pink_fish

Thanks for that xxdarnixx! I might just try that!

That's fantastic! :bounce:

They are homeopathic remedies – homeopathy is an alternative therapy/medicine. Homeopathy is a bit controversial in that some people say it does nothing at all, whereas others swear by it. Perhaps do some research online and then make up your own mind.

Thanks all for the help and suggestions! My pair have yet to spawn, so no hungry mouths to feed just yet, anyways. Discusguru – I'm not sure why I couldn't get the BBS going either – all I ended up with was a bunch of unhatched eggs after several goes – maybe I had dud eggs! Might take you up on your kind offer next spawn, but for now will go the microworm/decaps route I think.

18 x 14 x 5.5 cm? What could be kept in a tank of that size apart from fry? :-? Or a single, betta. With no heater.

Could be an indian banded, but these are usually bigger than 3-4 cm. http://media.photobucket.com/image/indi ... LTAweb.jpg My guess would be some kind of dwarf gourami - there's quite a few different colour varieties around.

Nevermind jars for fighters, check out this: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 995112.htm gah!

Hi all, I'm _finally_ about to have a go at my first Betta spawning and so hopefully soon will have a bunch of fry to feed! I've tried raising BBS in the past, but had no success and have lost interest in doing so, so I want to know what the best alternatives are in your opinions. I've started a microworm culture, have Liquifry, NovoBaby (which has 3 little containers, Baby01 being NovoTom I believe), JBL Nobilfluid and Sera Micron – I'm basically planning to use a combination of these foods. Also, since we both work all day, it means the fry are only going to get three feeds a day – first thing in the morning, when we get home from work, and right before going to bed. Will this be sufficient? Thanks in advance!

Hi snivypop, congrats! I'm new to this Blue Ram spawning thing too – mine currently have a wee nest of wrigglers (hatched babies) at the moment. They'll take 2-4 days to 'hatch'. Before they do, to avoid any getting fungus, put some methylene blue in the tank – this is important as it is quite common for eggs to get fungus and for many of them to be non-viable (these ones will look white) – methylene blue will prevent this, although it is usual (in my limited experience, anyway) for a few of the eggs to fungus or be otherwise non-viable anyway – the parents will pick these off. When they are ready to hatch, the parents will help them out of their egg casings – they'll pick them off and appear to be eating them !, but really they're just helping their babies out. They'll move them to a safe place (mine have dug a shallow hole at the back of the tank) and then the babies will lie there and 'wriggle', slowly getting more and more bouncy, for 2-4 days until the last of their yolk sacs are used up. By the time the yolk sacs are used up, the fry will be free swimming and you will need to start feeding them. The generally agreed best food for fry is live food – newly hatched baby brine shrimp being the most recommended (annoys me too, lol, but people say it's easy-as) – for BBS you'll need some kind of hatchery, either bought or homemade – there is heaps of information around on the forum and online about raising them. I'm a bit pathetic and have never actually managed to successfully raise any BBS , so I feed my fry on alternative foods (which may be why I've never had all that much success in raising fry, lol!). I am about to start using powdered fry food (Sera stuff), which I'm advised will work really well – mixed with water and then squirted next to the babies (will keep you posted as to how successful I am with this!). I've also started a microworm culture, so they will at least get some live food. Fry should be feed several times a day. I've had trouble with the parents eating their fry at times and have been told that it helps to keep the parents well fed while they're raising their babies too – feed good quality, high-protein foods, preferably live foods if you can get them (or good quality frozen foods like bloodworms, brine shrimp, etc.). Hope some of that helps! Good luck and keep us posted!

Welcome to the forum, blueguppies! Just thought I'd mention an experience I had with doing this and why I don't do it any more. :-? – I had a breeding pair of blue rams and one day came home and couldn't find the female anywhere. After poking around in the tank for quite some time I checked the last place I thought she would be: inside the box filter, which I'd taken the lid off so that the fry wouldn't get sucked in – there she was, stuck head-first in the box, between the filter wool and side of the box. Goodness knows how long she'd been there! :-? She looked all squashed looking and her fins were a mess – presumably because she'd been wriggling and wriggling to try and get out. I thought she was a goner, but I treated her with melafix and she survived (that was about 6 months ago and she's got another batch of fry now, lol) – but she's retained the slightly squashed look from her time in the filter!

Hmmm ... I think I remember someone talking about potassium permanganate it a few weeks ago on here – I believe that it's sold as some kind of horse treatment on TM and maybe garden centres sell it? Have had a look, but I can't find the thread anymore. It does sound like it might be some kind of flukes – would be best to ask at your LFS about it before buying the potassium purple stuff, though – they might be able to suggest a proprietary treatment or tell you where you could get some potassium permanganate from. Sorry I'm not being much help! I had thought by now that one of the expert peeps 'round here might have dropped in on this!

It may still be parasite that you can't see – it's probably a good idea to try and sort it out, especially if you see them doing it a lot since that indicates that the fish probably aren't feeling too comfy. Sorry I can't be more help, but maybe you could have a search online for more info?

Hi Floater, I believe this behaviour is called 'flashing'. Fish generally do it to relieve irritation – like that caused by parasites, or maybe (I've read) an ammonia spike in your tank (but I guess this is unlikely since the rest of your fish seem okay). Blue rams are prone to ich (whitespot) which could make them itchy – any sign of little white spots on them? If so, 'white spot cure' from your LFS will do the trick. If there are no visible parasites, you could talk to your LFS and they might be able to figure out what kind of parasite it might be and provide you with an anti-parasitic. Also, just wondering what temp you keep your tank at? Blue rams like it very warm – 28-30 deg suits them. I had mine in a tank at 26 deg and they got white spot. (Your other fish will be comfy at around 28 so if you haven't changed your temp already, it might be a good idea to do so prevent any future illnesses.)

