chopper

When you clean your tanks pour the water (especially the mulm from bottom of tanks) into the outside buckets. The Goldfish excrement present will make it bloom , initially having it in direct sun helps too but it can be moved into shade later after it has seeded (if the nutrient levels in water are up kept). Once you have established an initial amount of green water you can use small amounts of it to seed other containers.Having snails in the bucket helps as they excrete lots of waste (feed them high protein fish food to make better blooms). I have green water in the shade and during winter and I live in blenheim, it really depends on how much nutrients etc in water .

I was joking. I would never shoot a domestic cat or one close to human habitation , wild cats are a different story though, they are fair game!

Feed em earthworms, blood worms, guppies, neons,prawns

Get a dog! I used to have problems with cats pinching my goldfish but not after I got my dog only have kingfisher probs now but its worth it as I like those birds. Apparently cats are allergic to bullets as well, gives em lead poisoning!

Use it for eel bait! Its always sad when a cool fish dies but is interesting as you can get an up close hands on look at them with out the risk of harming them. I have kept both types eel before but not together. I prefer the tyre track myself but for no particular reason. Have seen pictures on the internet of people who have successfully housed them together.

I use this method to make aquarium dividers instead off egg crates. Follow this link (or copy and paste). http://shelldweller.myfastforum.org/about4.html. Does the job for most fish species but had a jag cichlid that used to jump it (before he was moved to his new tank) to waste my oscars!

I would like to say Arowana as I love those but they really are not as interactive as others I have had. So i would have to say jaguar, jack dempsey, siamese fighter, giant gourami, red devil, in that order. Oscars are pretty cool too! I must have kept close to a hundred species of fish over the years both personally and at work. Big puffers are by far the most interactive and can be taught to swim in particular rotations and squirt water at you to get food so they probably are the best if you can get one.I have had heaps of cool big fish and rare ones and many which cannot be kept at home but am still drawn back to the humble goldfish which is still one of my favourites.

Ya guppies may have to watch out for your goldfish. If he is big enough he may eat them, I had one that ate all my white cloud mountain minnows once!

Was pretty good episode made me laugh a little though due to its sensationalism. I have been bitten by big longfinned eels dozens of times their bite is very week and only draws a little blood. Feels like two metal files getting hold of you and pulling back, barely grazes the skin. Good show though I enjoy Jeremy Wade, he had an earlier series called Jungle Hooks as well if you are interested.

Fly me up from down south and I will come help ya! Hehehe. You can actually make quite good sumps quite cheap using plastic bins and buckets from the warehouse and payless plastics etc. You can drill holes in them and cut it to shape very easy. I have made heaps using these and they all work fine. If they are hidden away like most sumps it doesnt matter what they look like. I think a lot of people believe they need a hard core design with the latest fittings and trappings to match current trends when really this isn't needed unless they want to display it somewhat.

A pump is the electric motor that powers your filter and is integral part needed for it to work . So generally if you have a filter you have a pump. Hope this helps!

You asked earlier about an electric pump as a solution. With a few simple modifications you can hook your siphon up to your fish tank pump and pump it out that way. Depending on the type of pump you are using depends upon the modifications needed! Be careful not to get an electric shock or shock your fish and preferably only use internal tank pumps for this method of siphoning to start off with and don't run them dry!

Seeing as there have been a few recent posts on eels I thought some people might like to watch the following. Follow (or copy and paste) this link, http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/6235/Longfin ,to watch an interesting documentary on the longfin eel. Enjoy!

I love eels work with them every day (except weekends).Nymox if your eel in question is truly 8ft long it will most likely be a record holder and will be very old indeed. You should have contacted Jeremy Wade when he came here to catch a big one for River Monsters he only managed to catch ones about 4 ft long. A mate of mine caught a 5 footer about 10 years ago was bloody huge he didnt know any better and served it up for us to eat. Trout are a big threat to them too but this threat will never be stopped as there are too many trout fisherman and Fish and Game to deal with.

Looks like a sort of JD to me, a jack hybrid perhaps or maybe a golden coloured Jack you get those! Any ways i guess he was suckered in by a moron at the pet store saying that it was rare. Will have to see a better photo though. If he really paid that price for that tank and fish he is a real tool! If he is still keen on fish I have a few Piranhas (bronze comets) for sale will let them go for a meagre sell for $200 because they are big and i am feeling nice. They are very rare too!

