livebearer_breeder

I can't see a tear? is she bursting externally? or are you talking about her internal changes? She will get bigger than that before she releases, or at least mine do. Albinos are always a bit tricky, best thing to do is have plenty of floating plant and if one day u see albino fry you know yours is at least fertile enough to produce something. I've held onto fish for longer than a year before just hoping desperately for offspring but to no avail.

Well that's the interesting part! and I'm glad you asked katrina! Originally it was thought that female live bearer's as a general rule could release up to 4 (even 5) sets of fry from one fertilization. since i first started learning about livebearers this was the general information available but since then i have read a number of articles that suggest new information. Now it seems, it comes down to a variety of things. Firstly and obviously: tank conditions, this includes parameters and temperatures (higher temperature = less viable sperm over time, lower temps = higher chance of multiple insemination's, however higher temps = shorter gestation periods and larger numbers of fry, where as colder = longer life spans but also longer gestation periods and fewer fry but more sizable on release, the larger amounts of fry holding, the smaller they are when released) Specie of livebearer (some are more prolific than others, in personal experiments i have done i have had multiple outcomes, Leopard fish for example only ever released one batch from one insemination, but they breed in very small numbers at a time and are coldwater livebearers. Ive only ever had one fat female guppy separated, release 3 batches of separate fry (all others have been 2 batches) before stopping becoming gravid, what was interesting is that the first load was just over 60 fry, the second was around 50 but with A higher number of underdeveloped fry that died before birth and the third was 12 viable fry with around 20 stillborn) this suggests a form of deterioration of the packets over time that i would be so bold to say most likely is a trait shared across all livebearers, BASICALLY the fresher the sperm the better. I did other tests with mollies and got 2 batches before no longer gravid with no discernible differences between the batches and similar with swords and platys (with a slight drop in fry numbers on the second drops, never more than two batches before needing re fertilization, bar the guppy this was always something that interested me. type and potency of the male that fertilized is also a big factor, here in NZ i have come across more and more story's of nice guppys/livebearers that are completely infertile, this could also have had a bearing on the tests that i did when i had my fishroom. As you may find that fish overseas have a higher fertility rate/re insemination rate, It would be interesting for me to hear from a hobbyist overseas who i could cross reference these findings with to establish commonality if any? as originally i thought it may have just been my fish until i read an article that suggested livebearers actually couldn't re inseminate, well this article was obviously proved wrong. But it did suggest that livebearers could not re inseminate as many times as originally thought. also obviously availability of varied high quality foods, this has a direct relation to the health of your fish, amount of fry produced, quality of off spring, life expectancy and i would dare to say has some kind of bearing on a female livebearers ability to re fertilize herself. All in all they are amazing fish and i don't feel get the due's they deserve. So to finally answer your question katrina, if your tank is at 26c and there are no other males in the tank, regular water changes and plenty of good foods, and suggesting that the above may have some relevance to your particular fish, 8-10 weeks most likely I would love to hear from people who have had different experiences! hope this helps

yeah i know its completly my fault, it just sucks

So im really angry about this situation and need to have a rant about it and forgive me for my spelling! I thought getting LED's atleast giving them a go could be a cool idea. so i found this retail outift from auckland on trademe and decided eventually that i would purchase what i wanted/needed through these guys. Username :great-bargain This was the auction: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=386477844 as you can see i was asking the guy all sortsa questions as i did not understand the product or how it worked, eventually he told me to just hit buynow and that he would help me sort everything out via email. So this is what i did, i emailed him a few times about power supply options etc, but never recieved any information accept one email that said i needed to deposit $96.50 into his account. I continued to email, desperate for answers, but the guy never bothered to email me back, so i waited a couple more days, nothing, i decided to pay him and hopefully this would motivate the guy to get in contact, i emailed him again saying i had payed and asked again about power supplys etc. no email recieved few days after this the LED's turn up in the post, 2 didnt even work (found this out today) and all of them had DC connecters, which made them completly useless, and i had payed for these extras to be added apparently, i had no idea of this as it was not what i finally asked for. so i contacted the guy and i basically said bro you've send me a product i cannot use because you never bothered to get back in contact with me like you said you would from the auction, nothing was arranged, had you bothered to email me back we could have fully organised everything and i would have a usable product, as it stand these are useless to me. This is whats interesting, within 5mins i had a email back saying "your really pissing me off" and started accusing me of scamming him! he said "if you want the product to work for you, you must pay a further $24 for tranformer plus postage". Obviously i wasnt happy about this, and let him know that he had abismal communication skills! I mentioned a refund, postage at my own cost, especially considering the product supplyed was faulty, momments later he black listed me on trademe and banned my email address. This really shocked me, i got angry, but waited another day or two to do anything, as when im angry i usually don't make the intelligent decisions! I couldn't contact this guy now, so instead i deposited this money further into his account, thinking ill atleast get what i have got going, maybe get some LED's from another store (at this point i didnt know 2 didnt work) and because i had no idea what to buy as far as tranformers went from other stores/auctions. So the transformer arrived this morning, its a single, he said it would run four, the really crappy thing is that it doesnt even work! the LED's barely flicker! so for the first time i placed bad feedback on this guy you can see what he has to say about me here: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Feedback.aspx?member=3286936 http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Feedback.aspx?member=2561048 hes threatening me with all sort, including police action? claiming im a scammer? i just don't know how i would even scam this guy? i can't force him to send me anything, had to pre pay for everything, as usual, if anything i feel like hes scammed me. I've never had a problem like this before, i don't really know what to do now, i have contacted trademe, but from previous experiences ppl have told me about, apparently trademe is really useless with stuff like this. all i want is to get working gear that i payed for, is this too much to ask? grrr

