Rob

I quite liked the chickens feet when I tried them - I did draw the line at the steamed tripe though.

I'm always (and still am) confused about what gets sold as cardamine here (at least in the North Island). Shops call it cardamine (just as a common name) but from what I've seen it's always Hydrocotyle leucocephala. Also the pics for the two plants (cardamine vs H. leucocephala) on http://www.fnzas.org.nz/index.php?PG=plant look the same to me, same flower form, same leaf shape etc - surely that means one of them is mislabeled (or I need my eyes checked). The cardamine pic doesn't match up with the pic in my plant book (for leaf shape, which shows them not as a full kidney shape but more shell? like) - but then leaf form can be vastly different depending on growing conditions. I guess more tellingly the flower isn't the form I'd expect (as a member of the brassica family (Brassicaceae) I'd expect the cardamine flower to be vaguely reminiscent of cabbage flowers as shown here). Hydrocotyle is a member of the Apiaceae (also called Umbelliferae) family and the flower on the FNZAS pic of cardamine looks to have a little umbel of flowers to me. Can someone clear this up for me - do we really have Cardamine lyrata in NZ (stashed away in the South Island perhaps) or is it all H. leucocephala?

I suspect the concern is the possiblity of decreased oxygen levels when the lights are off and waking up to fish gasping at the surface (since once lights are off, the plants start consuming oxygen and giving out CO2).

They appear just be a colour variety of harlequins. Looks like they may get called either black harlequins or purple harlequins in other countries.

Sue and Craig were members of the Waikato club for a number of years and they have 35 registered breedings (under the WKTO listings) starting off with Hypancistrus zebra in 1998, through to congo tetras in late 2000. The waikato club saw their breeding setup on at least one tank crawl.

Firenzenz has indicated there is still decendants from those breedings around. As for Sue and Craig, not sure if they got totally out of fishkeeping or not. It's a bit hard to be an ex-fnzas site member when the site didn't exist at that time.

No - they were definitely THE zebra plecos (at the time the shops were calling them Imperial Zebra Plecos - mainly because Panaque nigrolineatus was getting sold as Royal Zebra Plecos). Sue and Craig had a reasonable amount of success with them - their webpage is still up http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~zebra/zebra_pleco.htm but hasn't been updated in the last 10 years. And no, to the best of my knowledge they do not have the zebra plecs anymore - they went into breeding dobermans instead. At that stage I was a poor student so couldn't afford expensive plecos. Because Sue and Craig had had multiple spawns the price they were selling them gradually dropped and when I joined the Waikato club they were offering them to club members for $80 each (keep in mind that at that stage they were a semi-regular import and were retailing for around the $180-200 mark - from memory). I still love how their very first registered breeding (rather than being guppy or platy like it is for a lot of us) is Zebra Pleco /edit - damn, somepeople are fast and got the website link up before me

Excel isn't going to fix any nutrient deficiences anyway since is just a carbon source. Flourish (note no excel tacked on the end of the name) or some other micronutrient mix might be more effective (if it is a nutrient deficiency).

I know there are a number of fish (I think 3) that get called blackline flying foxes here in NZ - one of which is Crossocheilus saimensis. I've never seen an SAE actually labelled as such in any of the NZ shops I've visited (but then I haven't visted all the shops - yet ), they've always been labelled as a blackline flying fox. The other fish commonly referred to as a black line flying fox is Epalzeorhynchos kalopterus, (the third type I haven't seen for sale for ages and can't remember much about it). This naming makes it difficult for people in a couple of ways - they get told that SAE's are great - but they can't find a fish labelled that in the shop, or alternatively they get told about black line flying foxes and they end up getting something that is not Crossocheilus saimensis. The main thing I look for to distinguish between a SAE and E. kalopterus is the fins - in an SAE all of the fins should be colourless (apart from the blackline possibly extending into the tail), also E. kalopterus has a much more distinct gold line on top of the dark central stripe, whereas SAE only has a faint indication of a gold line.

From previous experience golden apple snails will happily clear-fell a planted tank, however brown apple snails (and by the sound of it the blue ones too) will leave plants alone unless they're starving (i.e. they prefer to eat decaying plant matter or left over fish food). As for their usefulness at controlling algae - I'm less convinced on that score. A combo of flourish excel and Siamese algae eaters (more commonly called black line flying foxes here) is my preferred method of controlling beard/thread algae. The excel gives you that initial 'knock it on the head' control, with the BLFF's giving ongoing control.

Some people will use trademe, others prefer to support their LFS and sell there, yet others will offer them for sale or trade at their local club. With selling to the LFS it's always a good idea to ring before hand to see if they're interested (not all LFS will buy from hobbyists, or sometimes they already have enough of that fish in stock and don't want anymore at that time). Also, my rule of thumb for trying to sell fish to the LFS - only offer fish that you yourself would be willing to buy (i.e. not too small, reasonably coloured, no deformities etc). As for the price you get - that will depend on the LFS, some offer more if you take it as store credit rather than cash, but in general I don't expect to get more than half the retail price.

