gsveda

And Hollywood Fishfarm have just come back to me with the following: Also, before I started trying to talk to petshops, I found a website about NZ freshwater species (sadly didn't bookmark it) and emailed them and Dr. Clint McCullough replied with this information:

They didn't research it until I asked them about it from the sounds of it - they're feeding them that NovoTom stuff now though

Thank! In that case I won't mess with them

And then she really got up my nose and in the end I called her a name I shouldn't have, so that's definitely the end of my relationship with this particular vendor. Meantime, I've emailed a couple of other petshops and tried to be more diplomatic about how I approach the issue - see, I can learn from my mistakes! I also want to find out if they have any other advice for looking after the mussels than what we've gathered here, or found on forums around the place. Is JBL NovoTom and some home-cultured green water the best we can do? Speaking of, I've been using it for a couple of days now, and the little powder flecks of NovoTom do suspend in the water and not get sucked immediately into the filter. It's hard to tell if the mussels are ok but so far they're not trying to escape (apparently that's a good sign?) apart from one of them rotating itself 180 degrees on the first day, and I'm pretty sure they're the right way up (any advice for how to make sure I haven't got them upside down?) and they close up if I touch them gently so I know they're alive. One of the animates guys suggested sitting them on top of an upturned plate so they'll move down the slope towards the gravel and orient themselves on the way. Would that work or should I just trust that they're the right way up now if they're not struggling?

It's too late to take it back. However, I did actually mean it. I didn't want to cause offense - I actually like(d) their staff and spend alot of time in their shop. I just wanted to bring something to their attention and find out what their experience of buying and selling freshwater mussels is. But, I don't think her response was called for regardless of how annoyed she was. There are other ways that she could have dealt with the situation.

This was my email to them: Too much?

Also contacted Wonderworld Pet Centre in Rotorua ([email protected]) and received a really crappy response from Jo Drummond: I usually deal with the guys in the fish part of the store, and have never received anything other than excellent service from them (and I've spent a huge amount of money there in the last year or so). In one fell swoop this woman has soured any good feeling I had for them. I won't shop there again.

I've just contacted a guy called Brendon Mikkelsen from the Ministry of Primary Industries (which has absorbed what used to be MAF) and he's going to look into the mussel supplier and find out where the mussels are coming from and who's gathering them.

Also it says no new permits are being issued -what if the suppliers have an existing permit? Then they wouldn't be taking the mussels in contravention of the act, so it wouldn't be illegally selling them either. How could we find out who the supplier is, and whether they have the right permit to trade in them?

Can you please link to the full document/site where you're quoting from?

I did ask Animates to tell me, but he hasn't said where he's getting them from. Is it illegal to gather animals that don't have a protected status?

Fair enough. What have you done so far?

Great, off you go then! Pick a petshop that stocks mussels and get in touch with them. Unless when you say 'we' you aren't referring to yourself?

I'll do my best anyway

I looked it up, if I've got the right stuff it's actually NovoTom and it's described as: I think I'm still going to do the thing with the green water and the turkey baster as well

Update from Animates:

Thanks everyone. I sent an email via the Animates website about it, and got this response thismorning:

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that. I was a little panicky when I did that, but it was only thismorning so hopefully not much harm done yet. I'll test when I get home. The filter media is three plastic sheets with carbon on one side and filter wool on the other. What if I replaced them with ceramic noodles and filter wool instead? Would taking the carbon out of the equation help? I did hunt around in some overseas forums and found this description of how to feed their ones, I wonder if this method would work for my mussels? In the meantime I've bought some liquifry for my other tank and I'll try adding a bit of that to the small tank. And I found some stuff called 'nourish' at the petshop. The description says "Vitamin and amino acid supplement enhanced with iodine for freshwater fish", and it's a mixture of potassium iodide with spirulina and chlorella. The petshop guy thought that might help.

