Rob

Pretty sure the first fish picture is a Peacock Goby/gudgeon (Tateurndina ocellicauda) - I'm not aware of any Killifish that have two dorsal fins.

Sorry I didn't make it Owen - first week of having uni students back and trying to sort out the 170 people in the course leaves me pretty antisocial by the end of each day.

Yeah - I would have been getting rid of them through Brian and not asking too much for them.

The timing and the location means it's probably from a batch of Peckoltia brevis I bred back in 2002. Don't have the parents anymore but still have some of their offspring lurking around in a tank somewhere.

Except for me only remembering when we were passing through Huntly on the way home that I'd left the plants I'd been given in Peter's car. I have now started setting up my very own Hillstream loach tank though.

I'm keen - see you on the 22nd.

Are there any further details about Peter's presentation - I'd be interested in attending.

Yes maths can be used to for all sorts of purposes, for example: To find a woman takes time and money: Woman = time x money We've all been told that time is money: time = money Therefore: woman = money x money = (money)^2 We also often hear that money is the root of all problems: Money = sqrt(problems) Therefore: Woman = (sqrt(problems))^2 Woman = Problems A mathematical proof of what many of us guys have always suspected.

The classes FNZAS use for breedings correspond with class designations for fish shows (not all fish show classes are appropriate for a breeding scheme though e.g. Class A = furnished aquaria). Also some classes have subclasses (for example Class C = Characins, and then you can have Ca, Cb, Cz subclasses) and the not all federations make use of every single subclass. The FNZAS classes correspond with those used by the Federation of British Aquatic Societies. The last information I have is from 2005, at that date the valid classes for the breeding scheme were: B Barbs Ca Parcheirodon, Hemigrammus & Hyphessobrycon Cb Pencil Fish Cz Other tetras Da Angels Db Dwarf Cichlids Dc African Lake Cichlids Dz Other Cichlids Ea Bettas Ez Other Anabantoids F Killifish G Tropical Catfish H Brochis & Corydoras J Rasbora K Danios & Minnows M Any other tropical egglayer Op Guppies T Other livebearers Ua Single tail goldfish Ub Shubunkin (short) Uc Shubunkin (long) Ud Comet V Double tail goldfish Va Veiltail Vb Fantail Vc Black Moor Vf Oranda Vg Pearlscale Vh Lionhead Vj Celestial Vk Bubble Eye Vl Pom pom W Any other species cold water From trawling through the breeding records it looks like another couple of classes have been activated since 2005. These being: L Loaches Yb Seahorses (I'm assuming this, since my National Showfish booklet has them lumped in with Class Y - marine fish, seems logical that Yb might be the seahorse subclass). For all those goldfish subclasses there will be class defining characteristics/standards that they should adhere to to qualify, if they don't then they'll default to being either single tailed (Ua) or double tailed (V).

All the rules say is the parents have to be in your possession at the time of spawning - they do not have to be in your possession at the time of hatching or at the 30 day mark either.

I haven't seen any around recently and I don't have my colony anymore

I'm not sure what your plant is but here are the links to the 'dodgy' Sagittaria's: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/arrowhead http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/arrow-head http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/sagittaria

Thank you Zev.

I had fun trawling through the updated breeding pages ( at Paul Billaney's efforts). Just one thing - looks like the recent breedings for Waikato people (WKTO) are getting mixed in with the old Wanganui (WAS) breedings.

I know that Wok is the current breeding coordinator so I don't want to step on any toes but the rules and regs simply state: "The breeder is to have possession of both parents at the time of spawning." (emphasis added) So buying a mouthbrooder that already had a mouthfull would not qualify or simply hatching killfish eggs you'd got from someone else would not qualify. If the rules have changed to still having the parents alive at the 30 day mark then there are potentially going to be some irritated killikeepers (for those types where the eggs are kept in peat for months before hatching them).

Yes, I don't have either anymore though.

It's a little bit hard to tell from the photo - possibly Micranthemum umbrosum. It has slightly larger, rounder leaves, compared to Micranthemum micranthemoides, also umbrosum is a pale green where micranthemoides is darker green. LOL - just typed out the stuff above, and decided to google "Micranthemum umbrosum" - my first result was that exact image - good to know my memory isn't failing (yet). I found both of the Micranthemums annoying to grow - no issues with growth, just the thin stems were quite fragile which I found a hassle.

