rainbowfish

These boys do get pretty big and they really look great in a large tank. I am always amazed at the different colors this fish takes on. Some of it is in their mood, some in the background of the tank and I think a lot in what they've eaten. When we caught the Faowi Village fish wild they really had a lot of yellow in them, similar but brighter than the photo of mine that was posted in this thread. There were ample shrimp available in that stream along with all of the normal algae that any stream has to offer. On a second collection of C. fasciata from Pagai in 2008 we netted a whole mass of 2.5-3 inch fish in a tea water colored creek right near it's outlet into a big muddy (croc containing) river. These fish weren't yellow, but rather bright golden in color as seen in the photo below. This photo was taken stream side about 10 minutes after collecting them, they were even brighter in the net. About 15 minutes after collecting the ones we wanted we had to get into the bucket and clean out all of the green poo that had accumulated! It was like a bed of green gravel at the bottom of our yellow bucket! So we know that these fish had a very high diet of either green algae or unknown plant material. Since the tea water stream really didn't contain any plants and the muddy stream probably also didn't support any plants most likely this green poo was all the result of eating algae. However over time these fish lost most of their golden colors and now have colors similar but different to Faowi Village. You can see some of that for yourself on the photos that have been posted on the European Rainbowfish Forum under http://www.rainbowfi....php?f=4&t=1833 Scroll down further and you'll see some very nice photos of this fish. I think if one were to keep either fish outside where more bugs and algae was available you might see more of the yellows and golds pop out. Gary

Today is the last day to preorder any rainbowfish for the workshops see classified below. There are still a few nice rainbowfish there. I've been busy picking eggs and it looks like the fish were very happy this week :-) - oh baby oh baby! See first post and get those tanks ready for some rainbowfish eggs. See you on Saturday. Gary Lange http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=32397

Looks like a schedule has been worked out. 11:00 am - Florida Fish Farming - Jack Spencer 12:00 noon - Lunch 12:30 pm - Adventures in Paradise - Collecting Rainbowfish in Papua - Gary Lange 2:30 pm - Collecting in Uruguay - Spencer Jack 4:00 pm - "Basic Rainbowfish – How to keep them Happy and Healthy"- Gary Lange 5:30 pm - Banquet - Award presentation We will be auctioned off rainbowfish egg kits right after each rainbowfish talk. If you snooze you lose! They won't be at the Sunday auction, only the workshop. Looking forward to seeing you then. OOP's forgot to add - Rainbowfish Egg Kits are a 100% donation to the club. So all of the money you bid on them will go back to the club.

I got what I think is going to be the schedule so it gives you an idea for planning. You'll have to check with ACE for the registration process. CAS members that were thinking about making the trip to Edmonton, come on down! Although I will be giving the same "Basic Rainbowfish talk" at both places the collecting talks are very different and I won't be doing the photo talk at CAS. The talk that I am giving after the banquet is only about our latest adventure, which was quite productive. We brought back 4 new undescribed species of rainbowfish as well as several color varieties/locations for other rainbowfish that have already been in the hobby. 12:00 Ann Marie, on wild bettas 1:30PM Gary, Rainbowfish basics 3:00PM Gary, Digital Fish Photography 6:00PM Cocktail 7:00 Dinner, Gary, The Third Time's the Charm So again the eggs will be offered after the Rainbowfish basics talk and the Collecting talk at the end of the day. I think we are not going to let anyone into the talk during the last ten minutes. The egg auction will only be for those who suffered thru to the bitter end . Sort of like a reward for their pain and suffering. In the photography talk I will go over what equipment I think you should buy if you want to take decent pictures. When I was giving a similar talk at the ACA convention in Atlanta I realized a lot of audience members were writing feverishly trying to write down every detail. After that talk I now supply a 4 page cheat sheet. That way you aren't scrambling to write down what F-stop or shutter speed is the best one to use. Bring a pen anyway (that's your Darwin test) as you may want to add a few more notes or to capture an ahha moment that will vastly advance your ability to photograph your fishes. It will be a long day but you can get your fish ready for the Sunday auction on Friday nite and Saturday morning by either putting them in easy catch tanks or already bagging up the small ones. Believe me, fish can stay in the bags quite nicely for several days, otherwise we would never be able to get rainbowfish and other exotic fish home from these faraway locations. Big water changes and no food for 24 hours will ensure happy auction fishes . Looking forward to seeing you all. OOP's forgot to add - Rainbowfish Egg Kits are a 100% donation to the club. So all of the money you bid on them will go back to the club.

