Graeme Holden

You should recognise the signs when they are laying, the female generally stays with the eggs and fans them and the male will chase off anyone else, at this stage it would pay to move the others out of the tank, as soon as the fry are free swimming they will be fair game for any other the others, but the parents will defend them and actually move them from place to place in their mouths. If you do see eggs just leave the pair with them, no other attention is needed by you, just some fry food and of course do not forget to feed the parents as they tend to lose count if they are hungry. good luck p.s. once the eggs have hatched the parents tend to move them straight away and they are a wee bit hard to see if you have gravel etc, they will just look like a little piece of quivering jelly on the bottom for a while before they start their free swimming, I suspect the parents move them away from any bad eggs that might infect the fry ( just my thinking - nothing scientific)

great the zebras have spawned but they are not too well at present, must be the water, so going to have another go later, the minnows are just being minnows at present, love them. tks Graeme

Well for a start they are being spoilt, I only fed mine plain flake food and trout crumble, however I think the secret might be dog roll !!! I certainly had no trouble breeding them in fact I had trouble stopping them breeding. I only used a 2 foot tank, in one tank it was fully planted but when they bred they destroyed all the plant, in another one there was only stones and a ceramic log, they liked the log and generally laid eggs in there rather than elsewhere. the best dog roll was one with rice and garlic, did not seem to cloud the water too much, however if you are feeding meat or things like dog roll you will have to have good filtration and clean the filters often, I was doing about 1/3 water change a fortnight. Hope this helps, Graeme

Hi, and tks for the reply, about one thing you are definetly wrong, I worked for him on a casual basis looking after the fish room, and yes he definetly imported fish, check with MAF if you want, they used to come out and imspect the fish room, perhaps this was at a defferent time that you new him. I was in the Army at the time and moved to Auckland with my job which was the end of the line for fish keeping for a while. He was a very successfull breeder of Angels and also was one of the first (as far as I am aware) that started breeding Discus in New Zealand. I worked for him for several years in fact, cleaning tanks and filters and generally mucking around in the shed, but thanks for the info. I lost contact with him over the years and recently decided to see where he was at, hence the questions on this site, Graeme Holden

You would be amazed at how fast these wee red ears can go, a fit one would cross a room in say 15-20 seconds or less, put your finger in front of the mouth of a bad tempered one and see if you are quick enough to remove your finger while it is still in one bit !!!! hehehehehe I think it is tortoises that are slow

The local turtle rescue lady did a great job saving my turtle that had been attacked by a dog, cost her heaps, and was one of the worst damaged ones to survive. His/Her( hard to tell because of the damage), name is Star because it will be on TV on one of the SPCA programmes later in the year, Now very defensive and I think anything that moves probably resembles a dog !!!! so tends to back into a corner to protect the rear end, coming right though. Very dark shell so is considered to be reasonably old, maybe around 20yrs

GOT ANOTHER ONE, don't know what age but he is a really big male that is so laid back he must be on something, eats like a horse, has shell rot and in some places you can see the bone, quite happy though and is the only one I have that does not want to eat me hehehehehehe. A NOTE FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW:- THIS TURTLE CANNOT RE-RIGHT HIMSELF AFTER BEING TURNED UPSIDE DOWN, normally an easy thing to do for a red ear, but this one is so out of condition he just lies on his back and of course would not be good for him to be left like that. He actually goes to sleep lying upside down but I suspect he is rather crook when that happens, this problem apparently can only be solved by lots of feeding and excise, He is underweight for his size and apparently quite weak, healthy in all other respects apart from the shell rot. Perhaps the indication he is weak is that he look like he is on Prozack he is so slow at present, getting better slowly though, cheers

and that is where I first noticed it here as well, in fact he/she is better than the black line flying fox

I have had and still have lots of algae in my tanks but one of the most recent events that I have witnesses is my largest clown loach munching on my blue green algae. I have not seen this behaviour before from a clown, maybe I am just not feeding him enough but there certainly is plenty of algae if he has developed a taste for it. anyone else noticed this with clowns ??

