twinkles

looked at him this morning and it was gone :bounce: must have fallen off and been eaten by the snails :oops: he looks much nicer

i don't know much about goldfish, but what about a type of food that comes in little goldfish-sized portions, so kids can feed them without overfeeding? Either little lumps of food (maybe frozen?) or a container with a dispenser like the ones you get for baby formula? Then it could be marketed for kids fishtanks.

I have two male and four female gardneri blues in a 35L, and they get along great. One male is dominant but they don't fight or anything, and its losely planted so they can hide if they want to. And have two male australes like in oeminx's pic in a big tank, and they stay together the whole time, seem like friends. The females are very pretty too, much more colourful than some of the other species girls.

depends what sort, big or little and if they're all girls, mixed, all boys etc. what are you thinking of?

i agree, there's a market for smaller size food, or even ground flake. If i could buy it ground up for fry i would, and even the adult gups can't manage the whole flakes, they like them crunched up a bit. Since alot of people have community tanks of small tetras, danios, guppies etc a small flake food would be good

lol When I first noticed it, it was sort of flatter on his skin, now its seperated more and only half is attached, sort of looks like its coming off. Can't see any sign of an injury, and it doesn't look sore, more like a warty thingy. Think its safe to watch it for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes?

he's in our 200l fry tank at the moment, want to make sure its nothing nasty and contagious before he goes into our community tank.

picked up mr pleco today, he's got too big for their tank. Tried to get a clear photo of it but these are the best i managed - doesn't seem to bother him, its been there a while now and he's growing super fast.

yes, and good role models. My son learnt as soon as he could crawl, that when you finally grab a handful of the cat, it runs away, but if you sit with mum and pat softly with an open hand then you actually get to touch it I'm very firm with visitors that i expect them to show the same respect towards our animals as my children do, all good if they don't have pets at home and need some help to learn, but i can't stand parents that turn a blind eye to what their kids are doing, say 'they're only stupid animals', then complain when their child runs up to a strange dog, pulls it tail and gets bitten.

logical consequences ie, my four year old daughters cat is very tolerant and laid back luckily, but she knows if she wants to play with him she has to be very gentle and nice. She can put him in the baby carriage and cart him around, but if she picks him up too roughly or shouts, he'll be off and she's lost her playmate. Didn't take her long to learn that nice patting and nice talking will encourage him to stick around and play the game. Same with the dogs, my shepherd can be sat on, dragged around, dressed up, but if there's any sibling arguements, or anyone gets too rough, he'll come and sit with me and refuse to play anymore. Our other dog is 14 and both kids know all they're allowed to do with him is pat him gently, and if anyone tries to sit on him it will hurt him and they wont be allowed to play with him anymore. Animals can be a great way to teach kids how to behave with other people, as well as with animals.

the problem then, is how to convince useless parents to bother bringing their kids up properly when they have no morals themselves. More focus on it at school? Parenting classes at high school? Of course that just dumps more work on the teachers.

there's no way of stopping this sort of thing with harder punishments, that wont stop them wanting to do it, or change the mindset that goes with it. Its up to the parents to teach - by modelling - respect and empathy, so their children would be horrified to hear about something like this. Its when you get parents who are mean to animals, or their kids, so the kids are brought up thinking thats the way to behave, and just take it a little further from kicking the cat to chopping off its paws. If they had any empathy taught to them they wouldn't dream of doing something like that, punishment or not.

i'm sure they would if they could

mine try to get it on with each other, even though they have girls. They seem to think the black spots on the wild type and snakeskins are gravid dots, its funny watching two males display to each other

98 fleas?

If you want to leave food for someone to feed them, get one of those 7day pill boxes from the $2 shop, the ones with 28 tiny boxes, and put there food for each feeding into a box. Then you don't have to worry about them being overfed. I get someone to feed mine if i'm away more than 2 days, and just write the days onto the boxes so there's no confusion.

i thought someone would say that, i'll try to grab one next time i'm in there. They're like reddish-warty things.

are they the same strain? or were the girls already preggy?

i'm trying to choose which carnivorous fish to buy, to feed up on the ones like this. i've read its from inbreeding, damage as fry, or disease.

this boy's a mottly-spotty tabby, perfect camoflage, i've had a few tabby cats but nothing like him.

i've known one case of a feral dog, and it was the pup of a pig dog that was lost in the bush. Pup was captured by another hunter when it was a young adult, and is still wild. Its owned by someone who does dog rescue, and has the run of her farm, sticks around but wont let anyone else touch it. I don't think there's packs of feral dogs roaming the bush, but maybe someone else can prove me wrong?

They're not just in around people, there's actually too seperate categories of feral cat under the most recent legislation on it, one being feral cats that live in cities or around people, and scavenge for food, the other being truly wild cats that live and hunt in the bush. My partners cat came from the middle of the bush near ruapehu, someone stumbled across him and his brother in their nest, 10 days old. He's a beautiful cat, different from any pet or town feral, with camo markings and a perfectly balanced body. Which suggests to me there's a good few generations of bush cat natural selection in there.

i didn't know they can spread tb? I thought it was only possums that do that. But I know nearly every feral i've trapped has had either ringworm/feline herpes/feline calici/or feline aids. Not nice to have around.

i'm not saying feral cats don't kill lots of birds, skinks etc just that ferrets are better mass slaughterers, but cats are worse because of the sheer number of them. Cats are more likely to catch a bird, play round with it, and eat it, but a ferret will kill the bird, leave it, and go looking for the rest of its family. But the point i was trying to make at the start, was that instead of banning ferrets, they would have done better to introduce better controls on owning and breeding all pet species. Perhaps we should ban cats, dogs and rabbits and make everyone keep fish?

Chased our preschool pleco out of his spot today so i could get a decent look at him, hardly ever see him, and he has these funny lumpy things on the side of his mouth. They weren't there a couple of weeks ago, and they don't look like bristles on a bristlenose, plus they're only on one side. Any suggestions what they are?