Hi twinkles, sorry to hear about your fish. Pretty sure that he has dropsy, as others have mentioned. I've had quite a few fighters go down with it before (they are prone to it in my experience), so have done some research. I found out that dropsy is a symptom of kidney failure (which could be caused by any number of things) – because fluids in the fish's body are not being expelled properly by the kidneys, it swells up and scales stick out giving the 'pinecone' look. Unfortunately, once the scales are up, it usually means that internal damage is pretty far advanced and so any treatment (if you do manage to figure out what has actually caused the dropsy) is too late. If you catch it early, people say that it can be treated - mostly the assumption is that it's some kind of internal bacterial thing and so they treat it with antibiotics (like Furan). I've never managed to save any of mine unfortunately. Apparently kidney failure is very painful for a fish, so if he doesn't show any signs of responding to treatment after a couple of days, it would probably be best, imo, to euthanise him if you can bear it.

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lol – thanks for that Simian, but M thinks he's got a plan - will have to see how he goes!

The tank will be about 200 mm high – probably can get away with it being 230 mm actually – I already have some smaller tanks that are this deep and that depth has been fine in the past for little fish (not headstanders, lol). We'll be running it bare-bottom as a breeding tank for guppies and/or for raising fry. Barrie – thanks for the offer, but my partner's keen to have a crack (pun intended, lol!) at doing some glass work so will let him have a go.

Thanks guys, that's kinda what we figured. We have a two-tiered stand, and it's going on the bottom tier (which has a height space of only of about 35 cm). It was a cheapy tank anyway and my partner is keen to try some glasswork, so he'll probably do as you say, Phoenix, and take it all to bits.

Hi all, I've just bought a std 2ft tank (i.e. 60 x 30 x 30) and have found that it's about 10 cm too tall for where we want to put it. My partner is keen on trying to take 10 cm of height off, and we wondered whether anybody had done this before and if anyone had any tips. Thanks in advance.

Yep – peas should be cooked (then cooled) and shelled before feeding. A few seconds in the microwave will cook a small batch – basically I think the idea is that you want them soft; straight from the freezer they would be quite hard and tough, and they can't eat the shells easily, so remove those. I find that my fighters will have trouble with big chunks of pea, so I usually mush them up a bit. The other thing is that you may not be aware of is that some fighters do like to spend quite a bit of time lying around – I have ones that like to sit in plants and on the substrate – sideways sometimes!, so it is possible that this is part of what's going on with him too. If he's eating the peas and otherwise looking and behaving normally (except for his big belly) I wouldn't bother about adding epsom salts (in my experience they don't help much anyway).

Yes, feeding him peas will help if it is constipation. It sounds like he might be getting a little too much rich food, and/or maybe too much food. Here's what has worked for me best in the past – don't feed him anything at all for two days (you may have to separate him if he's in with other fish), then on day three cook and shell a pea, squash it up so it's soft and offer it to him. Feed him a pea everyday until he is, ahem, unconstipated. To prevent this happening again, avoid over feeding – especially with rich foods like bloodworms (keep them as a once a week treat), and offer peas once or twice a week (any other fish will enjoy these too). Keep us posted on how he does.

That only works for gravel cleaners, I think? If you're using a tube alone you fill it with water as livingart mentioned above.

When you cleaned the tank out, did you throw out all the old water and replace it with fresh? If so, this might have been the problem – the chemistry of the 'new' water could have been very different to the chemistry of the old water in the tank, which could have stressed the fish out. One of the main things to check is the pH – I myself have had problems with this. The pH of your 'old' tank water could have been quite different to the 'fresh' water you added. Over time, as a general rule, the pH of water in a setup tank tends to get slowly lower due to the build up of fish waste and also if you've got any wood in your tank. Water from the tap will almost certainly have different pH from the water in your tank (as well as other chemical differences) – for example, the water out of my tap has a pH of 7.4 and most of my tanks hover around a pH of 7. I've read that a pH change all at once of more than .2 can be very stressful for fish. First of all, don't change all the water in your tank – even when things go wrong, generally you'd never change more than 50% of your water at one time (because of the above mentioned issues). Second, make sure that the water you do add to your tank is chemically similar to the water already in the tank – i.e. make sure you remove the chlorine (use a water ager) and check the pH – adjust the 'new' water to match the pH of the water in your tank using an adjuster from your LFS. Also, when you clean a filter, you must be careful to really only rinse it and the media out using nothing but old tank water. If you 'clean' it thoroughly, this will kill all the good bacteria and then you might end up with the waste in your tank not being broken down safely, then you end up with nasty chemicals in the tank which will cause problems – could this have been the problem?

Bolivian rams are probably the most peaceful cichlids I've ever encountered. We have our pair in with a siamese fighter, guppies, Blue rams, an algae eater, small pleco etc. Have had corys in there from time to time too, absolutely no problems at all. As for tank size, Bolivians are biggish for dwarf cichlids – our male is almost 10 cm long (including his tail), females are smaller – ours is about 6-7 cm I would guess – so absolutely nothing smaller than a 2 ft, and preferably bigger. Hope this helps.