I'm impressed tks

Recently acquired a couple of red ears, one very bad tempered male approx 5 yrs old (but cute), and one that has been attacked by a dog, recovered but missing some shell, and only just growing back claws, also has chunks of tail missing, got the bug, so quite happy to take oversize or anti red ears, and if I cannot learn how to rehabilitate or fix them, I know the turtle rescue service locally and am happy to get them to this knowledgeable lady to help me, UGLY, DAMAGED, ROTTING SHELLS, BAD TEMPERED - NO WORRIES, GOT HEAPS OF TANKS AND GEAR TO SET UP REHABILITATION FACILITIES

thanks, will keep my poor old peepers peeled

I have five very fat and healthy females and would like to breed them. I believe them to be females as in the past I have always noticed the male is slightly smaller and a lot thinner, do not know what the ratio of male to female should be, perhaps it is a little like guppies and I may only need one or two, but quite happy to purchase 10 or so if you do not know the sex. I can only pickup in Auckland and prefereably reasonably close to Papakura as the other side of Auckland is at least an hour away on a good day and not worth it at all on a bad day (Roll on the south island and no traffic hassles)

bit expensive but if I take into accout the cost of all the fish in the main tank, it would be money well spent, not realistic in the mountain minnow tank as I could replace them a few times over for that cost, (even though they were part of a swap) but thanks again, I have dealt with that firm before and found their stuff to be quite good, P.S. the fish so far are doing fine and do not seem to have suffered any ill effects so far but of course it is early days and I will be keeping an eye on them for a while. INCIDENTALLY - I only realy noticed the problem because in about 1960 or so I went to a fish clum meeting in Timaru (yes a mainlander) and one of the speakers there reckoned that each tank should be looked at closely at least once a day for symptoms of easily spotted disease like white spot, and I have done that ever since (when ever I have had fish), so that advice was quite oportune Thanks for all the advice and I guess it is a little known problem that could affect others with disastrous results in some tanks of very expensive or rare fish

Earlier today I found my new lot of white cloud mountain minnows at 110 degrees f, immediately added (slowley) cold water to get it back down to somewhere like normal, likely result ??? white spot maybe. 3 fish died but the rest seem to be ok, comment

YAAAA HOOOOOOO

hehehehehehehehe as Mystic would say pmsl, but everyone to there own theories, it is just that I have never had trouble with snails but man have I had trouble with algae !!!!!!!!

Hope to hell they do breed well as I can sell as many red ramshorns as I can produce, I have had these snails now for a couple of weeks and they have not looked like eating the plant at all, but if they do, they would certainly be easier to remove than algae, but everyone to their own opinion, Ifyou do have any ramshorns let me know I will gladly take them off your hands

I too have stringy green algae, pretty common problem I would guess, my solution was to buy $20 worth or red ramshorns and they are so busy getting around the tank eating it is marvelous. I know lots of fishy people detest snails and I have never understood why, they are part of the ecology of water and do a great job. I am hesitant to put in more chemicals to control things like algae as the world seems to be heading to oblivion because of just that type of thinking !! If the snails become a problem they will be put in the Jewel tanks and do not think they will last too long although that to is a little abhorrent to me. I will not even put down sick fish or ones that are not the right colour or shape etc and some of them have become lovely fish. So my suggestion is try the ramshorns as they appear to be the least likely to eat the plants. Of course if they end up getting too hungry I guess they will start eating the next best green things

IT'S NOT THE PASSION IN THEIR EYES YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT PMSL

contrary to popular belief, I have got a couple of jewels that are not mass murderers, in with a very large tinfoil, tiger barb, 2 rosy barbs, several cats,kribensis, clown loaches, and they are getting on very well. the tinfoil just pushes them out of the way and the large male kribensis is the only one who is getting a little testy. I am a little surprised as the last time I had them in a community tank, they caused havoc but now this lot are not a problem. I am well aware of their reputation and was quite prepared to have to move them back with their mates but certainly not in the meantime. I have still got heaps of these for swap or sale or free, the biggest are well over 100mm and most are over 70mm or so, some have yellow tails and some have red, I have the 7 biggest in a 2ft tank and they get along quite well even though they are overcrowded but then again YOU can prevent that. I have just been feeding them trout crumble and it will not be long before I can feed them by hand. I recently had a look at misnomas ones that he got off me and they are gorgeous, the colours are amazing

do you have a ph test kit??? never use one normally but it is the first thing I turn to when the wheels fall off, quite often is the cause of dull lifeless fish and quite cheap to administer remedies, great to hear the fish are better, cheers

WHEN MY GOLDFISH GET SICK, it is quite often due to a low ph, I lost a few last year in about 2 days due to this, we tried lots of things but the raising of the ph cured them in no time, probably does the same thing if you change the water, the tap water in my area is reasonably high in ph and does the same thing, after a while I put stones in the tank that seem to maintain ph and have had very little trouble since, also agree with most of the other coments from others, they also like dog roll but it does cloud the water very quickly and needs to be removed immediately if not eaten, good luck

I still have heaps of Jewels free to good homes, or make a small donation (always appreciated) or swap something, some around the 100mm mark but most over 50mm. Bring your own bag would be appreciated

tks for the advice, makes sense