rollergirl

Just bought a microworm culture off T/M for my Bolivian Fry. I didn't realise it would take a week to get the culture going! I mixed up a batch of yeasty goodies last night and poured the culture over it, and this morning did notice some of the worms crawling up the side, which I assume is a good sign. Now my fry just became free swimming overnight, so I've gone to feed them some of the microworms this morning, however I'm having issues actually getting them TO the fry, as they're down at the bottom of the tank still being guarded by their parents (so funny, they'll try and swim away from the little pit and mum will pick them up and spit them back into it). What I'm doing is scraping some worms off the side of the container with my finger and dipping into water but by the time I get my finger anywhere near the fry the worms have all been swept away by the current and into the filter most likely, never to be seen again. How do I get the food to the hungry little guys? The tank is 30cm in depth so not particularly deep...

Just had a read, (not that I'm into breeding angels) nice article! I loved your ending hehehe :lol:

Cool pics, I love the look of the cube

Can also buy frozen from most LFS preprepared "Discus Tucker" which, (according to the packet,) is a mix of insects, shrimps, beef, fish oils, cereals and veges. As mine are in community tank I mix with frozen bloodworms and seriously green tucker to ensure everybody gets a bit of variety

Totally agree here-I know of one (very rich) guy who spends the MAXIMUM on equipment, tank, etc etc and has all the latest gidgets and gadgets...But at the end of the day, doesn't put the time and effort into his tank and wonders why his fish/corals die? (Before he goes and buys more to replace them!) At the end of the day the money spent is not the issue-of course you need good equipment, but if you just don't CARE enough to learn about how to look after a reef tank then things aren't going to thrive in it, no matter how much you spend. My .002 cents anyway...

Thanks guys, Just noticed the cory hasn't made it (obviously the trip stressed him out too much, he was pretty tiny though maybe starved ) But the gourami certainly looks happier in a clean and now PLANTED tank with places to hide! The funny part is Mum DID want the fish-just obviously not the work that went along with them (although honestly it wouldn't have taken more than an hour a fortnight to look after that tank! grrr :evil: ) That's the last time I ever give pets as a gift, no matter how much the recipient says they want them!

I picked up the 40L hexagonal tank that I got for my mum a few months ago yesterday, wanting it for a grow out tank for ram fry. Mum has complained about not having enough time to look after the fish properly and kept managing to kill them off somehow (despite my clear instructions on water changes, cycling, feeding etc...I guess some of us aren't meant to keep fish!!) so I offered to take it off her hands. 8) It came with 2 current inhabitants, a pearl gourami and an albino cory. This is where it gets worrying-I was with mum when she bought these fish, maybe 4-5 months ago, and they don't seem to have grown at ALL! She has admitted to me that she was slack with W/C's and only fed them flake, nothing else, so I'm guessing a combination of poor water quality and a boooooring diet have stunted their growth somewhat. :-? They are both extremely skinny and looked pretty unhappy yesterday. My plan is to start feeding them up on nice rich frozen foods (I usually mix up seriously green tucker, bloodworms, and a bit of discus tucker together to make it more of a gourmet experience :lol: ), plus tubifex, colour bits, etc, 3x daily if possible, and do small regular water changes, say 10% twice a week. I'm just worried that with a start in life like this they will always be runty and not grow properly, is it possible to get them healthy and growing again once they have been neglected for months like this? My eventual plan is to put them into my planted community tank but I want to fatten then up and get healthy first. What do you guys reckon? Will they grow or be forever destined to a life of being the little guys? :-?

UPDATE: The little wrigglers have hatched! :bounce: :bounce: Have been watching their mum transfer them by mouth to the little hole that dad dug out for the last hour...There's a bunch of them (looks about 150 odd although hard to tell) squirming away in their gravel pit, with dad standing guard as she transfers more over ...So cool and amazing to watch as it's my first experience watching fish really breed (apart from livebearers). So-I managed to answer some of my own questions from yesterday (the internet is a beautiful thing...) and here's what I've done: Removed glowlight tetras and placed fine mesh over filter intake (it's a sucky-pushy internal filter-was planning to get one of the sponge filters but as I said didn't expect any procreation this fast! So had to make do with the bio-filter I have for now and just wound a really fine mesh bag over the intake part so they don't get sucked in. Have also diverted flow to the top of the tank more so that once they are free swimming they don't get too pushed around) Setup 40L hexagonal tank for grow out that I stole from mum's (she wasn't too great at keeping fish alive :-? ) Its current inhabitants are the pearl gourami and albino cory that came with it (both looking pretty sad and skinny I must say...Have had a grouch at mum and told her they are in a better place now), I treated these guys in a 2x concentration methylene blue (sp?) bath for 20 mins before putting them back in just in case (I know their water conditions weren't that great...) so will keep in there for QT for 2 weeks while the ram fry grow a little with their parents, then will move them (gourami + cory) to the planted community and move the ram fry into the 40L for grow out. (I've heard the parents can spawn again in 2 weeks and get stroppy at the fry then). For now though I'm planning on leaving the fry with their parents. Have ordered some microworm culture from trade me and will start feeding this to the fry in 3 days when they are free swimming, then move on to baby brine shrimp and finely ground flake once they are a little bigger. Plan on feeding 3x daily and doing a small W/C (5-10%) after each feed to keep nitrogenous waste down as I hear the fry are ultra sensitive to nitrates, etc in the water. On this topic-what do you guys think of having a nitra-zorb pouch in the water to help with keeping nitrates down? (I have a brand new spare one floating around but don't know if its a good idea with fry or not.) Anyway-that's the plan-hoping furiously that it's sucessful, I'm so stoked to have babies I really want to bring them up right! Hopefully in a couple months time I'll have a whole bunch of little bolivians to rehome Will keep everyone posted on the process anyway!

Yea, I'm really enjoying uni so far although haven't really got into the official marine studies yet, that starts in second year. Into fish physiology and whatnot through my animal bio paper though. I'd say I'll probably be at uni for quite some time as I want to take it to at least an MSc level...that way I can do my own original research. :bounce: Not really looking forward to 4 more years of being broke though!!! :-?

Hey, yep long time no see is right hehe, I've been laying low lately (been extremely busy at uni). The little tang unfortunately passed away to the big tank in the sky- I think in hindsight we probably weren't feeding enough, either that or a parasite of some sort as she was pretty skinny before she went This was a while ago now though. On a better note the clowns and chromis are doing great. Tank full of softies now and still pumping out lots of coralline growth which is good seeing as it's still under those t8's! :lol: Oh and believe it or not- that pink monti you gave us is still hanging in there, in fact it's doubled in size since we got it-kind of got broken when we moved house though, but that's ok, now we have 2 pink monti :lol: Anyway- the boy has now gone and bought us HelenMac's old 4 foot bay window tank, :bounce: (so funny how when I started my marine tank he was so against it, yet now he's completely obsessed and spends all his spare money and time on it! LOL) So we're just in the process of collecting LR, skimmers, lights etc and should hopefully have it up and running in the next couple of weeks. Still going to keep the little one going as a QT/softie tank, as they seem to do quite well in there. Ok there's my long story! Unfortunately can't accompany it with pics as yet-despite spending $1000's on fishtanks we still haven't invested in decent technology to show them off! How embarassing :oops: As soon as we do get a camera I'll chuck some pic's in here to show everyone how they look. Ok thread hijack over!! LOL xx

Crikey !

Well after only 3 weeks in domestic bliss together my bolivian butterfly rams have got busy and laid eggs in their little terracotta pot :bounce: Now they are at this stage, I'd like a bit of advice on what to do to ensure the eggs actually hatch.. The rams are in a 2 foot (54L approx) tank, with dark gravel and a few plants (just some braziliensis swords and a couple of indian fern). pH around 6.8, temp 27-28. Not sure on nitrate level at the moment as I've run out of one of the solutions in the test kit(will get new kit asap), but would assume it's low as the tank has only been setup a month and gets 20-30% water changes once a week. At the moment I have 5 glowlight tetras in there with the rams just for aesthetics, but can always move these to the planted community tank if necessary. I'm not exactly sure how old the eggs are as I wasn't home all of yesterday/last night, and can't say for sure whether they were there or not the day before...(been a bit distracted with back to uni stuff! :oops: ) but they definitley weren't there on the weekend. So anywhere between 24-48 hours old is my guess, and maybe even today as the boy didn't notice any yesterday when he was feeding. So....my question list... 1) Should I take the glowlights out? 2) I've heard that the eggs will only hatch if the tank is in darkness, is this true? 3) How long till the fry hatch? 4) Will the fry need to be seperated from the parents? And what is best to feed them? (I was thinking baby brine shrimp and micro-fine flake once they are older, opinions?) 5) I don't have a grow out tank, but can get hold of a 40L tank if necessary, will this be sufficient? Ok...that's probably enough questioning for now...As you can all probably tell I'm not exactly experienced with breeding these guys and don't expect to get it right the first time (although it would be great of course). To be honest- I really didn't expect them to spawn this fast, I wasn't even sure my new ram was a female or not yet! Having said that- it's good to know they get on at least for future reference, even if I stuff this one up. So, any advice you guys have on caring for eggs and fry for my little guys would be greatly appreciated Cheers so much, Tash

Wow Wasp your tank is looking amazing

I always wondered about this...seems a bit ridiculous to pay $20, $30 and upwards at the LFS for a bit of wood!!!

Serpaes are gorgeous lil tetras, don't grow too big either. I've had a group in my tank for a year now and they have grown from 2cm to maybe 2.5cm. Really beautiful lil fish and nice and easy as well

Hope this quote works or I'm gonna be like, totally :oops: It was mixed up for about a week before we used it, didn't aerate it though as I thought you only had to do that to remove chlorine(enlightenment please!) and it was RODI water I mixed with.It was only a small water change too about 15% which is about 18 litres or something in my tank. Weird...

Go NSW all the way, When I used the Instant Ocean salt mix last time it totally buggered up my skimmer and airflow for some reason, made it go crazy filling up the cup every 10 mins and we had to play around with it heaps, as a consequence our fine-tuning is off and we haven't got the air flow quite right since!! Apparently this has been heard of before?? :-? Also on this site in the links to reference sites you will find a link for the Auckland tides, Just make sure to get it on an incoming tide and like Krama said not after crappy weather

Hehe good work getting the kids to clean it lol

I have just set up a tank intended for malawis and am waiting on the cycle to finish..I used 2mm aragonite which I got for about $45 for a 25kg bag from Hollywoods, this is basically marble chip and it looks really pretty, nice and white at the moment (but will no doubt be messy once the tank is stocked! ) The good thing is that it buffers the water which means I won't have to keep lifting the ph for them. In regards to cleaning it I don't know what it will be like with malawis but I do use it for my marine set up and you can just vac it like normal with a syphon if it gets messy and it comes up pretty clean, (although I don't actually even do this anymore as I'm trying to grow little pods on it to feed my wrasse...But it worked well when I did)

Good thread Krama.... Nice to know how everyone is going with their new projects! Mine is doing great, I still haven't figured out how to get a nice pic of it however, but everything looks good. The clowns are happy and healthy as is the tang. And coralline algae growth has now replaced the horrible cyano, yay!!! Ken and I bought our first coral the other day from Hollywoods, it's a lovely little frogspawn. The tank is now starting to look really colourful with all the frags that have grown at least twice their size since it's been set up As soon as I figure out how to get a good pic without the reflection on the glass I will post one in here, might be a good little mission for tonight

Hey, Been busy at work so haven't had the chance to get on here much. It's coming along really well, have two clowns in there now as well who are just so cute. The frags you gave me are all thriving (especially the xenia which are now doubled in size) Oh except for the monti which seemed to be recovering for a bit but is now looking a bit sad again Nevermind, can't win them all....I'll post a pic as soon as I am able to figure out the damn camera!! Anyway hope your day has turned out to be excellent! And congrats on your cool new addition

Happy Birthday Wasp! Hope it's an awesome day :bounce:

Have fun Wasp!!! Sounds like it will be a nice break...

That looks awesome, so the two small tanks are sitting on top of the big one? That is really cool!!