Hi there all,

I have tried the local fish stores and the net but have not found anything great in terms of what I'm looking for.

Since there are many experienced hands on this website I am wondering if any of you have or have come across any of the following as I require them for my work.

1. Female CT - Cambodian with good double rays

2. Female OHM - Any colour but OHM needs to be obvious.

3. Full dragon HMPK male or female

I'm done with my spade tail project so now I'm moving on to some somewhat hard to find types.

why?

I intend to get some half sun types for a new planted tank.

Thanks in advance.

-Gagan

The only person I can think of who will have the quality tail types you want to start a project is Trilobite from this forum. To my knowledge there are no other fighter breeders out there who participate on here with high enough quality stock, particularly females. CT will be particularly hard to find. You could start with a PK female and line breed by crossing with good quality imported CT males until you get the good quality female CT. Thats what I used to do, took about 3 generations before they become good quality. Does require a lot of culling though.

Have you tried New Pupuke Aquarium Centre. The owner is a reknowned fighter breeder - discus guru.

Oh yes trilobite, where art thou?

I have a Cambodian pk female here... will have a good look around for ct males tomorrow and the weekend. I don't normally cull but what I do is give the unwanted ones to my friends and sell bulk lots on tm, since they're not breeding quality they don't really affect prices.

I have a certain HM Dragon I'm following on tm as well.

The trouble is that selling off bulk lower quality unwanted sees them then bred from and so the story continues.

There are no high quality halfmoon on TM currently - the ones that are there are nice looking but a halfmoon has a D shape to the tail and these all have rounded edges. You would need a spectacular female and several generations to get the true halfmoon tail shape.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/150909571710093/

trilobite and alot of breeders from nz are on the siamese fighter forum on facebook.... some of the fish on trade me atm i think and dont quote me are from the breeder recommended....

yes discus guru had some extremly beautiful fighters, brougth a few off him a couple years ago

chaos you should pop to my place sometime and you can take any that you want.

when im at home obviously

I may be able to help you with a male dragon hmpk in the near future (marble dragon though so dont know if you want that or not), at the moment Im getting rid of my dragon trad pks and havent really sorted through the hmpk ones yet, theres only about 4 so far though They arent the sharpest either since their fathers trad influence messed them up, but some selective breeding should fix that out if youre game enough lol.

Female wise tbh Ill be lucky to get one sharp 180 girl. But hopefully if I do an F2 I might have some sharper boy and girl dragons

Also theres a guy who bred a super red hmpk pair which are looking sharper than mine, if you want hmpk and dragon isnt essential you could hit him up. From what Ive seen they are the best hmpk out there at the moment

As for ct, theres a couple of people on the page that max posted who have some ct spawns going, but I dont know of their quality or whether they are cambo or not, I havent see pics of the parents. Not many people are breeding for ct for some weird reason

+1 on having to do multiple generations to see good quality, unfortunately thats the only way to get a decent fish in nz

Ohm female will be a challenge for you, maybe see if donm has any. I know a while ago he put up some true hm males so maybe he might have some sibling females...be careful though and make sure to see a full flare pic before buying anything that is claimed to be hm/hmpk. Also be careful since many ohm are rosetails and you definitely dont want x factor in your line so check the branching and scales before you buy one. But if you find do a good one she will def help the spread of her offspring and youll have to tell me where you found her lol

Good luck on your searches and your project!

Im a taker for Dragon HMPK whether marble or not so let me know when he's ready Trilobite,

Ill e-mail you when I'm ready mr SS, I'm heading down to HFF and then animates tomorrow, if I make time then bird barn as well...

I understand its going to take between 3 and 4 generations to get proper half sun and yet it won't be a true breeder due to co dominance, I'm not on facebook at all

Thanks guys, will keep you all posted on the hunt for a good HM female.

I know that to find one who has full spread will be hard so I'll give it two weeks after which I guess I'll have to breed the type myself.