I remember Spencer's dad, Billy. He could kick like a mule, he was tough for such a little guy. I once saw him knock out a fellow that was 6 foot four by smacking him in the jaw with the side of his foot. :beer: Added - Man, don't you have ANY members that watched really bad cult films during the 70's??? Maybe you just forgot or did too much indulging

G'day CAS members, Gary Lange here. Looking forward to speaking to your club at the workshop Saturday April 2nd. Sometime during that day I will be doing a talk on: Rainbowfish Basics. How to keep those bows healthy and happy, how to breed them and then going through what is now a long list of rainbowfish that are actually in the hobby today. I will be planning to bring a bunch of rainbowfish egg kits to the club which will be auctioned off RIGHT AFTER MY RAINBOWFISH TALK. That's right, not the Sunday auction but right after the talk. If you don't attend the talk you miss out on the eggs! An egg kit consists of 40-70 eggs (depending on the fishes friskiness that week) along with first fry food and detailed instructions on how to raise the fry. I can't tell you at this moment which fish eggs I will be bringing. I won't be bringing the very latest stuff as I'm still paying for the last airline ticket to Papua with those fish . I will certainly be bringing some stuff that you've never seen before in the stores, I can guarantee that! No crossed wholesalers garbage with these rainbowfish! We'll just have to wait and see which fish are breeding to see what will be in the egg kits. Don't worry about knowing the names because as each kit is auctioned off I'll put up the photo on the projector so you'll know what it looks like and I'll give a brief description. With some savvy bidding perhaps you'll be able to go home with some F-1 Melanotaenia praecox eggs from our Pagai Village strain as shown below. This fish is just so much nicer than the fish you see in the pet stores these days! I think we are planning on two talks so another talk will be based on my first two trips to Papua with a little of the third trip jammed in there. It's kind of hard to talk about six weeks of collecting in about an hour's time with "Adventures in Paradise - Collecting Rainbowfish in New Guinea". Hey, I won the leech contest last trip! Last trip we brought back four, new to science, unknown species rainbowfish. When you hear what we have to go through to capture these fish and bring them back alive maybe you'll be a little more careful with them . I don't know whether this talk will be in the morning, afternoon or as a banquet talk. I will be auctioning off more rainbowfish eggs after the talk though so find out and plan to go. I have also posted on this site some fish (rainbowfish and gasp, non-rainbowfish) that can be pre-ordered. Need to send email and not PM, see ads for more info. Note fish are only available for pickup on workshop Saturday, not at the Auction on Sunday. http://albertaaquati...showtopic=32397 http://albertaaquati...showtopic=32398 Anyway the workshop is only about 30 days away so start making plans. You snooze you lose! Cheers, Gary Lange

Wish I could tell when the talks will be, I was hoping that they would be up on the website by now. I guess get in touch with some of the BOD people they probably know. I do know that if you want the rainbowfish egg kits you have to be at the rainbowfish talks to get them. They won't be at the Sunday auction. If you are also looking for hatched and growing rainbowfish I have listed what I have for sale on the for sale portion of this forum. http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=32397 If you are interested in any of those rainbowfish I would get to it right away. Also note the second post of non-rainbowfish, it wouldn't all fit on one post, sorry kind of like photo spam . http://albertaaquati...showtopic=32398 Maybe betta girl might want to take a look. Not a betta but close. Betta i have more pictures of "real" bettas spawning than she does :thumbs: .

I only post the eggs in an auction AFTER my talk(s), not at the Sunday auction. I don't really take preorders for eggs as that could limit the amount of kits that I could bring for the talks. This is designed specifically so that your members will go to the talks. Clubs spend a lot of money to fly in a speaker but so many members ONLY show up on Sunday, auction day. And a lot of times they are the ones that needed to be there on Saturday to hear the speaker and learn about the fishes . I will list some fish shortly, just have to do some netting and counting in the juvenile tanks to see exactly what I have available. Fish eggs that "might" be on the egg list. I can't tell who is "happy" and going to produce eggs at any given time. The week before the talk though I'll change a lot of water and feed heavily. Fish that often produce include: M. affinis pagwi, M. kamaka, M. synergos, M. parkinsoni - European yellow, M. nigrans, M. duboulayi Kangaroo Cr, M. utchiensis, possibly M. trifasciata Wonga Ck. M. praecox F-1 Pagai 2008, M. pygmaea, Glos, maculosus, Glos. dorityi F-1 Lake Nenggwambu (Kali Biru), C. fasciata - Faowi Village 2005, M species Suswa Village, M. angfa, C. campsi, C. bleheri, M. boesemani - Lake Aytinjo, M. boesemani - Lacorte strain, M. splendida Deepwater creek. Somewhat less reliable are fish like M. species Morehead river, M. species Kiunga, M. sexlineata Tabubil, and M. trifasciata Running Creek. And then there are the Pseudomugil. I'll have to start picking those eggs almost a week before the trip as they don't lay near as many as the big fish. In that group it could be possible to find P. ivantsoffi or M. gertrudae Aru II's which are really outstanding fish. Hopefully out of this group of fish I'll be able to come up with 10-14 vials of eggs. Most of this stuff you really can't get the right stuff in the stores. It doesn't ship wild out of Oz or New Guinea and so much of the stuff from Florida is either badly bred or a cross. I won't even mention the junk coming in from Asia -01- . If you can raise baby brine shrimp and follow directions then you should be able to get yourself a nice little school of rainbowfish from everyone of these egg kits to enjoy for years to come. Gary

