Mikey

First one is the best I reckon :thup:

Agreed! Natives have pretty awesome colours, patterning etc

Got home last night, switched on the tank light for my daily observations and chill out. Hone Te Koura (big guy) has shed again... he obviously did it out in the open judging by where the shed carapce was... but I wasn't home this time to get any photos or video (Sorry Stella ) He has gone a much darker colour, and almost has a green tinge to him now. I'll try get some photos in next few days to show the change. While I was looking at all this I noticed a half eaten Chelae go floating past, I naturally assumed it was Hone's shed one that he had been consuming... however, I then looked for Billy T Cray... who was perched up on the left hand wood looking very pale... intially I thought he was going to shed as well, but then he spun around and noticed he only had one chelae present :facepalm: So I'm suspecting Hone had something to do with that, so Billy T Cray has been relocated into an emergency set up (water, and a stick in a spare tank). So I'll work on getting Billy's Chelae regrown and get some size on him... will be an interesting thing to watch I reckon, so I'll start up another thread with photos and update on a cray regrowing a chelae... might be of interest to the readers out there. My next thought... is what do I do long term... Billy will be fine in the tank he is in for a good while yet with Winter coming etc. Should I look at getting a few more organisms for the big tank to try and spread agression between all of them... do I start a second tank and keep a cray in each? So many options... I will take my time to consider all options

I love that Kokopu in the second pic.... looks like it needs a speech bubble saying "what you looking at punk" And that is some nice detailing on the bully... like you say, great for a point and click

Turn off the TV? :rotf:

Sugar

erstwhile

The beginning of the end... soon you will be crawling with them

Are there any Koura in there with it? Just wondering what impact they might have on moss, and whether it is even worth trying to get some into my tank. :facepalm:

My vote would go with the fire place... :thup:

Lemon

Awesome pics, and awesome little frogs. *sigh* Makes me want to go and start my own enclosure for them again.... had them when I was growing up, and loved watching them leaping around catching the bugs Thanks for sharing :thup:

turn

Funny

I love the patterning on that fish, looks choice! And by second photo... I think Stella was referring to the first photo which is the second image on your post

Some lawyer would probably be able to find some strange loop hole and get it into a court room... It wouldn't surprise me.

I am sure this peg is native.... born in NZ so says the label YEs they definatley get and eat their veges, brocolli, courgette, peas, cauliflower have all been eaten happily. Hmmmm, I wonder if should push on and get some Bullies then... It would be sad if I stopped seeing so much of the Koura because there are some fish in the tank. Obvious solution is to get a new tank going for some fish... :slfg:

Was wondering if anyone would notice that occupant. The Native Purple Peg is a bit boring to watch, it just lies on the bottom of the tank clinging onto food so it doesn't float away. In terms of them getting along the Koura are always trying to rip the food out of it's jaws, but the peg hangs on tight... I came out this morning and found the peg had magically relocated itself to the other end of the tank, and had empty jaws. I can only guess what the Koura did to make it let go :rotf: Agreed on both parts... A lot of the reading I have done says that Koura are quite hidey and reclusive... but I see these guys all the time... I turn on the light and they come charging out to see what is for dinner. Hone pretty much climbs up there when ever something hits the surface of the water... flies and moths mainly, he stands up there and tries to catch it... one day I was watching him up there and he made a lunge... he missed and ended up falling off the branch... after clinging to the branch with one chelae and trying his utmost to get his other legs back up... was amusing to watch! They both love seeing the tweezers come into the tank... moths, flies, other random bugs, earth worms.... have fed them using tweezers and they love it... they even nailed a cockroach once... might be hard in middle of winter to chuck my arm into a cold water tank though

As promised, here are some images of the tank and occupants. Overall view of the tank, frontal and end on: (If you look closely near the top of the wood on the right hand side, you will see Hone Te Koura standing up there... he was trying to catch a moth that had hit the waters surface, so once I finished taking photos, I grabbed tweezers and fed him the moth, one very happy Koura :thup: ) Some angled shots: Hone Te Koura when he started wandering back down to see what I was up to: Billy T Cray charging around up the back: So yeah, thats the new look to the tank... I'm thinking I'll go find some foliage and get that in there as well, maybe attach a fern frond to the filter pipes to hide those and add a bit to break up the black background. Hopefully the weather holds till Saturday night, as that is when I plan to go get the Bullies and Shrimp... but i will keep you posted Cheers.

That is one impressive piece of wood! Looks good thus far in the tank... be interesting to see how you set it up with plants etc... Thanks for sharing.

Glad your fish reappeared... looks like he could be a character I get this all the time when I started keeping ottos... I was never sure how many I had after a while because in a big tank with lotsa hidy holes... ottos are masters of dissappearing for a long time. In the smaller tank they are in now, it's not so bad

This has happened to me once or twice when Stella enters the conversation... she is very knowledgable and I love learning from her threads and posts! I'm guessing you are starting to recover well now Stella?

After much thinking about it, I finally got off my backside and rescaped the tank. I have changed the orientation of the wood on the left hand side and added heaps more rocks and revamped what was already in there... looks a lot better to me now, plus the crays are loving it as there are a lot more hidey holes and random areas for them to explore. Now that I am happy with the lay out and have given more hiding spaces, I can finally go out and get the bullies, because I didn't want to put them in there with the crays without decent coverage. I also figure it is best to get the bullies while these two crays are still small, so they are less likely to eat them, and so they grow up together. I'm thinking I'll get some shrimp too, and if the Crays want a good meal they can have one of those... if they can catch them. I do have some photos... but I'm having technical issues here at the moment :an!gry So I will update this thread later tonight when I get home so you can see the tank as it is now. Cheers all.

Wow... that is a big tumble, and one messed up vehicle... glad you got out of it!

I love the look of that tank, overall it just looks fantastic... thank you for sharing... I really need to get off my backside and re-scape mine