David R

140 long, 65 wide, 48 high. Very similar size to the reef tank I sold you... :facepalm: more here

choice, will have to go grab a can of matt black next time I'm in town.

Not likely IMO given the poor conditions of many of our rivers and our cold winters. I doubt they're any bigger threat to our ecology than most of the other large predatory fish that currently get imported (cichlids, dats etc).

Ze Germans sure know how to set up awesome public aquaria!! Will have to make a visit to Koln/Cologne some time. That festae is a brute, the oscars are awesome too (would love to see one of them jammed in a 2' tank....), and the honking great niger at the very end!!!!!

Haven't you seen the movie Piranha 3d?! They kill everything. EVERYTHING!!!

ordinary exterior acrylic house paint??

Possibly, but I'd prefer to be able to still see in there to see the water level.

As you can see the durso in my new tank stands out like dogs bollox, is there anything I can paint it with to make it a little less obvious? I was going to ask for the overflow to be made out of tinted glass but forgot ( :facepalm: ), hopefully the algae soon grows in there and makes it a bit less obvious....

SPECTACULAR!! SPECTACULAR!! SPECTACULAR!!

A bigger tank would help the growth but 300L is ok, will want bigger for breeding tho!! Clean warm water (26-7C) and good food (hikari + shrimp) had mine growing steadily. They're not fast like oscars or midas but will grow steadily under good conditions. He looks nice tho, quite miss my pair despite their shyness...

Would depend on how the dominant/resessive genes work, could end up with an extra-red rotkeil, could end up with something muddy, especially if the "rotkeil" already has some gold genes in it. Would most likely require a lot of line breeding and crossing to fix a solid strain, crossing to a gold then back to red would be far easier.

because SPECTACULAR! If you've got the space to play then cross the other male with a gold female, grow out the fry and pick the reddest female to breed with your SPECTACULAR male. The results could be ....... :slfg: :slfg: :slfg:

SPECTACULAR!!! Jack should be able to sort you out with a female for your midas, might even be able to get an interesting coloured one. It would be interesting to see how varied the red colour was in the offspring if you crossed two red sevs together.

Yep, based on simple Mendelian Genetics the F1 of a cross are often consistant but some will carry recessive genes and others won't, so two F1 crossed together will produce a varied batch of fry. It might just be best to carry on searching for a red female, especially if you don't have space to grow out the fry and/or experiment with crossing back. Even having more than one red male to cross back to would help as it would provide a bit more genetic diversity.

my guess would be convict X jag, look interesting, wonder how big they will get

Could be a bit varied, I'm fairly certain the reds have been selectively bred from golds so you'd essentially just be undoing some of the line breeding. If you're going to do it I think you'd want to grow the young out to a good size to see what they're like and would probably want to be prepared to do some serious culling if needed (I'm sure Henward would help! ). Could always try crossing the reddest of the fry back with the red male to try improve the colour.

My bad, I'm just a dumb train driver with no degree who has only been keeping fish for about fifteen years. One question though, have you ever seen a 12"+ oscar in person?

Would be interesting to see what they fry would look like if tho of these are crossed, going by my basic understanding of genetics I'd say they would be pretty varied.

particlesolutionz.co.nz

A; I have never met anyone who had half a clue about keeping fish who with think the above scenario is acceptable. B; there is no such thing as a full grown fish. Unlike people fish continue to grow up until the time they die, although their growth does start to slow considerably as they get larger. You are obviously either naive and arrogant or heartless to think that your fish will be fine in that tank, I have seen many large oscars in ponds and public aquaria overseas, and I would never even dream of keeping one in anything less than about 500 litres regardless of what internet experts may say. There is a huge difference between surviving and thriving...

The fish in the pic certainly is, but if it was bred by Phil its almost certainly a female rotkeil crossed with a male gold...

I know what you're getting at, but with this Amphilophus complex you're trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted (and galloped 50 miles down the road and been hit by a truck). Try find a true Amphilophus citrinellus or labiatus anywhere, I doubt if there is any in NZ fullstop, about the only way to be sure it is an actual species is to buy from someone like Jeff Rapps who has collected them from a known location. And even then its not really 100% as those who study the genus aren't all sure themselves as the two species vary greatly over their range. The fact is that the two (or more, depending on how it ends up split/lumped) species have been freely crossed by people for countless generations, the safest bet is to call any fish know from a known source/location simply Amphilophus Sp. or midas/devil mix as Jack has done and enjoy them for the awesome fish they are. Here's some more reading for you; http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?439705-A-cf-citrinellus-A-potential-case-of-F1-Midevils http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?367826-Please-read-before-asking-if-you-have-a-Midas-or-Red-Devil And here's a pic of one of my old "mutts" from Jack, fantastic fish, just starting to go thru his second colour change into the mottles red/white look.

Yeah Si it is! Stupid HP netbook thing, not even that old... vieja X texas has nice colour but looks a bit funny in the face.

Yeah from their website. Not sure what shipping would cost, its light but the volumetric weight would be quite high.

While I commend your dedication, I agree with cricketman that it seems rather OTT unless you're doing a large % waterchange on a tank with sensitive fish and very cold tap water...