Galaxiids love Ox heart don't they!

[preacher]

Wow, I've never seen my fish so active. Being in the pond I thought they would need a while to pop out and investigate. Talk about a fish magnet! I took the frozen heart and tried the fine side of a cheese grater thinking it would need to be small for them. That didn't work at all so I switched to the coarse side. This produced small worm like pieces which I thought would be too big. Boy I was wrong. The Inanga shot out as soon as it was in the water and tore into it, chunks 'n' all. I thought perhaps the goldfish would be into it too but they didn't even bother.

Have you tried a bit of Ox heart in the wild as a fish attractor Stella? Or are my fish just super hungry cos they are certainly growing well.

I have seen 2 small bullies in my top pond since I put the fry in a couple a months back. Both about 2cm now and lacking any real markings so I assume they are girls at this stage.

P.

[Stella]

Oh that is very cool!

Neat to know they went for it straight away.

There are some pools I know with shortjaw and giant kokopu. Hopefully when the rain stops (ie next summer) I will go back and was planning to take some mealworm beetles. I might just do ox heart instead!

I have a 2cm Cran's fry, it doesn't have much by the way of markings either. They seem to be very nondescript for a very long time. Presumably yours are Cran's or upland, being the ones that don't have to go to sea as fry.

(Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier, I had to go cold turkey from a few sites so I could focus on uni stuff.)

[preacher]

Hi Stella

Great to hear from you. I had assumed the Bullies were just Common, but I take it they goto sea too? My ponds got a bit overgrown with plants so I took out all the fish, stripped it clean and redid them both. I was very pleased to find that I did indeed have 2 bullies from the fry I found in the river. I also had about 6 or so smaller bullies in the lower pond so I put them all together in the upper pond. Some of them do seem to have that blunt faced look of Crans though.

The Galaxiids are doing great, Still only about 8cm long and I haven't seen any doing the floating on the wood trick so I am guessing that was likely low oxygen in the water. I wonder if they have a higher oxygen requirement than Bullies since they are alot more active than Bullies which tend to just sit on the bottom and wait for food?

It's been very wet down here too, the rivers generally been too high to go to my favourite spots.

P.

[Stella]

Commons usually go to sea, but they don't have to. They are finding with some of the diadromous native species with sea access that some actually haven't been to sea. Will take more work to unravel quite what is going on here.

Commons are not blunt like the Cran's, they are quite obviously tapered towards to snout. Cran's females are less clear, but definitely not tapered.

We decided that you also had koaro or something, didn't we?

The galaxiids possibly do have a higher oxygen requirement. Bullies are certainly very active but not quite as active as the galaxiids.

Oh, I have recently added a dwarf galaxiid to the collection. Nutter fish! It looks like it is constantly panicking - breathing fast and flapping their pectorals fast while staying on one spot. It is just how they are. I swear they are dwarfed simply by putting all their energy into flapping!

Then it will disappear for two weeks without applying for leave. Most inconsiderate.

Cute wee fish though, I would like to get more as apparently they school a little.