Rainbowric

Melanotaenia praecox "Pagai" known as praecox .... neon Rainbowfish, very common Rainbowfish for many many years. About 3 years ago the praecox seen in the LFS were starting to become quite dull looking...not to forget to mention the health on them was rather poor as well. Fortunately Gary Lange went out and did a collection of this wonderful little (dwarf) Rainbowfish. It was a while before F1's became available to us. We were very lucky to see F1's, as many in Europe were quite pleased to see F2 and F3 of this collection that came from Pagai. I was able to obtain a mop of eggs from Gary in June of 2010 from which I hatched well over 100 fry. Later in the spring of 2011 Gary came to Calgary and Edmonton and auctioned off some eggs from his group of wild caught praecox. So there were many F1's to be seen in Alberta in 2011! The question that so many ask today is the expected life span of the praecox. Before the Pagai collection came along many believed it to be 2 to 3 years. I know that Gary still has some of his wild caught but I wonder .... How many people in Alberta today can say that they have M. praecox "Pagai" F1 ? Here is a picture of one of my pairs that I have, that is now 2.5 years old! Strong and stunning pair! This boy is dominant in the tank ....and let's all the other fish know it! Easy to tell female from male as the male has bright red fins and the female yellow to orange fins. and this pair is still spawning, not just after water changes but at least every other day... as here you can see him with his strip down the nose signaling the female! I haven't noticed any signs of this pair getting old. Yes I have lots of young F2's ! Hope you liked these pictures. Regards Ric -------------------------------- "Melanotaenia boesemani from Lake Aytinjo" The Aytinjo variant does have stronger colours!

Oh the joys of hundreds of little baby rams for Christmas !!!! We had close to 3 hundred in this bunch! Like little bee hives hanging in the tank Yes indeed they can be agressive and tough! The Gold ram above has the GBR on the run and the two EBR's showing perfect manners! Congradulations Jarmila on your spawn. Warmest regards, Ric

Anywhere from $2 to $20 ...pending size, quality, and health. Oh yes and who you buy them from..

Looking pretty nice Jason! I don't think that your herbies look that dull, especially in the new habitat, and definitely a male and female... Got yellow, orange, and green bows. Will have to see if we can get you some red ones!

Based on what Ron wanted for them ..... maybe a one wink friend deal, and a few items of trade! However if you wanted some, I would recommend talking to Ron .... as I posted at the start of thread, Ron calling me up ....knowing I was looking for some. Couple more images .....

Maybe why all the shrimp were out feeding yesterday was the rams on the other side of the tank in my dinning had a little conflict going on! The 2 Electric Blue boys are really confused, one week the German girl needs the attention and the next week the Gold girl demands it. One of the EBRs is a little more dominate and when there are no eggs to be concerned with he will color down and keep a low profile in the tank. The other EBR is always colored up. He has two girls to bug for eggs in a planted tank so they don't get beaten up to bad from him. However when one of the females is ready to drop eggs, both males get a little excited! In this photo the EBRs are moving in on the Gold as you can see why with her big belly. The GBR female is quite upset that the boys are not paying any more attention to her and comes in and trys to chase the Gold Ram off. In this photo the boys are at it and the GBR is happy that they are focusing there attention at each other and swims off. The less dominant EBR eventually swims off, with no females to spar for around. and the more dominant one is still looking around for the girls.... Happy the wife has been so busy at work lately so as not to see this, or she would be bugging me to breed rams again. Hope you enjoyed this little confrontation and pictures. Have a nice day! Ric

Thanks Ron....certainly had fun with them today!

A couple of weeks ago Ron called me up ...knowing I was looking for some Painted Fire Shrimps....and told me he was shutting down his Painted Fire Shrimp tank. Well lucky me when the next day Ron showed up with a bucket full of these bright...brightest red shrimps ever! These guys were pleased as could be to make there new home in my dinning room tank full of dwarf rainbowfish and rams....german, electric blue, and yellow. Well we didn't put them all in the tank as there were so many! Separated out a number of males and berried females and the small young and started a tank for them and ended up with a dozen large ones to show in the dinning room tank. They were large enough that the rams couldn't care less for them. These shrimp were so red ....that when they took a cr*p ...it was red also... check out this HD video of this one shrimp! Be sure to change the quality to at least 720 and expand the picture to enjoy! Hope you have enjoyed... Regards Ric

Hmmm ....only you :bow: Paul can mention both, those other families of fish and the selfish plug "Where someone might find some 2 inch, sexable, Lake Aytinjo boesemani pairs in the same thread! But on the serious side I have lots of sweet wonderful Corys, actually many species of them as well and have never noticed that dominance pecking order. Is it other catfish you are referring to? In addition from stories I have heard from some of the Chichlid community it can be quite deadly for the less dominant male, mind you I have heard of death with Rainbowfish as well I am pleased to have someone with your extensive knowledge of all these familys of fish contributing to my thread and really at the start I did say breeders let us know what you have available.

