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Showing the fan inside the bucket, plus the steel rim, arm bracket, and the hole in the sieve that the collecting jar fits over

This shows the home made bucket moth catcher in situ - it is out there in all weather. The light is mounted under the lid. A fan sits inside in the middle to suck the moths down, a kichen sieve (minus the handle) is screwed on over a hole in the bottom of the bucket, two slits in the side of the backet at the to lets the light out and the moths in. A wire hoop holds a plastic collecting jar in place underneath. All basically very simple. The key points are a slow speed on the fan, all electrical connections are hidden inside the fan housing (the top of the fan housing is sealed and waterproof (the fan throws off any water that does get in out to the side anyway)).(The standard light fitting on top is silicon sealed also). The large polycardb sheet is a snug fit on the outside of the bucket, tucked up under the rim of the bucket and held with a couple of wire pins. The hardest part was finding a steel rim that would fit inside the bucket and a steel bracket to take the mounting rod. The rim is a pizza/pie base cutter and the bracket came out of an old photocopier ( I am one of those hoarders that pull those sort of things apart and keep the pieces just in case they come in handy one day). Ron

The bug catcher from bunnings with modified light (the fluorescent circuit died after a while) and sieve and catching jar. This jar has another jar inside to separate the larger moths from the small moths. Ron.

Pics may take a bit to organise - will try tho. Moths think a bright light is the moon and navigate by it (eg keep it over their left shoulder) but as they get closer they end up circling around it, spiralling in closer - so doesn't have to be uv to work - does have to be a moonless overcast night tho. Ron.

Moth traps - I run two of them most nights to feed geckos and native frogs. One I made from an old desk fan (2 speed model cos it needs to be slow speed or the fan chops up the moths) fixed inside a bucket with a 60w clear bulb above and a large rain shield above that to keep the electrics dry, a hole in the bottom of the bucket to take a kitchen sieve, and a hole in the kitchen sieve to let the moths thru into a plastic jar fixed underneath. The plastic jar also has small holes in it to allow air current to pass thru. The holes in the jar are made by heating a nail over the kitchen stove and piercing the jar with the hot nail. The 2nd moth trap is a bug catcher from Bunnings ($100) which catches small flies as well as moths but is not allowed to get wet (ie its not wet weather proof) so stays under the porch at home. It also has a faster fan which unfortunately chops many of the larger moths. I replaced the collecting jar it came with with a sieve and plastic jar same as the trap above. The jar above also has a self closing flap so that the moths don't escape when removing it from the sieve. The self closing flap is the lid of a margarine container cut into a star pattern in the centre so that the points of the star open downward when the jar is pushed up against the sieve. The margarine container lid is cut to fit inside the lid of the jar and the jar lid has the centre cut out of it so the moths can pass thru. I hope all that makes sense. Ron.

Thank you very much for the invitation. Unfortunately I am in Palmerston North this weekend, Masterton the following weekend (for the New Zealand Iris Society convention), working the Saturday the 20th and off to Te Aroha on the weekend 27th which leaves precious little time before the 30th (the end of the permitted season according to what I read on one of your other posts) so I would love to accept your offer of a few babies; 6-8 fish would be fine. I will make sure the person on duty knows what to do with them. It would have been good to see some in the field again too. I am looking forward to seing Stella's new book too! Ron.

There are 225 hectares of park (and waterways) and 99% of the visitors don't reach the halfway point - it is very easy to go off to the south end and not see anyone - just birds, (fish in the streams if youre that way inclined) and even tuatara on the tracks where you least expect it. Peter: I would like to take up your offer of getting some more whitebait. I can be contacted at the sanctuary quite easily. The eggs still haven't hatched but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see any eyes in them with out some sort of magnification - the eggs just look like a carpet of very tiny airbubbles at this stage. Ron

Watch out for baby anemonies after you have fed them up for a while - they pop out of the mouth in the middle.

