raewyna

I asked my father if he could remember more about the Tauranga bore water. The brown sludge I was remembering was organic iron, and he thought the silica came from sand from higher up the bore - and therefore likely to be present for anyone with a shallow bore. He doesn't remember it having any effect on algae, except that we did have an algae problem with what sounds like cyanobacteria or similar. He couldn't remember exactly what it was. Re what I was saying about plants v. algae competition, the advice I remember from the book was basically that any plants that either have roots growing free in the water, and/or are at the surface or even above it are best. Also that the most important thing is that the plants are growing actively. One of my tanks that was very green for quite a while has now been good for several months and all the plants are growing beautifully. I use the prunings in the other tanks, two of which have also now cleared of green water and the plants grow well. The fourth (and newest) tank struggles to grow plants and is pea soup green within a couple of days of a water change. A partial change makes no difference at all - just feeds the algae more I think - and a complete change of water starts greening again straight away.

I see you are in Tauranga. The bore water is likely to be high in silica and to also have a brown sludge that is a bacteria that feeds on the silica (also very soft and slightly acidic). I think that's how it goes. It's stretching my memory back 30 years. It possibly also gives you nutrients that the algae will like. I don't know about that. I'm on town supply and have had big green water problems and have eventually succeeded in ridding it from 3 out of 4 of my tanks by simply trying to follow the principle that the green water is because the conditions favour the needs of the algae rather than the plants. To solve it long term, it's essential to get the plants growing more than the algae. I have used plants like indian fern, java fern, tiger lotus, Hygrphila augustifolia and Elodea canadensis as the key ingredients towards that. My bible is "Ecology of the planted aquarium" which you can get at the Tauranga library. Has a lot deeper level of science than you usually get in an aquarium book. It's written by a scientist who is also a hobbyist. Best of luck. (The 4th tank is my bare bottom baby guppy tank and it's pea soup green still, but has only been going about 3 months. So far the floating plants struggle to get enough light to grow well)

I hope he comes right for you. The 'picking on' each other aspect might be that they are preparing to breed. If they have that in mind they will challenge each other and lock jaws (kiss). sometimes it can get a bit rough and they might get mouth fungus on the injuries. So if he's already sick, that will all be extra stress.

Daily food morning and night is mixture of VitaPet goldfish flake and Tetramin crisps. Once or twice a week they get a mix of Aquarian cichlid pellets and peas. And at present I'm doing brine shrimp for the baby angels so they get some of that each day too. I always soak the cichlid pellets before feeding them (even to the angels) and for the peas I soak them to thaw, then squash and feed just the inside. My understanding is that wild guppies eat about 40% algae so plant matter is an important part of a balanced diet.

I'm not big on platy genes specifically but if you have bred hifin to hifin and got plain babies, then the hifin gene appears to be dominant and your parent fish are not purebred (ie are carrying the plain gene as well as hifin). If you try breeding the plain babies back to the parents, you will only get more half breeds. So I would guess continue keeping and breeding the hifin babies and after a few generations the population should become more pure. If you can recognise individual fish and monitor their babies you might be able to work out which ones are purebred, but that takes lots of tanks and lots more patience. Also, I don;t know how old the babies have to be to show the hi fin. My answer will have moved this back to the top. Hopefully someone else can come in with more direct knowledge. I just have a few red wagtail platies. The original two females have grown so big they look like hybrids, but are breeding (I thought the sword/platy hybrids were sterile). The male is a normal platy. The first babies are just about getting to breeding size and so far are a mix of big like Mum (female) or smaller and brighter coloured like Dad (but both sexes).

They will probably spawn again in a week or two. My female lays every 8 days when the eggs are lost. They will likely eat them for a while but then might settle down. My pair got into a routine of him eating the eggs every time and getting fatter, and her providing new ones every 8 days and getting thinner. I separated them for a while (she sulked and still didn't get fatter) but when I put them back together it worked and I now have a tank of about 90 6 week old babies, still with their parents. And they are so cute! And now that mother is happy plus not producing eggs every week at the moment, she's now in the best condition I've seen her. So please don't feel disillusioned when it doesn't work out the first time.

As was said above it all depends on the overall bioload etc. I have white cloud mountain minnows in an outside pond and I always winter some inside just in case our winter gets too cold and I lose the outside ones (I never have). Most years the ones that I brought inside have spent the winter with 10 fish in a little unfiltered 10 litre tank - ie one fish per litre. I always keep an eye on how the water looks, and am careful not to overfeed. Have done this about 5 years and never lost a fish yet. The plants I use for this are those that grow well floating rather than needing substrate, although sometimes I might put a little pot of something in. For the overall science of the role of plants in water quality I'm a big fan of Diana Walstad's book "The ecology of the planted aquarium".

I have Diana Walstad's book "Ecology of the planted aquarium" so I got brave and did as she suggested - 1" garden soil and 1" gravel. It has only been about 5 months but so far the tank I did that in is going well. Plants all growing, fish happy and the green water went away and left a crystal clear tank. The plants are Amazon swords, tiger lotus, Hygrophila, Indian fern - some planted and some floating and Java fern growing on some gravel.

Sorry, still can't see how to upload photos. The fish in question have orange marks like in Cesarz' first photo and also black spots. They have top and bottom 'swords' like in the third offspring photo above. So I guess that means they are likely to be just guppies that have reverted to wild type. As an aside, when I put them in with my angels (other guppies already happily in the tank) the angels looked like they wanted to eat them (but didn't). The angels were clearly responding to the spots. I took them out again after a couple of days because the angels weren't settling down and neither were the guppies. They settled a bit but remained nervous so I took them out. This was just the ones with the wild type spots. The others were fine. I then removed the two biggest angels and tried them again (still three smaller angels) and now everyone is happy. Something about those spots made the angels think 'food' even thought he fish themselves were big enough to be tankmates.

I was about to post a question that might already be partly answered here. I recently bought some guppies on internet auction. The impression I got is that the seller (kid) had started out with good stock and that they have been breeding pretty indiscriminately. There were some with reasonably nice green tails etc, plus a number of males that look similar to those at the top of this thread. I was wondering if these are just guppies that have reverted to wild type or whether they are something different (eg hybrid Endlers or something). Because they are similar to some of the pictures on this thread so instead of starting one I thought I'd come in here. I'll post some pictures as soon as I figure out how. Raewyn

Thanks everyone. Caryl, you are SO right.

Not all together of course. I've been lurking here for months and decided it's high time I put my head up. This is a great place for all sorts of information. I re-awakened my interest last autumn - dug a pond for the goldfish and decided to use their old tank for tropical. Started off with some angels, added two more tanks and some guppies. Now have a 30 litre bucket of baby guppies in the office. You all know how it goes. Outside there is the new goldfish pond, the old minnow pond, a tank of 'stuff' that includes bullies and shrimps, and a couple of containers of goldfish fry. Plus various lotus and water lily features. I took two weeks off work over Christmas and can't believe that I didn't achieve anything except fiddling with and watching fish! Cheers Raewyn