Derek

Can anyone tell me the colour of this plants flower? Is it variable? I presently have a submersed flower on this plant but the anther is white. The watercolour at the Tropica site shows it to be yellow/orange although another watercolour of Anubias barteri var. nana appears to have a cream coloured anther. Does it start out white and the yellow/orange colour appear latter as the pollen matures, or does this colour difference identify it is another plant / variety? I am sure that this plant is not A. b var. nana as I have this plant growing alongside the flowering one under identical conditions and its leaves are smaller, as you would expect. I also have an emersed plant of Anubias barteri var. nana with an unopened flower spike and the flower on that plant is definately smaller as well. Cees, if you want to pop round and take some photos, let me know.

Warren this was not the initial mutation. There were about 8-10 of them. Someone obviously selected for and bred this condition on purpose. They all seemed very active and healthy.

Just saw these at the LFS. Ugliest looking fish I have ever seen but humerous with it (and I like some really ugly catfish) Not so much a ballon mutation, as it is usually seen. This appeared to be a loss of most of the vertabrae resulting in the tail being almost immediately behind the gills. Think of a pigs head swimming through your tank.

Does anyone know of a source of the wild type Dwarf gourami (colisa lalia) All I ever see in the shops are the various colour vareties. It must be years since I last saw the wild type

John Eastwood may know about the container. I think he mentioned something at one of the more recent conferences about it rotting away on a farm somewhere. I think that's right anyway, assuming you can trust a red wine drinking catfish breeder. Or should that be a red wine drinking breeder of catfish?

Thanks for the comments Peter. I will try out your suggestions. The male has started to build a nest, although he is not putting all his effort into it as yet. I guess he is still a little immature and probably just needs some time to get his timing right.

Is Roy still the AW editor? I e-mailed him an article for the AW along with a few questions over a week ago but have had no reply. I used the address posted for him on the FNZAS site Is this address correct ?

Haven't seen the fish you are talking about so this is a complete guess but are they anything like those hybrid cichlids developed in asia called the flower horn. Some images can be found at http://www.kirin.com.sg/2species.php

I have just come up from my fishroom where I have been watching a pair of Siamese fighters attempt to spawn. The male has made no attempt to create a bubble-nest (I don't think he has even strung two bubbles together). It is the heavily gravid female which is initiating spawning. She and not the male has chased the other females in the tank into hiding and it is she which approaches and entices the male to the surface. Although the male is encircling her to fertilise the eggs as they are shed, he makes absolutely no attempt to retrieve the eggs and carry them to the surface. The eggs are dead white and appear to me to be unfertilizable. I assume the eggs are in this condition because they have been in the female to long and I would expect future batches to be OK. It is the males behaviour that worries me. If this continues he will never raise any fry. Is this because he may be too young and inexperienced? Peter, you may be able to answer this question. These are the fish that you gave to Cees. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice? They are in a 60x30x30cm bare bottomed tank, 27C, DH ~3, pH 7.2 There is some driftwood with attached Java fern as well as some Indian fern and riccia floating in a clump on the surface. There is also a plastic lid floating on the surface in case the male preferred a more solid platform to build his nest under.

Ira sounds like youre having a real bad run with this tank. It might pay to check and monitor ammonia levels in that tank, especially since

If fertiliser didn't, pesticide / herbicide residues certainly could have. When using soil in pots: A. use only a small portion. B. It is best to use soil that comes from an uncultivated area and is taken at least 15cm below the surface. Nothing personal Ira, for all I know this is exactly what you did. It is more a comment for anyone thinking of using the same method.

Andrew, let me know if you want some crypts. I'm sure I can spare one or two plants of a few species to get you started again. It pays to spread them around, you never know when you may lose a species. Fish are hard enough, it's even harder to track down some of the rarer plants at times.

Andrew said I'd be in for that. Are you bringing the red wine Andrew? Ira I wouldn't be surprised if at least 1 or 2 from the Upper Hutt club were interested in going. If so I'm sure you could get a lift. Another incentive for you to make it to a club night, unless you made it to the last one which I missed. If you follow me. I think the Upper Hutt club is also planning a trip to Napier in August perhaps you could join us for that trip. I haven't heard anything about this trip for a little while, I assume it is still on.

Pegasus wrote:

Hi Caryl and Paula I have grown a large number of different species at 28-30C. If everything else is optimal for plant growth then temperature is not a major issue. I have a list of them on my computer at work. I will see if I can find it and email it to you.

