kinnadian

Excuse my blatant ignorance on the subject, I'm only repeating what a few marine shop keepers have told me. But as I understand it, currently fish shops get overseas imports of fish rather than national imports. Due to this, fish shops: - Aren't really able to dictate what fish they get, they generally get what they are given (to a certain extent). - Receive quite infrequent shipments (the ones in ChCh are every 2-3 months as far as I'm aware) - Have high costs associated with overseas shipments and long quarantines in MAF centres. - Inconvenience customers who wish to purchase fish in the somewhat near future, rather than months ahead. - Are regularly out of marine fish (as each shipment goes within about a week here in ChCh) which discourages newbies to the hobby? For example, they see a very sparse selection of marine fish and assume it is too hard or time consuming to get a good selection of livestock (which it sort of is). Am I roughly correct so far? Would it not make sense to have a national distributor of fish based in Auckland/New Plymouth who receive fish, quarantine them, and stores them until they are ordered by fish shops all throughout the country? So you could order fish as needed rather than having massive swells of livestock.

Ended up going first to Otukaikino, nice looking river but couldn't see any fish and couldn't get amongst the deep water without hip waders. Went up to Ashely's Gorge, spent an hour flipping over rocks and got ~20 of them, ranging from 0.5 inches to 2 inches. Thanks all! Got 3 crayfish from Vince Skully as well. Working on getting the light dimmed (currently using 1 18W 36" bulb, but it's too bright). I've got the tank set to summer-conditions to promote activity, but they are barely moving around. I've tried feeding them a variety of foods but they aren't really eating them (sinking pellets, carrot, pea, liver, hot house turtle food). It's been a week so I thought they would have settled down by now, but I guess I'll just keep offering them food and hoping.

Thanks all. Will head north and give Otukaikino a try, and then head over to ashley's gorge. If I'm only after juveniles do I still need to head out at night and do spotlighting? Or will I have sufficient luck during the day? I'm a complete fishing amateur.

Hey, I'm starting up a native tank (getting some Koura on the weekend) and hope to populate my 3footer with some Bullies, Inaga, etc. I went out a couple weeks ago to try and find fish in our rivers, but had no luck. I went south to Selwyn river, which was all dried up, and then further south to Raikaia River, but this was too fast flowing to be able to catch fish in (couldn't see any, either). My other alternatives are going north to try and find some side-streams in the Waimak, or the river near Rangiora. So do we have any native fish keepers here in Christchurch? Or does anyone know where I can feasibly find some?

So keep the temps up and just keep waiting? I just fed them, they had about 2 mouthfuls each then left the rest of the food on the ground.

My 1.5yo RES aren't eating food and rarely beg anymore. Spend more time hiding/sleeping in their little "bedroom" corner (its got a massive bit of driftwood in the way so they can feel safe in the left side of th tank). OK so I've narrowed the reasoning down to a couple things, and wondering if you guys could help. I've been feeding them occasional veggies, occasional turtle frozen turtle food, and mainly pellets. A few weeks ago I was talking to a turtle owner who feeds his shrimp and heart/liver, so I thought I might try that. They loved it for about a week, and then my heater failed and I was so busy that I didn't notice it had broken, so it was probably 8-12C in the tank for at least a day or two. The danios in the tank somehow survived. Also about a month ago I upgraded from a long 110L to a standard 200L, and made them an above-tank basking area with viewing perspex on 2 sides. The male goes up there regularly, however I've never once seen the female up there. She is extremely timid and even sometimes hides if I get up from my chair suddenly and startle her (male on the other hand isn't scared or intimidated at all, I can my hand in the tank and he will just swim around it). So I got a new heater, and it now sits at a comfortable 20-24C (depending on the time of the day). I feed them at night, as they mainly come out more after 7pm, and I will drop shrimp, liver and pellets and they might eat a few bites and then stop. So I'm thinking either: - They somehow got sick from eating the shrimp or liver, or that has otherwise affected them. They didn't bother with the pellets after I'd given them meat, which is fair enough because the meat would be a lot tastier. - They are somehow still in a hibernative state, even though they were only cold for a couple days max and have been warm now for a full week. - The lack of UVB on the female is causing her digestion to be insufficient (as the UVB is in the basking area), however this doesn't explain why the male is similarly not hungry. They still swim around, maybe a little less than usual but are still plenty active. I've inspected their heads and eyes and I can't see any infections or anything on them. Their poo is normal too (although they don't poo much at all now, obviously). Should I just wait it out? It's been maybe 1.5 weeks now since they were eating regularly. They were a bit fat before so a diet can't hurt them, and if they aren't physically ill or act weird is there any way to definitively say there's something wrong with them? Before anyone suggests it, I am a student and can't afford to take it to the vet (unless they started showing some visible symptoms, of course). Also, is there any way to get the female up on the basking area? It's been 6 or 8 weeks now and I thought by now if she was going to go up there, she would've done it by now. The only way I got her up on the previous in-tank basking area was to tempt her up there with pellets, then she figured out it was nice in the heat. I think she just doesn't know it's there, despite the few times I've physically placed her there.