Yes I noticed that also with the 3 pairs that I got from you last year. I was getting quite disappointed in them and you, until I separated them! That can happen once in a while with other species and often with two pairs if they are not matched equally. One male will over dominate. My first group of 4 males, that I got of the Lake Aytinjo boesemani did that and I really got upset.... for months! The other 3 males back half were almost white! Moved the dominant male out and they all started to come around ... then 2 went white. Moved out the second dominant male and the other two came around. Watched this for about 6 months. Keep this in mind if you feel your group of males aren't looking as good as they should!

All my air pump problems went away when I got my first Hi-Blow pump. First one I got was the Hi-Blow 20 which handled a quite a few tanks. Eventually bought a second and now never run out of air. Very quite and no maintenance in two years. You can order it on line at JL and because it is over $100 ...free shipping. http://www.jlaquatic... Air Pumps.html

Ok ...discussions about what our spouses think or say about us and our hobby.... we might need to start another thread! Jerry I can relate to the frustrations you had about finding a female boesemani years ago. Almost like the distributors were trying to limit us from breeding them. Tanks of boesemani in all the LFS and none with females. Fortunately we should not have that problem anymore. John remember the three pairs of Lake Aytinjo boesemani you left me last time you were down. One of the pairs was the runts of the liter, the pair that you were so worried about. Well he did not do well with his brothers so I moved him into my 40 gallon dinning room tank with my smaller rainbow species. The largest bow in the tank was my praecox pair. The rest .. pairs of P. furcatus, P. connieae, P. paskai, Threadfins, GBR, EBR, and Y rams, Corys, Painted fire shrimps. He was just a little shy. He is looking and doing great now that he is not the smallest fish in the tank, and the praecox has become his best buddy! He does not bother any of the blue eyed fish and spends quite a bit of time watching the shrimp! I am very happy with him and also that he is so small. I will be able to enjoy watching him for many months in this small tank! It really does show how stable this strain of boesemani really is. You did not tell me that your Deepwater Creek had become your second favorite bow next to the Lake Aytinjo boesemani, even though I can understand. Let us know when you have some available! I will be happy to try and explain to your wife that we can become a little impatient at times with breeding fish. Ric

Great to hear from you John! Maybe a year ago you might have been a little green under the gills :rofl: But in the last six months you have helped me considerably to provide some nice young fish to my customers! Even though I have cut back on breeding ..... I am still keeping a sharp eye out for some nice M. lacustris! Warn regards, Ric

I would like to see you prove us wrong ......by all means if you luck out, let us know!

I guess I should have titled this thread, "Serious Rainbowfish Breeders", but I have seen that on the Rainbowfish forum done and there were so many arguments that it never happened. In my mind and I think most Rainbowfish breeders minds, none would try to breed Rainbowfish in a tank full of predators. "Never having done it" and trying to do this does not qualify you as a Rainbowfish breeder. Now if this was the first time that I heard from you(Cainechow) I would advise you of this in this section on how to breed your furcatus. But you have had a thread going for some time now and I have already advised you in that thread that if you were really serious about breeding your furcatus, to remove the Amano shrimp! I would be pleased in giving you advice in breeding them but first things first, again .... get the Amanos out of the tank! Now if by some chance, lightning hit, and you saw an egg before the Amanos did, were able to wrestle it away from the Amano shrimp. What would you do with this egg? What temp would you keep it at? Supposing lightning struck twice, and it hatched in 3 weeks providing your water conditions were good enough for it to mature to hatching, what would you feed it? Suppose you found good food for it and managed to keep it alive for 4 to 6 months....until it got to maybe an inch in lenght. Where would you raise this little fry? Looks like you have a great little colony of furcatus ( not spelled furcata ) that appears to be producing eggs. 5 females! you could easily have 100's of eggs in a month. But it will not happen, especially now that the Amanos have tasted furcatus eggs!

