Jayba

Just saw an ad in the latest Amazonias magazine. Pretty slick. So how big is this auction. I have a couple tanks free?

Hmm. What else is in the tank? I know baby plecos need to eat and eat and eat and perish rather quickly without food. Did you leave food out for them? For the parents?

Pretty funny. Your little guy saying Cheese. Cheese. Cheese because there is a camera out. My son did the same thing. Lol.

I have 2 rams that breed all the time. I have never seen wrigglers. There may be 2 Females as both of their tubes look the same. But hey. Their having fun and their color is good.

Thought about it. All the larger ones were sold. I Need more angels like I need a kick in the pants

Look what I found at Riverfront today! Man am I choked.

Hopefully they are not in the filter! My guess would be hiding. They are pretty skittish for the first little while after leaving dad.

I had it pick off 3 rainbow fish I picked up at the auction. The first one that did it I thought it maybe skipped off the lid and hang his bell. I have lost 3/6 but haven't lost any for a while. Hopefully it was an isolated problem.

Iphone or not, the fish look amazing!

These little guys are fun for sure. Thanks for recomending them to me. I still cant get over how these guys feed.You would think I neglect them every other day. Unfortuneately the Bosemani are in Edmonton still, just need to figure out how to get them down here, but as soon as I get them I will try and get the boesemani "Lake Aytinjo" breeding machine fired up and see what pops out the other side. I have been feeding cyclop-eeze since I got the M. Splendida along with the usual goodies my fish get. Black worms vacuum infused with vitachem, (Don't tell Claudia what happens to her marinater after she goes to bed!) NLS, blood worms, Cyclops-eeze, brine shrimp, microworms, wafers from Almost Natural Fish Foods and soon daphnia. If Red Deer ever thaws out! When my new camera gear shows up, I'll clean the glass and blast some pictures off of what I have going on. Cheers

So here is a little information on what I have been doing to hatch and transfer the fry. These are the tools I have been using. Blue scoop from to grab the little fry and transfer them to a 5x8 shallow tupperwear from the dollar store. Sera Micron fry food. Chop stick to serve up the food from the container Large toomy syringe to remove excess water and food Smaller syringe with an airline and hard plastic pipe at the tip for more delicate sucking of water and waste Here is the hatchery contraption (Saw this at Ricks house): Heater set at 79 degrees, air stone on lightly, mops hanging off a stick across a 5 gallon bucket, and tank water from the breeding tank. I float the tray with the fry in it to keep them warm and so I don't tempurature shock them as I transfer them. There are 105 fry in that tray! They seem to hatch at night, so come morning I take the tray out and start scooping out fry. Although I think most of the eggs that are going to hatch have, but who knows there could be another 20 fry in the am. Not real sure when I had put the mop in the tank originally, and it was in there for a week or so. I'll leave it in there till there are no more fry coming out in the night. You have to be very delicate, as the fry are so small even agitating the water too hard can damage them. I think sucking them up with the syringe would destroy them as well. I have had a couple oops incidents while cleaning. I have learned to take more care, and the fry have learned to stay outta the way. I have had lost 6 or so, and I would bet it was me being too rammy. I leave for Calgary for 2 days tomorrow morning, we shall see how the fish momma makes out while I am gone

iPhone or not stunning fish!

Hopefully nobody buys them so they disappear.

I have seen them in the raw once and they didn't look as good as the Internet makes them look. They looked like the Non photoshopped dorsal version on Planet Catfish. I did catch a glance at what I thought was one about a year ago in Pisces before it went into hiding in a very planted tank. It was very white. Nobody could tell me what it was.

With a nitrite reading of any sort do a water change. The tank hasn't cycled yet. Squish in another sponge from another tank or two. I bounce fish into new tanks with brand new filters all the time, just squish all the mulm into the tank from an old tank. Also dont feed him as this will just add to the water quality problem you have. It'll look like hell for a day, just WC the following day. Lower your temp as well. As temperature goes up oxygen goes down. He is far more comfy at 74ish. Good luck.

Just got home from baseball, and the food I dropped in this morning is gone already! All the little green specs that you see in the tray were gone this morning too. Healthy little eaters. Just scooped out another 1/2 dozen fry. I wonder how long this will go on for? Lol.

These guys were throwing eggs from day one. But I didn't have them in a species only tank till last week. I do have sera micron for them. I tossed the micro worms in for fun as they won't foul the water. But nobody ate them. All the little green dots of the Sera Micron were done this morning, that's a good sign. Had another 20 new fry in the bucket this morning when I looked. I am going to try and count them today. P I have totally enjoyed these guys, they eat greedily every time, they actually school in the tank, which I would think they will outgrow. Fun little project so far. They are prolific, and so far forgiving for a rainbow newb like me. Maybe ill do updates showing what I'm doing. Jorg, yesterday I had no snow on my front yard, thus morning I woke up to 5 inches! Everything is still kinda frozen unlike Calgary, but just like Edmonton. My son has already asked about going to catch "critters." I want a daphnia culture.

