livebearer_breeder

NZ Born, Both sides of my family were here pre-treaty. My mum's side came here in 1830's as an engineer. Maped the rangitikei on horse back and then constructed most of the original bridges, still farming marton to this day. My dad's side came here and caused trouble for the crown and bred with Maori woman in trade agreements. Both sides mostly Irish - makes sense, I'm about as kiwi as it gets i guess built on the blood of the mongrels of the world - the Irish :slfg: .

Gee thats expensive, Id sell my ghost for $20 and hes almost the same size. $130!

Having a larger bone area doesn't necessarily mean that your bones are denser, as diets have the largest effect on our bone structure during our lifetimes. For example high sugar diets will cause de-calcification which makes your bones soft and brittle and therefore lighter, it just means that someone who has a larger frame doesn't necessarily have a heavier frame. Most people's wrist are usually quite fat free, its not a normal place for fat deposits to occur, so i can understand why your doctor/physiotherapist would have used that as a reference point BUT the connection between your Radius, Ulna and carpels is a high impact zone, and through your life becomes a high injury zone, this often means that many people, especially in their adult years, due to over use or injury and having a lessened ability to heal at this age, generally have calcification in this area. Which increases your bone density as well as bone size. out of curiosity though, would you be against giving me your wrist measurements? I've always had what i feel to be, very dainty lady like wrists, i'd be interested to know the comparison. Also curious about your employment/sporting/injury history, as i'm sure your doctor probably already asked you, these are good questions to help us gauge certain aspects of your life that we can then apply to a scientific view of your anatomy.

There's just so many awesome fish and animals out there that i wish we could have. but we are not allowed them because we are "protecting New Zealand's biodiversity" <-- that doesn't even exists anymore, most of what was endemic to this country is gone now, first through over hunting by Maori and then through agriculture and population density due to Europeans and Asian settlers.

haha dammit this forum needs a "like" button.

It would be really nice one day to have some super intelligent people making the decisions. Much like our government. :spop:

Its not the wii's fault its been programmed for the BMI scale which is ancient and very inaccurate. Im 6foot+, 98kg's and have a body fat percentage of about 14 atm cause i've been lazy re gym and injury, anatomically i'm still in pretty good shape. That's considered fairly athletic as far as NZ stats go and the BMI scale still says i am "morbidly obese". So other than using as a tool to track progression its pretty useless. When someone makes a reference to you about your weight, and they say something like "your just big boned" then it means you must be a giant... or it means the person who your talking to hasn't studied human physiology/anatomy well enough or they've spoken without thinking. One of the skeletal function is structure, unless your suffering from a growing disease your probably not "big boned". Bone density however is a very real thing and humans do differ greatly in bone density. This discrepancy is mostly due to nutrition or lack of, getting an accurate read in a water chamber of your bone density and muscle mass is the only way to actually know truly what your body fat percentage is.

poor koi

Sweet, yeah thought so

Are you 100% sure? i remember kerry from napier telling me that your not even aloud to take them from the waterways alive?

haha DONT catch the gambusia and keep them alive, cause that's illegal, you want to feed them they have to be dead on the spot. But that is a good suggestion regardless. And i COMPLETELY agree with f15guy, these fish are hard to come by and really do deserve their own space.

Adult females shouldn't be so bad but fry will get eaten. My Leo females are around 4cm and i would say are giants for there species, however the males are tiny.

Must be some good sized hydra! switch from Brine shrimp to micro worms for a while, always find that helps reduce numbers

Probably not comets. but something slow and lethargic like the fantails/blackmoors perhaps. Buy them small and add plants. A better combo would be WCMM and Leopards.

Trying not to Topic jack, but is there anyone in the lower north island area who would be interesting in trading leopards for leopards? I'd be keen to increase the genetic diversity of my lot, who to my understanding have not had any new blood in a loooong time.

I keep mine in direct light on my window sill and just top up water, gets about 6-8 hours of light a day. I've noticed it usually yellows at the ends before new shoots form. This may be what's going on?

**Stuff i learnt from an oldie who i wont name but is very wise and had, at one point been morphing his axies for years, although only breeding them in newt form to my knowledge. Its actually very easy to "let" them morph. And the reason they do this is because, here's the kicker, they are supposed to. As Alan said, along their evolutionary process they became trapped because the nutrient they needed to activate the hormones that caused the next metamorphosis where no longer available or limited to them through mineral and nutrient rich water or food and as previously mentioned, some still, regardless, for whatever reason, will change without any environmental or food based contributions. These creatures are absolutely magnificent to science. They are one of the few creatures in the world that has the ability to make repairs and sometimes even replace major organs naturally. Its even been recorded that they can make repairs to the more minor parts of the brain (Health benefits wise, medical science loves this creature). Its a testament to this animal that even though life tried to snuff it out, it was genetically diverse enough to become one of the only animals that can actually breed during its "newt" or "larval" stage, this however was a development caused by their inability to make the last metamorphosis. Granted it is basically extinct in the wild now, but that is largely due to human influence, though not limited to. Yes, when they morph there can be a life expectancy shortage. This is because it is their "last" stage of living, but has not stopped morphed salamanders from living another 5-8 years. Often the process of life shortening is due to the humans inability to care for the animal properly and also axolotls are often seen as very low maintenance pets, when in fact they deserve just as much attention. They do not "weaken" in this last form, rather quite the opposite, the legs, joints and back strengthen marvelously to accommodate the salamander for its last stage. You don't need to use chemicals or hormones or purposefully keep them in terrible water conditions. An axie will happily live in shallower water as long as it is regularly changed and/or filtered. In fact normal behavior in a terrarium type setup will show that they prefer to hang in the shallows, under some cover, or near some very wet peat. The key to keeping them alive and healthy once fully transformed is to change their enclosure to almost entirely peat or another soil like substance that can be kept moist for them to dig around in. There is plenty of information on the net on how to setup for a salamander once its morphed and what to feed them to keep them healthy. You will also find PLENTY of people screaming animal abuse, there are plenty of arguments out their to support and then rebut. But i say why not, if you can do it the right way and then have the ability to keep them properly, help your axie achieve his/her full potential. However i will not support the use of anything other than fresh water and a varied diet. Feed live food

haha Mary Ann is awesome

Really interesting seeing actual faces, rather than the ones i invented in my heads to do with your usernames! some of you will already know me, been lurking since i was a young teen, fish club people etc This photo was last year, couple of my besties, im doing the duck face! you know it :happy2:

so at the pet store today in lower hutt they had a 60l tank FULL of paradise, small goldfish and WCMM, hppy az, no worries, your good to go. Nice WCMM, think those two are the long fin variety

Not a livebearer. Definatly an egg scattering species

Its entirely dependent on the mother fish, how big she is, how old she is, how well shes fed, how often water changes are done, her genetics, her specie. Livbearer fry can be tiiiiiny and look like a tadpole! and then other times they pop out HUGE and seem to be a miniature formed fish!

Just had knee surgery, and doing exactly the same thing, it just takes sooo looong now

Went down there last night, only bugs, no shrimp

Bet ya the black mark on the tail turns into a sword!