In reply to Sage - no I don't keep any marine fish now. I originally set up the tank for banded blennies - they are just as beautiful as neon tetras. They are also found below the low tide mark and I ran into the same problem of keeping the tank cool enough in summer. Rock fish and sucker fish are much tougher but there is not much you can keep in the tank with those guys. Ron

Oops - still lots to learn obviously - I just assumed he was a she. The best way to enjoy the sanctuary is to take out a membership - its about $60 but you can go several times a day if you want (some of our members do that), every day (except Christmas), and get free invites to all sorts of evening presentations, talks, special events, subsidies etc. Ron

Notes from the note book: "Caught early Jan and placed in a mixed fish / shrimp marine tank. A few days later it was lying next to the glass under the sand and I was able to make a sketch. I didn't see it again until late February when I found it on the floor - already dry but still alive! (There were only two small holes in the lid for airline tubes). Needless to say it was a bit sick and lay on the surface of the sand for a couple of hours. Then it began skimmiing around the surface of the tank with a rapid snakelike wriggling of the body. Then another rest on the sand and within half an hour it had vanished again. (2 foot tank). Mid June - I had just put in a load of polychaete worms when the sand in the middle of the tank erupted. I didn't actually see the fish although it must have been just under the surface. Mid August - I saw the sand move - more or less caved in - but I didn't see the fish. 12th Oct - in the evening I put in a load of live crustacea (plankton) and the following day the Limnichtys was on the surface of the sand making lightning darts for the crustacea, thinner, paler, but very active, the eyes moving independantly and no longer shy. (I usually collected the plankton by torch at night so the fish were usually fed at night). Was still visible at 4pm but gone by 10pm when more plankton was added. Was on view again the following morning. 29 Jan - was out hunting again at night. Unfortunately it was dead a few days later - possibly due to the tank getting too warm - it was now the height of summer. So I saw it only 4 times in a whole year. Ron.

Incidentally when it was described it was the juvenile larval form that was found by poisoning the water in rockpools. Ron.

Success at last. As you can imagine, at a distance of 1m the fish becomes invisible. (Very hard to keep track of when you have to keep returning to the surface while snorkeling). Ron.

I have managed to load a sketch. Those eyes on stalks appear to be able to retract completely when the fish dives into the sand. The mouth is very hard to see unles it is open. There is a red area behind the gills that I presume pumps water over the gills when the mouth is closed, and the fish is under the sand. The photos still dont want to load and yet are less than the 640 pixels required. Will keep trying. Ron

Yes that's it - slightly more brightly coloured in your pic. What do I do to insert my own pics? It lives below the low tide mark, in sandy pockets between boulders. I first found it at about 15m and then later at 2 -3 m. It is so well camouflaged tho - as you will see if I can post my own pics. Ron.

Limnichthys rendhali - one of the strangest fish I have ever seen or kept. The photos (when I work out how to include them) are close up of the fish in its natural habitat. It is about 9cm long with chameleon type eyes revolving independantly on short turrets. It lives buried just under the sand with just the eyes exposed and is essentially invisible. To photograph it run your hand thru the sand until there is a swirl and something darts away. Try to see where the something goes and disturb it again. After about the fourth attempt it will rest on the sand rather than under it and you can try working out what it is you are looking at. (It took me nearly as long again to find someone at the museum who could identify it.) In the home aquarium it promptly vanished from sight. It only emerged from the sand when I put in live polychaete worms (they swarm at certain times of the year and the fish love them). Other wise there was just the odd occasion when it was buried under the sand next to the glass and I could make an accurate drawing I could take to the museum. The sketch (if I can attach it) is from early notebook sketch. I would be curious to know if any one else knows of it. Ron

Peter: I cleaned the tank again Friday and the bully was still guarding her eggs. I was careful to work around her. During the cleaning process she changed to uniform black colour, keeping the other fish at bay during the disturbance but as I was finishing she quickly changed back to her usual mottled tans and browns within 5 - 10 mins. I always clean the tank late in the day so that the fish associate cleaning with getting fed and aren't stressed by it. Ron.

