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

I have talked to quite a few breeders about Sterbai's, there appears to be some fertility issues with Sterbais, I had no luck for ages, introduced some fresh young males and increased tannin content of water, much better now.

Good choices, they will sell well and not too hard to breed. I have had better fertility results with a very high tannin content in my water, Leaf litter bottom supplies that, blocks filters fast though so consider a screen before the intake if you go down that path. :facepalm: Most cory species I have bred have tended to spawn close to the outlet of my filters. Use some spawning mops or fake plants to collect the eggs, try different types and at different heights in the water column, your group will soon decide what they like best. Choose young healthy fish, don't be tempted to get that old big fat girl that looks like she's ready to drop a ton of eggs, I recently learnt that fish about 1-2 years old produce the most eggs and those big old girls you sometimes see are probably past their best Have about a 3:1 or even higher ratio of males to females to get really good fertility results. Don't fill the tank too high, except when you are simulating monsoon conditions. The temperature will need to be fiddled with and recorded if you want to get good spawns, most cories like cooler water 23deg average IMO some even like it as low as 20. Condition with live food (white worms) blood worm's will do the trick too and keep the water changes up. I am breeding some cories that are chronic at eating their eggs and young (large group about 15-20 adults) in a 4 footer with those basic principals and usually get a spawn every few days, I only get time to look after them once a day so I don't get to save all my eggs but have almost got this setup sorted, raising the fry can be the hard bit, especially if your chosen cory has very small eggs, the fry seem very fragile and are difficult to feed if you dont have much time. HTH Owen

Bronzes are the easiest As for the setup, some say bare bottom but it really depends on how you intend on raising the fry and how much time you have. For a low input setup You can have a leaf litter substrate, medium lighting, plenty of floating plants and plenty of wood and places to hide, feed the tank, regular water changes and strip it down in 6 months, your population will be much bigger than when you started High work, more babies Bare bottom tank, fake plants, dim lights, run peat fibre in your filter, save the eggs and separate grow out tanks or floating baskets (fly mesh works well)

:thup: :thup: :love: :love: OMG, I'm soo excited by this, I'm gonna start saving up now for some F2's

A important question.. Are you wanting to breed out of interest, for making money or to build a nice big colony Answering that question will determine which type of cory you try and breed The easiest and most prolific would be Bronze cories closely followed by Peppered Great fun and very rewarding to see hundreds of babies growing out, not a great $$ return per fish though as it is very easy to saturate the market. If you are new to breeding start with them and get raising them to saleable size perfected (8 weeks from free swimming should see them at 2-3cm) Then sell off what you have and invest in a trickier species As for size tanks, it depends on the species and the size of your group a little, IMO I'd stick with a 2 footer as a minimum

I appreciate what you are saying Jennifer, and typically for a Asian or South American tank I'd agree 100%. IMO you cant beat the punch and effect of high quality & intensity lighting when you are showing off your African rift aquarium I personally only leave all my lights on when I am actually viewing my aquariums, with 1/2 power for the plants (if its a planted or semi planted setup) and the same if I am about the house but busy. The lighting hardware for my current project only cost $155+gst, its an Industrial fitting and not at all pretty, but as its going inside a new custom hood and I'm a sparky its not an issue. So its really not hard to spend more than that on tubes Hope that clarifies my position

Hi guys Couple of tips/warnings on previous discussion 1. A rift lake setup with few plants will benefit hugely from the addition of some green light, typically a plant tank will prefer not to have green as it wont benefit the plants and would prefer more light in the red and green spectrum's. Green light has the advantage of not supporting photosynthesis, hence higher light for viewing but less algae growth. I have a good portion of green on my E Yellow/Dem tank and when I fitted my new tubes (old ones were still new) the difference was huge, especially the yellows 2. Photosynthesis occurs in both Red & Blue spectrums (thats why many grow tubes look purple) the red gives vegatitive growth and blue gives flowering/fruiting growth (or vice versa I forget exactly and cant be bothered looking it up) 3. Beware of staggered lamps on your aquarium it will give you overlaps and hence, light and dark areas (it can look like poo if you're not careful) 4. You get what you pay for when it comes to tubes, my hood I'm building will end up with the tubes costing more than the fitting! I'm doing my 5 footer's lighthood very soon and am using 4x4' t5 HO tubes, the small gap at each end will limit algae growth on the end glass, and I will be modifying the reflector to throw the light to the back of the tank to minimise algae growth on the front glass. I personally like growth on my rockwork in an african tank, the fish will graze on it and give fry get all the micro organisms that live in it. I'm going to take it one step further on a planned tank and add additional LED high intensity directional light onto my rock spires so the algae grows there in preference to less desirable locations, like the glass HTH Owen

awesome! that's very cool I am guessing you will leave the other eggs in with em?

That pic is probably not of the actual fish, its probably a file photo from the breeder, HFF may be able to clear that one up. If the timing was better I'd grab the group too, I just don't have the space unless I sold my Ikola colony, and that would be unlikely to earn enough to make it worthwhile, and as they have finally started breeding again, I'd need a damn good offer, another small spawn will see me with my numbers right for the planned final set-up. Then I can start selling them on to others who want Ikola. I haven't seen any young for sale for about a year, so they could finance my next colony within a year once my girls start producing more young per batch, they are still learning. Just doesn't stack up to start again with a new strain for me. :dunno: Maybe next time

Sweet! I hope you are winning a jackpot draw Ryan