Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi JM
Pretty much agree with your thinking
Introduced species are here to stay. In my experience when there have been mass feral eradication programmes it has devastating short and long term effects on native species and the environment. While you are right about native species adapting to feral fauna and flora there are many documented species that have totally vanished or so rare that they are unlikely to survive due to the small gene pool. Our recent camel cull in Central Australia (and more proposed) may have some interesting repercussions with all the camel carcasses being left to rot on the ground there may be a population explosion of Wedge tail eagles, dingoes' etc which in turn may increase the pressure on other animals that are hunted by them. who knows or can predict the outcome?
While not a cat hater, cats are almost the ultimate killing machine and are responsible for some total extinctions of several marsupial and bird species in Central Australia and no doubt the rest of Australia. Unfortunately many cat owners have the idea that there cat never kills wildlife, studies of cat scats have shown that this is rarely the case and often contain remnants of birds, lizards etc

As for turtles there is one AP system that was turtle poo powered it has been temporarily dismantled but believe that he will be setting up again very soon. will try to keep you posted when this happens.
Many years ago I tasted the long neck fresh water turtle in Arnham Land with a group of Aboriginal people it was very clean and quiet tasty and dare I say it I tried eating cat once with some Central Australian Aboriginals back in the mid 80's it just tasted like rabbit. Haven't eaten one since but any cat that enters my place is fair game for tree fertilizer.
My belief is that if you choose to keep a Cat it should not be allowed to roam beyond your boundary

I am currently in the process of setting up a small system with my 6 foot Turtle Tank. it has one Northern Long Neck in it and a couple of fish.

Keep you posted.

Interestingly, I saw tiny baby tortoises on sale the other day, leading me to assume the minimum 10cm shell size (for sale in Victoria) law has been relaxed. Now I want a couple for my indoor tank.

little long necked turtles make awesome pets, i have had a few over the years, they will take feed rom your fingers once they are used to you, i had a little guy about the size of a 50c peice that would walk/crawl out of the water to take food from my fingers and cary it back to the water to eat it, my sisters cat got ithe poor little guy one day

i have been looking for a little turtle as my wife wants one but i can only find lots of big ones these days in the pet shops.

yeah, they're what I saw, tiny little things, $100ea though.. bit pricey

$150 here, yet they are very common in the water ways, during and after the wet season! You have to have a reciept that you bought them though