alanmin4304

You put a piece of glass on the top and the food under it. You lift the glass and there is a ring of clean worms around the food that you can pick up with your fingers. They are photophobic and retreat into the compost when you let the light in and they take a few hours to fully come back

Just curious. I used to breed nothos about 30 years ago by this method: Pass washed sand through a fine seive and keep what passes through. Put some of this in a small tank with a male and 3 female that have been seperated and conditioned and leave a couple of days. Pass water and sand through same seive and you are left with eggs only. Place in peat and store 3 months then add to water and remove fry with an eye dropper.Squeeze water from peat and store 1 month and hatch again (you can do this a number of times) I found only about 10% hatch the first time (its a defence mechanism for if the pond dries up again prematurely) What do you guys do? They were saleable at about 6 weeks---grow like mad on live food.

I use it all the time without any problem at all, but I am talking about greywacke sand with a little silt not clay with a little sand

I was licenced to import goldfish before they banned it and your premises needs to reach a pretty high standard (which has got tougher since) and has to be gazetted. Also if you are new chances are MAF will not make life easy for you. After six weeks of quarantine and seven visits in six weeks, all by different pairs of inspectors I gave all the fish to MAF in a frozen lump. Each visit cost me nearly as much as the fish did in Singapore. My suggestion would be to try and get an importer with contacts already to bring some in for you with another shipment of their own fish, this would give the best discount on freight. I don't think you can rent space as the owner would want to be in control of their premise (you do something wrong they get their licence pulled) As a rough guide the importer would expect to make 100% on fish, freight, fees, overheads and deaths. You would probably have to be prepared to pay even if the whole lot died in quarantine.

If your half handy with glass, make a tank shallower and slightly smaller than your breeding tank with no base and glue stainless steel mesh to the base. Glue a couple of straps to the top so it sits on the tank (this will act as a brace as well) You can use this for any fish with non sticky eggs. The eggs fall through the net and can't get eaten.

Thanks, I have a male and two females in a community tank at 28 deg C so I will just have to leave it up to them. I'm guessing they know more about it than me anyway.

I have made hundreds of tanks from new,imported,second hand,laminated and toughened glass and by the time it is full of water and has grown a bit of algae I don't think you would notice any difference. Get the cheapest. The tank is going to need proper reinforcing because it is a long span and a high head of water. The stand would need to be well built also to distribute the load evenly ( 700Kg / sq M for the water without the rest ) I built one recently that is 1600mm long and 600mm high but it was for turtles and is only half full of water.

How critical is pH and hardness?

On seeing both females together, the double red female has some red in the fins, so I should be able to tell

You make life easier for yourself if you know what you are breeding. If you use fertilized golds the young will all look the same. Even if you have some that are splits you wont know which ones. Using virgin females you will know you have 100% splits Good luck.

Both females look the same. The normal male had longer fins with little black and this male has black and red dorsal and tail but the fins and tail are a lot smaller and this pair are about the same size. The normal female is colouring up (becoming more yellow and more pronounced black bars) and is showing off to the male. My guess is that the first generation will be all single reds

Straight peat may be too acid, I don't know. I know a guy who used to collect the peat from filters which would be a bit less severe I would think.

The original male was about 3 times the size of the female and had long fins but very little colour (light yellow fins) this guy has red dorsal and tail but a lot smaller fins. This is how I have seen them in pics also. Both females have no colour.

I have a comunity tank that I built 3 caves into for this purpose. Problem is they look realy great but are built from weather worn Takaka marble and I am not sure if they will like that enough to breed. It would be nice to see them do it themselves, but if they don't I will move them to another tank.

Same to you

I had a pair of normal Cockatoo Cichlids and the male died, I just got a pair of double reds and they are all in a community tank. If the male mates with the normal I believe I should get double red,single red and normal offspring. Is there any way to tell the females apart? Will I get all single reds? Does anyone know?

I tried plastic contaiers but they climbed all over the place. I found a wooden box is best but if you line the area in contact with the moist media the box will not commit suicide so quickly. The worms do better if quite moist but not wet, and cool.

You will need to use definate virgin females or you will never tell the splits from the pure golds in the first generation and it all gets pretty hit and miss.

If you breed 1st generation to each other you get a problem: 25% albino, 50% splits and 25% normals. Because normal is dominant the splits and normals look the same so you can't tell one from the other.

Albino is normally a recessive gene so you should get all splits first generation with 25% if bred to each other and 50% albino and 50% splits if bred back to the albino.

I think you need an inert media so they have to come to the top for food rather than feeding on the media.

I use the potting mix from expired potplants that need repotting. I am told the peat from aquarium filters is also very good, but I can't confirm as I don't use it. I have made boxes with sliding opaque plastic lids, about 400mm x 200mm x 200mm and feed them on luncheon.

Gambusia are called mosquito fish and are live bearers used in Asia as live fish food, hence the odd one has come into NZ with imported fish. They are distributed world wide because they were thought to feed almost exclusively on mosquito larvae, but they are actually not that good at controlling mosquito larva and will eat all sorts of stuff. Our dearly beloved trout and salmon fishers have no doubt convinced the Maf they are bad critters. I don't know if they are or not, but they are certainly not legal. Calcium oxide will kill them, and everything else as it uses up all the oxygen, but I am not sure how you get the life back into the water. A fish friendly Vet might have an idea on that or an alternative. I think you would need chemical control to completely wipe them out. Good luck

I used to feed infusoria a little and often but get them onto brine shrimp as soon as possible and they will take off. Microworm in between is good also

I don't know anything about your black sand but if you want hard alkaline conditions you are giving yourself a real challenge starting with sand that will go acid. I would think you should use a mix with marble or sea shell to increase the hardness and pH.