Trilobite

Ill set up a little tank for it later today then, got lots of indan fern floating around my tanks which will be perfect Parents were marble dragon pk x blue red dragon hmpk from this thread hhttp://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewt ... 14&t=64668 The siblings are mostly all normal looking marble dragons and some solid coloured ones too, but there are a couple of cellophanes where either the marble has removed the dragon scales or they never got it. Those will be the ones Ill probably use to breed it to (hopefully those will be the little albino carriers) Theyre still a bit young, their dragon scales havent even filled in yet but when they are big enough Ill definitely be selling them, got too many lol. How did you get yours to breed? were there any different techniques you had to use for their bad eyes? Heres some siblings, in the background you can see 2 that have little-no dragon scales, hopefully they dont all end up the same sex though

Apparently I have to breed it asap otherwise its eyes will deteriorate and impossible to breed. But I cant even tell what sex it is yet Think Im going to take it out and give him his own dark little tank since the one hes in is pretty bright

Thanks :-D Yeah hopefully it will survive lol, Ill keep an eye on him incase his eyes get worse and his siblings start to take all the food. Cant believe I never noticed it in the tank before

Apparently I have an albino betta juvie who was hiding amongst my baby dragons, red eyes and all :happy1: He bumps into the driftwood so his eyesights not the best but somehow he manges to keep up with his brothers and sisters since he is one of the bigger kids. Im so excited, I never thought Id see one in real life :nilly:

Halfmoon isnt controlled by one gene, but instead its made by lots of diferent environmental factors (training, water quality etc) and genes (ray splitting, sharp edges, big spread, long fins etc). Because of this most hm x hm will throw sd and delta as well For some reason many people seem to think that if a fish has some scales on its face then its a dragon...lol I used to too when I first had bettas :facepalm: But yeah dragon has the thick painted look as you say, like this guy Your one is more like this, with a tiny bit of masking. But the scales arent thick and the mask isnt full to let him be called a dragon. I think maybe what the seller is meaning by longfin is that the hm is long fin instead of hm shortfin (hmpk). My biggest hate was how anything that had black orchid blood in it automatically became a black orchid as well, even if the fish wasnt even black...but it kept the ridiculously high prices of a "pure" one lol what ever your fish decides to become at least its a cute one :-D

Im leaning towards delta female. Its fat in a triangle behind the stomach where the ovaries would be. Heres a pic to show what I mean As for tail type, definitely not pk or hmpk, fins are way to long even for a male, it has 4 ray branching and rectangular anal so definitely not a vt, obliviously not ct or dt, cant reach 180 and has a round tail so cant be hm. Therefore it can only be a delta/superdelta. Im leaning more to it being the result of a hm x with something else because of that caudal roundness but only way to know for sure is to ask the breeder Colour isnt dragon either, just normal turquoise with red loss. Dragon thickens the scales and gives a full mask. But it has a massive tail making me think male... only way to really know for sure is to separate it from view of all other fish for a while then see if it matures into a male or stays as a lady

She looks like a very nice one, nice compact fins. I think you will get some good fish from them Marbles so hopefully some will turn out like dad after all, and one is turning cellophane with white dragon scales

Yay!! :thup: Im glad you got yours to breed. Cant wait to see what your babies will look like when full grown

Yeah they were bred overseas at a random fish farm in singapore. There was a pretty big variety of quality in the shipment, some were absolutely stunning (almost perfect form, pure red hmpk completely clean of blue) and others were a bit of a mess. Maybe in the future well be able to have top aquabid or IBC breeders as our fighter supplier which would be a dream come true My eyes not that good, all my young female pks keep turning into males haha :nilly: Yeah Im not usually a fan of red either, but for some reason I quite like the look of it in the dragons. Luckily I have the redloss gene running through my other line which is my lifesaver for getting rid of red if I decide I dont like it Lol babies are such pigs. it sounds like yours are going to be nice fat healthy fighters the most exciting time is definitely when they start to show their colours

Yeah some of them are showing little crowns, Im hoping it goes away since but since these were imports who knows what crazy genes they are hiding. The female was labelled as HM but she looked more like a hmpk to me so Im praying my eye was right and the babies dont end up with long fins lol

