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I LOVE natures natural Christmas lights, well that's what they remind me of with their bright flashing backsides and twinkling away light lime green fairy lights. If you haven't guessed I am talking about Fireflies. I adore seeing fireflies and get a real kick out of watching them actually flying and flashing,(they are surprisingly fast little flyers too) and thankfully we are now back into firefly season, so I have been able to go to a couple of local places I know where these living gems can be found. My sister used to tell me that there where fireflies in Ross Creek at Yeppoon, but that's a little far away for a quick Friday evening field trip. I know for a fact that they can be found along the Fitzroy river, but alas almost all the places you can get to are either to well lit by houses and street lights or just inaccessible. So instead one of the best places we have found that is not too far to travel is Mt Archer. Because Mt Archer is a Tourist lookout it has lights up there and now after cyclone Marcia has a lot more glow lighting it up from the city below. BUT fireflies can still be found there and if you go a short way from the lights and just stand still watching in the shadows you will see the fireflies flashing, provided you also stay out of any strong winds. So without further ado, here's some photos of the result of my night time field trip.

Hi everybody. So I would like to present our (my and partner) sulawesi tank. Size:60x30x30cm Volume: 60l (water 45l) Substrate: JBL aquabasis, JBL florapol and JBL manado (6cm) Filtration: JBL e401 with micromac (JBL ceramic balls), seachem matrix and seachem purigen Secondary filtration:HBL with seachem Denitrate Lightning: 1x24w T5 Small RGB led stripe Decorations: Lawa rock 8kg approximatelly Also some of denitrate and matrix directly in the tank Flora: Pogostenon erectus, sagitaria subulbata (or something like that), algae ball, singapore moss, cameroon moss, christmass moss and flame moss and surprise surprise hemiatus cuba Additional: Oxygenator mini, borneo wild mineral balls, mironekuton stone, at sulawesi mineral water conditioner, GlassGarden bacter AE Food: algae, ebi pro sulawesi, at sulawesi, at tylomelania, sometimes leafs, GlassGarden BetaGlucan Water: RO water remineralized with salty shrimp sulawesi 8.5 No2/3 = 0 NH 3/4 = 0 Gh and Kh = 7 Ph = around 8.0 250/270 μs Fauna: 10x Caridina Denerli, 10x Caridina striata, 2x Tylomelania sp. Orange

I swear I checked their site earlier and it was all sold out. Maybe I was hallucinating?! I found some in a local hydroponic store, so tested the nitrate one more time and then added it in (tonight I've just hung it in front of my powerhead, tomorrow I'll put it in the filter). Looking forward to seeing what the results are.

If you haven't already tried them I would suggest Chameleon shrimp from the NT, they are still a small shrimp and can be tricky to keep but they do get amazing patterns and some nice colours. I'm lucky right now and have quite a few berried females and am seeing a lot different sized shrimplets around the tank. It will just be a waiting game to see if the new shrimplets are chameleons or more Blackmore River shrimp or perhaps even Darwin Red Nose. Blackmore River Shrimp can also get interesting patterns and so far I have found them the easiest to keep and breed in my native shrimp tank. I did have a heap of Barney Springs shrimp but they just gradually disappeared and the few remaining ones I ended up adding to my other native shrimp tank. Sometimes I suspect I am seeing the odd Barney Springs shrimp still getting about in the tank but its really hard to tell and there are too many places for the shrimp to disappear into other recesses of the tank.

Thats a really nice piece of wood. Cant wait to see all the plants grown in.

i have a miner problem...

School yard brawl standoff! Betta guarding the food from the shrimps. I can literally hear the shrimps go... "Give me food! Give me food!".