Kind of hard to do a "hands on" workshop unless you have something to shoot. Even if you had a show going on "bare tanks" are really not the way to show the best way to capture a fish image. I'll be bringing my equipment so you can get a feel for what it looks like. Hopefully my host will REMEMBER to clean his tanks and glass hint hint so that I can some pictures while I'm out and about.

Hi ACE members, Gary Lange here. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the workshop Saturday March 19th. We'll be starting out with "Rainbowfish Basics" in the morning. How to keep those bows healthy and happy, how to breed them and then going through what is now a long list of rainbowfish that are actually in the hobby today. I will be planning to bring a bunch of rainbowfish egg kits to the club which will be auctioned off RIGHT AFTER MY RAINBOWFISH TALKS. That's right, not the Sunday auction but right after the talk. If you don't attend the talk(s) you miss out on the eggs! An egg kit consists of 40-70 eggs (depending on the fishes friskiness that week) along with first fry food and detailed instructions on how to raise the fry. I can't tell you at this moment which fish eggs I will be bringing. I won't be bringing the very latest stuff as I'm still paying for the last airline ticket to Papua with those fish . I will certainly be bringing some stuff that you've never seen before in the stores, I can guarantee that! No crossed wholesalers garbage with these rainbowfish! We'll just have to wait and see which fish are breeding to see what will be in the egg kits. Don't worry about knowing the names because as each kit is auctioned off I'll put up the photo on the projector so you'll know what it looks like and I'll give a brief description. With some savvy bidding perhaps you'll be able to go home with some F-1 Melanotaenia praecox eggs from our Pagai Village strain as shown below. This fish is just so much nicer than the fish you see in the pet stores these days! What you can do to get ready is to find some new 5.5 or 10 gallon bare tanks. You'll need a separate tank for each vial of eggs that you plan or don't plan to buy . When you see some of these beautiful bows you may find yourself running out of tank space, like me! Rainbowfish can be very difficult to tell apart at a young age so you need to keep the species apart. Some species grow faster than others and may end up eating the other so make sure you keep them in separate tanks. Get it set up so that it will be at about 80-82 degrees F and get a sponge filter going in it. You just need to set this up a day or so before the workshop, we want to incubate the eggs in relatively clean water. Dirty old mulm water usually ends up causing the eggs to fungus. You'll definitely need a heater as you won't get a very good hatch rate at cooler temperatures. You'll also need a small tray for each species that you buy to hatch out the eggs. A 6x6 sandwich type tray works fine. You'll be changing the water in that tray every day for about 5-9 days while the fry hatch out. It's not very hard and hobbyists all over the country have been very successful in hatching and raising my eggs. It's a pretty neat way to get some very nice rainbowfish that you really can't buy at the stores. So often, rainbowfish that you do happen to see at the stores, really don't look like they are supposed to anymore. ***Also keep an eye out for my rainbowfish list on the Livestock Classifieds. IF you are interested in purchasing fish you need to email me ahead of time so that I can bring the fish with me. Many of the fish offered will be different than the egg kits. It should be posted within the next few days. Some of the fish are limited so if it's something you want don't wait! I'll also be doing a mid afternoon talk on digital fish photography, everything you wanted to know about shooting your fishes but were afraid to ask! We'll briefly go over what type of cameras are good for taking fish pictures and what equipment does the best job. We'll also talk a little bit about what to do with your images after you take them. How to set them up for printing, or sending on the web or posting to a forum. I'll also bring a few pages of notes for everyone in attendance so you don't have to write everything down. And finally in the evening, after the banquet I'll be talking about my latest trip with, "The Third Time is the Charm". The trip in 2010 was my third trip to Papua to see rainbowfish in their native habitat. We endured the heat, humidity, land leeches and rockslides to find four brand new species of rainbowfish. See you soon! Gary