Hey sam, Basically you need MAF, DOC and Fish and game approval to keep anything non native, they only give this to zoo's. Kahawai are native you will just have to catch your own. But I suppose if you have a stream like you have said in an earlier post you could lure some trout etc there thats not illegal if they are already in the same stream. As a kid I kept fish that are illegal here over in aussie, caught a rainbow trout in a bucket, kept it in a fish bin for a while , had a few perch too. In nz About 15 years ago I found a live brown trout in a puddle after rainwater flooded a local stream and it burst its banks and then receded, i found it splashing in the middle of a paddock! Legally i was supposed to leave it there to die( I didnt have a fishing licence) but i rescued it instead and seeing it was already illegal to tranfer it to a new water way as well as catch it from its drying puddle i decided to keep it. I took it home and kept it in an aquarium for a while then ate it. Was pretty cool, very shy at first, after a while it started to come out. Would hover just above the gravel and was real skittish would dart into the glass at the slightest disturbance! Wasn't too fussed if anyone found out really. The rules on keeping fish in this country are all stupid. You cant keep trout etc even though they are introduced and very abundant because you may release them into a new water way and transfer disease. But you can keep certain natives that are found no where else in the world and some are rare ( but you cant release them again). Sounds stupid to me! IMO you can be a eco warrior catch trout how ever means possible( and thus stop it eating a few natives) keep them without getting caught and fry them up later. Or catch natives, deplete their numbers even further ( not all species I know) and do it knowing that it is all legal, and even if they spawn for you in captivity you cant release them, but can feed them to your cat. Some times doing something illegal isnt immoral. Keeping trout etc to me is like driving without a Rego it doesnt really hurt anybody, just as long as you eat it afterwards (the trout not the rego) so it cant tranfer any diseases back to the stream. In nz you are very limited in big pond fish most natives which you can keep are small and introduced big ones are illegal to keep. Your pretty much stuck with goldfish and eels I am afraid. Thats why I am trying to convince my wife to move overseas so I can keep truly monster fish like wels catfish etc.

Clowns are wicked grow huge though. I used to live in singapore as a teenager there was a pet store that had one in a 6 foot display tank, the fish was absolutely huge must have been about 80cm long. I felt really sorry for it it couldnt even turn around properly. They used to feed it mice and goldfish, so the store owner said when no one was around. They need a truly massive tank when fully grown. I had had a few small ones in a six foot tank with a green aro years ago but had to sell my set up to pay off debts, otherwise I would probably still have them and an even bigger tank. Wife has been telling me to cut back on my fish tanks so one day I might have one again!

I kept mud skippers about 7 yrs ago. Real hard to find I waited for ages to get them. Quite hard to keep I found, difficult to keep temp above water warm and humid, saying that they were real cool. My flatmate who thought he knew lots about fish kept altering the temperature, moving stuff in tank around etc when i wasnt around. I went away for a week and when i came back they were all dead. They acted very similar to the native bullies you can keep , ate blood worms, earth worms and scooted around on bottom. They had little pointed teeth and would bite your fingers. Bullies make a good alternative, in fact I wouldn't buy mud skippers again, just keep bullies or marine triple fins or blennies or gobies all I have kept and all very similar in behaviour (in the water that is)!

Hey just read this thread 3 months after it was published dont go on computer much. Stella mentioned mullet in an earlier post which i thought was a good idea not many people would think of that. But If you want a big fresh water fish catch a Kahawai they eat mullet and can live in fresh water like them. they have been recorded over 60km in fresh water, look and behave like a trout even get called sea trout but will probably eat any goldfish you have! The grow over 2 foot long. Unsure how long they can live in fresh water though? I have tried keeping rainbow and brown trout as a kid in my pond (overseas, I know its illegal here if you get court) they need really well oxygenated water, that said I always had the problem of them jumping out ( had to cover it). Perch did real well really hardy nice colours but ate all my small goldfish and any other small fish I caught and threw in there ! You can keep tropicals in summer in your pond here, make sure you catch them again though or most will perish.Keep them from say Mid December until mid February but you will have to judge as this will depend on where you live! I did have some armoured catfish that I forgot about and my pond completely froze over for the winter and they survived and started breeding the next summer (Maybe a possible bio security risk, so be careful) they are back inside now, some are tougher than others I guess! Hope this helps. P.S I own a stolen TV ira !

DOC use rotenone to poison the Taylor Dam up behind blenheim regularly in an attempt to remove Tench, Rudd, Goldfish etc. The dam still has heaps of bullies , frogs etc in it they re appear rapidly. They poison the dam every few years because people release fish there regularly in an attempt to create coarse fishing. I go up there often and always see lots of bullies

Catch a torpedo ray they live in nz waters, although marine! They can discharge roughly 250 volts. Would be difficult to catch though as they live in deeper water. they are small though mostly under 60cm so wouldnt need a truly massive tank but probably very specific conditions hard to match at home!

The ones that where in the frozen pond where peppered corydoras. Im living in blenheim, I saw one yesterday. When I fill up my pond they swim into the shallows to grub around for food, with the goldfish. I guess they are fine in the summer but not very nice for them in the winter. Hard to catch them because they live on the bottom so have to fill up pond to catch them. Hope do get em back in next few weeks

I put some cory's in my pond last summer and forgot about them, it totally iced over in winter. I saw them the other day they must be bullet proof, will fish them out and return them inside.