DJay

Great news! Mine continue to do well, have grown a fair bit and have started to color up ... Some males I hope!

Do you recall how much they were?

Came home to find 12 (possibly 13) Celebes Halfbeak fry, Nomorhamphus liemi, swimming about in the 20 gal tank that holds my lone female. I had picked up a pair at the start of the New Year, but lost the male almost immediately for unknown reasons. I was hoping that she might be gravid as a result of their brief time together and over the last few months it did look like she was "filling up." Well, apparently they were together long enough! These fry are enormous! The female is maybe 3 inches long yet each of the fry are close to 3/4 - 1 inch long! I've separated "Mom" in a mesh breeding box within the tank as apparently the adults are notorious fry eaters. I fed a bit of crushed NLS pellets to the babies and they seem to dig into it right away. Here are a few pics I took of the new arrivals, hope you enjoy! Duncan <a href=" /> <a href=" /> <a href=" /> <a href=" />

Where did you get your pump from?

Great Stuff actually does sell a pond and stone spray foam that is black. I think I saw it online at Home Hardware. Also, I picked up a can at RONA in their pond section quite a while back, made by Beckett. It was pretty expensive compared to the regular stuff though. Best bet if you can't find the black stuff is to spray it on, and then when its dry cover it in black silicone and then press in cocoa fibre. That's pretty much the standard method that I'm sure you were going to be trying.

I was by Big Al's Edmonton a few days ago and their pair of Banggai's (in one of their display tanks) must have recently spat out a whack of babies. They had them in a net breeding trap in the tank with the parents. Very cool! Little mini versions of the adults. Not sure what they were feeding them but the fry were a good size for sure.

Looks to me like a Nannacara anomala and not a Laeticara curviceps (two completely different fish). No matter, he's a beauty! Hope you get fry in the near future.

I just picked up the most recent Amazonas magazine and there is a short article in it on a dwarf bristlenose pleco, Ancistrus claro (LDA 008). I was just wondering if anyone had ever seen these around recently or had any experience keeping them. I did a search of the forum and there was a brief reference in 2007 of them being at a Calgary FS but nothing else showed up. I really haven't kept any plecos over the years, as I haven't had the larger tanks often needed to keep and breed them (and just haven't been that interested in the regular bristlenose that are available everywhere), but these guys definitely caught my eye. Anyway, if anyone knows anything about them or has seen them anywhere I'd appreciate your input. Thanks!

Brilliant shrimp! These are on the "some day must have" list, maybe once their price has come down and there are local breeders making some available Are you doing anything special to keep pH and hardness as high as they are?

Vampire crabs "Geosesarma" species are more of a terrestrial species and should be kept like dart frogs in vivaria. They are definitely not brackish water crabs and should be kept in an aquarium with more land than water. If you can find CB ones they seem to do better than WC. The water feature only needs to be an inch or two deep. Some care sheets say you may add a pinch of marine salt/liter to help the frogs with moulting (this wouldn't be considered brackish in my books), but when I kept them I never did and they did fine. Mine ate fruit flies and flake fish food. There are a number of care sheets on the net..

Nice price. What species/varieties?

Pretty sure it's an assassin snail. Score!

Aphyocharax rathbuni - Green Fire or Rathbun's Tetra

Possibly C. leucomelas

I was really surprised to see this, maybe just a fluke. As mentioned, I too would have thought that the shrimp would have darted away as soon as the snail moved in. I'll be watching my other snail-shrimp combo tanks though. My gold Sulawesi snails have been with a bunch of red sakuri shrimp for months and there's never been any issues that I noticed.

Maybe something to watch for with these snails ... I have 3 adult chocolate rabbits (plus two babies) in with some yellow shrimp and when I looked in on their tank yesterday morning, there was one of the snails chowing down on the tail of one of the shrimp ... while it was still alive. Tried to get it free but the snail retreated into its shell and trapped the tail of the shrimp and wouldn't let go. It resumed its feeding after a few minutes, all the while the shrimps legs and antennae were flailing away. I came back later and the shrimp was dead and the snail had eaten probably half of its tail. Not sure if the shrimp was going through a moult, or it was on its way out already (although it appeared healthy the day before), but it may be that the snails can occasionally be opportunistic if they catch a shrimp off guard. It was interesting drama in the tank if nothing else

Hi Everyone, Just wondering if anyone local has any first hand experience with any of the varieties of Sulawesi shrimp. I've read a little about them and in general they seem to prefer an alkaline pH (~8) and higher temps (80 F) and need established aquaria with very good water quality (R/O water?). I noticed the lfs had some Starry Night (orchid) Sulawesi shrimp and have thought about picking some up, but want to do a little more research before shelling out the $20 per shrim being asked. Any help appreciated. I would love to be able to track down some of the other brighter red varieties too (Cardinal or Harlequin) Thanks!

I have an AquaFX 4 Stage RO/DI unit which I got from a fellow dart frog/fish keeper. So far the water doesn't seem to affect the clothes in any way and I just add the normal amount of soap. Everything seems to be clean and still smells good too I'd have to say that the volume of waste water to "good water" is the other way around ... for every 3 gallons of waste, I get 1 gallon of "good" (or so). It was because of this that I started to use it for the wash, it didn't seem right to just send the waste water down the drain.

I fill the washing machine with the waste water and then do a load of laundry. I've only flooded the laundry room once when I forgot about it

No heat on any of my shrimp tanks and I can't complain about the results I'm having. Started with 5 shrimp about 2-3 months aback and now ... :thumbs:

Both Ellerslie Garden Centre and Salisbury Greenhouse usually have them.

Hey Morphine, check out Canadart.org for a look at a bunch of great vivs (GRIMM, who posted in this thread, has an amazing viv build video series going on right now too!) as well as all the answers to the questions you may have about PDFs. As for where to get them, most of my breeding stock I have gotten from out East, but now I breed a few species myself. I just dropped off some Dendrobates azureus at a LFS a few days ago. More on the way! If you have any specific questions after you search Canadart give me a PM.

Thanks for all of the great responses everyone. I'm looking forward to seeing the results in my vivariums and aquariums. I've heard more than one flood story now with these units, clearly something to watch out for! Can I use the waste water for anything? Although I'm not into African cichlids (at least not the lake varieties) which I've heard you can use it for, I was wondering if I could use it to water plants outdoors?

I was fortunate enough to recently pick up at a R/O unit a great price (O.K. free :thumbs: ). I was told the membranes etc. weren't very old and only had run around 100 gallons through it etc. Although I've kept fish for decades and now currently keep primarily dart frogs, I've never used R/O water before. So I guess the question is, how do you use it? Do you use the water straight, as is? Do you reconstitute it (add anything afterwords)? Its my understanding that its great for soft water fish (potentially low pH too) which is great because I mainly want to keep S. American/African characins, barbs an dwarf cichlids which come from these conditions (in general). Lastly, would there be any danger to my dart frogs in misting their vivariums with the water? I know it would probably be appreciated by my orchids and other plants but could it harm the frogs in any way (particularly with long term use)? Oh yeah, how about with my shrimp? The unit is a 3 chamber one, brand name Aqua FX (if that makes any difference) Anyone with experience and or insights would be appreciated. Thanks!

When I bred these fish, I did have to use infusoria before they took microworms. It was pretty low tech in terms of what I added though (green water from the windowsill seeded with a drop or two of water from my pond) and I supplemented with Liquifry. They moved onto microworms in a really short time too. Good luck with these! I found they were pretty easy to raise in a densely planted tank (after I removed the parents).