twinkles

i have to recomend ford laser hatchbacks, cause i have one lol its only 1200cc = really cheap to run the hatchback boot is heaps bigger than most, which is why i chose it, plenty of space for dogs and bags and stuff. Mine was $1500, they're pretty cheap. And manual. Backseats fold down for more space, once put 4ft and 3ft tanks plus my two giant dogs in with the back seats down

welcome

I have a pair of angels in a 220L tank, with no other fish except bristlenoses. They're supposed to be a breeding pair but haven't bred for me yet. When i first got them they spent most of the time cruising around together, then the larger one started picking on the smaller one. I thought maybe they were getting ready to breed but they've only got worse. 90% of the time its the big one nipping at the little one and it spends most of its time hiding in the vall at the back of the tank, but every now and then it chases the big one away instead. My bristlenoses have also lost the tips of their tails this week, which i assume is from one or both of the angels picking on them. Should i be worried about them fighting? They haven't hurt each other at all yet, but the little one looks sad hiding in the back. Would adding a few more angels help spread out their attention and stop them picking on each other? Should i take the bristles out? Could i add some other fish to the tank instead to distract them, they eat anything guppy sized but i'd love some rams in there.

maybe ours is a rebel, he's always in sight, most noticable fish in the tank. He lives with guppies, bettas and a rainbow.

hehe i can feel smart for once now i'm glad to know what they are, don't like calling them 'black whiptails', they're not even black lol

doesn't the book call them r.lanceolata? The other name is for the fish above

aww dey so cute whose possum? such sweet little things when they're all ears and legs like that

i've got 3, they only eat meat, don't touch my plants except to hang off. They love bloodworms, suck all the redness out and leave the icky clear skins behind Bought mine as 'black' too, glad to see a proper name for them to go on.

she looks like some sort of copper/iridescent purple very nice that tail looks quite long too, love to see it flared

i paid $52 for a pair, female keeled over a few days later the male didn't look like much at the shop, but i'd seen how great they look in pics so i thought i'd see how he turned out, first week he stayed pale and hid in the plants, then he decided he likes it here and went like that one in the pic above, and started spending all his time at the front of the tank Can't wait for more. He's bigger than 1cm now too, maybe 2cm with his tail?

i have one, and really want more if i can find them anywhere he doesn't seem bothered to be by himself though, he's really bold and cocky, super greedy lol. he'll even tear off pieces of bloodworm out of the bettas mouths

i've given up on getting any help from the iwi group, they still haven't got back to us. been searching all morning for any examples of using trees to protect stopbanks, and finally found the right terms to put into google for what i wanted seems every other council in the country uses a system like this to protect their stopbanks from washing away - the page i found that pic on also had some good information on native plants to use in each zone, flax, cabbage trees, manuka, totora etc. also spent ages searching for anything to back up the engineers claims about why all the vegetation must go - he says having vegetation and trees between the river and stopbank will mean that in a flood event trees and logs coming downstream will be grabbed and turned by the trees, then flung into the stopbank like battering rams to bash through it. He seemed to delight in trying to scare the neighbours with his image of a giant log smashing a hole in the bank and our houses washing away. So i searched and searched for any information on this, but couldn't find a single scrap of anything. I didn't think it made logical sense What i did find was loads of info about when stopbanks have failed in the past, everytime due to water flowing underneath and tunneling them out from the bottom. And every council document i could find on the subject detailed their plans for heavy plantings next to the stopbanks to create an area of slow water flow, rather than the raging torrent a grassy paddock would become. What started out as wanting to save our swamp has begun to include saving our houses, i dread to think what would happen in a major flood with nothing but grass next to the stopbank. So now i think the best move is to try and compile all the reports from other councils, and take it to the local council and maybe someone higher up at horizons, questioning why they are taking the opposite aproach to every other river in the country.

