Pegasus

Hi Mitsy, That was one long email you sent :) My drive was SMOKIN... Pond looks great. Hope you enjoy your visits and we all look forward to hearing about your fish. Regards, Bill (Pegasus)

Hi Reef, A warm welcome to you. About time we got some action in this section. How about inviting some friends along, and explaining how you bred those fish of yours. Best regards, Bill (Pegasus)

Hi Caryl, Just a bit of fun... but I had a catholic upbringing and HAD to learn latin, along with a few other languages, but I don't speak a lot of French these days :) Even after all these years I can still recite the entire latin mass and all the prayers in latin. Comes in handy for the fish I suppose.. he he

Hi Andrew, Well that's a relief to say the least. I didn't know NZ was free of Argulus. My last experience with them was terrifying. I used to feed my show Oscars and other fish up to 500 goldfish runts a week, (obtained from the wholesalers) so I decided to "Go Fishing" in the local canal for something to feed them. I found heaps of fish about goldfish size, but lurking in the water were thousands of these blasted Argulus, but I never spotted them till I looked in my tanks and saw my prize fish covered in them. Three days later after dosing with (I think) potassium permanganate, if I remember (Turns a deep purple ??) and I had to cover all the tanks to prevent light getting to them, but anyway, it got rid of them, but my fish were no longer showable, and my tanks were a sort of violet colour for some time to come, but bright light disperses the effect. Hydra were another thing we had to watch for, especially with young fish. Sorry guys for going off topic... Bill (Pegasus)

Hi Ira, Geez, Caryl's in a witty mood tonight, but her latin stinks. Can't really offer you an answer Ira unless you can describe it/them a bit better. (Microscope/ Magnifier) Appears you have little to worry about from the above. Try to think back what you may have put in the tank to start this off, or perhaps they have been there a while and you have only just noticed them. The confuses me as the only thing I can think of like this are baby Argulus (Fish Louse) but these tend to be a bit flat with little colour, and would only be present if you perhaps put something in your tank from and outside pond or stream/river. If they are Argulus, which seems unlikely, they would attach themselves to the fish, but this is apparently not happening either. Mmm... I do a bit of searching and if I find anything I'll get back to you. Bill.

Describe them: Long, short, fat, thin, bulbous, transparent, winged or not, etc. Cyclops and Rottifers frequent the places that Daphnia do if you have fed daphnia recently ?? Could be something you brought in with some plants perhaps, or possible in your top up water. Bill.

Hi again,

Hi Ira, Just saw your post, but I'd already compiled this so read it anyway Just note that there are many methods, and mine, like many others works a treat. Alright, we'll try again. Make up a "Wooden box" around 150 to 200mm square and around 75 to 100mm deep. Fill to within 25mm from the top with moist peat. Have a piece of glass cut to fit inside the box and sit on top of the peat. The glass should not be too tight a fit as the wood may swell. Dig a hollow in the centre of the moist peat and tip your culture in. DON'T spread the culture about, but just place it in in one lump. Adjust the peat as required. Soak a piece of bread (without crust.. thin slice) in aquarium water. The size of the bread should be around 50 to 75mm square. Place this directly over the centre where you put the culture. Place your glass over the top of the bread/peat/culture mix and cover the lot with a piece of card to keep it dark. Opinions vary, but I keep my white worm cultures cool, and have always had ample supplies of worms when needed. Leave the culture alone for a day or so, as robbing the worms at this stage will give you poor results in the future. Watch the culture carefully to see that the bread doesn't foul. If it does, and is left for any amount of time it will kill your culture off. If the bread looks mushy and smells bad, Replace it. Check the glass surface as you check the culture. The worms will congregate on the glass sheet. NEVER feed direct from the culture, but ALWAYS from the glass. If you are squeemish, use a razor blade to scrape the worms from the glass, but the index finger works for me In a few days time you should have enough worms adhering to the glass to make daily feeds. Try different foods as Caryl suggested, but be careful not to make it too mushy as it could remain uneaten and foul the culture. Try only SMALL amounts at a time for the above reasons. If the worms are not congregating on the glass after a day or so there could be something amiss, so check your culture is still alive and well. Want to keep it going ?? After a week or so your culture COULD be going well enough to split. If there are very few worms each day, ignore this, but if you have an abundance of worms do the following. Set up another box identical to the first, and go through each stage as outlined above, but this time introduce a SMALL clump of culture containing worms from your active culture. Use about a HEAPED TABLESPOON only from you good culture. Replace what you have robbed with moist peat. Plop this into your NEW culture box and cover with a small portion of soaked bread and then your glass and card. Again, place in a cool place. Doing this method you have a "Back up" in case your culture goes sour. Refrain from feeding from culture 2 until it has become well established. Hope this helps. Regards, Bill (Pegasus)

