Ice222

Thanks . Thought I'd lost a few, but seems like most of them were hiding. Most likely getting a bigger display tank soon, so it would be neat to have a nice school of CPDs once I have everything ready.

Not too happy with this, haven't had a single fish illness in 4+ months then about 2 weeks ago I get a dwarf puffer with ick from the store. That's no biggie on it's own really, but bad things ALWAYS have to come in a row. So, i get sick making it difficult for me to step up the water changes as required, my runtiest cpd gets velvet, my sparkling gouramis seem to have gotten finrot AND cotton mouth, my betta got injured earlier today, and now I'm starting to think he's getting the velvet too (He was in the same tank as the CPD that fell sick, the sick one had been separated from all the others for about 10 days with no signs of any of the others getting sick till now. Considering 4/5 tanks are under treatment right now, and I am STILL sick, I'm not too optimistic about the survival rate of my fish. The only tank that's safe atm *fingerscrossed) is my breeding/fry raising tank. I really hope I doon't have to start over .

Parents have been moved back into their original tank and apparently I found some of the lost fry! 11 in today's headcount, I could live with that .

Sigh, he got hurt AGAIN. This time he swam too close to the siphon as I was cleaning the tank. The siphons was stationary, he swam up to it and got his head sucked in ofr a second, now he has a ugly ring of ruffled scales around his head that looks rather painful . Too darn curious for his own good. I wish he'd stop getting hurt! There's only so much I can do in terms of being careful!

Hmm yesterday morning I still counted 3 free swimming fry in the tank, 1 in the breeder. 6 glass sucking fry, and 4 eggs. Then at night, only 1 fry out in the tank remained, and there were no free swimmers in the breeder . found 6 glass sucking fry still, and only 2 eggs, which meant two more must've hatched? Seems odd to me that so many are swimming out of the trap, the holes in this particular one is pretty minute, and the free swimming fry I observed in the tank seem to like to swim quite high in the tank, so I don't know why they all seem to be swimming out of the bottom of the trap and getting eaten. Oh well for a first go, it doesn't seem too bad, today's head count is 6 glass sucking fry in the breeder, 1 fry in the main tank still doing well. So I've pretty much lost half the fry. Hopefully they're just hiding in the masses of moss to give me a surprise another day. Turning the cup vertical again so that I can keep the remaining fry in. See if they'd fare any better that way.

Another update: From the eggs in the cup, I now have 7 Hatched fry, and 2 of those are now Freely swimming . Now there are 8 eggs remaining, 5 of which are on the verge of hatching. I also found two bonus fry swimming in the tank today. I've moved the cup into the breeding trap, so that they'd get a little more room and better water circulation/filtration. They're still small enough to swim out despite the holes being smaller than most breeding traps, but the two free-swimmers that hatched in the cup seem happy to stay there. I also tried to gather the two loose fry, and place them in the trap, but they are incredibly quick! Even had trouble catching them with my makeshift siphon ( just a piece of air hose really). When I finally did catch them and place them in the trap, they swam right back out :roll:. The cup-hatched fry stayed though. How's that for pre-natal (or hsould it be pre-hatch?) developement huh :lol: ? That's the current tank layout, with the plasitic cup horizontally in the tank, allowing fry to swim out into the trap. The trap I'm using is a Marina 'multibreeder', which I choose because it has a plastic piece with only 1 diameter holes, which is a lot finer than most of the grates of other breeding traps. Please excuse the algae on the glass, trying not to disturb the tank too much, so I haven't really cleaned the glass lately. Still doing water changes of course, it's just the glass I'm leaving alone. Edit: It's now 3 swimming fry in the tank and 1 in the trap . I worry about them as the adults are pretty keen to have a go at them. Happened during the water change just now, as the trouble with breeding traps that aren't the floating sort is that water level in them goes down as you drain the tank, so one of them must've swam out of one of the small holes with the current. Fry seem to be incredibly smart though, one of the 3 fry in the tank keeps swimming up to the trap looking like it's trying to get in, while the one inside would swim up close to the other fry when it does. None of the other 2 fry in the tank seem interested in the trap at all. Maybe I'm humanising them too much, but that's how it looks to me!

Lol well I got mine from roskill and one of them is definitely a nasty one. Luck of the draw really .

