and leave the front open for viewing? I don't know what the current on the surface is like but floating plants such as azolla could also possibly deter jumping.

Bullies are usually pretty good at eating and settling in, have you tried bloodworms as Stella suggested? They are usually a sure bet when they move in the current. Bullies will also sift through the gravel to pick up the scraps

They havent noticed them getting any fatter than when we caught them a couple of weeks back, we may have to cross that bridge though. I did read an interesting post that if one fish dies from being egg bound then by forcing the eggs out it can trigger the rest to release their eggs Here's hoping they are all boys...

The tank has been going well in general, with the change of seasons it is much easier to keep the tank temperature at an acceptable level, our second koura has been with us now for over a month now and hasnt escaped the tank :thup: they are suprisingly quick creatures and I think the small upland bullies may have fallen prey to him, because all three have disapeared without a trace We have since brought home our largest bully, a female redfin, she is quite shy, but the male must know she is around because he is going very dark at times. I have seen her pop out from the maze of rocks, usually when the koura is moving about and at feeding times. I guess I thought she would settle into the tank quite quickly, especially if she is making friends with the male, but this doesnt quite seem to be the case yet. We also have decided to try with a small shoal of inanga now that it is much easier to maintain the temperature, we have collected three and they fit into the tank very well, they are eating very well, and are much better at chasing down waterboatmen than the bullies although you cannot fault the bullies for their persistence. They are slowly getting more accustomed to people being around the tank but I havent been able to get any semi decent pictures to share other than one because they do tend to move quite quickly. Now that it is getting colder the chances to go spotlighting will be rare so I think we will be concentrating on the fish we now have until the next summer

Nice video, the tank is looking good mate :nfs: I like the amount of thought you have obviously put into the scaping of the tank, it certainely shows in the finished result

In light of new information I wish to change my guess to say that it doesn't look like a Koaro to me :slfg:

On first looks to me it looks like a Koaro

Looks and sounds like a great project, what kind of total volume would you be looking at on this?

Thanks everyone for your support and compliments, hopefully we can keep it looking as nice as this as it matures, with the lights seldomly being used for more than an hour a day I'm hoping we won't run into any algae issues provided we maintain the water quality. On the tank front, have got a new koura and are thoroughly enjoying watching it feed, it lives mainly in a cave on the left of the tank but seems to make it all around the tank judging by the disturbed gravel. Will try take some photos in the near future. The bullies are a lot more settled now and the Cran's bully is definitely the boss of the tank, followed by the redfin. I'm not sure if we will look for a female redfin or even a just common bully, I think at the moment our stocking level is fairly realistic without being boring

I like the composition of the one on the left because it is off centre, and I think has nicer lines which lead you into the tank, but the second also has great potential as a more Iwagumi styled tank. Best of luck, look forward to seeing it planted out!

I'm not sure what they will say, I'm not sure if that quite fits with the notion of a sanctuary, but it would be worth a go, Stella recently posted saying that they had eradicated the trout from in there and the galaxids had benefited greatly Meanwhile we went out to the Kahuterawa stream to try find a spot where a friend said she used to go with her brothers and find crayfish all the time so we would no where we were going if we went back at night. Because the stream ran between private properties we explained to one of the house owners closest to the stream what we were doing when she saw us. She proceeded back to her house to watch us with binoculars from her window until we left a while later, we were slightly creeped out by this so most probably wont be returning there any time soon. The stream was quite high so didnt make for good fish spotting anyway We also returned to the Turitea stream last night looking for a new crayfish to test out our new crayfish proofed tank and a femle redfin to partner our male. We thought we caught a female redfin bully, it was really washed out so hard to identify but looked like it had the right markings we brought it home but it turns out it is definitely a male. Either Cran's or common. We were way off the mark there :facepalm: We didnt spot any koura, but there was bullies a plenty and heaps of perch and trout. We even saw two small eels. It didnt help that although the stream level had dropped it was flowing very quickly still. The new bully that we are pretty sure is a crans I like watching the tank at night, I have chucked in a some leaf litter and let it settle wherever it wants, it looks quite natural and it changes whn the fish disturb it Side shot

That is an interesting notion, I guess the cray shells would offer limited nutritional value and sharp parts could possibly pose a hazard further down the digestive tract. Graham, I know that the stream that runs down Happy Valley and out into Owhiro Bay still had koura in it a few years ago even after it had major issues with contamination from the tips and compost plant located up the valley, so I wouldnt be suprised if there was something lurking in the karori stream, especially given that the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary has a heap of natives in it. We build em tough in NZ!