It really doesn't matter if its not line bred fish, the female will use the freshest packet available, often you may notice after a female has dropped the male will be extra persistent as this is the time to fertilize for the next batch, this can also cause extra stress. If you have males and females you will get plenty of baby's of mixed and matched traits

3l juice bottle $5 from supermarket, 3m air tubing $4.50 from pet store, yeast and sugar from supermarket. very easy to do! My method: half full with one and a half cups white sugar disolved into warm water, let cool for a bit then add a teaspoon of yeast, takes off within a couple of hours and goes strong for 3-4 weeks

Sweet, just stick with newly hatched BBS, white worms and snails, hopefully thats enough, they will not eat anything not live

Forgot to mention that i have 3000LPH being pumped downwards into the centre of the tank from my trickle filters, both the diffusers are placed at the bottom of the tank under this water flow, which causes increased diffusion of the micro bubbles and causes the "foggy" "misty" Co2 look at times

Or you could be a cheap az student like me! I have seriously DIY lighting and DIY Co2 and two of these on my 6 foot http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=384681162 6x3l juice bottles, 3 hooked up to each, ridiculous amount of co2 being released like a micro bubble fog, looks awesome, Haven't added LED's yet as just waiting for transformer to turn up, but getting almost 2 inches of growth a day off the stem plants, even have some red/purple plants growing steady which Ive never been able to do. $50 including yeast, juice bottles, sugar, diffusers and air line, you can get cheaper diffusers too, i just liked these ones, the spiral looks mint! My current lighting in total has cost around $50 too lol Can get KG's of unrefined white sugar and bakers yeast really cheap from Moore wilsons! No doubt the cheapest way to add effective co2 to any tank!

managed to get almost 40 tanks in total on those racks too! was mainly for killies, bettas and livebearers at the time, so didnt need huge tanks

Wow ripped off! 2.2mx50cmx3 tares, 30ml sqaure tube 3ml thick and a 1.2m x 3 tare of the same for my old fishroom, pre cut, picked up, taken to palmy, welded together at the farm. all in all including blue powder coat and petrol just over $300 Having said that, i did have a lot of hook ups at that time, trade steel from chris downs before he started working at the pet centre.

When i was in the NZKA i got lots of fish off Stu and Alan wakelin who i miss dearly! After Alan went so did a lot of members, as far as i know, stu doesn't have killies anymore, there's almost nowhere to get them in wellington, Did see the very small australe in the stores, but no females. no clowns down these ways either

Im going to go against the grain and say its probably not columnaris, although you may have it as a result. To me this sounds like very very poor maintenance and over feeding. Resulting in ammonia and various other tank condition spikes, would have caused the cloudiness, made your fish very sick etc. Filter stopped is a big red flag! Sometimes the worst thing you can do is medicate your fish before they need to be, this can cause undue stress, destroy the healthy bacteria trying to rebuild your ecosystem and potentially cause more deaths than needed. If i where you i would do 20% water changes every second day, a tiny bit of melafix and a sache of peat to help calm the fish, The fish that have spots and cotton mouth will be a result of stress and bad conditions, these fish should have individual salt baths for a short period of time, perhaps a couple times a week till there symptoms subside. Do this with an external container, don't medicate the whole tank until you have healthy parameters and the fish have settled again.

DIY Co2?

Gna give these a go anyway

K so getting 300 in this first go, blue or white to start? I cannot decide

Called welly Jaycar, i think the woman on the phone thought i was messing around with her or something lol but they don't have them

anyone know where to buy those remote control subs? they used to around for like $25ea I remember some where on TM aaages ago, can't find them anymore like this http://www.mini-rc-cars.net/minircsubmarine.aspx

reckon this could be a goer? http://www.trademe.co.nz/Building-renovation/Electrical-lighting/Lights/Exterior-lights/auction-386489700.htm

In total i can fit 600LED's, maybe more, was going to go 100 of each colour per light box. so three light boxes with 100 white and 100 blue in each? should i just go with all blue? Whats best for plants and whats best for look?

should i just get blue then?

Sweet, Ill take before and after shots

mainly wanted for aesthetics, i just wanted more fore ground light with the whites and moon light at night with the blue strips, They are the car ones, is there some different ones i should get? I would have thought almost 300 LED's would make a small difference? Maybe get all whites and flag moon light?

I have some Dwarf freshwater puffers and am curious if anyone knows if they will eat big apple snails? they love normal snails but i can't get enough, was wondering if a big apple snail would feed them for a time :slfg:

Fresh water is cool, I found it interesting the conditions tetras lived and bred in, really dirty and covered in green algae