I put them in when theyve learnt to eat floating food and when they are roughly 2-3 cm. So around 2 months Also your babies sound like they will turn out real nice, i expect pictures when they are old enough :thup: Heres a pic of some of the bigger shiny ones just before they got scooped out and put into the big tank. Some are starting to marble and males are starting to appear Thanks :-D

Thats a really good idea! thanks. And that would make them actually grow on the rocks. At the moment my moss is just balancing on top of them... Thanks it was so disgusting before, it was an embarrassment to me

I found some moss on a rock and so decided to redo my ugly tank and turn it into a waterfall/paludarium type thingie. Problem is some of the moss is quite close to the waterfall and turning dark since its so wet, will it drown since its not aquatic? Its not fully submerged, just very wet since water is constantly flowing over it. Also if it wont survive, would aquatic moss handle the wetter patches, if so what type of moss (I hate java moss by the way so not that one) Heres some pics to show what I mean

You could float the betta in an icecream container in his tank so it acts as a little quarantine tank. That way you wont have to worry about using heaps of meds or risking your shrimp.

Nice! what parents?

I recommend laserits eggs, I always get a good % hatching every time

Thanks! yeah it was pretty interesting putting it together, you can see how anal fin shape changed overtime towards a more rounded appearance through the plakats, which I never noticed. Hopefully next generation I will finally be able to stabilize the black copper and get them to breed true :happy1:

Yeah pretty much what Sam and Blondfish said. I have one little male in particular who loves sitting on top of the floating leaves so his entire back is sticking out of the water... I lost about 4 tanks. All my community fish died so I was left with only bettas who somehow survived even though their tanks fell down too. Then another quake smashed my growout tanks so the juvies had to be collected from the floor among the glass and under the couches into a dog water bowl lol they all survived though. So now i basically only keep fighters haha. Yeah its kinda a sorority at the moment, just growing out some of my previous spawns females in there, but Ill only keep 1 or 2 of them and then they can go live in the "keeper" tank Those tanks are about 7 L, roughly 30cm long. My non keeper males get way smaller living quarters than that though

Thanks :-D I hope they will get their parents good looks Heres babies tank Then they get to go into here once they are big enough (lol excuse the bracing on the tank, lost heaps of tanks in the quakes and am paranoid about more falling over) And the parents little tanks, excuse the mess, photos were taken just before a waterchange and Ive given up making these ones look nice lol

My fave male so far from this spawn. Hes uber aggressive and flares at me just for looking at him The girls are starting to show their potential too Heres their family tree, I think theyve reached the point where they can safely be called hmpk. Hardest thing is still trying to sharpen up the tail though, still too round for my liking... Pretty much sums up the need for good quality females though, adding a VT or trad PK (which is what nz usually gets in) to a HM or HMPK will take generations to get sharp tails back and unfortunately I see VT being sold as HM on trademe all the time, which would no doubt mess up a poor newbie breeders HM line for endless generations

:nfs: What type of fish is number 4? It could possibly be one of the most awesome looking fish Ive seen

Babies are dragoning :bggrn: Looks like most of them have red fins. Hopefully they decide to marble as well

Lol youve pretty much summed up my views on my tank! Is echinodorus the big thing in the middle? if it is Im liking it quite a lot. Swords definitely sound like the way to go. Also can you get sand that is too fine for cories? I want to get some sand instead of the gravel I have

I dump my baby fighters into a new tank when they are about 2cm. No acclimation, just gather them into a bowl and pour them into a new tank and I havent had any deaths. They are pretty hardy things

Im glad i can just cut the stalks off especially that big tall plant. Are pups baby growths? if so then I think theres a few of them. I even have one small plant growing out of a dead leaf, and somehow I have a massive bush of it growing out of my driftwood..they just dont stop growing and spreading :nilly: At least my fighters like sitting on them I couldnt find java moss but the store said mouse ear was pretty hardy so I got one of them and also a few grassy plants since they were nice and cheap. I quite like the look of swords too, I'll have a wee hunt for them sometime. Any plants to stay away from? eg ones that are very easy to kill Im really pumped about giving my tank a makeover now.