Tinkering around tonight, scooping M. Splendida Splendida (Deepwater Creek) fry out of the bucket, and figured hey, I wonder if I can get a picture of these little things? The white squiggles in the background are microworms (about 1-2mm long) and the tupperwear is on a paper towel. These little fry are nothing but eyeballs and color, delicate little things. I have about 80 fry that hatched out in the last 3 days, we shall see how many I get......and how many make it to adolescence.......haha

Pretty sexy looking. I can never look at mine the same again. The tool holder is a great idea!

Get ahold of Patrick at http://gillsnfins.ca/. He sold me mine.

Works to heat my concrete slab. Costs squat to run. Can't even tell on the gas bill.

If you have a polishing pad it's more than likely clogged. Is it blowing tiny bubbles?

I have seen them on eBay for about 5 bucks. Clay pot saucers and glass ashtrays from wallymart will run you about a buck. Have seen both used.

I thought about calling her out on some if the dumb things I've heard her say over the past year, but she wouldn't get it anyways.

True, but unless you have placed your fish into RO water that is nearly void of salts, there is enough salt/minerals in Alberta's hard water that this a mute point. The use of salt in freshwater tanks has recently been a controversial subject of some debate. When we speak of "salt", this is a confusing term, because salts are a large heterogeneous group that consists of any ionically bound elements or compounds. The salt that most freshwater aquarists mean to speak of, however, is NaCl (sodium chloride). Salt adds electrolytes, which reduce osmotic stress to the gills. This is especially important during disease, when the ability of the fish to maintain homeostasis with its surrounding water is disturbed. Salt can aid in the production of the slime layer and speed up the healing of some wound sites. This occurs by hyperosmolarity... fish have a certain specific gravity (concentration of total dissolved solids) in their bodily fluids, and so does the surrounding water... if the surrounding water has a slightly higher concentration, the fluids from the wound site move into the water around it, and fresh plasma goes in to replace it, creating more blood flow in that area (makes it heal faster). Many pathogens, such as Ichthyophthirius (the protozoan that causes "ick"), do not particularly like salt. Despite some of its (rather minor) potential benefits, there are a lot of potential dangers to consider in using salt, especially if you are a beginner. Please make special note of these. Although NaCl is not composed of any truly "hard" ions (laundering ions of Mg or Ca, which produce the hard water stains on your tank and are the only ions that count in true carbonate hardness), it does raise the total dissolved solids in the water... these add up to raise general hardness, or GH. This is not well tolerated by a number of fish, especially true softwater fish from places like the Amazon river basin, where there are very few electrolytes of any kind in the water. These fish include (but are not limited to) neon tetras, cardinal tetras, rummy nose tetras, hatchetfish, elephantnoses, and discus... in addition, most live plants will not tolerate it either. DO NOT USE SALT WITH ANY OF THESE FISH, AS SOME HAVE RATHER STRINGENT PH/KH/GH REQUIREMENTS, AND COULD DIE AS A RESULT OF THIS ADDITION. There are other Amazonian fish such as angelfish which will not particularly prefer salt, but may possibly tolerate it because they are hardier. Salt can also have an unpredictable effect on other fish, since there are no bodies of water in Nature which are naturally saline (high in NaCl) but very low in "true" hardness ion concentration (Mg, Ca, etc)... Rift African species, for example, need more than just ordinary "aquarium salt" (NaCl alone). Salt, if not predissolved carefully, can give fish bad burns. This is especially true of scaleless fish, such as some types of eels and scaleless catfish. The efficacy (effectiveness) of salt has not been proven experimentally to the satisfaction of many in the pet trade. THE GENERAL RULE IN ANY TANK, ESPECIALLY THAT OF A BEGINNER, IS TO STEER CLEAR OF ADDING ARTIFICIAL ADDITIVES UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Salt in many tanks is not... in a livebearer only tank (such as one with mollies, swordtails, guppies, or platys), I would consider recommending it (these are moderately hard water fish which like electrolytes in their water... some, such as the molly, from it's Yucatan peninsula natural habitat, actually prefer it because they are semi-brackish), but since so many community tanks contain more delicate, soft water fish such as the neon tetra, I usually do not. Please consider all your fish carefully when setting up a tank environment, as harmony in a mini-ecosystem is extremely difficult to achieve and any one thing can throw it off. The chemical additives goes not only for salt addition, but also for medications, pH up/down solutions, snail/algae eradicator, etc... if you are a novice and not entirely familiar with what you are adding, USE GREAT CAUTION, and educate yourself completely on the potential effects (some of which are unpredictable) of that product before you add it. But I guess you also consider the poor water conditions that many unexperienced fish keepers keep their fish in, salt may help in the long run.