Yellow

The small fish should all be fine IMHO, but I'm worried about your dwarf gourami.

Live food helps. Daphnia, chopped earthworms etc. Submersed plants with fine leaves helps eggs and fry avoid being eaten as well as being a surface that can grow microorganisms that bigger organisms (like rotifers and copepods) can graze off, which newly-hatched goldfish fry can eat. Which reminds me, does anyone culture those really small waterfleas (moina and ceriodaphnia)? Newly-hatched Daphnia carinata are small enough for guppy fry but not for any other fry.

:bounce:

Microsoft Publisher. Gewürztraminer grown in Hawkes Bay or Gewürztraminer grown in Otago?

Dough

I'm keeping some blue moscows, which have large caudal fins that don't have sharp corners; I guess an F2 cross of female moscow x male Tiger could give the sort of snakeskin that I'm after? The main difficulty is that the metalhead is probably y-linked and if the tigrinus/zebrinus is also, then to get a snakeskin with just the snakeskin pattern I'd have to use another male somewhere down the line. But hopefully by then I'd have the colour and body sorted.

The wait for photos is killing me! :smot: JaSa, I checked out the wicked photos in your signature's link, and was struck by how the colour scheme of your Tiger Endlers resembled that of an old coarse snakeskin I had. Do you know of anyone breeding coarse snakeskins with that colour scheme (lots of glowing green/yellow and black and a blue shoulder patch)?

Welcome back! :sage:

I'd suggest keeping it under regular control. Both azolla and duckweed will cover a pond surface if left alone. Both provide cover. Both absorb ammonia and nitrates and other nutrients and can be removed and used to transfer nutrients from your pond to your garden. HOWEVER, both will shade out any submersed plants that you have, preventing them from adding dissolved oxygen to your water, and if too severely shaded the submersed plants will die and decay, using up more dissolved oxygen. Duckweed stomata are on the upper leaf surface so they just puff off their oxygen into the air. The floating leaves will also get in the way of oxygen gas diffusing into your water through the water's surface.

sigh. I'm keen on any look-alikes if anyone has them.

Fish food or pet food, or even raw meat or egg (sparingly!), milk, yoghurt, or crushed leafy vegetables will also work. If trying to seed new filter media then old media would definitely help, but if none available then try the nearest stormwater drain and scrape off some muck onto your new media to speed things up. Very Macgyver, much No. 8. :dnc1:

5 years later... :sage: Did the threadfin rainbows breed easily?

The low temperatures here where it doesn't snow won't be a problem. It's the high temps which might be, from what I've read. If you have them outdoors I'd suggest some shade and air circulation.

So... did they manage to grow?

Ostracods (seed shrimp). Copepods are those 'cyclops'-type things and are eaten like hotcakes, while every fish I've kept has ignored ostracods.

fmueller, have you tried the Avondale Sunday Market or the Otara Saturday Market? I remember seeing a stall selling large jars of honey for reasonable prices. Beekeeping would be great if you had a large section and crops (or neighbours with crops) requiring pollination. However, in the city there is still enough garden flowers to support a hive - I've identified a stack of beehives just a couple metres north of the university of auckland business school.

I used to keep guppies a couple of years ago. All started with one yellow snakeskin male (fine snakeskin, with a half-pie sort of topsword) from Animates, and two pre-hit females from Wetpets. They got their own 120 L tropical tank, the lucky fish. My plan was to keep the best-looking male (jokingly called 'Henry n') and most of the females in the big tank and place all the other males in a reserve tank. Any time Henry n passed on I'd pick the next best male out of the reserve tank and replace into the big tank. On occasion I sold or gave away a few females. Most of the males lived a bachelor life. I got up to Henry III before a lack of maintenance caught up (a relative was looking after the tank). The lowest range of the temperature was 16 degrees, to try to reduce maintenance and increase lifespan. Henry I I can't find photos of this one at the moment; I think it's on my old computer. I'll chuck it up some time. But imagine a yellow fine snakeskin guppy with grey body with very slight blue-purple iridescence, with a poor excuse for a topsword, and whose dorsal fin and tail are about the same colour as the body. On the shoulder, a blue eye-like patch with reddish eyebrow. Henry II The pinnacle of the lot. The snakeskin is a coarse type, with nice matching dorsal fin and black where there was no green/yellow, but what was really interesting was the colour. The camera flash exaggerates it, but there was a definite green-ness (but not moscow). The shape and that eye-like mark on the shoulder shows it was probably a relative of Henry I (whose eye-like shoulder mark tended to carry through). Henry III Almost a spitting image of Henry I except for the orange (instead of yellow) tail which was fully-developed with nice definite corners (instead of a half-pie topsword). The tell-tale shoulder eye is there. (Terrible cellphone photo.) Does anyone breed any snakeskins that look like the Henry II one above? I've got some tanks set up up here so would be keen on them.

Looks wicked. I first saw one on a collectible breakfast cereal card in an old tin from the previous generation. The live ones in public displays look more alive, of course.

Have you considered watercress? Growing watercress in a sump would work! Also, if you have some media that wicks up moisture but not excessively you'd be able to stick a Nepenthes in it.

Welcome! That's a very nice postcard-worthy photo of a Tui. I haven't seen a high-angle shot of one before. Male red-finned bullies (Gobiomorphus huttoni) and koaro are two of our native freshwater fish which have a lot of colour. They need a saltwater phase in their lifecycle though. Other bullies are more drab but you can watch their whole lifecycle in a freshwater tank.

My bet (for OP's fish) is on Crans. Uplands have very distinct and numerous fanta-orange cheek dots (smaller in size and with sharper borders than these blotches), while Commons have three quite distinct and thin horizontal cheek stripes like whiskers. Well, this could also be a Giant and I remember reading something about dorsal fin ray count a couple of years ago. I can't recall it in detail. Something about five or six.

If I can make it, I'll bring along some Daphnia carinata in bottles and some windelov java fern, riccia and christmas moss for trade or sale. I'm looking for some grindal worms, smaller water fleas (anyone got ceriodaphnia dubia or moina?) and Anubias barteri var. nana (mine died of neglect some years ago ) and... any green coarse snakeskin guppies like the one I used to keep (a photo is attached):

Hi cesarz, do you have any suggestions on what I could pair up with the female pingu? Will crossing it with the blue tux there, the snakeskin I have, or a blonde snakeskin male produce anything worthwhile?

Does the female carry metal-head/moscow traits? Or is it called "gold"? Fingers crossed it's carrying metal-head genes, so I can breed it with that blue-tux male and my green snakeskin male: Then I'll have blue moscows and green metalheads! What I've always wanted, lol. My green snakeskin (coarse/cobra) male hasn't got the largest tail, but his dorsal reaches past the end of his body, so that's a start. It's longer than that blue tux male's anyway. And over the generations it might improve. The future looks bright.

Guppies should be fine at 18 degrees. I've set my heater to 18 degrees for a few months and had no problems. Positives of using a heater: fish grow faster, less time between litters of fry, the tank can be used for different tropical fish, the heat can be changed to help spawn certain fish, you have security if the room heater breaks down or a freak snowstorm occurs. They're not that expensive either, about the cost of an airpump to purchase and run, sort of. If the air temperature is already warm then the heater will be off most of the time.