Perhaps it's just me but after watching the clip my initial thought was: "if that goes on for too long you're going to end up with a carnivorous gpig" mmmm hamster, nomnomnom

Card 4 gets my vote too.

Yeah - I suspect the majority of the cost (or potential cost) would be from the 'follow on' from the paperwork. Being able to have multiple species on one application is good - do they have to be from the same genus or can multiple genera be on the one application (guess I should wait until you email through the example).

I suspect that one of the few ways we will get new fish on the allowed list is through the federation (or similar body) putting in the effort. While wholesalers might like to have more fish on the allowed list, the disincentive is once they put in the effort then all the wholesalers could bring in the fish - not just the company who put the effort in. I can sort of foresee two main issues if the federation wanted to persue this: 1) Cost - I keep hearing people say it's expensive but never seen any numbers bandied about (my suspicion is the application fee probably isn't too much, but the real expense comes from the expert investigation that would be required). 2) If the cost wasn't too bad then what fish(s) do we add - as many of us have our own particular fish interests and how do you decide between the cries of polypterus, killifish, plecos etc etc. Regardless of what gets chosen someone is going to be disappointed. Let us work on the assumption that the FNZAS does successfully get a new fish added to the allowed list - it's just a name on a bit of paper - there are no guarantees that the fish will ever actually be imported. There are potentially some people who would like some Apisto's added to the allowed list - there are currently 76 or 77 (I may have counted one twice when I was scrolling though the list) different species of Apisto's on the allowed list of which I think I have seen about 18 imported in the last 15yrs. Have a look at the allowed list here: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/imports/ ... ic.all.htm (scroll down for the list) and see how many species are actually listed there, and then have a second look and consider how many are actually being imported. Any effort to put new fish on the allowed list needs to involve a dialogue between hobbyists (what would we like), retailers (what do they think would sell) and wholesalers (what do they actually have access to). We've seen recently, with the effort that Hollywoods (in conjunction with one of their suppliers) went to with the imports from Germany, that the vocal minority get access to what they would like but then the shops/wholesalers are left with what the silent majority (who probably don't even know this forum exists) have little interest in.

This used to be how the old allowed list worked e.g. Corydoras species (as a generic listing) meaning any old cory could come in. But then with ERMA/HSNO and the updated list it changed to having to be individual species. If you look on the current allowed list there's a large group of corys all listed as individual species. In some cases generic listings make sense (to us as hobbyists) e.g. Corys. However, if I recall correctly, on the old allowed lists barbs (genus Barbus +others) were a generically allowed group - problem with that is Barbus barbus is a large (upto 4') coldwater species that produces thousands of eggs in a spawning.

Some insurance companies (AA and AMI come to mind) advertise the fact that you have your no claims bonus for life (AA) or have some facility (freeBmax - AMI) to keep your bonus. I'm with AMI for my insurance - from memory (don't have the policy in front of me) the freeBmax thing means even if I caused the accident I would keep my no claims bonus (as long as I didn't cause more than 1 accident a year(?)).

While you might be able to (with a bit of work) get tropical freshwater shrimp on the allowed list - stingrays would be an entirely different matter. I suspect that the stingrays would fall under Schedule 2 of the HSNO act. Schedule 2 is the list of organisms specifically prohibited from being bought into NZ and includes: "Any venomous reptile, venomous amphibian, venomous fish, or venomous invertebrate. (In this item, venomous means capable of inflicting poisonous wounds harmful to human health.)" Full Schedule 2 list is here: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/publ ... _resel&p=1 So you can also stop dreaming about having a pet squirrel, gerbil or cane toad.

Previous flatmates used to have one of those cats that are picky eaters - sprinkle a bit of fishfood on whatever it turned its nose up to and hey presto new favourite food.

Can't help with the first one but the first of your ferns looks to me to be Shining Spleenwort (Asplenium oblongifolium) and I'd agree with your identification of the second fern.

I suspect that they're clusters of spores from the fern itself (often get them on mature fern fronds).

I totally agree Caryl - was just a bit of an eye opener to us kids that our quite placid mother adopted a "take no prisoners, they'll never take me alive, man the canons, once more unto the breach" approach.

Our family has a history of playing crib, 500, euchre, dominoes (using a double 12 set) - whenever particular aunts or uncles visited this would be the after dinner activity. We tried the board game ludo for awhile but mum gets way too competitive (almost scary) - apparently it's a deep seated resentment of her mum and sister ganging up on her in ludo when she was a kid. More recently we've played Stonewall - again mum gets a bit enthusiastic - it's amusing watching her decide if she will move closer to her winning spot or go out of her way to stomp on another player to send them home - usually the stomp option wins out. There was the usual stuff for farm kids as well - building dams in the stream, eeling, just general exploring the farm (which for me often results in turning up back at the house with a supply of field mushrooms or blackberries which mum was then expected to do something with - my dad never complained about having to eat blackberry and apple pie though), riding bikes, building huts etc.

Sounds like the old labrador we had.

I'm not sure what list you've looked at but I couldn't find violet/dragon gobies on the allowed import list: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/files/bi ... ic.all.pdf I checked both under its valid Gobioides broussonnetii name and also synonyms (as provided by fishbase.org).