Apparently I only qualify as 'getting older' - though I do remember the old party line phone. As Caryl said, we kids never touched it, I remember 'our ring' used to be short-long-short and I was never sure as a kid how long you had to crank the handle on the side to qualify as a 'long' - what would happen if I cranked the handle too long to be a short, but to short to be a long - was there someone out there that had a short-medium-short ring?? I also remember that there were a couple of batteries (big 1.5V dry cells??) connected to the phone.

I can only go by what the guy at my LFS says (more than 20yrs experience) and what I've seen of their behaviour: Yellow apple snails = plant murderers Brown apple snails = plant friendly (unless really hungry)

@ David R Unfortunately I don't have sajicas anymore - there may be some lurking in the Hawkes Bay - I'd provided Warren with some, which were apparently breeding like crazy. Don't think Warren's got any tanks going at the moment but I assume he must have passed the fish on to other people down/over there.

I haven't named any of my fish, though my flatmates have named some over the years: group of glass catfish = 'the grannies' since they thought they looked like a group of grannies all nattering away the Malabar/dwarf puffer (deceased) = 'Julie' because it reminded him of a previous flatmate i.e. vicious and trying to appear bigger than it really was.

Old flatmates had a cat that was a bit fussy about food - but sprinkle on a bit of fish food and hey presto instantly palatable

I guess first off - some of my suggestions are based on international conferences I've attended and/or presented at (as part of my work as a uni lecturer) - so there may be aspects that are over-the-top or not required. It seems that different science fields always have slight variations in what is required for conference papers/journal articles. To overcome this most conferences and journals provide authors with with 'author instuctions' about required layout, number of pages etc etc. If you haven't been provided with anything like that then my suggestion would be to get a hold of a journal article published in your field (or a copy of the proceedings of a previous IPPS conference) to get an idea of what sort of stuff is included, how it is presented etc. Pretty standard sections to have in most sciency conference papers are: Abstract Almost a summary thing, should have a little bit of intro, a little bit of info about experimental techniques and definitely some mention of results obtained. Introduction Provides background info to the topic and a lead in to specifically what you're investigating and why. Experimental (some times called Materials and Methods) Give information about what you actually did in the experiment (the idea being that the information you provide is sufficient that someone else could replicate your experiment and therefore validate/confirm your results). Results and Discussion Present your results and analyse/interpret them. Conclusions Usually a recap of what has been achieved (i.e. key results). References So that's for the written portion. For the presentation portion - it's pretty common to be using powerpoint (but don't dive right in creating the powerpoint presentation - you should have written the paper first, then it's just take selected info from the paper to use in the presentation) - but should check with conference organisers to see what facilities are available. If you do end up preparing a powerpoint presentation: - you don't have to include all the information that you included in the written paper (since most conferences produce a printed proceedings where your full paper will have been included - so your audience would have that to refer back to if they needed more detail) - adhere to the KISS principle: -> use the same slide background for the whole presentation (and the background shouldn't be too 'busy') -> keep animated transitions etc to a minimum (from past experience they're the most likely thing to stuff up) -> don't put too many words on any single slide (good presenters usually use the words on the slide as a frame work that they then verbally annotate) -> make sure images/graphs etc are large enough that the audience can actually tell what is going on -> if you are using the most up-to-date version of powerpoint - save your presentation as an older version (just incase the software at the conference isn't as up to date as yours) For actually giving the presentation: - practice, get your timing right. If you are always going over time then you are trying to present too much information and should cull some of the slides from your presentation (you can still have this more detailed info in your full paper though). - the most common error for first time presenters is going too fast - depending on how much you are 'verbally annotating' the slides you may only change slides once every 2 minutes. Not very common (for the conferences I've been to) to be asked to provide handouts - only occured once where the paper hadn't been published in the proceedings - in that case the handout was a copy of the full paper - not a printout of the slides used for the presentation. I don't know if all this information was overkill, hopefully at least some of it will be useful.

Yes is available, commonly sold as 'stardust' (both pink and white types). Generally considered more a terranium plant rather than a true aquarium plant. An earlier discussion on this plant: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/what-p ... 28018.html

Thanks Caryl - I stand corrected - V. spiralis is there too - though it does appear to depend on which list you look at. The initial list I looked at http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests-di ... t-list.htm only has V. gigantea listed. But then Caryl's link has both - no wonder I'm confused.