I guess it is time to get around to starting this thread. It would be nice to know some of the other breeders of Rainbowfish here in Alberta and even around the world. Breeders are welcome to post in this section....tell us what bows you are keeping, what bows are you currently breeding, what might be available soon and just some general discussions between breeders of Rainbowfish. Hopefully there will be lots of good discussions! The thing that prompted me to get this thread going is that in the background of this forum, lurking around, watching me, and finally making an appearance last week, while I was down with the flu, is a good friend of mine from the USA, who to me is a Rainbowfish breeder that I very much admire and respect. Mark N. has bred so many Rainbowfish, as myself, that the challange of breeding is no longer there. The challenge now for us is to breed and raise a better, stronger, healthier Rainbowfish. I hope Mark will be posting some of his pictures of his older stock for you all to see. He is one of the few breeders I know on the International Rainbowfish Forums that post pictures of Rainbowfish older then 3 years that looks fanstastic! However that is not the main reason why Mark is joining me on the forum. Mark has agreed to help me with the Care and Raising of Rainbowfish thread for which he has taught me plenty in the last year. Your lucky also in that there is someone watching what I am telling you and will let you know if I am leading you a stray:) Mark I have seen some good posts from you on the Rainbowfish forums. One that comes to mine is the one you did on the Hamburger Matten Filter (HMF). One of AA members has a Group Order post going for Poret Filter Foam. I know that most of your tanks are using the HMF. Any chance you could give us a little info on what you are doing?

Chilatherina campsi ....same family as the C. bleheri, C. alleni, C. fasciata Faowi Village. I use to have a small colony of this species up until 6 months ago. Had the same wonderful personality of all the Chilatherina and was quite colorful if you had it in the right conditions. These conditions were a little more difficult to obtain ...well more than the conditions then needed for the other species in the Chilatherina Genus. If you had anything other than black substrate the colors would wash right out of them. But if you did get those right conditions the fish could be quite the showpiece. Unfortunately the pictures displayed were taken with a different camera than what I used on the other species of Chilatherina. Chilatherina campsi... Because I do not have this species anymore, does not mean it is not available in Alberta. Last year I sold about 30 pairs to the LFS in Alberta. Big Al's did a weekend special on them and many went to new homes. A picture below shows them just before they left for the LFS. You will notice how light the substrate is and how light colored the fish is. Fortunately Big Al's has black substrate so they did look much more colorful! They were quite young at just over 2 inches in length. Young male and female in the picture above and you will notice like most of the Rainbowfish species, the female has less color and shorter fins. If you ever owned this fish without a female you would be very disappointed with it! When it started to display for the female ...the fish could be quite stunning. Having a colony of this species in tank with very dark substrate, planted, could be quite nice to have. It is also a very rare fish to find in the hobby and may no longer be available in Western Canada. Hope you have enjoyed these pics .... Regards Ric -------------------------------- "Melanotaenia boesemani from Lake Aytinjo" The Aytinjo variant does have stronger colours!

Welcome to AA Jarmila, I can see by the few posts that you have done on our site already, that you will be much welcomed here! Other then providing me with a lot of great products, at a good price from your online site, I have learned much about the hobby from having you as a contact over the last year. Kind regards, Ric

On my 36 " tanks ...4 mm is sufficient, little sag is noticed. Even one tank at 40 inches wide, however it is 22 inches deep. However on my 48 inch tanks there is a fare bit of sag. It is quite difficult to find 5 mm glass so I went to 6 mm. Then the problem comes in finding hindges that will work with that thickness. But it can be done. I have never found 5 mm glass. A far as light distortion ...there is none between 4 mm and 6 mm. I even did two 48 inch glass tops with 6mm starfire glass and no noticeable difference on light.

Surviving incubation with CRS or Cherry I have seen also, a number of times, however it is determined by a number of factors... How many breeding female furcatus are in the tank? and how prolific are they ..... 1 egg a day or 5 eggs a day? How many shrimp are in the tank? How well are they being feed? How big is the tank and how much cover is available? In the situations I have seen where the fry survive, I have not seen any eggs and the fry had to be removed at once as the parents were hunting them, and the parents were being feed live bb and live foods supplementation in addition. Probably didn't see the eggs because the female found a good hiding spot...... not out where it can be seen easily. Now the Amano shrimp is a different critter then the CRS or cherry. When I first had them years ago, loved the way they cleaned up the tank, one inch fish, gutted and cleaned within hours. Not a bit of shyness like the CRS or cherry. If there is something there that it can eat, it will eat it! It appears that you may have a breeding group of furcatus, if you want to increase the odds dramatically of ever seeing a fry, remove the Amanos. BTW the eggs at first will appear clear and then within a few days a black spot will develope, which will grow until hatched.

How soon do you need some shots taken? Down with the a bad bug of something for the last 4 days but once feeling better I wouldn't mind coming over to see if we can get some good shots for you. Don't worry about cost or trade.... Club / Friend discount. Ric

If the male is dancing around with the females, likely they girls are producing eggs. They lay eggs during the day and sleep at night. Incubation period for the egg is somewhere aroung 16 - 20 days, longer if the water is colder than 80 degrees. I believe your amanos will see the eggs before you will !

