I have started a youtube account to put up videos of native fish, both in my tanks and in the wild. Over summer I want to do a few videos showing how to catch various fish, what to look for when identifying them and where to look.

There are three videos up now: one of the mudfish feeding, a banded kokopu in the wild and the banded and giant kokopu and common bully in one of my tanks.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nznativefish

Your tanks look better in the vids than pic!

That bully cracks me up

Very cool Stella. :bounce:

Excellent 8)

You get a much better idea of a fishes habits seeing it swimming rather than still pictures.

The night time one is cool too. I bet during the day there was nothing happening in there.

Ian

Cool videos Stella!

where abouts in auckland was the stream where you videoed the banded kokopu?

Thanks guys

Enzoom1 - I have absolutely no idea! It was dark and I was getting ferried from stream to stream by some random old guy And everything north of Taupo is a blurr to me.

It was actually in the middle of a new development, next to a big field I think. The stream was maybe 2m wide and perhaps a foot of so deep, quite sluggish with the odd tree blocking it. I will PM the guy who took me and hopefully one day he will come online and let us know where it was

Ian - no there would have been nothing out during the day. There were also heaps of eels and crays and the odd bully. Very cool site.

HaNs - That bully is a prime example of the behaviour of a bully when they are 'top bully' in in an aquarium (presumably it works in the wild too). Most bullies hang about on the bottom but the most dominant one spends much of their time high up in the water column. Presumably it gives them more access to food and a better vantage point to shoo other bullies away. It would also make them more at risk of predation...

Very impessive Stella.

I have to agree about the comments that the tanks look much better on the vids than the photos.

Although once I finally make it down to visit, I will prob be more impressed to see them in person,

Cant wait to go on the next fish hunt now. :bounce:

so what is so wrong with my photos if tiny grainy jumpy videos look better? ;-P

I am pleased to announce that my 'channel' is number 83 on 'the most viewed today' chart of NZ channels...!

nice videos i never knew native fish had so much colour the mudfish are very prehistoric looking kind of cool r they the canterbury 1s?

It's nice to see the fish move around the tank.

But your closeup photos of individual fish are great.

Like the mudfish in this link

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/a-few- ... 33134.html

Hiya Spoon!

Yeah, native fish rock though I am biased.

Colour? They were all brown! You wait till I upload a redfin bully one tonight

The mudfish do look very prehistoric. Funnily enough they are actually fairly 'new'. They are evolving from a more 'fish-like' fish to being like an eel, so they are actually a transitional fish undergoing big changes (in evolutionary time).

My ones are brown mudfish, Neochanna apoda. The Canterbury one is Neochanna burrowsius (names after Mr Burrows, not a burrowing habit). They all look pretty similar though. Biggest difference is the Canterbury one has small pelvic fins, the brown mudfish is slightly further along the evolutionary scale and has none at all.

lol colour wasnt really the right word more the werent as bland as what i expected them to be i would be interested to see where canterbury mudfish are like if they are spread right across canterbury plains or just in isolated pockets

They would have originally had a fairly wide distribution across Canterbury, but now are really really threatened almost PURELY due to habitat loss: wetland drainage.

Mudfish around the country are often confined to tiny pockets of habitat, often areas that were just too hard to drain. If you think about how a tiny aquarium is much less stable (water quality) than a great big one, you get the idea of how marginal these habitats are for them.

This is a short basic intro site to muddies:

http://www.youtube.com/user/nznativefish

(PeteS has also got mudfish, some juvenile black mudfish from Waikato)

ok so you know I didn't mean to put the youtube one there again :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

:oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

www.mudfish.org.nz

Do you know how long ive been waiting for a NZ fishkeeping channel. lol :lol: Great just subscribed.

lol I subscribed aswell :

5 stars of the videos, they're awesome! :lol:

Dial up internet really sux.....

Snorkel, I assume you know to pause it and let it completely download before you watch it?

Pete is putting together a couple of videos I shot today in the field of Mike Joy and Amber McEwan electrofishing We also took a few videos of my fish last night. Hopefully to be uploaded soon

The electro fishing video has been uploaded.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nznativefish

electro fishing is fun the fish are so spaced out

Lol the link is getting passed around DOC now.

Dad and Glen want to come over and see your setup now so they can do a decent setup in Turangi. Im may jump in and come along.

Lol the link is getting passed around DOC now.

....................................omg

.....wow.......

I actually got an email last night from the local DOC area manager (he saw my aquaria last week) and now there is a woman from head office keen to meet me and talk about the book and the possibility of doing some kind of live display for the head office!

This is in addition to the other person from Wgtn DOC wanting to talk to me about the book....