Author's note:  Every winter I spend a month or so travelling wherever I want in the World. In December/January 2003, a time of international tensions, I decided to visit safe and friendly New Zealand, and stop off in Western Samoa on the way home. I'd been to New Zealand three times before but there were a few places on the South Island I hadn't seen, so my golf partner and I rented a car and drove around playing golf and stopping to take photographs of the awesome natural scenery of the Southern Alps and the West Coast.
I also wanted to meet and write about some New Zealand aquarists, and to find some of these I first contacted Andrew Broome of the New Zealand Killifish Association. He suggested that I try the very active Fishroom Forum Section of the Federation of New Zealand Aquatic Societies and also put me in touch with Caryl Simpson in Blenheim. With further help from Matthew Milne of Christchurch, and Gordon Jones and Denise Keenan of Dunedin, I soon had a list of prominent South Island aquarists. Because of my travelling schedule I wasn't able to see them all, but was pleased to visit the fish rooms of Colin Clarke and Ivan Mockford in Dunedin, Sid Smithies in Otautau, and Gordon McKay and Sean Canovan in Christchurch. Thank you to everyone.

MEET AN AQUARIST SERIES: NEW ZEALAND
Part One: Sid Smithies

By Howard Norfolk
Aquarticles.com

When I was planning my visit to New Zealand, someone said that I must meet Sid Smithies, who lives in the village of Otautau, near Invercargill at the south end of the South Island. I tried to phone Sid when I was in Ivercargill, but it happened to be Christmas Day and he wasn't home when I called. But since I'd be passing through Otautau the next day on my way north to Te Anau and Milford Sound, I thought I'd take a chance and try phoning again when I got there.

After damaging a tyre and being lucky to find someone to replace it on Boxing Day, my friend and I stopped at the village pub in Otautau for lunch. I hadn't spoken to Sid and didn't know his address, but when I asked to borrow the phone to "call someone," the bartender said "Who? - Oh, Sid - he's just up the road. You can't miss his place. Why not just go and knock on his door?"

Indeed I couldn't have missed Sid's place! On the main road heading north was a large barn-like structure painted bright blue and turquoise, and covered with paintings of fish and underwater life. I knocked on the door, explained myself, and Sid invited me in.

   A lady artist painted these murals on Sid's building. It was raining hard in Otautau on Boxing Day, which explains the raindrops on my camera lens!

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR ENLARGEMENT, THEN GO "BACK"

Sid's building is divided into three sections. At the back is the living area, where Sid is kept company by his computer and his smart little dog. Part of this is a glass conservatory with a collection of orchids, cacti and succulents. The middle part is devoted to two tropical fish keeping rooms, and the remaining half of the building is where Sid keeps a stock of goldfish and has his workshop.

The tropical fish area is heated to 80 to 85 degrees F. - quite a high temperature, but Sid says there is less chance of fungus, white spot disease and other problems if the temperature is kept above 80F. The two rooms contain about sixty fish tanks, mostly of about 200 litres* each. Sid prefers large tanks so that fish growth is not stunted. The tanks are on metal stands that Sid made himself, and the rows are recessed so that the tops are free for easy access (see photo). He has glass covers for the tanks but mostly does not bother to keep them on - again for ease of access. Lighting is by general fluorescent room lights. Aeration is by Hagen's "The Pump", and the air is controlled by valves that Sid has adapted from medical devices used to release fluids into patients' veins in hospitals.

* New Zealanders build their tanks in feet and inches, but estimate their capacity in litres.
100 litres = 22 Imperial gallons = 26 US gallons

  Each row of tanks is recessed for easy access.

Sid has been keeping fish since about the age of twelve, when he started with a "tadpole tank" (he's still interested in frogs!). He soon graduated into keeping and breeding goldfish, and specialised in goldfish for many years. Then he began to breed tropical fish (some favourites were African cichlids and killifish), and for a while he had even more tanks than he has now. In recent years he has cut down on his number of tanks, and has come back full circle to concentrate on goldfish again.

He does still keep plenty of tropical fish, and has a special interest in catfishes, of which he is successfully breeding about a dozen different species. One interesting catfish that Sid is giving a try is the "flagtail porthole cat" Dianema urostriata. Sid says that there have been instances of this armoured catfish laying eggs in aquariums, but nobody has reported raising them yet. He is also trying to breed the "chocolate catfish" Platydoras costatus.