Caryl said, Do you ACTUALLY read these posts Ira ??? Did you visit the link I posted? Obviously not.... Your culture will "Sweat" and be dead in a week.

All you need to know. http://www.livefoodcultures.com/whiteworms.html

Come on you guys. Find an appropriate area before you make your posts. This one has been moved from FRESHWATER. You're frightening all our new members away Moderator.

I'm just smiling to myself here. This hobby seems to get more complicated by the minute. Now where is that Dutch translation book I had :) Sorry to be a PITA, but shouldn't this topic be in Technical... or Aquatic Plants even. I think I may have asked this question before somewhere. Bill.

Hi, Saw a nice huge turtle in Pets & Aquatics in Northland just recently. About the size of a dinner plate. Kept Terrapins for many years, but they loved my guppy stock too much, so I had to decide which to keep. The answer is obvious BTW Andrew. Came across a discussion on Killies on another site overseas, so I posted your link. Hope You don't mind. Bill.

Hi everyone, Been hatching a few brine shrimp, and just using a basic setup at the moment (hatching in a bucket) I was finding it a bit of a prob straining the live shrimp through a sieve. I made up the following little gadget to simplify things. You will need a small plastic screw top container, two bits of airline, and a piece of fine fabric to act as a strainer. I used a plastic yeast container, as I bake fresh bread each day. In the screw cap make a hole in the centre so that your air line is a tight push fit in the cap. Do the same with the base of the plastic jar. You should now have an inlet, and an outlet on your jar. Cut a circle of your fabric slightly larger than the diameter of your jar, then place it over the open end and screw the cap back on, and in doing so you create a strainer under the lid. Place the air line coming from the cap end into your shrimp, then suck on the other end. You won't get salt in your mouth because of the design. The shrimp are syphoned into the jar and collected on the strainer fabric, while the surplus water passes through the jar and is caught in a container to be later returned to your hatcher. Of course the small jar has to be below the level of your shrimp hatcher in order for this to work. Remove the lid and rinse your strainer in the tank to feed. Rinse them if you are concerned about salt buildup. Easy, no mess, and convienent. Replace the lid and filter for the next time you need it. Happy Days, Bill.

Hi Dawn, You were mentioning this earlier, I was reading an article on Cichlids and came across this. It seems to be related to your symptoms. What sort of food are you giving them ? Bill.

Hi everyone, My attempts were in perhaps 1962 to 64 if I remember correctly. Breeders of neons were few at that time. GEEZ.... That makes me feel old :) Happy Days, Bill.

Hi Goldie, Put them up for auction in the Trade section here on the forum. You'd be surprised what they would bring. Bill.

Hi Ira, If you email Jansens or Hollywood in Auckland they will hopefully send you some prices. You say, Setting up with marines will cost you a great deal more than this. Your corals, substrate, test kits, hydometer, live rock/corals are all pricy items, plus you may need a skimmer and ozone reactor and ultra violet sterilizer, unless you go the "Natural Method" which involves live corals and rocks containing marine worms and micro animals, along with bivalves with the correct type of planting which would create a natural filter. The way many go is to use a very high powered undergravl filter which gives a high turnover. This must cover the entire floor of the tank. It all looks pretty simple, and amazingly beautiful when set up correctly, but it cost big bucks. In my dealings with marines, you get less warning of the dangers, and water conditions can change rapidly, resulting in many cases dead livestock. Visiting you library and reading up all you can is my suggestion before you take the plunge. Don't know if your existing filter would cope, but perhaps someone else can enlighten you. Bill.

Hi Dennis, No prob,... Good subject anyway. Good to hear you have bred the WCMM. Not a lot of shops seem to stock them, and someone was looking for some on this forum not long ago. Great little fish, and your 50 odd must give you a good show. Regards, Bill.