When getting reptile stuff, I found a lot of success using eBay australia. The shipping isn't often that much, a lot of it comes out of China which costs the same to ship to Aus as it does to NZ, and if you get combined shipping it is reasonable. As I recall I got $150 worth of stuff for $40 shipping, the same would have cost $400+ at NZ retail prices (couple things were knockoff no-name reptile stuff, though.)

Does the 24/7 light not mess with their metabolisms or breeding cycles?

I am looking at getting a bearded dragon and breeding my own insects, and after a lot of research locusts seem like a lot better to breed than crickets. I plan on getting large plastic containers for them, probably insulating them with polystyrene and using a 40/60W bulb during the day and a heat mat for heating all day/night (they need 28-32C apparently). I haven't been able to find a lot of information about heating requirements, so I was wondering if you guys could provide me a bit of advice. Looking at the Australian Ebay, I'm able to get 7 or 20W heating pads for reasonable prices, I'm just wondering if those would be sufficient with the cold nights I'm getting down in ChCh (0-4C over night), assuming a get a good few inches of insulation outside of the plastic containers and the only heat loss would be through the ventilation holes? If I'm on the wrong track, how do you guys breed crickets/locusts on a budget? (Can't really afford a second thermostat at this stage, if I can get away with it...)

Hey guys. I'm currently housing a pair of RES (both about 2" now) in a 55g with some mbuna (sort of a temporary thing). At the moment the turtles and mbuna get along well enough, but I realise eventually the turtles will eat most of the fish. I was wondering when you guys thought that would be (ie what sized turtle)? There are a couple wee cichlids in there at the moment that the turtles could probably almost swallow whole if they felt like it, and I would rather not have that happen, so I just wanted some kind of timeline as to when I have to buy/build a new tank by? They are coming up 5 and 6 months old. And as an aside, can anyone who has made tanks in the past give me a really rough estimate of the cost of a 100g tank? (Like 120Lx60Wx50H).

I showed the picture of my wooden lid so I could give an example of the limitations I've put on myself in terms of size of the heat lamp, as I said it can't really be much wider than 60mm or most of the light won't even be shining on to the heating surface. If halogen are really as useless as I think they are though, I might have to go the incandescent route and just deal with all the wasted light; I was however wondering if any of the small lights would work as well. The actual UVB is at least 20cm away from them, i only mentioned 10-15cm as the distance away from the heat source. And those exo terra clamp lamps are like $60 or $70, I was trying to find something a bit cheaper

Hey guys. I made a previous post about a pair of new red eared sliders that I had that weren't eating. All is well now and they are extremely active, eat plenty, and love to beg My issue is, I bought a halogen lamp from a lighting store, and in 3 weeks I have been through 2 bulbs. I've been looking online, and people report a lot of problems with halogen bulbs blowing, with any number of possibilities causing them to blow since they are apparently very fragile (in terms of blowing), with overheating due to extended use (my bulb is on for like 14 hours a day), fluctuations in voltage, general vibrations (taking the lid off for cleaning, etc), water evaporating in the air, etc etc. I have made a custom wooden lid which doesn't allow a big bulb to shine down in to my basking area, and also doesn't allow me to make an above-tank basking area. Obviously the very last option would be to explore either of these options (since I spent a bit of time with the lid), so I was wondering what heating solutions you guys use or could suggest for me? The halogen heat lamp I was using until now ($26 at local lighting store) The lid I made, the gap I've allowed for lighting + cords + filter tube etc, is 60mm, and basking area is near green tube in the photo. The distance from the top of the wooden lid to the basking surface is only 100-150mm so I wouldn't need an incredibly powerful lamp. Are the small spot-bulbs useful? (Note: I already have a UVB bulb in the light hood so this is for heating purposes only). Is there some cheap form of heating only that I could put in the corner? Like a small heating element or something like that? The area is fully lit so I only really need the heating aspect. Also, I was previously using a flat rock as a basking surface, as a temporary one until I could get around to making a perspex one. I've been reading online and apparently you have to use the silicone to fix the perspex in place when the tank is completely empty (as sometimes the curing fumes can be poisonous, and also it needs to be in a dry area?) for 1-4 days, and this isn't feasible for me because I have no where else to put my fish + turtles. I don't really like the look of the tan coloured floating basking surfaces that you can buy from the shops, and as rocks are insufficient I was wondering what suggestions you guys could make? I was thinking I could silicone the ramp to the basking surface outside of the tank, and then use a few big rocks as the base and simply sit the surface on that?

