Yes it seems strange that P. olorum is not mentioned in "The Marine and Estuarine fishes of South-western Australia" which was specifically written for that area. Perhaps we are too reliant on general references like Merrick and Allen. Or perhaps the dist
ribution needs to be rechecked. Perhaps a nice little project for Cyrus and his cohorts.
<< Another favourite of mine is
Redigobius bikolanus>>
Another of my favourites, a superb little fish - attractive, peaceful, breedable in freshwater, interesting behaviour etc. In short everone should have atleast one pair. The colony I have at present come from a pair I caught in Bool creek on Fraser island
. I caught a few and was giving them away to friends regularly then noticed I didn't have any left for me ( a not uncommon occurrence) so removed the blue-eyes drained the tank gave it a quick washout and refilled from the tap put in some neutraliser swit
ched the backdrop filter back on and forgot about it for a week. I was quite surprised to see a little female R. bikolanus hopping around. A few days later I was even more surprised to see a male with her. A week later there were several tiny fry and even
tually about 10 survived. Obviously the backdrop filter provided most of the habitat needs for this pair.
. << Another great fish is Mugilogobius
palladus which was probably introduced to Victoria (the only place you
find it is Western Port Bay, a major shipping port). The fish also
occurs in NSW and Qld. Very similar in shape to a desert goby, it has a
dark body when aroused with yellow fins and the characteristic blue spot
on the first dorsal fin>>
The Mangrove Goby (M. paludis) is a top little aquarium fish also and will spawn in aquaria but I'm not aware of successes in raising fry ( but I would be delighted to hear of details from anyone for a future A-Z)
<<. The guys in Townsville have it made though when
it comes to gobies, they have recorded around 40 species from the one
spot over a year or three time period! >>
Yes I remember Kerryn Gough's gobies well from the Townsville conference.
<< It certainly can get abundant and may displace other
gobies but who works on goby ecology? >>
I know Helen Larson works on Gobies out of Darwin Museum and is constantly battling to get taxonomic projects done ( even in her holidays) because so few people work on gobies. She even has the "GOBIES RULE O.K." sign on her wall Peter. Now there's a la
dy who has a great collection of "fishbooks" and really knows her stuff.
<< Today, when a new exotic
establishes it doesn't displace any natives typically (many are gone),
but it just displaces some other exotic organism!>>
BTW perhaps we could get Dick Smith's Australian Geographic or Geo and co to do a story on the effect of these "ballast water beasties" in Australian ports. Perhaps the Spotted Handfish could be a symbol for this problem.
Bruce Hansen ANGFA
Attachment Converted: c:\eudora\attach\RE Swan river tank (Perth WA)1