Well, it has been a pretty bad weekend, 1) Lost the final of the Hockey Tournament I was playing in to a team we had earlier beaten 2) The Koura had escaped from the tank and managed to find/fall its way into the filter bucket 3) Stacey's rat passed away 4) Koura died the next day, possibly from injuries from falling into the bucket 5) Suit which I brought from the UK arrived but had no pants only two suit jackets We only have possible theories of how he escaped most of which invlve climbing filter pipes, we feel quite irresponsible having taken it from the wild and then having it die 4 days later. We have a cover made of netting which has some small gaps around the light fitting and filter pipes, so it must have been through on of thee gaps. We are going to look at ways to fix this up before we out looking for a new one Anyway as promised here are some pictures of the tank and the suicidal crustacean and Mr.Redfin The tank, you can see the filter bucket and if it did fall, how far it would have fell Mr.Redfin had a ripped fin, but it has since healed and he is eating well One the plus side, all three of our disagreeing thermometers agree that the tank is sitting below 20 degrees without using any ice

Just a butterfly net from payless plastics bent so that it has a flat bottom and a couple of those small square fish nets you see in pet shops. I even managed to catch a koura and bully using a small net and shooing it in with my hand.

So here is our story so far, apologies I do not have any good photos of our tank. We have been planning on having a native tank for quite a while, we saved up and brought a new 180L tank with stand and filter and had to wait five months before we were able to set it up in a new flat. We had to satisfy our native urges by going for study break walks to Te Manawa (the local museum) which has a huge native tank. !drool: We also visited and highly recommend the National Trout Centre at Turangi to all native fish enthusiasts. It is well worth the ten dollars and makes a nice place to stop on a long drive. Our tank has been set up a month now and it is going pretty well, we use ice to keep the temperature to what we think is about 20 to 21 degrees. We have three thermometers in tank and all say different things :facepalm: We only turn the lights on when viewing the tank to help minimise algae growth. We have been out looking for fish a few times now. At the Tokomaru stream we collected the first three bullies which I'm pretty sure are all uplands and have inhabited our tank now for a month. We went to the Kahuterawa reserve at night with a feshwater ecology PHD candidate where we found a small cray, an eel, lots of upland bullies and a nice sized female redfin. An evening trip out to Himitangi Beach yeilded no shrimp as was hoped but we found heaps of inanga. Our latest trip to the Turitea Stream was our most sucessful, we borrowed a torch from and Gumboots from Foxja and set off, I used plastic rubbish bags to keep my feet dry which worked really well . I later went back in just using aquashoes and long johns and the water was suprisingly warm. Here is some photos of what we found, at first we didn't take a camera because we thought we wouldn't find that much interesting stuff, so had to rush back to get one :oops: We were really excited when we found this big bully, I'm pretty sure it is a common bully because of its face patterning We caught this Inanga, we think we saw a few more of varying sizes around. Stacey releasing the Inanga A few smaller bullies, may have been female redfins, but they were very washed out so difficult to see markings One of the Koura we caught A medium male redfin which we ended up taking home with us Another adult bully, pretty sure it is a common again Two introduced species, perch and brown trout juvenile We went looking for another cray we had seen earlier but got distracted by these two large male redfin bullies Our friend Emma doing the honours Another cray with nice patterning, we took this one home with us for the tank It was really cool to see so much life thriving in a stream which I had heard had less than ideal water quality. Our tank now has four bullies (three upland, one redfin male) and a koura. If we can we would like to find a female redfin to complete our stocking. I will try to get some photos of our tank soon.

I really disliked Bruno Mars' 'Grenade' with a passion when it came out, but this version from the Graham Norton Show really caught my attention

:slfg: Somehow I don't think High Definition dyed fish will catch on either

Very cool tank, I agree Koura are definitely interesting critters What temperature does yours sit at? I'm just curious because have similar sized tank which sits at 20 to 21 degrees usually or a bit higher on the warmest days without putting any ice in it at the moment

looking good, love the tall rocks on the right Are you planning to get any other species in the future or just concentrate on the ones you have?

Brown, cos thats what I have Frozen L&P or Frozen Coke?

It sounds like a chlorine issue to me too. I would say the best way to solve the problem is to use a water conditioner to dose the tank and then when changing water. Otherwise agitating the water in a bucket with an airpump for a hour or two will help disapate the chlorine. Or letting the water stand for a long while (I think it is four plus hours) before adding it to the tank

Which one Stella? And would you kindly help me identify the species

Here are a few photos me and my girlfriend took on our latest weekely (avoid study) trip to Te Manawa. The tank is looking great. We were there just after feeding so all the kokopu were out and active. Unfortunately our camera isnt the greatest so we could only get photos of the bullies and one of the Koura which came out and put on a nice display for us.

A few weeks on and I now have 6 Bumblebee gobies with a few more to come next week. I also managed to track down some java fern thanks to Kiwiplymouth and the tank is starting to fill in nicely. Because the fish come in freshwater I will start adding salt once this next lot of fish arrive. Hopefully the plants dont react too badly too this. I'll try to increase the salinity slowly over about four or five weeks. I'll try to get a clearer picture soon Some of the inhabitants

The latest info that have heard is that Brooklands would have gobies in about 5 weeks time, this was about three weeks ago so hopefully soon. I cry at every list which comes out without them on it :tears: The last resort would be to get them from HFF as they have them. Nobody has orange chromides available at the moment