museeumchick

I just kept thinking - how would you clean that?! but looke wise there are some neet concepts, perhaps more practical with plastic fish and plants = no cleaning or animal welfare concerns?

yep We had one when i was little, so long as you have a large enough enclosure initially (and are patient and have tough skin for the taming of the damn thing, they are pointy pirds). ours ate mostly dogroll and meat scraps

mmm, so many palmy fishey people perhaps we should have a gathering? -hello by the way

I wondered that too google (Matamata, reptile) and you get some wicked gnarley turtle pics (kind of wierd looking) assuming this is what they ment

I heard a different version of this (well its similar) "life is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration"

I have southern bell frogs, they seem happy to eat anything that moves as much as or more than a meal worm. I am using meal worms as an easay staple for their diet (they also get lotts of other bits as i find things, and biosuppliers locusts if i'm feeling generous). although it seems i am a failure at meal worm farming, as my farm is rather pitiful production wise at the moment - i am working on it

Attention seeking behaviour methinks? thatll teach you for not thinking paying it enough attention :lol:

setting up for geckos doesnt take much (the cage specs are ont he herpetological soc website, and there are some threads on native lizards have a look) one thread had pics of some peoples setups too - try the reptiles and amphibians section from memory there needs to be mesh on 3 sides of the cage(mine had a mesh front and half of each end), think about where to put it, buy a neet tough pot plant or two for them to climb in (cheep at the warehouse or local garden centre) and make sure you can easily get at food and water containers (water needs to be shallow, some mentions of a drowning tendancy otherwise. you should be able to find a suitable cage second hand relatively cheeply and outfit it from there. also call your local DOC office for the application

good stuff y'all, am all for helping out but theres that travel thing, car pooling is such a good idea. what year is your son at uni? (maybe i know him). looks like all the hard work is paying off (not implying that the hard work is over, with animals it is never ending). Well done to all involved!!!

yep, but some of it counts as work (in the i'm learning about fishies n stuff kind of way) sort of... shall i call it networking? (well if my boss asks, thats what it is)

how about a crayfish/koura (my newest fave) -free! yopu just have to find them. or a native gecko? theyre excellent (although there will be setup and licence costs, as you cant buy or sell them its just a matter of finding someone with spares). or a pet rock (my old flatmate had a great fondness for rocks "who needs a girlfriend when you've got a rock" comes to mind), theyre cheep and easy upkeep. or a carniverous plant or some roaches (also easy to keep/hard to kill)? the gisborne ones are rather pretty, and when you get bored you could feed them to something. um..... so many choices

Another trip? yep absoloutely!!! how about this week sometime (during the day is good too) am trying to go away for the weekend but it might not happen, so just let me know what suits and i shall see whats what. Doing anything this arvo? work is soo super boring today (much waiting for people to get back to me with stuff, sigh).

the fresh water weed control unit? bullies and koura (although i suppose its just the pots the bullies were after so not so good in weed control, koura of the destruction are perhaps better - just send in a team and hope they dont all eat each other).

I work at the Te Manawa museeum, but share an office with no sciencey people (the other sciencey people are down the hall) Currently the consensus on the frogs is cute, and some even agree with me, that the koura is cuter than the baby (on a visit to be coo'ed over). what a great minagerie need some whitebait next (the unfrittered kind)

not pets, being rehabilitated back to the wild -even cooler livingart! my family had a 'pet' one when i was little - dont think it knew it was a pet though, too busy thinking yummy bugs n critters.... (it just lived near the house so inevidably got a name)

Neet! i must show all my flatmates so they can nod and smile (=look bored and back away slowly) thanks for thr trip everyone at th office loves the koura (a competitions over whether its cuter than the frogs).

I got straight B+'s and diddnt get in (to vet that is), that was enough for me - was ready to try something different. am now really glad i diddnt get in (i'm graduating from a BSC in Zoology and Ecology next month).

i know there are a few koura threads already, but i just wanted to make a short note of the coolness of them. mine settled in yesterday and is already marching about like he (or she) owns the tank - super cool! now i need some company (fast enough not to be food) for it super neet!

I got a little lazy and threw in a koura before fixing the slime problem, and he seems to be methodically destroying it! yay! i shall see what happens (no fish to be added until slime problem is under control) happy munching little koura

Thankyou and apoligies

good point there i think i mentioned earlier about captive parrots as a source for diseases in natives? even if there is no way a species can establish in the wild, let alone compete with our natives (although as stella mentioned, how can you really tell, some things act unpredictably) there are indirect impacts on our native wildlife. there are a whole lot of inconsistancies in these 'lists' of allowed and banned species (plenty of exceptions are made to anything of economic importance) and often they are obviously unfair but there is time and money that needs to go into changing these, and maybe one day it might happen (?) but for now i wonder whether we 'need' to import these species? so i'm not a serious hobbiest, so i probably dont get it, but i just wonder. while possums and rabbits were introduced with an initial purpose, things like heather and gorse were introduced to make settlers more comfortable (make it more homey here) and now they are quite serious pests. correct me if i'm wrong, not stirring (much ) just wondering.

MIce seem like a great pet idea if you have something that will eat the extras could havve done with a morepork to sort out mine (i bet they are neat pets, albiet a little hard to see)

even if we can keep exotics safely and effectively in captivity, do we need to? We have so many fantastic natives, i often wonder if we are justified in introducing 'pet' animals purely for our own enjoyment. also it is difficult to know what the long term effects of an apparently safe introduction will be (ie captice exotic parrots providing a pool of hosts for viruses attacking our native parrot species, who could know?!). r.e.1080, personally i am still on the fence on this one (yep its bad, but so is deet but when visiting the tropics i would rather use deet than get malaria/encephalitis etc.... lesser of evils?) -she says as she ducks for cover.....

Thats the one, she's so pretty. thanks Ballistic, geuss i'm lazy when it comes to computers

Nice one Bulldogod, it looks like a taniwha foot mine is a weta on my breast, no pics (cant be bothered) but its on the powerhouse tatoo site under greyscale images i think. i went in with my entomology diagrams and worked out an idea with the artist, turned out better than i hoped. just what i wanted! my dad doesnt know yet (and i've had it for 1+ years) but will have to tell eventually. there are plenty of people that matter to me who dont approve, but this i feel is an entirely selfish piece of art - its just about (and for) me. I chose a weta (after 2 years of Deliberation) as they are something i admire asthetically as well as an animal, and they apply to my interests and studies, and even my work (science geek type), it is easily hidden (in case of parents /employers), and well done so rather nice to look at aniway (no real need to hide it). they are soo addictive and i will soon be saving for the next one, i am thinking something with some interesting native plants (have started some sketches), but the hard part is where - i'd like it to be easy to hide so theres the option (should i need to cover them). some tatoos i think are awful (mostly badly done - make you feel sorry for the person with them - they have that on their body for the rest of their life! or threatening) but so long as it really means something to you, tatoos are great. :bounce: