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Rainbowfish Breeders


Rainbowric
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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?

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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!

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Thanks Rick for putting the pressure on me! :) .You know as well as i do we both think the same when it comes to not just raising rainbowfish but, raising rainbowfish to thier full potentials.You have done a tremendous job at that for quite sometime now....Let me just add to your comment above if i may.Rick is spot on about his comments.Those amano's are smarter than you think.They will learn the pattern of finding where the fish are breeding.It won't take them long to find all those eggs your furcatus have been laying daily.I'm pretty sure you are already missing alot..The amano's will find the mop and know it is a feeding ground..assuming you have a mop in the tank for them to deposit eggs on?.And where you can collect eggs from easily?.With 5 females you should have a 100 eggs by weeks end..As Rick stated.. That is just the beggining.There is much more to know on how to hatch and raise fry of this wonderful little species you really need to learn to be successful with them..

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While not in the same league as others on this forum I have enjoyed breeding a few species of rainbows.

I started with some store-bought lake kutubu (M. Lacustris) rainbow. After some misses I figured some of it out and was successful in raising a few dozen.

Having bred world class dogs for some 25 years, I wanted better quality stock and was able to find Rick and with his help gathered a dozen or so species.

I have bred M. Lacustris, (aquarium strain) M.parkinsoni.(aquarium strain) M. Machalocci (skull creek) M. Boesmani (aytinyo) M.Parva, M.Preacox (aquarium strain) and Pheudomogul Gertrudia (Aru 2)

At the moment I am enjoying raising a month old spawn of M.Splendida splendida (deep water Creek) which beside the Aytinyo's is a favourite.

My hope is to find an original strain of M. Lacustris so I can perpetuate this “old” but well known fish. If you know of any let me know :D

John

Edited by geleen
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I have spawned some praecox that came from John's stock, and currently have pairs/groups of wanamensis, praecox, herbertalexrodi, and parkinsoni. Now that I've sold off a bunch of large plecos, I'll be giving more attention to these 'bows.

I think the best thing about rainbow breeding in Alberta is that you don't need to adjust our tap water! I've had eggs from almost all I my spp (parkinsoni are new, but I expect to see them spawn sson), so I'm hoping with the new space available, I'll be able to help spread some of these awesome fish!

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Thought it would never come to this point where people were talking about Rainbows... cant tell you how many M. Boesmani , Reds and M.Preacox and a few

others that just eludes my memory for the moment that I bred before I just stoped because there was no interest. Glad to see a little interest in these guys now!

I think my biggest challenge was finding females for my Boesmani's... the stores would only bring in batches of small colored males, I can remember checking endless weeks at big Als and other locations for females... finally I found a few that had not been culled out of one of big Als tanks and was able to spawn them succesfully after they had matured... was a lot of fun seeing the first few spawns of dozens of very small fry hatch from my mops... so much fun I may have to do it again some time.

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While not in the same league as others on this forum I have enjoyed breeding a few species of rainbows.

I started with some store-bought lake kutubu (M. Lacustris) rainbow. After some misses I figured some of it out and was successful in raising a few dozen.

Having bred world class dogs for some 25 years, I wanted better quality stock and was able to find Rick and with his help gathered a dozen or so species.

I have bred M. Lacustris, (aquarium strain) M. Machalocci (skull creek) M. Boesmani (aytinyo) M.Parva, M.Preacox (aquarium strain) and Pheudomogul Gertrudia (Aru 2)

At the moment I am enjoying raising a month old spawn of M.Splendida splendida (deep water Creek) which beside the Aytinyo's is a favourite.

My hope is to find an original strain of M. Lacustris so I can perpetuate this “old” but well known fish. If you know of any let me know :D

John

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

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While not in the same league as others on this forum I have enjoyed breeding a few species of rainbows.

I started with some store-bought lake kutubu (M. Lacustris) rainbow. After some misses I figured some of it out and was successful in raising a few dozen.

Having bred world class dogs for some 25 years, I wanted better quality stock and was able to find Rick and with his help gathered a dozen or so species.

I have bred M. Lacustris, (aquarium strain) M. Machalocci (skull creek) M. Boesmani (aytinyo) M.Parva, M.Preacox (aquarium strain) and Pheudomogul Gertrudia (Aru 2)

At the moment I am enjoying raising a month old spawn of M.Splendida splendida (deep water Creek) which beside the Aytinyo's is a favourite.

My hope is to find an original strain of M. Lacustris so I can perpetuate this “old” but well known fish. If you know of any let me know :D

John

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

John has the patience of Job... great breeder!

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While not in the same league as others on this forum I have enjoyed breeding a few species of rainbows.

I started with some store-bought lake kutubu (M. Lacustris) rainbow. After some misses I figured some of it out and was successful in raising a few dozen.

Having bred world class dogs for some 25 years, I wanted better quality stock and was able to find Rick and with his help gathered a dozen or so species.

I have bred M. Lacustris, (aquarium strain) M. Machalocci (skull creek) M. Boesmani (aytinyo) M.Parva, M.Preacox (aquarium strain) and Pheudomogul Gertrudia (Aru 2)

At the moment I am enjoying raising a month old spawn of M.Splendida splendida (deep water Creek) which beside the Aytinyo's is a favourite.

My hope is to find an original strain of M. Lacustris so I can perpetuate this “old” but well known fish. If you know of any let me know :D

John

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

John has the patience of Job... great breeder!

Thanks so much Rick and Jerry.

Jerry please call my wife re. the patience :rofl:

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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! :)

praecox_pagai_d.jpg

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!

melanotaenia_splendida_splendida_deepwater_creek_1.jpg

I will be happy to try and explain to your wife that we can become a little impatient at times with breeding fish. :)

Ric

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Good to know that he is doing so much better. I have a smaller male in my large tank with 2 (joint at the hip) other pairs and these older boys ignore the little one completely.....feel abit sorry for him :eh:

It has been my experience with the deep water splendida that the dominant male will "prevent" the other males in the same tank to not grow as deep a body. After I gave some their own tank and playmates, they have become more masculine and have started fill out very nicely. They are a very colorful fish (both male and the smaller female) as one can see in the pic from Rick above.... the males have very beautiful finnage, with longer flowing dorsals and anal fins- than the female-, giving them an almost oval appearance.

I raised the parents from eggs I got from Gary Lange.

John

Edited by geleen
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