Hi Ira, AJ. Sorry to hear about your loss Ira. Hi AJ, I too use only tank water, and prior to that, (whenever possible) would use rainwater, even from the very beginning of my fishkeeping interests. I was compaining about the price of test kits in the Welcome section. For just three general tests they wanted $129 bucks. Thing about the rainwater is that provided it is well filtered, as mine is, you can be pretty sure it is safe, whereas with town supply you are at the mercy of the supplier, who may, or may not add goodness knows what to the supply. The rainwater is I suppose the basic fluid which we can alter as we need to, but altering the town supply can be a bit daunting at times, especially since it can vary so much from day to day. Regards, Bill.

Hi Dennis, You wrote, . You've done terrific if you have bred neons. Not many people have when compared to other species, possibly because they are so cheap to buy. Just out of interest, did you set up with the intention of breeding them, or did it just happen? What were your water conditions, as they will only generally breed in soft slightly acid water ? Getting them to a saleable size in eight weeks is pretty good as well. Heaps of BB (Baby Brine Shrimp) I presume. I just used to use a bare bottomed tank , (18X12X12) with as I said, imported water, because my water supply was so unpredictable, so to save time I would ship it fifty miles or so. This along with a weighted bunch of plant, usually Cabomba or Myriophyllum was my main setup. I'd seperate what I presumed were males and females, then condition them with live foods for some time before introducing them to the breeding setup. My results were never in sufficiant quantities to cover my needs in the shop, as I regularly brought in lots of 500/1000 with each order, either weekly or fortnightly. They used to sell in large quantities, so I was always well stocked. These ones I have at the moment are still going crazy with their antics, so I might just give them a go, just for old times sake. My long term plan is to tackle the Cardinals, or perhaps Discus, which have always fascinated me, but then again, the Guppy line breeding is dragging me in one direction, the Cats (Plecos/Corys) in another, and the Botia's in another. he he. This hobby of ours has ALWAYS a challenge to offer if we care to take it. Happy Days, :) Regards, Bill. Bill.

Hey Seahorse, good to see you back on the forum. How are those Kribs and Rams doing ?? Usually when fish grow up together they do exactly as you say, and again usually, they get along fine, especially if they were all young to start with, but there are so many combinations that the best advice is just to be careful in your choice of fish. Hope to see you a bit more often on the boards Bill.

Hi, I hate disagreeing with posts, but this is a BOLD statement you made Caryl, Perhaps the "Tannin" may not affect the fish, but the pH level will, and a drop from pH7 to pH6 is quite drastic over such a short period. This "Tannin" could be "Tannic Acid" that is causing the rapid change in your levels. Alkalinity is a measure of the buffering capacity of water. Because pH is a logarithmic function, a change in pH from 6.0 to 7.0 would represent a ten-fold decrease in the hydrogen ion concentration; 6.0 to 8.0 would be a 100-fold decrease. In other terms a pH of 6.0 is 100 times more acidic than a pH of 8.0. Properly buffered water has a 120 to 240 parts per million (ppm) total alkalinity reading. For most species of fish, the pH in a freshwater aquarium should be between 6.5 and 7.8. At pH levels below 6.5, the growth and survival of nitrifying bacteria becomes reduced and could possibly cease altogether If pH levels below 6.5 are to be used like for breeding a certain type of fish, then frequent water changes are vital to prevent the accumulation of nitrogenous wastes (ammonia). Sorry if this makes things even more confusing for you Dawn, but the old warning still applies. "Any changes you make in pH should be done VERY gradually" as a rapid change can CERTAINLY cause problems. Water changes?? Well, it's just my opinion, but three weeks with a new setup in a tank that COULD be slightly overstocked would certainly need SOME water changes over that period. Any changes, again in my opinion, should not be TOO large so that they will upset the balance of your tank, but 20% would not cause an inbalance, again IMHO. Bill.

Nice article here if anyone is interested, http://members.tripod.com/~Boeing_Dude/id252.htm Bill.

HI, When selecting compatable species, think SPEED before size. Your Tigers in this case are the Jaguars, while say the Angel is a Mini, and the Fighter is a Moped White Clouds probably survive with Goldfish because they are in this case the Jaguars, and the Goldies are the Mopeds. Bill.