Faran

Lighting - At first I had nice bright lighting, hearing that bright light was key in stimulating spawning.... then one morning we looked in the tank before the lights came on and saw the congos going at it. So that brought me back to the website above that tells you that the eggs and fry are light sensitive. So I did a test - one covered container with eggs floating and one uncovered and exposed to the lights. Suprise suprise - covered container (low light) had a 50% hatch rate with little fungus, uncovered produced a whole 1 fry and had a LOT of problems with fungus. So, my solution is to keep the lights off unless I'm doing maintenance. The tank is exposed to perhaps 2 hours a day of a night/blue bulb while I work on it. Food - Well, they have a nice colony of cyclops in the tank with them and they seem to enjoy chasing them down though I suppose that won't last very long. Additional food is supplied in the form of microworms. The free-swimming fry are approx 5mm and stay pretty low in the water, though I've seen one go all the way to the surface chasing a cyclops. For the most part they scavenge the bottom of the tank for worms and assorted copepods. A friend was kind enough to give me a couple months supply of brine shrimp eggs so I'll start hatching them out today. After hatch care - by the end of the week all eggs should be hatched and most fry free-swimming. At that point I'll be transferring them into a smaller tank for monitored feeding and cleaning. That tank will have a small group of ramshorn snails as a cleanup crew. Once the fry get to 1cm they will all be put back into the 3ft tank they're currently in to grow out. So that's my plan of attack. I saw today that another batch of fry have hatched and are working on yolk sacs. I have a feeling I'll be over-run with bubbas soon and may end up leaving them all in the 3ft tank if there's too many for a fry care tank.... then again, they could always go in with the guppy fry - until they get big enough to start eating them!

Oh, and the best advice I found online for breeding them - http://groups.msn.com/Breedingtropicalf ... age20.msnw

Well, after a few weeks of trial and error I finally managed to get a successful spawning of Congos. It seems that a lot of advice on websites out there only give you half the picture and you need to mix and match to get a successful formula. Anyways, here's my "proud poppa with a camera" shots. Mind you that these little buggers are only 4mm including a very transparent tail, so sorry for the graininess from the extreme close-ups. This is a shot of a fully developed zygote still in the egg. Two freshly hatched fry - will lay about for 3-4 days absorbing the yolk sacs. A "group shot" of the youngsters in a floating nursery. There was 40+ in this container and I thought I had all of them.... then more eggs hatched, I gave up and they're all now freely swimming in the tank. So, wish me luck - I hear that these are as hard to raise to sell-able size as they are the get to spawn.... I have about 100 fry right now, so I expect to have about 10 left by the time they grow to adults

Yup that's one serious mini-setup. I'll be heading down to the Warehouse for some of those little tanks today!

Wow So how large is this tank and what else is in it? In pic 8 it looks a bit like a Borneo Tiger but the markings are off.... Nice Poly specimens. We have albino birchirs and senegalis that I've seen around but not much else....

Heck yeah, that's an amazing fish! Amazonian fish on the large scale really don't make it over here that often aside from arowanas and a few clown knives. Nice specimen, very impressed (and a little pea-green with envy, too)

Hi Ant, I'm in WGTN and currently have a bunch of fry that are getting up to 1cm. Most breeders locally are trying to spawn for numbers (so they're not worried about virgins) or if they line breed they normally don't want to give them up... here are the line breeders in WGTN that I know of - livebearer_breder shiuh cees and there may be more out there, but I haven't ran into them yet.

Coming from all your years of experience I'll take it as priven fact By the way, thanks again for the microworms. Spring is here, all my fish are spawning and they're very very very useful! Pegasus is my hero

Outstanding. I'm just making up an under tank heater for a 100cmx60cm (30cm tall) breeding tank. Was completely miffed on heating it properly so I decided to go with under-tank. Plan is to use electric blanket bits on poly and trial and error from there. Will be keen to see your results and compare. Thanks!

Actually, I was about to go get some of the same tubing to hopefully give my BNs a spot to breed. Good advice, will try that. Thanks Pegasus!

kewl, I'll try it.... sadly enuf my tanks are pretty well planted and decorated so it'll be hard trying to convince them to go in a new hidey hole that just happens to double as a trap

Still sounds like taking the whole tank apart in the first place, eh?

By the way, does anyone have any tips/tricks for getting loaches out of the tank? They seem to find every possible impossible hole to hide in and you end up dismantling the whole tank. I purchased at bait trap at the local fish club (KMAC) meet the other day but I need to figure out some better way to make the holes one-way as the loaches will get out in a flash. And my bait? Snails. No other fish will go in there after them, as far as I can think, that is... trick is, keeping the snails IN the trap.

Missing eyes definitely sound like loaches. They occasionally swim next to another fish and suck out the eye like a snail. Pretty gruesome to watch. Not sure about zodiacs or clowns but I know the random yo yo and tiger do it.

Must be.... try posting a *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~~~*****~~*~*~*Wanted: Electric Yellows in Auckland*~*~*~~*****~~~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* in the PrivTaE or Cichlid sections....

They cost $25 each in the stores, but there's a few breeders around that sell them for $10 each. I got it from the guy that originally sold them to chama527 on TradeMe. His name is "bulldog" on these forums and you could possibly PM him but it won't offset shipping unless you want a few. Oh, if u think Auck prices are harsh, try coming down to WGTN!

Congrats! So when will they be ready, mate? Glad to hear that box down to Invercargill made it with all fish alive, nice work!

Just got a male and 3 females of these a couple weeks ago. Great fish, REALLY looking forward to breeding them!

You should sit them both down and figure out what the problem is. Is there enough room in the tank? Does the BN think the Pleco is invading his personal space? Perhaps the BN needs a girlfriend/boyfriend? Is it a food issue? All those are serious aside from "sitting them down". The BN may be getting frisky or territorial. Not sure how large the tank is, but I assume it's a fair size if you have a pleco in there. Separation is a common solution to fighting fishies.

Hi Brad, welcome! Orange Spot BNs? I'm dead keen - haven't seen those around here much. Have you ever shipped any fish over to NZ?

By the way, I just sat down and read Shae's post. Get those cameras out of my house! How did you know!!! Just kidding. We never got up and checked on them with a torch but a parade of people did have a nosey (Sat night with guests over) and I'm sure I didn't help with the digital camera right next to them trying to snap pics. So yeah, they ate up the eggs. Get to try again in 2 weeks!

Freakyfish - Orandas are worth more if they follow certain breeding guidelines. We can buy 15cm orandas for $15 as well, but that was a "special" case. Don't think that kiwis just go all nutty for certain fish and will pay anything for them :lol:

Transfer gravel (wash in tank water to remove any excessive build up - not necessary if you keep up with gravel vacuuming) and some of whatever media there was in the old filter into the new filter. This will hopefully transfer enough bacteria into the new tank to set it up without a whole new cycle.

If you have tons and tons of money to spend you can look into the monitors that hook up to your computer. Saw them a long time ago but they're still around, I'm sure. I know there's definitely one for pH and I'm sure the rest of the tests wouldn't be too difficult to design once they'd figured that one out. You'll probably have to order in from Europe or the States. So, erm.... are youa bit colourblind? Just wondering. The test kits are usually very easy for most people to read.

Yeah, drawf rams need a few goes sometimes before they make good parents. Our blues ate the eggs and next time I'll be taking everyone's advice and taking the eggs away and "floating" them in an ice cream container. Lee - yup, same eggs and rams that you saw when you came by on Sat night.