Just an update, my newer turtle eats to his hearts content. I've seen the older (smaller) turtle eat maybe once. I put a small hothouse cube right infront of his face while he was hiding in some fake plants, after 15 minutes he hadn't even touched it. I've had him 9 days now... I still think he is a runt or something (if reptiles can get runts, lol), since he is quite a bit smaller than the new turtle but is 1 month older. Apart from just regularly putting food in front of his face, and otherwise not bugging him often, there isn't anything I can do until he gets settled is there?

The bigger one is only slightly bigger, we're talking maybe 10-15% more. They don't show signs of aggression towards each other . I have quite a few fake plants that he hides in but have definitely thought about putting live plants in. Is there something cheaper (eg vegetables) that will last that I could use instead/as well as? There is a big bit of wood in the corner which has a lot of hiding space behind it, but since I got the new one the old one doesn't seem to hide very often anymore. Because there is a lot of visual stimulus in the tank, I am worried about where to put the frozen food. The breeder said he is feeding it "bloodworms, oxygen weed, waterfleas, boatman daphnia dried fish small bits meat dried fish.. fresh fish ." So a very meat-intensive diet. I have frozen bloodworms for my fish, should I try some of that along with the frozen turtle food? The sand is to make the tank look nicer, I've never been a fan of bare-bottom turtle tanks as they look quite boring. Once the turtles grow up and I have to put them in to their own bigger tank I will probably go for something like that. Thanks for the comments guys. I was just worried that it has been so long and he hasn't eaten yet. I'll try just feeding him in the tank and hoping the cichlids don't eat it all, and now that he has a friend he seems a lot more secure.

I'm a beginner turtle keeper, I've kept fish for a couple years and understand all aspects of keeping aquariums and such. I got a small 1-1.5" RES a week ago (3 months old), and I've heard/read many places that it's easiest to feed them in a separate container (to reduce mess and monitor how much they are eating) so I tried him once a day and he would never eat anything. I tried making the water hotter or colder than his normal tank, and I've tried putting excess or no light on the container too. In his tank (it's a 120L tank) he spends his whole time hiding, sitting in a corner with all his legs in and being inactive. I've tried dropping turtle pellets in to his tank but they just get waterlogged and then break apart, and I never see him eating them. My tank was originally river-rock substrate but I have since replaced it with sand substrate (since river rock was impossible to clean lol). I have two heaters as it gets quite cold over night, and with the two going it maintains 25 overnight and 26-27 during the day. I've got a 600L/hr external canister filter (it's not fully established, but have been using that Cycle stuff), UVB fluoro bulb and a basking area with a 20W halogen light (and got the temperature of the basking rock good, between 30 and 32... but he NEVER uses this anyways). Basically I'm saying I have everything right for him, I'm pretty sure. I tried putting in some real plants amongst the fake plants and have seen him nibble at them sometimes I think. In the tank with him is various little cichlids that don't give him any trouble, and a couple bristlenose. I just got another turtle this morning (he is bigger, but only 2 months old... so I'm thinking my one is a runt?), this one is extremely active, swims around and has even had a short basking session today. I haven't tried feeding him yet but I've seen him go after some cichlid pellets. With the second turtle in the tank now, the first one seems more secure and hangs out with the new turtle and doesn't hide quite as much. Alright. So my question is, how do I encourage my turtle to start eating food? It's been a week now almost and he must be starving. Apart from my nitrites being non-zero (ammonia is 0) there is nothing wrong with his enclosure. Should I just drop pellets in to the tank and hope they find them? (cichlids drag them into their hidey holes and then leave them). Should I buy more real plants (or steal some from my other tanks) and put them in there? I have pellets, flake, the frozen turtle food from animates, dried brine shrimp, breeder guppies (though he is too small to eat them at the moment), and various other fish foods.