coelacanth

males are larger and have longer pointy fins with spots on the fin. Females are smaller, rounded fins, more colourful.

the replica heron thing is a myth. All it does is signal to other herons that there may be good feeding there. Personally I'd love a kingfisher visiting my ponds.

The Canterbury tree weta is very endangered, and does not occur within the city (its on Banks Peninsula). Do not go catch any. There are ground weta in Chch though which are perfectly acceptable.

there are only a very few species that need permits (the really endangered ones like giant and tusked weta, etc). I think a permit would be needed for katipo also because it is venomous, but I'm not sure. Apart for dedicated entomologicophiles few people bother keeping invertebrates, and most of those are just casual (they think it would be neat to keep weta or mantids or whatever). The insect-keeping scene here is vastly different from Europe's

that would be the yellow-margined box turtle (Cuora flavomarginata). In China it is known as the snake-eating turtle, a name that is also sometimes used as the English name. However the name is based on a folk belief and has no basis in fact.

where'd you get your seahorses from?

do you have a source for that ID? If it is H. longifilis then it does not look typical. H. longifilis grows to 5ft and is rather elongated. It has prominant double dorsal fins and several pairs of long obvious barbels. The head looks the wrong shape too.

so...anything on the ID livingart?

also helps as a rough guide to look at them from beneath (in a little tank or in a plastic bag). Male plecs tend to be wider and more robust than females

there was an Australian guy that used to work at Animates Moorhouse years ago who got about 200 young ones from his tank back in Aus. He fed the adults on live weatherfish (Misgurnus loaches, like dull-coloured coolies, that are wild around Melbourne). He went back to Aus for a holiday and found all these clowns in his tank (a 6 footer) and asked his mum if she'd been buying new fish! Apparently the adults didn't eat the eggs or young (or maybe it was just that there were plenty of hiding places for them).

and as for nudibranchs (sea slugs), avoid them. They are awesome critters but very few can be kept successfully because they generally feed on very specific things which can't be provided easily in an aquarium.

sea cucumbers are easy to keep (depending on species, but seeing they're local if they don't work out then just release them again), the difficulty with them is that they don't move much and if they die and you don't realise then it causes a small problem.....

I had a skunk loach that removed one or both eyes from almost 200 bronze corys. And I have several skunks that have been blinded by their friends (probably accidentally with their eye-spines when being shipped). Never had problems with clowns though

there are guppies, swordtails and mollies in various geothermal waters in the North Island, as well as mosquitofish of course in many places, and possibly caudos (leopardfish)

it isn't a Mekong catfish, you only need to look at (for instance) the tail and the lack of a dorsal fin to see that. I've seen several identities proposed for this fish but it looks most likely to be a wels (judging from the European-looking landscape) although some sites say the photo was taken in Thailand or some other southeast Asian country.

I doubt it would be a pictus. They grow to about 12cm at the most. A 15cm one would be giant. It seems highly unlikely they could get to 25 or 30cm

when I got my silver arowana many years back they were $50. Now they seem to be around $150.

to what are you referring here? It seems unconnected to the rest of your comments

not to state the obvious or anything, but is there a way to fit a cover over them to keep the arowana in, and to keep the air above the water warmer in winter so they're not breathing in cold air?

if you can afford that many

there is no way an importer would bring in 100 arowana. You may like arowana but the majority of fish-buyers are in no position to keep them. Importers are in a business, they do what is best for their business. Importing large quantities of unsaleable fish would be commercial suicide. And because they cannot (in a business sense) import fish like arowana in large numbers then the price will remain relative to the cost and trouble of them importing the ones they do.

they're just out of focus. I doubt they would have fungused that quick....

yes those are Cory eggs. If you want to rear them, there are many threads on here about what to do with the eggs (you'll need somewhere else to put them). If you're not too fussed just leave them and the other fish will take care of them.

I would be a bit wary of using water from a source that has wild fish in it.

yeah, seriously? Some of you don't realise zoos require licenses?