Update: This morning I found that 1 egg had turned white and mouldy, so chucked the dud out. As for the good news, I finally saw the fish in the act of spawning today, got two fresh new eggs from the spawn too . Next time I gotta have my camera ready and try catch a pic of it, I wonder if they'll think I'm a pervert D:. Also I went out to the pet expo today, wasn't as good as some past years imo, further away for me, entry was kinda expensive and less stalls too. Did visit the AFA stall though. I got back later today and found that one of the other eggs have now hatched, while 1 more looks on the verge of hatching. So egg/fry count for today: 3.5 fry (I think 1 more will hatch within a few hours) 11.5 eggs

They're Celestial Pearl Danios/Galaxy Rasboras, HFF Roskill have them on special atm, $14 or so each . Lol I bought mine at $21.40 each. I want to buy a few, since they're such a good price atm, but I only really want more females, and the ones they have seem a lil too young to sex atm. Btw, they tend to look a lot paler in colour in the stores, possible stress from being shipped. Feed them well and they'll almost look like a different fish.

I'm planning on getting the Hagen GLO T5 HO lighting system, the 60cm one, so I think that should be good enough. wish there was a size between 60cm and 90cm, but alas, light tubes and fixtures only come in set feet lengths . And yea Sam, I'm going with my plakat most likely. He's good looking and well behaved, better stick with him than risk any other betta not getting along with my other fish .

It's more whether the fish would be okay with the high flow/current created by the filter that worries me.

Basically I'm planning to have a display planted community tank customed and plan to stock: Definitely stocking- 1 x Betta 15-30 x CPDs (depending how many I manage to breed) 5 x Oto cats 5 x Pygmy cories or salt&pepper cories (depending on what's available in NZ?) Most likely also- 5 x Kuhli Loaches 3 x Sparkling gourami (will test with the betta, if they don't get along, then they'll stay in separate tanks) As for plants, the main 'difficult' plants I want to grow are glosso and hairgrass. I read that these plants prefer good filtration and good water circulation or they'd be prone to algae, they also need good lighting but I should have that sorted. I should be able to create some darker areas for the Pygmy cories by using taller plants if I do end up getting them. The current plan is for a 680W x 440D x 400Hmm tank ie about 120L. I haven't had the tank made yet, so the sizes are still adjustable, and I'm willing to go up to 720W x 480D x 420Hmm (about 145L), and I probably will. The problem is, is there such a thing as 'too much filtration'? I'm quite keen on the Fluval 204 or the Eheim Pro 2224, but I was told it might be too much for such a small tank, and to go for a Eheim 2213 instead. Now, I'm kinda inclined to believe them, since it was a retailer that told me that, and you'd think they'd what you to buy the more expensive product :lol:. Plus with the betta, even with him being a plakat, I hear they don't like too much flow/current. I will have a sponge filter piece over the intake btw, so I shouldn't have to worry about my tiny fish getting sucked in. Anyway, please let me know what filter you'd recommend, and the reasons. I hope my stocking levels and types aren't too incompatible to work I did check with AQ Advisor beforehand, and it stated that some of the temp ranges for the fish aren't compatible, but I believe that CPDs would be fine at the 25C temp that the others may need.

It finds YOU

Yea, I don't see any reason why breeding tanks have to be ugly. I like to look at the tank and fry, even if they're less than 3mm and still just stick to the glass atm . Wish I had bought more substrate before starting the tank on the right though, there's barely enough gravel, and I can't even put any jbl balls/root tabs under the plants. Bought them a new breeding trap today, once they're big enough to not be able to escape from the trap, they're going in there. It's a nice roomy one too! Will be a big upgrade from the plastic cup I have them in atm. Been manually doing water changes with a syringe as often as possible, so I'm hoping that will keep the water quality good enough for the fry .

Thanks Josh! I certainly think it's cool :lol:. I'm so glad my phone has a nice enough focus range for me to get decent photos of the eggs and fry. Sure is something I'd like to look back on and remember. Lol the actual fish are so much harder to get good photos of actually, they're so darn quick and never sit still for long. took me about 1h to get those pics of the alpha fish.

