coelacanth

I've just been keeping fish a long time...plus I read a lot

clown knives and ghost knives are unrelated. They should be fine together, but have a place handy to put the ghost knife if things don't work out!! Make sure the eel isn't too small in relation to the clown, otherwise he might look upon it as a juicy worm...

with regards to earthworms, some fish find them a bit slimy. If you drop them in a glass of boiling water (the worm not the fish lol!) it will kill them instantly and simultaneously strip all the slime off the body. But of course when the worm is alive the wriggling is what attracts the fish, especially if it hasn't been fed them before.

they have very good eyesight. They hunt by sight when fed during the day (at night I assume they use their lateral line and sense of smell). He's probably just still a bit shy. In the wild they live in shoals, so being all alone in a new environment would probably be a bit scary. He'll settle down all right. Once he starts feeling better, he should come out whenever you appear with food

clown might eat the pictus when it gets big enough...

clown knife: ox-heart (freeze it then grate off what you need as you need it), fish (as in from the supermarket), earthworms (these are excellent!) are all good. Don't feed too much of the ox-heart though. They like live fish but not necessary, but they're good disposal units for munted fry if you're breeding stuff. For Tsarmina, I feed my ghost knife on mysids (live and dead), bloodworms, earthworms (LOVES those!), zucchini, glass shrimp (dead are better coz he has trouble catching live). In fact its hard to feed worms to the fire eel because the knife is such a pig he just keeps barging in and eating everything he can!

note that you are allowed to collect native fish for your aquarium (except for in some marine fish that have minimum catch sizes) but you are not allowed to sell them without a permit

apart for the five I listed earlier, all the NZ galaxiids are thought to be solely freshwater fish, so any would be good candidates for captive-breeding attempts. I'd just go with whatever is found locally to you. Don't actually think it'd be that difficult. Might have to play around with simulating seasons or rains or whatever, but that's nothing new to catfish-breeders right?

not long. Maybe a month or less. The two commonest species, inanga and koaro are easily told apart. Feed them up and they grow like weeds. The fry themselves can be distinguished from one another but you need to know what to look for. There's actually only five species that make up the whitebait run (most galaxiids spend the whole life-cycle in freshwater). The fry of the giant kokopu mainly come upriver after the main season (and not really likely to find them on the east coast); banded kokopu make up a large part (relative to other non-inanga species) in some areas particularly in Oct/Nov; shortjaw kokopu minor part (and not in the east); koaro are common and widespread. Of the two commonest species, inanga are mid-water swimmers as adults while koaro are mainly bottom-dwellers. All the galaxiids and bullies mix well together in tanks.

depends how many you've got. Also they are still in migration mode, so any tiny gap in the lid and they'll be dead on the floor. They grow FAST!!

like lots of the big predators, they're not aggressive fish, so as long as their tankmates aren't too small they don't bother them. They get really tame too which is nice.

95% of whitebait are inanga. The other galaxiids almost miss the whitebait season so you need to get them beginning and end of season to try for something different (and then wait for them to grow up so you know what you've got!). There are some bully fry mixed in with whitebait as well quite often (blue-gills and others). Its lots of fun growing them up and seeing if there's a surprise in there.

warning: they jump like anything! Make sure there's not even small gaps in the lid coz they'll hit that gap dead on and you'll find it the next morning on the floor. That's my experience

lol bdspider beat me to it!

the Canterbury mudfish is seriously endangered and the other species are also becoming restricted in distribution through habitat destruction (drainage of swamps etc). I don't think they actually have legal protection, but aquarium-keepers going out and catching them isn't going to be doing the species any good. Leave them where they are. If you want native fish, get bullies, inanga etc

I assume you know how big they get? As for tankmates, when small, anything that won't fit in their mouths. When big, anything that won't fit in their mouths. Just need to upgrade their friends.

thriving and surviving are entirely different things. If they thrived in coldwater there should be dumped plecs breeding all over NZ, over-running the waterways. Not going to happen.

good. I just really hate seeing those hire tanks with their sunken-bellied listless plecs

no there are no coldwater plecs. Some people stick common plecs and sometimes bristlenoses in goldfish tanks (especially round Chch you see those hired goldfish tanks in supermarkets and so on, and they always have one or two small plecs in them). Bristlenoses will even breed at 20 degrees, but they are better at higher temperatures. Your average goldfish tank however is far too cold. The plec is not happy, will not grow, etc. Don't do it if thats what you were wondering about.

Indeed I do. I'm not the one smuggling stuff in.

also you've got to admit that MAF have an uphill struggle with regards to funding and getting reliable people as identifiers of species. Apparently the reason people like Freddie Angel could smuggle out protected geckos so easily amongst legal species (common and forest) is because MAF would check the shipment THE DAY BEFORE shipping, not when it was actually going out, so after the checks the protected species would be substituted and hey presto. Then there's all the illegal fish that come in. I know of piranhas, lionfish, etc etc, coming in easily because the MAF people didn't know one fish from another.

I believe most of the birds were destroyed, he had just snuck some choice species out that were at that time very rare or absent from NZ aviculture. I know Derbyan parrots were amongst them.

actually the reason parrots aren't allowed to be imported is nothing to do with the cost of building a quarantine facility. A quarantine facility being expensive does not result in importation being illegal. Lots of people were legally importing birds and they had perfectly serviceable facilities. What happened was that someone imported a bunch of parrots which were (while still in quarantine) found to be carrying diseases not at that time found in NZ. They should have been either destroyed or returned to the country of origin; he agreed to destroy them, but then -- because he was an idiot -- he instead spread these diseased birds out into the aviaries of other aviculturists who were only too willing to potentially sacrifice both their own hobby and the native wild birds of NZ in the name of greed. All private imports of parrots were stopped after that, and it is likely they will not recommence (apart for zoos, which I believe may still be allowed to)

I just spent a while going through the importable fish list and rearranging it by family so i could see what was actually on there. For example, only one hillstream loach ("Borneo sucker") Pseudogastromyzon myersi, but 21 New World knifefish; interesting to me as a catfish-enthusiast, if you take out the loricariids (plecs) and callichthyids (Corys), there are only 29 other catfish species, and 12 of those are mochokids!: Amblydoras hancockii Blue-eye catfish Bunocephalus bifidus Banjo catfish Bunocephalus coracoideus Banjo catfish Bunocephalus knerii Banjo catfish Kryptopterus bicirrhis Glass catfish Microglanis cottoides Bacon cat Microglanis poecilus Dwarf marble cat Microsynodontis lamberti Mystus micracanthus Twospot catfish Mystus tengara Silver mystus cat Mystus vittatus Striped dwarf catfish Ompok bimaculatus Butter catfish Ompok sabanus Pimelodella gracilis Slender pimelodella Pimelodus ornatus Ornate cat Pimelodus pictus Pictus cat Platydoras costatus Raphael/chocolate catfish Pseudomystus siamensis Bumblebee cat Synodontis alberti Bigeye squeaker Synodontis angelicus Angel squeaker Synodontis decorus Decorated synodontis Synodontis eupterus Synodontis multipunctatus Cuckoo synodontis Synodontis nigrita Upsidedown catfish Synodontis nigriventris Blotched upsidedown catfish Synodontis ocellifer Synodontis petricola Cuckoo catfish Synodontis pleurops Bigeye synodontis Synodontis schoutedeni Vermiculated synodontis sigh...oh well, still lots of cool stuff there...

the only hillstream loach on the new importable list is Pseudogastromyzon myersi. So all the owners of the other sucker species better start breeding!!!