Mikey

Siblings

eggs

It's 11pm at night and you want to go spot lighting at the nearest stream to see what lives there :dunno: , rather than going to bed to sleep. You've created a monster Stella .... I love spotlighting. I don't even try to catch anything (yet) I just love looking for what is in every stream and then making a bit of a note about it... so i can go back and see if there have been any changes.

Last night.... One of the cats bought in a cicada at 1:30am, 2:45am and 4:30am... *sigh* she almost got punted out the cat door on the last one, but I was too slow! Luckily I am well trained to interuppted sleep at the moment seeing as though my daughter is only 2 1/2 months old. I'm guessing the weather has something to do with the massive amounts of cicadas and butterflies flying around.

That's no good! Hope not too much of the 400L ended up on the floor and fix it job is coming along nicely. So how did you get the Koura out of the hole? Put another piece of grass in there and pulled it out by it's good arm? Or did it come popping out with the grass on the intial pull After much thought and discussion my wife and I have decided that I will break down the current 180L tropical tank and put our favourite occupants into a 60x30x30 that I have spare... I will only lose a school of Glolight tetra's and a couple of plants from this move... as I don't have the tank that heavily stocked at the moment and then I will set the 180L tank up for the Natives. So watch this space for updates on the streams in my area, as I need to go gather rocks and gravel for Native tank, and I will continue to go spotlighting and getting photos in the future, and keep an eye out for a new tank build thread. Cheers.

Thanks for replying Andrew. I found the same information you did. Could be cool to collect the one armed Koura and pop it into an aquarium, then I could observe the growing back process first hand... At this stage I'm leaning towards getting a chiller for the 180L tank I have currently (HFF have quoted between $300-$500 as a rough idea)... I think that might be the most fair on the animals. Although I am doing some testing of other areas of the house where I might just buy a whole new tank and stand with the chiller as the new home for the Koura... decisions decisions... More to come

School :facepalm:

Update: So I went back to the stream on Saturday night to have a look. Was very full and water was a dirty mess due to heavy rain on Friday night... I didn't think the rain was that bad, but clearly I was wrong :facepalm: So I couldn't see much at all, however around the edges of the pool I found some Bullies, a lot more Shrimp, a small fry fish and an eel... pics: So I packed up and started walking home, then I remembered another stream nearby in another part of the bush so I thought I'd go check it out while I was out and about. The water was much clearer and I saw a bunch of Banded Kokopu, and then as I was walking along the top of a steep embankment I shone my torch into a pool below and noticed something take off backwards and start scurrying around... I found Koura! :happy1: :happy2: I carefully got down the bank, and then took some photos, also got some video footage of one of the crays rearranging his home I noticed one of the mid size ones was missing a Chelae (pincer)... here are some pictures (and yes I removed the pump bottle) silly litter bugs! First pic is the big guy (7-8cms) that I was videoing. Second pic, look closely... there is camo cray! Third and fourth are overview shots, where you can see a bunch of them chilling out, and the one missing a pincer. So yeah, I am very happy to find Koura in the area... I am now working out whether I have enough room for another 3ft tank in the house, or whether to break down the tropical community into a smaller tank and convert the big one to NZ native... Koura charging around the bottom with some inanga schooling mid/high levels. Do the pincer's grow back? My wife wants me to help out the one that is missing a pincer and move it into the native tank when I get it set up... More to come in the future Cheers

Awesome photos! The wasp is probably dragging spider back to it's hive?/lair?/nest? to feed it to the babies I'll put this on the list of places to visit with my daughter when she is a bit older Thanks for sharing!

Android

Vehicle

Nope, not game over.... this is the latin word for breakfast: Ientaculum

Biology

**This is not the stream in above thread, this is another random little one that I thought I would share... I'll be going back to the above stream in the next few days and will provide an update and photos** Well I was walking dog on Saturday and peering into streams as I went... wasnt expecting to see anything when I noticed this fish just sitting there... if you look closely it is sitting in centre of photo. When I approached he took off under a rock... this little pool is just down from my house, so at 11pm that night it was hot muggy and I wanted to go for a walk... so I decided to go see if I could meet the fish and any other life... I got there, and it sat there for the whole time, so I got some great photos, once I finished taking photos, I put my hand in to try and touch fish... it moved away from my hand at a sedate pace, so I just left it alone. I believe it is a Banded Kokopu, and it is about 10cm long... There were a few baby ones kicking around in the pool too, but I was getting eaten by mossies by this point so decided to travel downstream and see what else was around... if you don't like spiders look away now I also found a small eel... I found nothing else down stream at all... I'm not sure if it just because it is summer, but I was very surprised to find the fish where it is... it is a small pool, directly upstream is all orange and very cruddy, the water quality isn't the greatest (as you can see in the photos) and downstream there are parts which are dried out, and there is some pretty major obstacles... So I hope the eel and four fish I saw are all ok where they are. Hopefully come winter with good rains, everything gets a good wash out and "renewed". So anyway.... that is some photos of a little pool near my house... like I said in top "disclaimer" there will be more photos of the big main stream coming soon Cheers

Yeah I saw it last night. it was cool seeing it in action... and actually knowiing something about the fish they were talking about

Algae

Reality

I have been doing a lot of recon in this area, and it is teeming with life... Bullies, galaxids, Shrimp are main occupants I've found so far... I normally go scout out an area during the day to see what looks likely and to get an idea of access etc. Then I have been going back to these spots at night armed with a light and a camera.... So far I have visited, Kaipatiki, Eskdale, Le Roys/Little Shoal Bay areas and they all have something in them... which I was surprised about considering the urban environs they are next to. One thing I can say is that natives have amazing camo... there has been times I've been looking directly at something and not realised until it twitches ever so slightly. Hope this helps. PS: Now the cyclone and bad weather has gone I'll be heading back out to the streams and having another look... keep an eye on my thread for updates and photos

So I went into HFF today and had a chat about the natives... The way I understand it from my discussion with the staff member is (although maybe I misunderstood something): Most of them are captive bred, and the MTI has a licence which apparently allows them to capture and sell wild ones as well. In the stock that was available at HFF there was a wild caught redfin bully and a bunch of Inanga and Kokopu. The HFF staff member has directed me to MTI website for some more information. So I will go onto that and have a look. Looking at P44s post it seems I may have stumbled onto something interesting...

Morning all, Just a query... are the natives that are for sale at fish stores captive bred or wild caught? Reason I ask is if they are captive bred, I'd rather purchase them if they are captive bred than take them from wild populations. I will be going into HFF today at lunch, and I'll ask them as well. Just thought someone on here might know. Cheers.

Rag

Onto

Thanks for that... The patch I have is a triangle piece. 5m (side) x 6m (side) x 3m (base), and there is already a natural slope from "top" of triangle to bottom with some nice tree coverage so it won't get too hot for native occupants, and I was thinking of digging a "big" pond in the larger area near the base, throwing the dirt from that up towards the top narrow part where I could mount a smaller pool/pond and then get a bit of a flow going on from top pool to bottom pool. I wasnt sure if the area was going to be big enough, but judging by what you have, I think it is now a viable option...so I'll stop hijacking your thread and do some more planning and present it to the forum under it's own thread So, back to your thread... How many Koura/Inanga you got in the pond? Cheers.

Kiwi!

Kyoto