museeumchick

The off balance swimming suggests there might be a swim bladder problem, maybe?? But best to wait for a goldfish expert to reply. good luck

Sounds marvellous! A pity about the state of the river though I have my sister visiting next weekend and methinks I am going to take her kick sampling for bugs (the turitea and perhaps other patches). Fun fun fun

GAh! i am sooo glad to be back at work and enjoying the air conditioning. do you think the landlord would mind if i put a fishpond in the lawn? then i could sit in it and be nice and cool (non toe biting fish only). :lol:

The exhibition is supposed to run for 4 years (latest info I've recieved) and i think that will be an at least. Also the 'discovery centre' part with live animals and stuff is liaable to hang about even longer. but dont quote me on that, firm info is at least 4 years

Te Manawa here in palmy will have natives in it's river exhibition due to open in early 1010, the only question will be which ones and how big I can convince them to make the tanks. Eels are also a likely edition in the wetland that will be built in one end of the exhibition (despite my concerns that they will escape as eels do, and go a wandering about the place )

interesting animal psychology going on i was wondering if all animals can be domesticated? (vaguely remember some lecture mentioning that horses were able to be domesticated while zebra weren't.... and relating it to things like what sort of society humans had in what areas of the world, depending on what they could domesticate) some super interesting ideas (despite the exceptional vagueness of the remembering).

I agree completely, v strange ideas he has

Sad day so i got to work this morning to find one of my beautiful bullies all black and dead on the bottom of the tank. well time for a water change and corpse collection methinks. although on a brighter note, i think the others are ok (hard to tell as they are small and hide so are hard to count). not a great start to the day

am far less likely to accidentally maim myself with plastic ones, also plastic suits my studenty budget far better.

excellent!!!! i was going to be a samurai pizza cat but there was a disappointing lack of plastic samurai swords in palmy at the time

i have some bullies (as of a week-ish ago) and i have been treating them for whitespot as they tend to come from the wild with it already. well it looks like i forgot to take this into account in the last water change adn now my fish are spotty sigh :oops: sorry fishies, i will fix it not really a useful topic, nmore a notice on my general failings (must pay more attention! i know better).

i have fed them to my frogs in the past with no apparent issues, although they do hide quickly so the hunters need to be quick or they wont be seen until the cage gets re-landscaped. but beardies might be different :bounce:

the frog info from otago university says that frogs dont like a dirt/mud surface so i just went from there. my pond is self contained so the rest of the terrarium is land. for the land part I put in some rocks/sand for drainage (my froggies love to splash the water out of the pond and I dont want to drown the plants) then dirt/leaf litter then I planted sphagnum over that with a couple of ferns still in their pots (so theyre easy to move/take out) tucked into the top layers (still above the gravel/sand layer though). most of my tank is sphagnum and the frogs seem to like it, and it looks great so will prob stick with that.

Thanks mel I have had planty of positive comment from my entomology lecturers so it must be good, although thats to be expected as I did give the designer my insect ID books to draw it from. I am now looking for a plan for the next one, i am thinking some native plants this time.

:lol: Livingart well methinks she gave up on my spelling etc... a long time ago (hopeless case methinks).

I have a friend that used to do that around palmy on a saturday night out, mostly removing surplus apostriphes Strange lady

Sounds awful, and terrible timing too - murphy's law? heres hoping there are no more losses and things sort themselves out soon.

I am thinking green and golden bell introduced from Oz Litoria aurea do some googleing (sometimes hard to distinguish from southern bells in a pic, is its back bumpy or smooth). :bounce: On second thought, i'm pretty sure its a golden bell as there are those distinct stripes from its nose and along its sides.

We are doing a secret santa sort of christmas this year and I already have it pretty much sorted although I am travelling to Cambodia in Dec so will likely to be broke after that. S'ok though, I'm used to it having recently been a student = 4 years of broke (the main thing is to avoid more debt, dont even want to think how big my loan is at the mo). Christmas is going to be many rellies trying not to kill each other (accidentally via severe gardening - Grandpa's traditional christmas habit and on purpose - grr, small and irritating cousins to be fed to the dogs?) its gonna be fun! although I will be missing those who cant be with us (A cousin in Afghanistan and dad in Cambodia and rellies in Belgium etc...) christmas is all about people and excessive consumption of christmas pudding (and other great foods), the pressies are just a bonus.

I have two southern bells and at least one is a male as we have heard some croaking, but not much. they have been really active, although were shy to begin with. And are the most fun to watch at feeding time. Only other thing I can think of is to keep an eye out for fungal growth in the tank and remove it, but I havent had any issues with this. Pretty easy pets really - feed, change water, and watch contentidly for hours

Sorry guys, i am severely lacking in a digital camera :roll: I shall see how organised I am and borrow one maybe, but am notorioulsy unorganised at such things so we shall see

Thanks Stella

Thanks Stella