BikBok

poor fish.. why didn't he just get a wet towel- stupid man. I wonder if he's been pricked by the odontodes before.. they can hurt! Maybe that's why he was scared of it.

Hi .. how is it all going now?

Hi jenniferh I don't feed jimbos' alone.. that's just the raw portion my cats get.. haha .. they get other stuff as well. (quality dry, fish, egg, chicken necks, mybeau etc) I know baby chicks would be really great for them!

raw feeders love them.. they've got meat, soft bone, offal, chewy bits everything. A lot of cat breeders feed them to their cats. I'm not game enough and just stick to raw meat in a jimbos pottle and the odd chicken neck. (raw not cooked)

i know a person that buys these for her cats.. (feeds them whole, good for them) She once bought a bag of newly gassed chickens , took them home and threw them in the freezer. A while later she heard a cheeping sound .. in the middle of the bag where it was still warm , she found a live chick. Yes this is a true story... can't remember what she did with it after that but i'm sure she didn't feed it to her waiting cats.

that little squiggly thing is different again.. it's not the white spot .. it's just holds the yolk in place and gets twisted when the yolk moves inside the shell.... and the fresher the egg , the more visible it is. It degrades over time.

nahh.. both eggs have a white spot .. in a fertlised egg the spot is more round in shape..

Well i transferred the fish and media from the little AR380 to the bigger AR850 today. It's been running a week with a couple of guppy fry but the media from the old tank should help it along.. won't be adding new fish for a few weeks yet. OK, i thought I was just going to pack down the AR380 into storage and keep it as a spare ... well no.. Miss 13 has other ideas and has done a spectacular job of getting it clean... then informs me she's going to turn it into a dwarf puffer tank.. her idea is to put two dwarfs in it and keep it in her room.. ha-ha so much for the single tank I bought a year ago. When she sets up the dwarf puffer tank (not without some research of course) We will have 3 tanks plus a quarantine /fry tank. Now I totally get "MTS" and it doesn't mean malaysian trumpet snail lol. The AR850 is looking good, it's a bit cloudy compared to the crystal water in the AR380 but I guess that will settle down. The guppys look rather small in it and mama guppy decided to go and have her fry today. I've got some driftwood soaking (Thanks Sam) and some plant to attach when it's ready. Will be planning to add 2-3 dwarf gourami, a rainbow shark and maybe 2-3 Otos. Question... Is it Ok for a guppy to eat a small ramshorn snail whole? We did have some baby ramshorns.. quite a few actually but i think the female betta ate them all as I saw her attacking them all and couldn't find them when I was emptying the tank.. found a single snail and as I dropped it in.. the guppy came and grabbed it and swallowed it whole.

oh so "smidey" should be pronounced "Smiddy" ? I was thinking "Smy - dee " in my head.

how can I pick a fav animal??? I love animals. But my pets of choice are Cats, Birds, Fish .

have you got a picture?

hmmm i guess I'm not used to drinking alone. It's usually me and hubby .. or the family if we're out and about. I'm used to the table and chairs setup.. or I just haven't noticed the bar style in Auckland lol . Makes sense for singles though..

Good coffee is my first decison on where to go for cafe break...and tasty food to eat with it. I don't mind paying extra if the quality is there. Would an aquarium attract me? .. sure, maybe the first time but to keep me going .. the coffee and food HAS to be good. Would it be just a single tank with 8 seats around it as pictured... I don't know that I would want to sit with a group of strangers in that format to drink Coffee.. that would be a put off. But if there were a few smaller tanks scattered around, that would certainly be a drawcard.. but more cost and work for you!

I don't think the vodka part is essential , just use a few extra drops of clove oil. .. but I'm sure meths would have the same affect as Vodka and the fish isn't going to know!

I'd prefer sedation first ... to go to sleep under anesthetic.. it's just like an operation .. it's a sedative first ..then you can overdose and /or poison with the vodka. (so they just don't wake up) I just can't handle the slamming into concrete thing.. what if they don't die straight away and flop around... no couldn't handle that at all. Clove oil is used for a sedative when shipping also... it clams them down.. when using to euthanise, the fish go peacefully... and there isn't the violent memories for the person doing the deed! Each to their own .. if you can handle giving out a quick swift death .. then good for you.. but the clove oil and vodka method is equally as humane for those of us more sensitive.

a few minutes for a guppy... it's very quick ... don't know about other fish ..

not a lot.. just a few drops. I put the fish into a shallow amount of tank water in a small Jimbos container (500g plastic pottle) about half full.. In another small container (i had saved for this purpose) i put some water and a few drops of the oil and shook it up so it was properly mixed (goes all milky) then added this to the jimbos container a bit at a time till he was asleep and then poured the rest in and waited for him to stop breathing.. then to be extra sure he wasn't still just asleep I added a few drops of vodka. The clove oil is very strong smelling so make sure it's not a container you want to keep and use for something else afterwards.. I used an empty glass essence bottle . The oil tends to stick to plastic.

clove oil .. it's cheap enough to buy from a pharmacy and keep on hand for emergencys. I actually had a bottle sitting in the cupboard for dental pain.. when I was pregnant I wouldn't take medicines.. endured a deep filling (almost a root canal) without anaesthetics.. ouchee!!!!!! But the clove oils helped.

clove oil and vodka method is what I used for my dying guppy .. clove oil to sedate and put into a sleep, add more till it stopped breathing.. .. then vodka to make extra sure I too could not use physical force to kill a fish ... just can't.

much better to get from a breeder if you can, or quarantine them. I had a bad experience with guppys from a petshop and now avoid live bearers from petshops.. however I did buy some nice wagtail platys and put them into quarantine for a month and they have turned out fine and bred lots of beautiful healthy fry... but it took me two-three months to find the right ones.. checking every petshop for weeks until I found some that looked ok. Seeing tanks of guppies and platy's with clamped fins was a real put off and I won't buy a fish from a tank with even one sad looking fish in it. The eventual fish i got were brand new stock so i took the best two. It worked out for me.. I know that's not normally the best thing to do ..(taking brand new stock) but they were cheap enough for em to take the risk and quarantine them myself.

lol... i thought as much.. rascal.. she'd just come out of the cage after having millet spray! she does need some fattening up though.

actually the more I think about it the more I believe she's asking for food .. like the chicks do. She is still young. when they want to poop.. they just poop agggh.

We didn't get Sunny back (so sad) but Emmie is providing a lot of joy. Here's a short video clip on my sons youtube account.. what is the sound she is making, anyone know.. Is it a juvenile sound? Is she begging for food or what?

oh that's a great game! and Billionaire if your ears can take it because people get very excitable and loud ! when I was young I went fishing, lizarding, eeling, bike riding and swimming. My two when they were preteens did outdoorsy stuff but as time goes on .. not so much. We have family game nights where the board games come out but it's otherwise hard to get them away from the pull of a screen.

yes, I see the site is coming up now.. I'll give them a ring later