Chilatherina alleni another species to the Chilatherina Genus. As I was saying in the other Chilatherina threads up until maybe 3 years ago the only Chilatherina species we had here in Alberta was the C. bleheri. Gary Lange brought in a bunch of C. alleni eggs and fish for Calgary and Edmonton Spring workshops in 2011. I am aware of a few of you that got them and have heard that you were disappointed with them. Well you need to get this fish in the right enviroment to really see it come alive. Below is a picture of two males that I have that are in a passive mode. Note with the blue color they might note be the most colorful fish in your tank. The red on the fins is hardly noticeable. Now the front one you will notice has even less red on him. Now when he starts to color up for the girls you can see how the colors in him start to change. Here is the one with the least amount of red flashing his colors for the female .... not realizing that he will have competition for her yet! The one in the back has more red on his fins, he is actually the most dominant of the two. The female with less fin and color who usually likes to keep herself in a low profile until she is ready to breed! The male with the least amount of red has noticed her over by the mop! Of course as seen in the C. bleheri thread, things can get quite crazy at the mop when a female is ready to spawn! Actually the Chilatherina Genus species have become my favorite Genus, not by color, but by attitude. I have heard many stories of the Chilatherina Genus where young are swimming with them in the tank. As with the other Genus you would be lucky to have an egg survive. They are "very" easy to breed and a lot of fun to raise a the young group of them. They are always very active and get along with just about any other kind of fish in a community tank. Very fast swimmer! I will have to see if I can get a picture of all three species together Chilatherina fasciata "Faowi Village", Chilatherina bleheri, and Chilatherina alleni.......but for now.... Chilatherina bleheri & Chilatherina alleni And the Chilatherina fasciata "Faowi Village" Hope you have enjoyed these pics .... Regards Ric -------------------------------- "Melanotaenia boesemani from Lake Aytinjo" The Aytinjo variant does have stronger colours!

The Chilatherina bleheri is a fish that you do not see often. Up until a couple of years ago when the C. fasciata "Faowi Village" was introduced to Alberta, it was the only species of the Genus family "Chilatherina" that was available to the hobby in Alberta. Why do we have 3 or 4 names on a fish? The first name is the Genus of the species, or the family of Rainbowfish, in my Journal now we have looked at 3 different Genus of Rainbowfish. Those 3 Genus are Melanotaenia, Glossolepis, and Chilatherina.....and soon we will be discussing a fourth Genus, Pseudomugil...the little Rainbowfish with blue eyes. The Genus name is always capitalized. The second name is the species. As you will notice, most of the common Rainbowfish species to the hobby today are in the Melanotaenia Genus. The species names are not capitalized. Well .... I am sorry that the software will not let me un-capitalize the species name in the titles to my threads here in my Journal. How these titles should be is Melanotaenia boesemani or Glossolepis wanamensis, or this thread title should look like this Chilatherina bleheri. Again the species names are not capitalized. The third name is usually the collection point. Example.. Melanotaenia trifasciata "Goyder River" and Melanotaenia trifasciata "Running Creek". Differently coloured fish all belonging to the Melanotaenia Genus, the species is trifasciata and the location could be either Goyder River or Running Creek. Back to the Chilatherina bleheri So the bleheri was the only species of Rainbowfish, from the Chilatherina Genus for many years. Like many of the other fish that have been around before 1990 they have become quite inbred, weaker, and washed out in color....most of them You have decided that you want a Chilatherina bleheri! After going through all the LFS for the last six months and seeing nothing that interest you, you contact a breeder and obtain a male C.bleheri. Now you have a high quality bleheri and have placed him into your beautiful planted tank. You might have something that looks like this fish. You give him the best care ever .....food, freshest water... and after a while even though he is a beautiful fish you get bored of him. So you break down and decide to put ( a female ) one of the white minnows in with him. In less than an hour he changed ....to this and what is that glowing strip down his nose, never seen that before! Funny what a female fish will to do to a lonely male fish But what happens if you put another male in with them...competition! I have another species of Chilatherina to this tank, the C. fasciata "Faowi Village" now there is more competition with the another species of Chilatherina. You will notice he is displaying a bright strip down his nose as well. Both of my colonies of three pairs each, bleheri and Faowi are in this tank together. But wait it isn't the bleheri girl that they are all getting excited for ....it is a C. fasciata "Faowi Village" girl! Now you have seen why there are a number of collectors still maintianing this fish. The demand for the Chilatherina bleheri will always be there! Hope I was able to show you the true Chilatherina bleheri.... Best regards Ric -------------------------------- "Melanotaenia boesemani from Lake Aytinjo" The Aytinjo variant does have stronger colours!

A few pictures of some young ....well they are almost 2.5 inches .... more like young aldults as they are certainly producing lots of eggs! These are young from the parents displayed in the first post of this thread. These young are wild and crazy! Regards Ric