David R

Petrol costs, and time is money....

Agreed, and I have actually had a business do that ($8 postage for a $45 soft-cover book which came in a large envelope with two 50c stamps!). Another thing I find very annoying is when you do a $1reserve auction, the item sells for $1-2 and then people complain about paying $8+ for shipping. :roll:

Do you mean what the courier ticket costs, or what the postage costs? Here's what the postage costs us at work: Courier tickets. We have to buy them by the book and sit on tickets, sometimes for 12 months or more, and at any given time we probably have over $500 tied up in courier tickets. Boxes. Either paid for ($1-3 each from packaging recyclers) or scrounged from the supermarket. Still not free as it involves a trip in the truck, somebodies time to collect, fsort and store them, plus the space they take up in the shed. Packing materials. Shredded paper takes time and electricity to create, and the paper has to be sourced. Same for scrunched up newspaper, polystyrene packing from stereos etc. Other miscellaneous. 'FRAGILE' tape, sellotape, envelopes for invoices, vivids for writing addresses etc. All cost money. Then there's the time it takes to find the right size box, estimate the weight of the parcel, decide on which courier ticket will be most cost effective, estimate packing/shipping cost, communicate this to the buyer, receive payment, pack the item, and phone the courier or take to post shop. Anyone who expects someone to do all that for free has got to be kidding themselves. Even with a small charge to cover the box and materials in almost all cases our shipping would still be done at a loss if a cost accountant was to work everything out.

pygmy chameleon?

Barrie how many of the species already here have been "totally tested"? You have to draw the line somewhere. At the very least you should be able to make a generic dispensation in cases where the members of a genus are all fairly similar, require similar conditions and pose similar risks. Uaru, Corydoras, Apistogramma and Polypterus are all cases where this could be applied.

Thats the problem with teasing people by allowing zoo's (and anyone with deeeeeep pockets) to keep cool stuff but making it almost impossible for the average joe. That there sums it up completely, supply and demand. Kinda OT; Security at Hamilton Zoo is pretty weak IMO. The first thing I thought when I went there years ago was how easy it would be for me to get a pet monkey. and no, it wasn't me either!!!

At work we always say "shipping at cost", and its amazing how many people assume that means the cost of the courier ticket. We normally charge for the courier ticket, box, and a bit more for packing materials depending on how awkward the items are to pack.

I heard today that a damsel fish had been spotted at the poor knights! Bring on global warming, soon I'll be able to keep an emperor snapper in a pond outdoors! Imsmith; your idea could work with reptiles and its something that has been discussed by some people. There is already a permit system for native reptiles, why not extend it to exotics? Its a really strange situation, no body wants to ban cats, dogs, pigs, sheep or cows, or roses, pine trees or grape vines. They all have big potential to establish themselves here, and some have. The list is very incomplete, the people monitoring it are clueless, the people who designed it even more so, and at the end of the day its local businesses that suffer the most from it. What was this thread about again? :-?

How about we start by banning goldfish, hillstream loaches and other temperate/cold water fish? and replacing them with endlis and other lower jaw polypterus! :lol:

Whats the difference between "job" and "role". You are the internet police, for this forum anyway, and part of that role/job is putting people back in line when they slip up. Nobody is perfect and its easy to slightly over-step the mark in a heated discussion, especially with strict guidelines as this site has. In my experiences as a member and moderator of other forums, people here are generally very well behaved and the mods have it pretty easy, very rarely is there a need to step in and lock/edit/delete threads. As I've offered before, if the mods feel they are over-worked or are sick of the job then I'm sure there's other people who would be willing to do the job, myself included. *edit* not having a dig at you lot who run the site, we all appreciate what you do.... 8)

Stella the problem lies with WHY they are not allowed into the country, and that the system was designed by a bureaucrat who knows nothing about fish/plants/reptiles. We bitch about it on a daily basis at work, as plants have an "allowed list" similar to fish. The survey of plants was done even less thoroughly than it was with fish and there are many species being grown commercially [that pose no risk to the environment] that are supposedly not allowed to be here. What Varanophile is saying is that the decision-makers need to either s*** or get off the pot, and make it clear in black and white what is and isn't allowed. BTW are you "horrified and disgusted" with all the people on this site who keep frontosa? They aren't supposed to be here, according to 'The List', but you can hardly claim that they are a big risk to the environment...

Isn't that their jobs??? If I deleted every thread I had to edit on the forums I moderate then there would hardly be any left. :roll:

I hope you've got my name on that list!! 8)

Can't even tell which one is my old one!! Looks good with the sand too, I bet the food bill is expensive!

Thats nearly irrelevant for aquariums though, as that would be the minimum rating for the floor in the most central point away from joists etc, IE 2Kpa on the point of a fat womans high heal. You need to look at where the joists and beams run and position your tank in a way that the load is spread out over them. Unless it is a tall thin tank I wouldn't worry too much, the whole thing will only weigh around 400kg, which is about as much as two chubby people on a water bed [eew!].

Thats because I don't think they are aggressive. Not for central americans anyway. JD's tend to ignore other large-ish fish that ignore them, in my experience anyway. They are more than capable of defending themselves if needed though and definitely aren't a community fish, they just aren't particularly aggressive as far as cichlids (especially central americans) go.

They do need to be acclimatised gradually. I put mine in a bucket and use an airline to slowly trickle the water in over the course of half an hour or more. Check your pH and the pH of the water they're in, going from harder water to acidic isn't such a big deal, but going from soft to hard needs to be done very gradually, maybe even over a few days. Good advice about the size thing too, the small ones at the LFS are still very much touch-and-go at that size. I would seriously suggest setting up a quarantine tank once you've and quarantine any new arrivals (particularly loaches) to minimise the risk of disease.

Oscar could eat the lionheads when it gets bigger. Convicts will breed and all hell will break lose (unless you have 5 males or 5 females). The angelfish and acaras will probably get picked on by the more aggressive fish. I'd say get rid of the angels, acaras and lionheads, just keep 1-2 male convicts, and perhaps keep some medium sized central american cichlids like firemouth, salvini or possibly a green terror. You could probably add some catfish like pictus or chocolate talking cats, and maybe some fast swimming dithers like bala sharks, apollo sharks, or silver dollars. Alternately keep the acaras, angels, lionheads and get rid of the others. Add some geophagus like altifrons ["surinamensis"] or leucosticta ["juripari"], and some other peaceful medium sized fish.

Don't worry Barrie, I still did plenty of that, along with watching cartoons. I actually think I started watching them more in my late teens.. :oops:

Didn't that get banned because they had characters like "Seaman Stains" and "Roger The Cabin-Boy". :-?

Even he doesn't perhaps you could get your male and his female together to breed and go halves in the eggs/young.

If you're serious about letting it roam, and worried about it getting pinched you could talk to the people that make the Blackhawk GPS tracker for cars and see if they could adapt it to be small enough to attach to the tortoise.

Anything with Dick Dastardly and Mutley in it, especially Stop The Pigeon. Also really liked old [pre scrappy doo] Scooby Doo. As for modern cartoons, the Simpsons still has to take the cake, its just funny on so many different levels and is always entertaining no matter how many times you've seen the episode. Aqua Teen Hunger Force also really appeals to my warped sense of humor. A pack of fries, a milkshake and a meatball from outer space living on earth with a white-trash neighbor, whats not to love!

Yikes! See pics like that all the time on MFK, big catfish with aroawanas or knife fish hanging out their mouths, only recently someone lost a 12" endli bichir when it choked on a big convict. Odd to see the male trying to eat the female though!

meh, doc, maf, erma, they're all just bureaucrats to me... :lol: