Simian

I have approx 12-15 of each and 3 Juli Regani, they aren't fully grown yet but still looks good, I do run a small canister filter to boost the filtration which will become more important as they grow on, I will try and snap a pic for you so you get the idea. Owen

I have a yellow/Dem setup in an ar980, its my lowest maintenance and definitely my most colourful tank. They are super hardy fish, relatively cheap and they breed easily, so boosting numbers is a piece of cake.

The real neon tetra disease is all but gone from the industry, and is unheard of NZ these days. (a very reliable source provided me with this info soon after I started keeping fish) What you are most likely seeing is false neon tetra disease, which is just as fatal if not caught early enough. I have successfully treated a group with white spot cure combined with formalin. If they have the whitish grey necrosis they are probably already past it, but it will prevent infection of the others. HTH Owen

OOOFFF!! Geeze Alan, anything like you gotta remember to give me a ring, I'd source you a stainless industrial grade one for a fraction of that! :facepalm: I look after those who have done me favours and the scale is tipped your way atm.

Have used it before, no issues, Bristlenoses, bred in a hollow piece. HTH

PH sensors are a delicate piece of equipment, they have a limited life, even the industrial grade ones I deal with. They have a special glass probe envelope which can be blocked easily. If you are using it to control co2 dosing be really careful a failure can kill all your fish really fast, just ask Daniel from my club. Personally if I was to be testing PH automatically I'd use a bypass line and some solenoids, take the reading, then run a RO/DI flush cycle. it would IMO extend the life of the probe element hugely! PH is the tricky part for reliability vs Cost, the rest of teh stuff you are looking at is pretty easy It something I'll probably be playing with part time next year when my engineering business is launched, I am toying with a few ideas at the moment, but I need to pay the bills first.

I'm pretty reluctant to feed anything I don't have 100% control over to my Trophs I stick to NLS and a quality vege flake. Treat of a few Daphina every now and then. Glad its sorted its self out O

update?

Wha! Its actually how they do it, I tried it once, takes about a day. couldn't bring myself to take it any further, just not into DIY Escargot

I have had a group of Skunks for about 2 years, somehow I ended up with all males! Just got 3 possible females from the helpful folk at HFF, they have some serious growing to do but fingers crossed. Got my 8 Barbartus today too, :happy1: again I will have to be patient, they are pretty tiny so suspect it will be a good year before I get some action with them. I hope they are M+F

Would suggest cleansing them like you would if you were some frenchy eating em :sick: The gut may have something nasty in it, depending on what they are eating. Put them in a container with carrot, when their poo is orange, they have passed anything they ate before collection. :thup:

They will be fine together, just expect some predation of eggs and fry

Update? I love these guys

Without getting into too many details & protect the identity of the owner- for good reason. Were they a private shipment? I'm guessing yes. And is there any chance of getting the details of the quarantine facility/Importer used? I understand the sensitivity so you can get hold of me privately if you feel it needs to be on the down low. Owen

Adolfoi's are a great Cory, very easy to sell on. I got a group from the shipment HFF got in about 2years ago, Bred very well and regularly. Downside is the spawns are very small, I was getting about 20 eggs per spawn, aprox half were viable. Very large eggs and mine didn't touch them (fry were still fair game tho), upside of that is they can take bigger food, microworms, decap brine shrimp straight away, no worries about feeding green water, infusoria etc like some other cories like Trilineatus (fake Juliei) Major downside with them is growth rate, I could have increased it but only had time to feed once per day, occasionally twice/day. I did an experiment, grew out bronze cories in same tank, spawns were within 2 days of each other. Bronze were 3+cm within 6-8 weeks Adolfois were sitting at 1cm It took me about 4 or more months to get them to saleable size, even then they were small and couldnt get more than $10-12 each from a local fish shop (I only sell to fish shops, club members and other breeders) which was IMO a fair price, but do the maths. My group was about 10 fish I paid $50ish each as they were the first shipment in years. Grow out for 6+ months till breeding thats about a year before you can recoup your investment and all that time you have to feed the fry pay for heating etc. Unless you had a perfected setup, live food, a super efficient fish room and time to feed em 4 times a day, I'd go with sterbais, panda's or some of the new lines that have come in lately. Saleable within 8 weeks and bigger spawns. But following that logic Bronzes can spawn over 200 at a go and have IMO the fastest growth rate, saleable at 6 weeks or so if you feed em hard out. if you can move them on at $2 each thats a nice $400 every 6 weeks, less costs. The hard part is not flooding the market, That is why I endorse only selling to LFS as they can turn them over. The difficulty there is unless you have a rep for quality and reliability most wont take em from you. The reality is you may be able to subsidise the hobby by breeding but you will never make any real money out of breeding (unless you invest a huge sum and heaps of time) I personally breed for fun and to secure species in NZ. The Market is just too small and as we are a colder climate you will loose all your profits because we are restricted to growing out in tanks, not ponds like tropical countries. HTH Owen