vince0

the betta it is the betta it works...

maybe you should give them some barry white background music?

if you leave them in a community tank, the farthest they'll get to is free swimming before they get eaten. With my pair, i have left them in the community tank so that they can gain parenting experience, but they will soon be moved to a breeder. If you want ram fry real bad, pull the wood into a hatching tank and use methylene blue to prevent fungus from getting into your eggs. Blue rams are bad parents, it has to do with where they come from. In the wild, they don't really have any predators so the parents don't have to be as protective over the fry as some of the other cichlids out ther.

add apple snails or nerites? or both? they do a great job of eating algea. Most of the time algea is caused by an imbalance in your water chemistry. So you can eitehr invest in tests kits to figure out what the imbalance is, or get something to eat the algea lol.

labidochromis come from lake malawi, and jack dempsey's come from central american, they cannot cross breed. also as angie stated, a 15 gallon is way to small for either of these fish. i wouldn't keep a jack dempsey in anything smaller than a 55g and the yellow labs in a 33g. my two cents. vince

This specific pair has spawned on anubias, and sword plants. I figure since there isn't any other inhabitants in this tank, they may choose the red tiger, or one of the many flat spots on the rocks. I have a few smaller swords kicking around I could put in there, but I'm trying to keep away from the very large swordplants that will take over the tank. Ill leave it this way for a few months and see what happens, If they decide they absolutely want an swordplant to spawn on, they will get it.... spoiled bastages

that is sooo much money! for a fish that may or may not become extinct, i think the folks running the zebra racket should get their heads out of their a, drop the price and give the species a chance of becoming mainstream in the hobby, rather than letting their greed take over. Within a year or two we could have a large aquarium population that could in the long run repopulate the wild stock.

Your right it would, however, I have a hard time keeping any fish without trying to breed them. Im planning on keeping 3-4 species that would completement one another and maybe a few syno. type catfish to complete the look. For algea control im probably gonna use snails to keep it natural looking. And im probably gonna end up getting a few tanks to put females in as they get ready to drop fry. But first I have to get this tank, and thats still a month away. Ive got soo many projects on the go at this point, it'd be nice to complete one of them haha.

i think ill do this one to please my roomate, she wants a tank with tons of color. So the plan is to change the gravel out for some pool filter sand, get some nice rocks and make a hap/peacock tank. I haven't kept african cichlids in about 10 years so it'll be fun to get back into it. Last time I kept them I spawned p. saulosis. So I thought i'd do something different. With the limitations of a 4 ft tank, I think this will give me the best bang for my buck. I still have 180g 6 footer coming in the near future too, so we'll see what comes to mind for that one.

if i were in your shoes, id start with a dwarf south american cichlid. Maybe like a keyhole cichlic or something similar. That way you get to experience the fun of egg layers without having to deal with very large size/territories of some cichlids, or the difficulty in keeping/raising the harder blue rams/apistos

Ill start off by saying, rio otapa sword are hard to catch! I decided to move some fish around yesterday, since my angel's are now in their breeder. After i moved them, I realized I had a lot of room in my 55g to fill up. Those angels sure occupied a lot of room in that tank lol. So out came the rasbora hets and the swordtails, destined to go into the 55g. The rasporas pretty much swam into the net, and the male sword was pretty easy to catch, must be the fin extensions slowing him down. The females on the other hand, were quite a bit of work, and in the process of trying to catch them, half my plants got ripped out. The amount of gunk that came flying out was quite impressive too, and I just couldn't leave it in there. So out came the syphon, and after 2 33% w/c's, it seemed that most the of the poo was collected. When it came time to replant everything, I couldn't just leave the plants as they were, I had to trim them back and make them look purdy again. And while i was at it, I may as well redo the wood in that tank, since it was restricting how much plants i could have in the tank. So three hours later, here is the final product. Im waiting on the second plant in from the right to grow in a bit before i trim it down again so the roots aren't exposed. It had gotten infested with dying black beard algea and i just couldn't look at it anymore. Here is a before picture for comparison. Hope you enjoyed this unimformative thread. I'm at home sick today, so I thought i'd post some updates!

