SpidersWeb

What about Amazon Swords etc? Surely there are plants available for an Amazon Biotope?

>95% hatch rate, now eating dry fry food and microworms swimming around having a party time. What are we going to do with all these severums :o Oh and while we were away, Sevs laid another few hundred eggs (same dad, different mum). We've left these in the tank, and the parents are keeping the 5 oscars and 2 huge plecs at bay. If they make it to free-swimming we might save them, but damn thats a lot of severums D:

Congrats on the GBAs meeshelly

Hey tsarmina, As you'll know now, the fry are amazingly tiny and stick to the glass for the most part. I use a small tank with java moss and fresh water and they breed within a few hours, when the eggs hatched I could see the occasional fry on the side of the glass (like 1 or 2). Within a week there was about 100 swimming around, of which all grew up and are sexable. I raised mine entirely on 'Staple Fry Fish Food' which is a dry powder you can buy at some fish stores. I'm sure there is much better solutions than this, but they ate it. Unfotunately not seeming very sellable. I've been having trouble giving them away to good homes In future I'll do leopard danios.

4ft x 1.5ft x 1ft (1200x450x300) is 162 litres, 3ft x 1.5ft x 1.5ft (900 x 450 x 450) is 182 litres. The 3 foot tank is actually bigger than the 4ft you originally asked about. Normally 4 foot tanks are a bit bigger, often in the 200-300L range.

Taken from about.com Taken from badmanstropicalfish.com HTH

Severums hatched, literally hundreds of tails wagging about.

All seem to have hatched this morning, and are all over the place wiggling their tails and sticking to things. They've gone in all different directions and the tank has sand, rocks, plants etc so chances of counting them are going to be slim. I'll have to remove some of the decorations tonight though because we're off on holiday for a week :oops: Will leave required instructions for fish-sitters but it's not ideal at all. Also will have sev eggs hatching at the same time :-?

Its also common to mix the aquatic mix and sand 50/50 rather than in layers. Sand helps prevent the clay from clamping down.

If your planting it then I'd suggest Daltons Aquatic Mix (Mitre10/Bunnings, $9.99 per 10kg) and Daltons Propergating Sand. It's a real common mix and once the aquatic mix has saturated (takes a couple of days sometimes) it'll be easily managable and you'll find the plant growth amazing. For my sand tanks I just use builders mix, and wash it like crazy to get all the sand that is too fine out, something like $5 a 10kg bag, but propergating sand will be a lot better and wont clamp up as easily. You wont need 10kg of anything, but often thats the only size, so you'll have spare for the next tank

They're non-submersible e.g. the seals will slowly leak water unless you keep the top section out of the water. You also can't disassemble them to remove the water inside without breaking the mechanism. For the price they're not bad, but I'd rather spend the extra $5-10 for an AquaOne or an Elite (my new favourite).

Can't be too much, they're thermostat controlled. Only reason you dont want too much really is in case the thermo fails and it gets stuck on. I've got a 300W heater here running a 30L baby apisto tank, keeps the temp within .2 degrees and its a $19 Masterpet (THE worst heater ever) 2 x 300W in a 350L will be fine, if you had the choice 2 x 200 would give you extended time in the case of thermostat failure, but if the 300's are going cheap I'd grab those instead. Your call though, some people spend $80 on a single Jager.

Thanks for the topic split (whichever mod it was) Should have done it myself really :oops: EDIT - Alan did it Anywho back on topic, dad left the cave AGAIN, (useless male eh ladies?) so when he wasnt looking I stole his eggs, both the cave and underlying gravel were securely attached to the single egg cluster. I've got an air stone keeping them tidy in a matured tank (30L), and unlike most fish they dont mind current so the tank has a HOB filter with a sponge filter jammed over the intake.

Sevs are all around 16cm including tail, so still got at least 1/3 left to grow. They're in with 6 oscars (1 adult, 1 teen, 5 juvenile), and 20cm redspot plec, 35cm common plec. Tank is 5' long and holds ~650 litres.

Not sure on minimum size, they can start breeding a lot smaller than fully grown (~20-25cm). First time mine ever laid eggs (two females, so weren't fertile) I'd estimate they were around the 12cm mark. Sevs get huge but breed early. I wasn't trying to breed them, they're in with 6 oscars, not a good match :lol: females were just full of roe, they didn't even wait for a water change or anything, just 'SHE'S GOING TO BLOW' and away they went. The other female is full, so I'm not going to be suprised if I find another batch of eggs soon. Girls are a normal solid colour, boys get a strong patterning of dots to them over their face and body, and the tips of their dorsal fin etc get longer and darker. When young they all look like girls though. I would really love a Gold Severum male, just couldn't find one that was of age.

I dont actually know. Assuming the dad has 2 Green chromosones (is that the right word?), and the female 2 gold, then should get the following combos: GG - Gold GrG - Green GrGr - Green GGr - Green This is assuming that the Gold is a recessive gene, I haven't looked it up, but I'd expect 75% green 25% gold. We've moved the rock in to its own tank with an airstone keeping the eggs clean. Had to move them before nightfall when the plecos are left to roam free. I got bitten a couple of times removing the eggs, they were a tad pissed off.

Severums (Gold F/Green M) just blessed us with a few hundred eggs tonight too.

I wouldn't recommend bloodworms with dwarf gourami, I found mine often developed a dropsy condition when bloodworms were on offer leading to death. Bloodworms are known to carry a lot of parasites etc, I still feed them to my fish just not the dwarfs. I know some products like Tetra ColorBits are great for enhancing fish colours etc Hopefully some more folk who are more up to date on fish foods than me can help more with that I recommend feeding twice daily, no more than can be eaten in 2 minutes. If food hits the bottom and stays there, it should be gravel vac'd out within 24 hours. I normally just work out which tanks need 1 pinch, 2 pinch, 3 pinch etc

Thanks shadowfax Back on the note of the GBAs..... the male jumped out for some flakes this morning, 14 days without food..... not my boy, 3 days :roll: I got close to the cave and he flew back though. He's rearranged his cave a bit, can't see inside anymore, big pile of java moss right in the way now.

fishboi, cheers for answering the questions but its the cave thats a week old, not the eggs :lol: they're a day or so old max. I was happy to read they take 5-6 days to hatch, gives me some time. Thanks everyone for the replies. What I've learned mostly is that the father will do a much better job of maintaing/cleaning the eggs, so I will likely leave him to it or move him and his eggs to another tank as suggested above. I have another male/female combo in another tank of the same age which would probably be breeding now as well if their caves weren't full of clown loaches :roll: I'll get some photos of this guy though, the cave has a hole in the end which you can see his head and sometimes the eggs (he moves the big cluster around). Young ancistrus are awesome at algae removal, so I'm stoked to have a GBA arsenal on the way

I've got my dapnia living with 5 white cloud minnows in one of those rubbish bins (would hold two garbage bags), and they're breeding and growing faster than the fish can eat, there is thousands in there now. Remember they need 'greenwater'. Green water actually looks light brown (but has a green tint when held up to the light) and comes from rotting organic waste such as lettuce, banana skins, a little dry grass etc. I mention this because I thought green water was water that was green from algae but its not. Sorry if you already knew that. What is cool is you wont see any for ages, then one day go out and realise they've cleaned the water and that there is millions of them.

Danios are a very hardy fish, and will probably be fine in your setup, but being under 20C in the winter isn't a favourite for them. It's not really a drama, just as long as you're aware they are by definition 'tropicals'. If you have a heated tank (anything between 20C and 30C is fine) then they'd do better in there with a few more friends, but they should be fine with the goldfish, just remember they dont like things getting too cold. I bought some Danios as feeder fish once that were being kept in cold.

They are long finned Zebra Danios.

It's a common Zebra Danio. They're tropical but can survive in unheated indoor tanks.

You know its illegal to import prescription only medication right? That is why its not sold here at your LFS. It is available from vets however I hear they dont like giving it out. Might want to keep that on the "down low" and only do small quantities for personal use.