For those of you who may wish to experiment with CO2 here is a link to an article that Len And I wrote several years ago. http://www.aquaworldnet.com/dbws/co2.shtml This is an inexpensive method using yeast and sugar to produce the CO2. If you ever wanted to know just how different the rate of plant growth can be with CO2 then this is a good way to experiment. Additional info can be found at The Krib http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/

Just to add my $0.02 (or perhaps a bit more.) The Sears-Conlin report is primarily aimed at controlling algae in a planted aquarium. It does not profess to be the "complete answer" to growing plants. Warren is correct when he says I have used it myself for many years and can also testify to its success. However it is not a magic bullet which works on its own, it needs to be used in balance with other factors including the fish load and what is fed to the fish Both case studies in the Sears-Conlin report were tanks that tended towards what is often referred to as "high tech". They both had lighting levels in the region of 0.5watts/litre, they both had substrate fertilization and one had CO2. Under those conditions I would expect one of the macro or micro elements to be the limiting factor in growth. This would cause an imbalance which would allow algae to flourish and potentially outcompete the plants. Fertilizer addition to the water column (at the correct dosage) would alleviate this problem. However if lighting levels are lower than 0.5watts/litre (which is the most common cause of failure in growing plants IMHO) I would not expect a lack of either macro or micro nutrients to be a problem. In this senario additional fertilization is unlikely to help. Just as adding CO2 will not help if the light levels are the limiting factor The high tech approach of CO2, heating cables, substrate and water column fertilization will enable a much wider range of species to be grown in any one tank. They will also grow bigger and faster. You could say plants look better (less tatty) because they are producing new leaves faster than the old ones can become tatty from nibbling fish or algae infestations, etc. The low tech approach can produce some wonderfull tanks but they are usually limited to a smaller range of species. In both cases good healthy plants can be produced. Deciding if their rate of growth is acceptable is up to individual expectations.

I wrote in the planet catfish article: "Both spawning sites, although not directly in the current, are adjacent to the main current in the tank. I do not know if the presence of this current is a requirement in choosing a spawning site." I now feel that a good current maybe one of the triggers in breeding. Since my pump packed up on me and was replaced with one that produces a smaller flow rate these fish have showed no further inclination to breed. Mind you the temperature is now a little cooler as well so that may also be the cause. If not already, you may want to consider this and employ a small powerhead or some other means to produce a current. In my case the current ran directly down one corner of the tank and then across the bottom of the tank. Good luck

Hi Cees, What stage is the database at? Do you need any help? I have Cryptocoryne affinis in flower at the moment if you still want to take photos of aquatic plants in flower. Derek

Hi Caryl Looks to me from the photos and Caryl's brief description that it is bladderwort, a Utricularia species.

Hi Caryl, It is certainly possible to have a tank planted with java fern as well as other species of plants. What size tank do you have and how much light do you have over it? How old are the tubes? When you add Java Fern to an existing tank how quickly is it before the other plants start to die? Fluorescent tubes will give out less light over time, perhaps as the light diminishes conditions begin to favour the Java Fern and not the other species that you have. If the Java Fern is out competing the other plants for the nutrients I would expect you to see signs of nutrient deficiency in the leaves of the other species prior to their death. Do you see, for example: in the growing tips: pale white or clear new growth, crinkled, deformed leaves, in the older leaves: dark green veins with yellowing leaves, holes (may be ringed with yellow)? Derek

Hi Bruce, I have a pair of C. haraldschultzi but have not attempted to bred them yet. I do have plenty of young C.sterbai however. They are very similar to C. haraldschultzi. The main difference being that, in the head area, C.haraldschultzi have grey spots on a white background and C. sterbai have white spots on a grey background. Otherwise they both have the orange pectoral spines etc. C.haraldschultzi appears to be slightly larger and has a slightly more elongated nose. Let me know if you want some. They are $8-00 each. Derek

Hi all, Does anyone know where I could obtain a specimen of this plant? A picture of it can be found at http://www.tropica.dk/plants.htm I have one allready which is presently flowering, but as it is a self-sterile species I need to obtain a second plant to attempt pollination. Cees, you may want to come round sometime soon and take a photo of it. Derek [ This message was edited by: Derek on 2001-06-07 04:34 ]

Hi Andrew, >Iam slowley loseing all my fry >due to too many egg shells in there diet! Sorry if I have misunderstood but are you separating the hatched shrimp from the unhatched and dead shrimps? :???: Even if you are getting a poor hatch rate you still shouldn't have to be adding "egg shells" to the fry tank. Derek

Hi Paul, I was interested to see the photo on your web site showing H.polysperma flowering. I was always under the impression that this plant had never been known to flower. I soon found out I was wrong. In their book, Aquarium plants their identification, cultivation and ecology (1977) Rataj & Hormeman say Hygrophila polysperma “Specimens cultivated under this name for some forty to fifty years have never flowered. Their identity is therefore uncertain. Among the imported plants of the last few years have appeared plants similar in the submersed form, but in the emersed form with top leaves clearly hairy; the plants flower easily and regularly. These flowering plants have been reliably determined without doubt to be H. polysperma. Is the plant cultivated for so many years in aquariums under the name H. polysperma only a non-flowering form of this species? Or is it a question of another species? This problem cannot be solved until we are able to make the sterile plants flower.” None of the plants of H.polysperma that I have seen growing emersed have had hairy leaves. In the Wellington region it appears that the “non-hairy” form is present but not the “hairy” form. I’ll have to find a better way of naming them.:???: It would be interesting to see if these two forms are distributed differently around NZ. If members could please post their location and form(s) of H.polysperma , I will try to collate and post the results Paul, do you have both forms?