Also being bred are two varieties of emperor tetra, rummy nose tetras, Australian rainbows, angelfish, neon tetras, neon rainbows, and a few African cichlids.

The living quarters and the tropical fish rooms take up about half of Sid's building. The other half is unheated, and is Sid's workshop and storage area. It is also where Sid keeps his breeding stock of goldfishes. A further forty tanks are lined up here, in two double rows. The male goldfish are kept in the top rows, separated from the females which are below.

  Some of Sid's goldfish tanks, in the cool workshop area.

When he wants to spawn goldfish, Sid selects a pair, takes them into the tropical room, and places them into a large spawning tank, (which he recently divided into two halves). He usually finds that he has eggs within three or four days. The resulting young are kept warm in grow-out tanks for about six to eight weeks, by which time they have changed to their adult colouration, and are about 11/2" long and ready to sell. Sid culls his fish and sells specimen fish only. He does not produce what he calls "nymphs" (feeder fish). He wholesales his goldfish (and tropical fish) to dealers in the nearby cities of Invercargill and Dunedin, and retails a few to callers at his door. He used to sell mostly at Christmas, but has been trying to make his production less seasonal, and now spreads it more evenly throughout the year.

     This large tank is used for spawning goldfish.

New Zealand is an isolated country. Before the days of air travel it took months for goods to arrive from England, so New Zealanders developed a tradition of self-sufficiency and making things for themselves. There are no large fish tank factories in New Zealand, and so many keen aquarists make their own all-glass tanks. Sid makes all his own tanks, and also a few for retail in pet stores.
(To see how New Zealanders make their tanks, see the Aquarticles article "Making All-Glass Tanks", by Bill "Pegasus NZ").

     Tank making. Sid has a supply of glass ready cut.

The advantage of making your own tanks is that they can be made to any size and shape, and once you are used to working with glass you can add your own modifications. I noticed that Sid has used his glass making skills in two interesting ways:

Most of his tropical tanks are filtered with a home-made undergravel system using a section of "Nova Flow" pipe - a 4" plastic pipe with holes used by farmers for drainage and irrigation purposes. The illustration below shows the pipe and how the filter looks. As you can see, Sid has undergravel filtration combined with the advantages of bare-bottomed tanks.

     Home-made undergravel filter used in the tropical room

Even more ingenious is the cascade filter system that Sid built for his goldfish tanks. As shown in the photos below, the tops of the rows of tanks are staggered so that water overflows from one tank to the next through connecting glass sluices, until they drain into a large filter, from where the water is pumped back to the top tank. This also makes water changes easy and automatic - just divert the old water and put new water into the topmost tank.

       Sid used his glassworking skills to make this cascade filter and automatic water change system in the goldfish room.

Sid doesn't only make fish tanks in his workshop. When I was there he had nearly finished making a large parrot cage for someone in Invercargill.

Sid sometimes cultures microworms for fish food, but his main live food production is done outside in his back garden. Here he has two or three above-ground swimming pools and a row of old fish tanks that produce large quantities of daphnia. He adds a litre of milk to the ponds each week to encourage daphnia blooms.

     These ponds and tanks are used exclusively for daphnia production.

A further three pools are used to keep goldfish, especially to "fatten up the females" and get them in good shape for spawning. These get a different type of live food: Sid goes out and shoots rabbits, lays them on wire mesh above the ponds, and the resulting maggots fall into the pond - automatic live food feeding! …..Now Sid just has to find an automatic way to keep the whistling frogs away - apparently they sometimes invade the ponds and keep the whole neighbourhood awake at night!

     Goldfish in this pond are fed maggots which fall from the rabbit carcasses suspended above the pond. Not very pretty but I guess it works.
Important note to married aquarists:  Use caution when installing this system at home!

When I visited, Sid had just returned from a three month trip to Australia. I asked who had looked after his tanks and whether there had been any disasters. He told me that he had recruited a lady friend who knew nothing about fish, and that there had been no disasters. She had fed the fish every two days and even did water changes, exactly according to Sid's instructions. Sid prefers someone who knows nothing and will do things Sid's way, rather than someone who "knows everything" and will do things his own way!

Sid insists that his fish keeping is just a hobby - he can't work for health reasons. It looks like he puts lots of work into his hobby however, which he summed up by saying it "plays like a job, but pays like a hobby!" 

....Go to Part Two: Colin Clarke and Ivan Mockford