How hardy are the fins on a rosetail compared to HM?

So I went in to Hff today, had nothing special except in terms of colours... they did have a black male CT but he had a significant amount of webbing, animates a little further along from them didn't have much except "dumbo" and delta types so will just do trips around st lukes to see what I can find, I'm just trying to figure out some way of using my unwanted juveniles... maybe use it for aquaponics or something...

How hardy are the fins on a rosetail compared to HM?

I've been told rosetails often end up with fins that are too heavy and therefore the rays can break (although one of the rays have broken on my HM too, I still want to breed him but I'll have to find myself a HMPK female as I was never really a longfin fan anyway).

:nilly: it's impossible at times to find the fighters you want. Donm had some nice colours but not many seemed to actually be HMs - seems like sometimes you have the option of nice fins or nice colours! Over the next few months I'll be in the process of looking for a nice female (preferably yellow for now) to breed to my HM mustard gas dragon boy, but I have no doubt it'll be painful to find one lol.

But yeah, try Pupuke Aquarium (discus guru on here I think?) - it's where I got my HM boy from, they've got some gorgeous fighters (I wish I had bought the gorgeous blue female import they had in there when I bought my boy )

I have a nice Blue with bits of red plakat, he will be a year old on the 3rd, He's got a good muscular body... I've finally come to the conclusion that traditional PK are probably the hardiest when it comes to fins and body structure (wide body), he's got some sort of extended ventrals which may be a desirable trait to some breeders.

TM:

In this search for good fish I accompanied my mate to help him complete a purchase. He bought a couple fighters on impulse, turned out they were good females but missed the ventrals due to overfeeding (done that before) they are crowntail apparently but no use to me if I cant see obvious crowning. (Expression of gene has to be prominent)

I agree those HM's had jagged edges on the tail. I remember when my mate got me a Copper Dragon HM from hff who had similar fins a little while back, He lost all his finnage over a period of 4 months, didn't spread it to any other fighters I had him housed with... that may just be a rare case but its the main reason I want to deal with a female HM instead of male.

I think that's where this website comes in handy (forums) The experienced breeders who are on here are keen to help when contacted... but I'm sure they know how hard it is to get a good shaped female of any tail or fin variety, except for PK.

and still no luck with the search...

I made the decision yesterday to not go back in to fighter breeding. Heres my advice for crowntail females.

Get yourself a good looking female, veiltail is fine. Get yourself a really strong looking male crown tail - good strong forked tail!

Spawn them, get rid of all the resulting males - too much rubbish on the market, don't put any more out there. Keep half a dozen of the best females (you will need to wait until they are about 4 months old, often the best finnage are the slowest fish to develop. Cross the top 2 females back to their father. Keep the best half dozen females, ditch the males. This time find another high quality male and put the females to him. Resulting females should come out like this

These are second generation females

and males

Cross once more and you will some nice looking males and females

female

YEP, this was what I was expecting to see here this is probably the best breeding advice I've got yet... I may set up with some sort of cichlid and bristlenose in one tank to use for culls. I've not culled before but seeing how many juveniles I have here I do see the point in not letting a few enter the gene pool.

Thanks again Adrienne

I have a few VT females I can use atm... does anyone want freebies? (my unwanted juveniles)

Forgot to add, the reason I say is keep the six best but only spawn the two best is because at times the females are useless breeders/not compatible with the male/the eggs are not fertile and then the female dies.

Biggest tip - never ever let anyone talk you in to selling the ones you want to keep, even for mighty $.

sound advice

sound advice

I might give you an e-mail sometime next week, come round and see what you've got if that's fine by you.

yes ill be home thurs, fri most of the day. saturday i have a batchelor party all day and a dinner in the evening rest of the days working

just txt me on 021 1838704

Sorry bro got conversation confused and later phone played up (darn xperia sola) running on "dumb phone" atm but will drop you a line again very soon.

thats fine, this saturday ill be home, working all week this week :tears: