preacher

Next time

Oh Stella! You should have said you were coming down I would have met you in the Hutt Valley and taken you to some great spots thats are teaming with fish. One has Whitebait galore, bullies, eels.... Oh well, next time let me know in advance. P.

I picked up 3 from the local petshop for $12. Thanks for your help P.

Pond liner is cheap and easy, but as Ira says its pretty weak. For mine I dug the shape out, removed any stones, roots etc that might have a sharp edge. Then laid down some cheap weedmat as a protective layer between the soil and the polythene. For a small pond I would use one layer of polythene, but for one your size I would double layer just for the extra protection. If your going to use gravel I would put a layer of sand or fine sifted topsoil down first, just to try and protect the polythene. Above all, plan, think and have fun! P.

The Hutt River is full of life. Bullies by the dozen, common, red fin, blue gill... not so sure on crans and I am sure I have seen a couple of giant bullies there (they were certainly huge, around 15cm? I have caught Inanga there, shrimp and evil troutlets. Just down the road in Belmont park are Koura. Your in Stokes Valley? If you go down the road toward Silverstream, across the road from the Railway museum is a small off the road pumping station? If you go down to the river at night behind it, where the weir crosses the river and look in the shallows you should see lots of bullies, shrimp around the top of the weir and if your lucky some whitebait. Peter.

Sorry, Its the only place I can put the photo's at the moment. If I could link them in here I would. Maybe someone else can save the photo and do that? P.

Hi all You can see the latest pics of the pond at : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nzfreshwa ... bum/0/list look under Peters Pond. Sadly I found another large Cray that had died. Not sure why, it was just curled up on the bottom as if it was asleep. I fished it out, turned it over and found a bunch of tiny baby crays (dead) under its tail. It must be that time of year. I put 2 goldfish, some bullies and 2 baby inanga I had in the quarantine tub outside. I checked on the tub on a regular basis and thought they were fine, but at some stage all but the 2 goldfish and 2 largish bullies jumped out and became hedgehog dinner. Oh well, such is life

Hope you didn't bring home the eel! It must be a very fast flowing stream for torrent fish, what a cool find P.

Well I don't want to go removing threatened species just for a pond. If they were reasonably common that would be a different story. Cheers all. Appreciate the help. P. Oh Stella, we have met. I came up with a couple a girls from the Upper Hutt society a few months back when there was a tank crawl on.

Hi all, I am coming up from Wellington to Hamilton around December 8th, possibly auckland december 9th. Does anyone know where I can get 2 - 4 fresh water mussels? Cheers Peter

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/nzfreshwater/ Goto the pictures and look up Peters Pond Note you have to join the group of course. I have put a couple of new bis of wood in the pond, it was cool moving some of the rocks around and finding the Koura. 2 were tucked up beside each other in a large hole and another was tucked away with a bunch of shrimp around it!

2 were about 3-4cm and ones about 5 at a guess. The 4th I think was 3-4cm. I had a nice discovery in the pond tonight, 2 new frogs! and one looks suspiciously like a girl. 3 are very definately green and just sit there while you pick them up. The 4th is much lighter in colour and hides at the first sign of trouble. I hope they mate, my 3 yr old daughter would love it! How do you cut up your frozen ox heart? Or do you just grate it while frozen? P.

I had a good look at the 2 whitebait (after trying to catch the little buggers for 3 days!) and they appear to be free of whitespot. But I put them into the tank with the goldfish. Sadly I lost one of my large Koura who moulted and got its claws stuck I also went down the river looking for some new bullies now that I have the salt tank ready. I caught 3 tiny evil troutlets (the 4th escaped me) plus a few bullies. Thanks again for your help Stella, hopefully this time round I will have some success P.

1tsp = 1oz doh! 5tsp = 1oz (changes things just a little huh hehe) so in fact 1000tsp = 200oz salt which at 16oz per lb is 12.5lb's of salt for the pond. Now that is more like it. Mind you I now have my 2 goldfish swimming in 5 times the salt they need Good thing it's going to rain tonight, though I think I will go change the water a bit too

Dear Lord when you work it out thats one hell of a lot of salt! 1/2tsp = 1oz therefore 1000tsp = 1000oz salt! 16oz per lb is... 60lb of salt! Yikes! THUD......... uhhh someone get the license of that elephant... now the Daphnia tub is 52*42*25... near 50L which is 25tsp... now that sounds far more reasonable! Does salt kill daphnia? Im not terribly bothered if it does. P.

Not sure where I got 130L from... If my numbers are right, then its over a 1000L (which seems much closer to reality) L*W*H / 1000 yes? Shallow end : 190cm*110cm*20cm = 418000/1000 = 418L Deep end : 150cm*140cm*34cm = 714000/1000 = 714L Remaining : 70cm*50cm*5cm = 17500/1000 = 17.5L Which I make out to be 1150L Bearing in mind the pond is rather full at the moment I would guess its closer to a 1000L normally. P.

Ok, well at least salt is cheap (and fortunately I have a huge pile of it in the cupboard from my model tank making days). I will give it a go. Last time I worked out the litres it was about a 130. Your the best Stella Btw, If I manage to find some fresh water mussels later on, would the salt affect them? Do you think they would be Koura lunch? Much as I would love some freshwarer crabs too I suspect they would very quickly become Koura bait!

Yeah, ton's of hiing places. It was amazing to see how much dirt the Crays moved to make their tunnels! The bullies died, I didn't think releasing them back into the wild was a very good idea. Strangely enough I have never seen a cray go for the bullies, indeed the bullies seemed to delight in swimming around the crays, they certainly didn't seem bothered by the crays. Mind you I havent had a Bullie nest, near as I can figure the last bullie perished about 2 weeks ago and I lost 2 whitebait about a week ago. The 2 remaining whitebait are swimming too fast for me to see if they are infected, the 2 goldfish don't appear to have been affected at all. I plan on moving the 4 fish to the daphnia tank tonight, what would be a good treatment to use on them just to be sure they are clean? The pond is so much fun, seeing all the bugs and life. The whitebait were even swimming in and out of my fingers at one stage. P.

I don't think temperature is much of a problem, at least at the moment. When we get to mid summer it might be a bit different. I do have a large storage bucket outside with lots of daphnia and duck weed in it. Not much else though, nothing for the fish to hide in. Thats all I have which I could isolate the fish in. At the moment theres only the 2 goldfish and 1, possibly 2 whitebait. Plus about 14 very active Koura and goodness knows how many shrimp and snails. I try not to do enourmous water changes, plus the water runs through 2 mini pools before going into the main pond. As for pictures, sure I can upload some to : http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/nzfreshwater/ Look under Peters Pond Note the pond is essentially the August 08 makeup, with some slight alterations. There is more wood and rocks, including a wall of rocks cutting across the shallow end between the branch going across and the small pile in the centre.

They are so much fun, I suspect they killed my lily and one other plant in my pond. Strangely enough they appear to have left the other 5 alone. I have lost the tags to two plants, but the others in my pond are : Juncus Effusus (common soft rush) (Bugger my torch just ran out! Time for the back up) Ranunculus Amphitirichus (Waoriki) NZ Native (Ewww! Its 1am, cold and pissing with rain! Why am I doing this now!) Rotala Macranda They were all left in their origional pots, and the Koura definately go around them all, though they do prefer the deeper part of the pond to the shallow where most of the plants are. P.

I went to the local pet shop and they gave me a bottle of something called BLUE CIRCLE WHITE SPOT CURE. Any good? It conveniently comes in drops per gallon so I suspect I may well have seriously under/over medicated the fish trying to treat the pond. I was also using some anti-chlorine and anti algae (the ones you get at the supermarket) treatment. I tried to keep the pond as clean as possible, plus change the water every few days but with all the rain we have been having here plus my shift work at the local hospital its hard to get outside.

Well I was struck by the white spot curse again For now I will stick with my shrimp and Koura and hold off getting any more native fish until I figure out what to do. The 2 goldfish in there don't seem to be affected at the moment. Ive tried everything I can think of from treating the water to water changes. The only thing I can figure is something is seriously stressing the fish out, though they seem happy enough (Im thinking maybe I'm not oxygenating the pond enough?) My Koura are certainly happy, they are out and about all the time and I even see one or 2 out in the day. I noticed one the other day that has had a scrap with someone and lost a claw. I wonder though, does anyone know how Shrimp mate? Last night I saw something unusual, 2 large shrimp with smaller shrimp riding their backs. I know they start as males and then change to females as they grow up. P.

I've not seen an 'All Black' bully in the wild before. (Sorry, just couldn't resist). What species is that? P.

Aren't they so. I love going out and shinging the torch in the pond at night, you just never know who's crawling about and which rock a heads going to dive under. Just when you think you know where they are, they surprise you! I found a dead weta in the pond today... I wonder how long it will last?

Hi all, it's definately getting warmer alright. We've had 3 days of glorious sunshone here in the Hutt Valley. I went out last night to a dwindling pool by the river and picked up a few more bullies for the pond (nice big fat eel in the pool too, wonder what he's been eating...) I went out to the pond tonight with the torch to check on them all, spotted 2 nice fat Koura lurking about and got the shock of my life when I saw a frog on a log. I went back out later and found a second in the weed. It's months since we last saw them, I hadn't expected them so early in spring though. Hoping we get some spawn, my going on 3 year old would love it. I wonder if the Koura will enjoy playing with the tadpoles.... P.