Hey Folks, I finally completed my angelfish breeder tank today. It is a 35g (36"x12"x18", with a aquaclear 50 filter, 100w eheim submersible filter and a 36" single t8 light strip. The gravel is a mix of small black fluorite and small dark river gravel. It is planted, although i couldn't tell you all what kind of plants are in here. The pair has been spawning for me for the last six month and i thought i would finally give them privacy. There are apple snail (difusa sp.) in the tank as well for algea control and there are some Asolene spixi hopefully coming soon. There may also be some horned nerites comming as well, but that really depends on wether or not I can find some lol. Heres a pic of the "final" product. The plants have some growing to do still, keep in mind this tank is only a week old lol, although the filter material is a few weeks old. Thanks Vince

one of these days im gonna do a reef tank, but right now isn't the right time.

Hey Folks, One of my friends is shutting down his 120g tank and giving it to me free of charge! It comes with stand, glass tops, 48" HoT5, fluorite gravel, canister filters and the heater. The tank dimensions are 48" x 24" x 24". Only problem is, I dunno what to put in it! I'm thinking either a south american, central american or lake tangyinika biotopes. If you got this tank, what would you put in it?

at 84f, you have to be real careful what pleco's and cories you put in there, not all of them will be able to withstand that high a temp for prolonged periods. Also, not all plecos are algea eaters. As for the cories, why not go to your LFS and see what catches your eye and is locally available. I have cory. sterbai. They are awesome, but they also took me close to 6 months to get my group of 11, since i they were so limited in number when they were availabe

maybe you should haha

as long as the apple snails are smaller than the assassins, your apple snails will be fine

I wanted some soooo bad, but i just don't have the tank space for them at the moment... ill buy fry from whoever breeds them lol

I want to get a method to breeding/raising them that will garantee quality stock so for now there won't be too many at fist. I have a group of 11 that i acquired as two seperate groups in order to help with genetics in the long run. PROFESSIONAL! lol ive been at this for a few years, on and off since i was 11. you kinda pick up on some do's and don'ts... and why would i want to ruin a beautiful fish like c. sterbai through inbreeding? there's plenty off fish already ruined out there that genetics don't matter anymore. If i wanted to make fancy hybrids i'd do that. But i love wild types and believe in being keepers of the marvels mother nature gave us. So I bring that into my fish keeping.

im keeping the number of eggs low that im pulling each attempt... I want to get a method to breeding/raising them that will garantee quality stock so for now there won't be too many at fist. I have a group of 11 that i acquired as two seperate groups in order to help with genetics in the long run. Over the next month or two i should have a 20l breeder set up for them so ill let you know closer to then. For the time being they are doing they're spawning in the community tank. I pulled 5 eggs on friday or saturday and i think three as still viable. I guess time will tell if removing the java moss from the breeder net will help. Right now the output for my fluval 305 is facing the net, but the flow coming out seems very minimal. If this time doens't work, ill try putting the net in front of an aquaclear 20 power head and see if i get better results. I kinda like this trial and error ive been doing with this species. Other species seem very easy, like my american flag fish. I put 20+ eggs in a breeder and they all hatched, without any effort on my part. The sterbai have been spawning for 6 months and I'm just getting around to trying to hatch the eggs.

thanks a lot for the info man

do you put anything else inside the breeder (ie. java moss?)

Hey folks, I have a group of 11 Sterbai Corydoryras that are continually spawning. Recently i decided to set up a breeder net and try to hatch out some fry and get myself a larger group. Only issue seems to be to actually hatch the eggs. Ive had two failed batches so far and im looking to hear what people's cory breeding techniques are?

its only $35 to join... might as well support local clubs while they are still around... otherwise there might not be an auction to go to

is there specific type/brand of pool filter sand you will be using? when purchasing pool filter sand is there anything i should watch for that isn't suitable for a fish tank? I'm considering using it for a future tank and am curious? The tank sound like a great idea, before and after pics would be awesome! Thanks Vince