I'm pretty certain it's not a disease, as I couldn't find anything on google that sounded like it, but I'll just double check here. My sparkling gouramis seems to have developed some dark spots on parts of their body, most evidently on the head. They appear to be the same colour as the original markings on the fish but I'm 99% sure they didn't have them when I purchased the fish. Here's a pic, let me know what you think and whether I should worry or not. You can see 2 darker splotches on the top of it's head. All three have developed these spots, although not all in the same parts of the fish. That's the best photo I can get, pretty hard when I only have a camera phone for photos.

Ever since I first stepped in HFF and saw Celestial Pearl Danios, I wanted them, but they were out of my budget. When I got my friends to fund me on the fish as a bday prez, I was thrilled with them and adored them since. I can tell every single fish in my school of 7 apart. To be honest, I didn't have any plans to seriously breed them, but thought the idea giving it a go once or twice would be fun. I still have trouble telling the gender of a few of them, but picking the most sexually dimorphic ones of the group to breed has apparently worked. I have eggs! And two have hatched into fry . This is great as it would otherwise have been a bad week for me, my dwarf puffers weren't getting along, one had a spot of ich, tiny patches of cyno are appearing in my main tank, and one of the cpds (a runty fish that always had stunted colour and growth) also in the main tank has got velvet. All things are under treatment now, but the fry has really made the week brighter. At first I only found 1 egg, but it was neat all the same, they hadn't been in the breeding tank for long so I thought they'd need more time to settle in. I took pictures of the egg once per day, and found it had hatched by the morning of the 4th day. Maybe a little slow to hatch as the tank is only about about 23C. Here are the pics: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 - Hatched! I kept trying to look out for more eggs but during those 4 day I simply could not find any. I was still very happy about the 1st fry though. Then today I suddenly found 11 more eggs and 1 hatched fry in the tank. There must've been some around earlier that I had somehow missed, as they seemed to be varying stages of development. Here's a pic that nicely shows a few different egg stages all together. How many eggs can you count in the picture ? I think this would also be a good opportunity to show off my CPD alpha. It's not just the colours, as I know he'd be even more vibrant if I had black like in their old tank rather than my current grey gravel, but I just love the little 'u' pattern on his side. The two tanks - Left side is the breeding tank, the whole bottom is filled with xmas moss now rather than just the corner, right side is my main tank for the CPDs, it's now a little more grown in as well. The Alpha being Transfered to the breeding tank, you can see a nice rotund female behind him. Closeup of his other side

So is his male, the father fish, one of yours? I remember a TM auctions with one of your stunning Plakat males that I was keen on but I had missed the bid so I contacted you to get something similar (and ended up with my current betta). Very stunning fish, all of them!

You have them there often? I was thinking of getting some for the tank I'm planning to start, so I'd probably keen for some in about 2 months time.

I think I've seen feather fins in HFF a while back, and I've asked about dwarf cories before, and they said they do get them in once in a while, but depends on their suppliers, so they're not something that's commonly available here I'd guess.

Pretty sure you can't dim florescent lighting, not T8s or T5s. I'm not sure about MH but the only aquarium lighting I can think of that could be dimmed is LED, and LED setups like that are pretty uncommon and hard to find atm. An alternative is to purchase lights where the tubes all have separate switches or cables, so that you can turn them on/off one by one to make the changes more gradual. If the system has multiple cables, you could even have a different timer for each tube to automate the changes.

Yea what I want is pretty weird tried to get a different tank maker to quote me already but I think they gave up after a try or two :lol:. A completely LI tank ay ? I am jealous, bet it'll look awesome once you decide what to put in it. My sister just gave me 'the eye' as I was going around the room measuring possible places I could have the tank :lol:. I don't think she's too pleased with my MTS invading our living room.

No idea, can't remember, must've been awhile ago. Hmm I hear about this tank2u a lot though, and all good things. I've been thinking bout getting a Low Iron bow Front tank with black silicon seals made, I wonder if they (or is it just 1 person?) can do those. Also, shellies, indeed they were something I knew I'd know :lol: . Was in pic of the month not long back if I remember right. I'm not a fan of cichlids but even I agree that those are cute.

Funny that, I think I saw a tank with the similar dimensions. My mistake.

I think I saw that tank for sale, was thinking of using it as a river tank but just a bit too long for the space I have . I'm not sure what exactly shellies are but imo river tank would be awesome. I bet as soon as someone tells me what shellies are, I'd realize I should've known it all along.