my condolences

lol, its easy to jump to conclusions when you wake up and see something like that wriggling around though be freaky if it turns out to be a real natural leg, but somehow i doubt it

they do look quite young, where did you get them from?

he looks happy, congrats :bounce:

i'm keen

can't wait for the autopsy results

me too

they were good in a way, cause they did show that there's a whole street of people (and homeowners) who are angry they haven't been consulted, and are against all their plans rather vocally. Doc just said to talk to the iwi person who didn't make it today, and let them know how we get on once horizons has finished talking to us. Set a trap a few times for fish, but haven't caught anything, and don't like to set it when i'm not sure i can get back over there to check it fairly quickly. Saw the grey ducks again today, they look like they're building a nest there. Its so sad, our family of (native) paradise ducks were shot last season, all 10 of them, and that one pair of greys are the only native ducks left on this part of the river. There's just mallards otherwise. Yes i read that article, it peed me off, everywhere else in the country is protecting their rivers and wetlands, while ours removes them and grazes cows in the river :evil:

well it went ok our main talking person, from the iwi group thing, never showed apparently she'd had to race off to a tangi so we had 10 half drunk raving maori neighbours with a guitar, me and my family, and the couple from across the road who look like bushmen. It was lol :lol: for the first while it went the same way as most meetings do when everyone has a different veiwpoint and wants to have a say - a hole bunch of people raving about different things and shouting over the music. Me who hates any public talking had to try and guide things in the right direction, and we got there eventually. He contradicted himself a million times in response to direct questions, he said twice that they were going to fill in the swamps and raise the ground level, and also said twice that they weren't going to do that at all, but dig big drainage ditches in to drain them. Eventually we managed to get him to agree to look at making a concesion, where the area between the bush/swamp and the river would be cleared (all pest trees) then replanted with flax and toitoi. The bush and swamp would then have the poplars removed, and some trees 'may be able to remain', but he wasn't willing to give any firm statements on what he'd even investigate as an option. It was agreed at the end that he'd come back early next week, and go over the area with us, using the old electric taping thats over there to mark out the area we definatly don't want cleared, so he can get a better idea of it. We'll be doing that this week so we've got it marked properly before he shows up At least its a step in the right direction, and we know now no contractors are going to show up for a few weeks yet. Will be making sure that the no-show people are here early next week too.

eventually, after a long time, alot that look like wild guppies - short tails, rainbow colours. In the short term though, or if you add in the occasional fancy guppy from time to time, you'll get all sorts of cool random patterns and colours

sorry i meant i agree with skippy over culling. aquiliam - i think with guppies culling unhealthy ones should mean killing, how else do you make sure they don't breed? pheonix - yes widen the gene pool as much as possible, to lessen the chances of a whole strain having a particular problem, but the main problem lies in people breeding for colour/tail shape over everything else. If people are selecting breeders firstly for health, then looking at the colour, we'd have much nicer guppies

agreed. i've had the occasional one pop up thats not perfectly straight, and it goes straight into the angels tummies Another thing that makes a difference is having at least the parents, and even better some other fish in the tank. Only the fastest and healthiest survive, if they're too slow at birth they're gobbled up fast. I'm really strict about only selling and breeding the healthiest, i figure if i'm going to breed guppies there's no point breeding unhealthy butt ugly things, better to cull alot to start with and get good healthy lines. Giving away or selling any with defects only serves to worsen the problem, because you can't stop guppies breeding and most people buying them from petstores will end up giving away or returning their defective babies in turn. The more people start breeding nice healthy gups the better, with more of them out there people have the option of buying healthy fish. Some petstores lately seem to only have mutant guppies, i've seen tankfulls with no straight ones at all

when he's not busy trying to mate, try getting a pic in a smaller container so he stays more still, and use a light over the tank with the flash turned off. I'm no good at getting pics either but thats two tips that have improved mine a bit lol. If you use a round container like a jar sit it in the tank so you don't get the funhouse mirror effect hehe.