Thank you all for your welcome, ideas and offers of help. I would like to try the idea of milking a gravid female if that will help keep her alive ( I was afraid the stress of milking would be too detrimental). I am still reluctant to add a lot of rocks - last time it doubled the amount of cleaning each fortnight and it became a two man job to clean the tank. I can try the fern frond idea. (I have been reluctant to put fresh material in because of previous problems with whitespot when adding new fish or substrate). It is surprising how well they can hide with the cover already provided. I love fresh water shrimps (I grew up along side the Hutt River (Upper Hutt) and the shrimps were in only a very few places and I have always regarded them as something really special - totally transparent with black pencil lines). I understand though that they too are migratory - how long can you keep them in a tank? (We also knew of a couple of pools that had full grown giant kokopu - now long gone). Limpets might work - they presumably feed on algae (the limpets I found in the Hutt River were always under rocks - will they display at all?). Mussels might be harder to feed. Presumably we would have to turn the filter pumps off for a couple of hours each time. Maybe I should point out that unlike your home tanks ours does suffer from some public abuse now and then - eg banging on the glass, which is enough to make a nervous banded kokopu try and jump out. Unfortunately the people that do this are careful to do it when we aren't around to try and educate them. Recently we had to get a commercial glass polisher in to remove scratched in tagging on the glass - the polishing machine was nerve wracking for the fish too. Thanks again, Ron.

I would like to respond to the observations about the native fish display at Zealandia. I gree with with the observation that inunga are nocturnal and like cover, we tried providing more cover (filled the back corners of the tank with rocks for 6 months) but the fish then became totally hidden during peak visiting hours. The tank is placed as far under the shade of the trees as we could get it in that locality ( so far to one side that many people miss seeing the fish display altogether). I did a web search and ours is the only successful outdoor aquarium I could find anywhere. (Most aquaria are in a darkened room so that the low light (to prevent algal bloom) still looks reasonably bright ). (One of the best displays in NZ would have to be the display in Cathedral Square Christchurch although it is already several years since I last saw it). We do have a problem that as the inunga mature and need to spawn we have no option for them to do so. (Presumably they naturally die after spawning ). The ones reported in our tank with the iridescent green dorsal stripe are the males that are left (breeding colour ? – I hadn’t noticed the green dorsal stripe until recently either). Our supplier Mike had promised to give us some replacement inunga whitebait and that was nearly a year ago. (Incidentally Mike was amazed at how long our fish are living ). Our fish are fed twice a week – a selection of white worms, tubifix worms, mealworms, tropical fish flakes, fish pellets, even chopped earthworms, and what ever moths, wetas etc that fall into the tank naturally. (They must like what I give them because they often leave the natural live food for some time). The tank is cleaned every two weeks ( we still get a lot of algae – especially in summer when very early morning sun shines into the tank which the fish seem to enjoy (ie they sit in the patches of sunlight). At the same time I do a 60litre water change – that keeps the nitrate and nitrite levels at 0%. The tank is kept below 19 degrees Celsius with a big chiller which then results in condensation on the glass when ever it is warm and humid making it hard to look in. (I hate using chemicals near the tank which might otherwise control the condensation). Another problem is that as a public display tank it is compared to other public aquaria which have their display tanks stocked at much higher densities than we can manage in a stand alone tank because the water in public aquaria are linked to massive (empty of fish) holding tanks under the floor. It maybe of interest that we tried koura – also very nocturnal (they burrowed under the rocks out of sight) and came out at night to nibble on the fins of the fish – so of no advantage at all. So far the common bullies, redfins and inungas have been the most successful. The banded kokopu become much shyer as they mature. We have tried blue gills twice but there is something about our situation that does not suit them. I suspect they have a particular food requirement (any ideas anyone?). Ron.