I did something really stupid, and bought some freshwater mussels without properly researching them first Now that I'm reading up on them, I’m horrified to discover these creatures are collected from the wild population and are most likely to starve to death slowly as there isn’t enough food in filtered aquarium water for them. I can’t find any good advice about feeding them or suitable substrate and temperature ranges. I have two mussels in a 40ltr freshwater tank, at 18 degrees. Tankmates are ten white cloud mountain minnows and two borneo suckers/butterfly loaches. Substrate is a fine gravel mix, and there are some plants and a bubbler in there as well. I need help finding out either how to keep them alive and happy, or if I would be better finding somewhere that has the same species and releasing them back in the wild. Is that even a good idea or would I be doing more harm than good? One of the overseas sites I found suggested using liquid fry food and using a dropper to squirt it into the water right where the mussel opens, but they also said it's probably going to clear too quickly for them to really get much of it. I'm very passionate about conserving our native wildlife, and the thought that I may inadvertantly be doing something cruel to such a neat creature really distresses me Any advice much appreciated ETA: In the short term I've removed the filter media so that all the goodness isn't immediately filtered out of the water as it circulates. I hope this won't cause anything distressful to happen to the fish in there though.

Thanks guys, I guess that leaves the mystery of how it happened. I'm scared to put him back in there incase he dies next time though - it was looking really bad for him for the first three days and he's only just started to come right.

In my planted tank I have three bristlenoses: one large male named Spike, one small golden female named Peach, and one medium sized female named Spot (we thought she was a boy, but apparently not). I have them cohabitating with emerald eye rasboras, marbled hatchets, siamese algae eaters, peppered corys, kribensis (two males, placid behaviour), and two apple snails (one golden, one pale blue). The tank is divided down the middle by a branch of wood, and the various schools have worked out their territories and tend to get on quite well, even at feeding time. So far so good, they're all eating well and behaving as expected, however Spike has recently become aggressive and tends to bodyslam my cory cats if they get too close to the burrow he's excavated in the gravel underneath the branch. We thought maybe he has eggs under there but until I can get hold of a little mirror on a stick, I can't see into the burrow to confirm it. The corys have moved to the other side of the wood where he doesn't hang out so that's ok, but now he's also taken to attacking my apple snails. He zooms out and rams into them until they tip over and retract. I discovered last week that one of my snails is now missing half of one of her labial feelers (the ones around the mouth part that look like moustache), and the other is missing a huge piece of flesh on his foot. I'm not sure whether the blame lies with Spike though - I haven't seen him biting, just ramming and chasing. I've moved both snails to my quarantine tank to recuperate. What do you reckon? Is Spike the culprit or am I unfairly pointing the finger at him just because he's the only one exhibiting aggressive behaviour? Is there anything I can do to break his behaviour? I thought maybe moving stuff around in the tank so he has to start again with the territory stuff, but the branch is too big to reposition. Maybe I should take away his girls? Poor damaged Blue (healing has begun so it's looking even weirder now):

Hi, I'm not sure whether to post this in the freshwater or saltwater forum - please let me know if I've done it wrong. My husbands parents have a marine tank at the moment, which they've had alot of trouble with and they've now decided that they'd rather sell the remaining fish and coral and change to tropical freshwater instead so they can have a planted tank that doesn't require as much fiddling. They're planning to rinse and scrub out the tank thoroughly and replace all the filter media and gravel etc, and give it a chance to cycle fully before they start to populate it. We weren't sure if that would get rid of enough of the salt residue, or if it would be better for them to set it up as a brackish tank rather than fresh. Can you guys offer any advice on this? If they do go to fresh, should we still look at salt hardy plants and fish and if so, are there any recommendations for starters?

Thanks guys, I'm sponging all your tips up so keep them coming I'm a bit confused about the water though. If I can't use chemicals in the water, but the natives are sensitive to water conditions, how do I get the water ready for them? In the past I've had goldfish and stuff like that, so I've always used a water conditioner but I gather that's not going to work well in this case. I saw a mention somewhere of leaving it in a bucket to let the chlorine gas dissapate, but what about the other stuff in it? Also, with 215 litres capacity I think leaving a day between buckets is going to be a mission Is it ok to use 'cycle' or will that cause me problems too? eep

I was thinking of getting some terracotta pipes and putting them on various angles with stones and wood piled over them, so there are little tunnels for the bullys and koura to explore, as well as getting a big bogwood piece with lots of contours and crevasses. I'm a bit sad about no plants though - could I at least get away with java moss or something that floats or grows on wood? Going purely native is out the window with the apple snail anyway but I definitely don't want plastic anything. I don't mind replacing plants as they're savaged, but something that lasts a short time would be nice As far as temperature, what would you recommend? I know everyone says under 20 degrees, but how far under is best?

I don't think I want to subject a warm water animal to a cold tank though, so I think I'll cancel the order on those. Are there any other algae eating fish that would be ok to use in a cold tank or are sucker fish all warm water ones? It's not going to be the same without some little guys boodling around sucking on the glass