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Daphnia in Auckland


Captain Beardy

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Hello people, new to the game and think I might have some Tetra Fry on the way. Trying to culture something but not having much luck. Until! I walked across the street in the Auckland CBD where there is some fresh water with a small duck family. A flashlight showed up heaps of Daphnia. So I sucked up a few and now hoping I can bring on a bunch more. Couldn’t resist and fed some to my Tetras. They went berserk. There was also one of those water boatman insects. A Silvertip Tetra took off after him and it took him a few seconds to catch it. Then a few to crunch it up and get it down. Was a fun watch. Black Neon Teras lit up as well.

Curious if any inner city folk are interested in the source?

Hope everyone is staying safe and doing their bit.

Richard

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Make sure any water boatmen get eaten quickly as they can eat fry.

How lucky you were to find a good source of daphnia in the CBD.

I've just been to the supermarket for the first time since lockdown began. Got straight in and had no trouble getting everything on my list. When I left the were 30 in the queue so I obviously timed it well (while the Covid Update was on). Of course, I am not in Auckland either!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still harvesting Daphnia , the ducklings are growing super fast so it must be good stuff. My silvertip tetras are showering eggs too. Watched some yesterday but as per usual all eaten before they reached the bottom. Trying a solo pair today. Less mouths more eggs? Also ran a bigger filter to get some flow. Is this a common trigger. I thought it set them off the first time. And a confession please don't judge too harshly. Dropped a female on the carpet. Went to pick her up and she flipped back into my hand, back in the tank quick and she seams ok. Whoops. Mistakes happen right. I bought the tanks late July so that is when I started. I remember tanks as a kid, but they usually failed. So far no fatalities !!  The way I am going will have the opposite soon if I can just keep a few more eggs.

Thanks for the reply.

Richard

 

 

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Captain Beardy is because I really am a Captain. I run a Yacht. Which leads me onto something cool. I was living onboard at the beginning of the first lockdown. I started feeding Parore behind the boat in Auckland's Viaduct. Snapper soon turned up and before long I had a nice shoal living under the boat. I went from wheat bix to fish scraps and then some Kingfish arrived. I feed them for a few months. The Kingfish about 10kg would take from my hand and would be circling in the morning waiting for me. "Bubba" would draw a little crowd when spotted, was so much fun. Have stopped now, the fish left with the arrival of winter.

Have attached a picture of my daughter and the kingfish.

Richard

Screenshot (79).png

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Neat photos. I thought the name might be because you had bearded dragons.

You will have more success with the tetras if you set up a breeding tank, put the breeding fish in there and, once they have spawned and eggs are all over the place, remove the adults.

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Morning Caryl, so yesterday had some Silvertip Tetras spawning in my breeding tank. This time just a pair, I  had plenty of eggs make it to the bottom.

I have removed the adults and covered the tank. A few questions. How long you think roughly before I might see something if they hatch?

I have the filter off at the moment. it is a Eco 37 so think 21L, do the eggs need flow?

Would a little higher temp help? 27c at the moment.

I am trying for some infusoria but do have some first bites and the smaller daphnia as a fall back.

Have a couple of cool little videos, Silver Tips spawning, and then one of a water Boatman insect getting chased by a Silvertip Tetra but being beaten to it by a Black Neon Tetra.

Last question! have a Black Neon Tetra with a couple of white spots on the dorsal. Really hoping it doesn't get worse. Any tips on that?

Crossing my fingers for fry!

Richard

 

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Thanks Caryl, so far so good. First bites and hard boiled egg yolk. Can see movement and a couple of little bellies might have something in them. Taking it day by day. Lock down entertainment.

I dropped about three tablespoons of Salt into the 70L, Used the Himalayan pink salt from the pantry.. The spots have gone from my Black Neon Tetras, think I had a win there. Took about three days.

The Sunset Platys were so heavy, I spotted a fry hiding in the rocks. It moved out and for a second I thought the Tetras might leave it alone. Sadly I was wrong. Gone in a flash. Have counted close to 30 Silvertips now though, happy with that.

Curious what you have one the go?

Richard

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Very little on the go these days. We have 1, 4ft tropical which just has Odessa barbs and Ancistrus. These have been self replenishing for years as the tank is also fill of C affinis, Anubias nana and rotala. The Odessa spawn all the time but only a few survive each time so I don't get over-run.

Outside I have a 3m x 8m approx pond. I'm pretty sure the build of it is in these forums somewhere. It now needs re-doing after a few quakes but we can't find anyone to help. We are both too decrepit to manage it ourselves as we each have different health issues. Would love to landscape the whole front yard again but can't find anyone to do that either at the moment!

Here are pics taken in May. Plants have grown even more since then!!

Tank itself 1 May 2021.jpg

Wall unit 1 May 2021.jpg

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Beautiful, love it! Plant at the back almost looks like a rock overhanging. Super cool. Barbs are quite popular. I did have a good look at them.

Made a mistake last night. With all the plugs on the multiboard I got mixed up and switched the filter on in the fry tank. W

I will never know. Still giving them egg yolk and first bites. I have added the smallest sponge filter and turned it down low. Noticed a little Nitrate/Nitrites so have change about 30% of water. I used the Pure Dew water from the supermarket. It says it is ultra distilled, PH neutral, steam distillation, reverse osmosis, less than 1ppm solids. Sounds good.  They are all still alive. 

Thanks for the pictures

Richard

 

 

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Very funny! Was considering popping down to Blenheim, think I could get a essential pass, I have family in Hamilton and know the airport doesn't mind who travels where. What's your address? I could stop in for a cup of coffee. I am a Jafa though so would need it to be high quality coffee with milk steamed to just the right temperature. Ahhh, come to think of it I might pass, would miss my new Mercedes too much.

Oh and I need to keep feeding my little fry! I watched one stalk a tiny Daphnia and pounce. Most of the others are too small, a good sign though right!

Favourite pass time is trying to count them. Not easy, getting older and need glasses. Confident there is still 12 or more after my accident.

Will keep changing water, thanks for the tip. Infusoria still doesn't look like it is growing. Frustrating. Have a plastic bottle outside . Have been putting cap on and off because it stinks so much. Used some potato peel and a touch of yeast. Think it might be a fail.

 

 

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You may stay in your own island thank you very much 😁

Can't offer you coffee as we don't drink it so only have instant in the house for guests (the ones who have not turned into coffee snobs).

So these fry hatched Sept 8th? If you can keep them alive for 30 days you should be right from then on. It is making sure they get enough food in the first 30 days that is the difficult bit.
You can buy infusoria in a tube at fish shops if I remember rightly. Click and collect? Is pet food considered essential?

Good luck!

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Hello Caryl, my fry are still going strong. I have figured out how to strain the larger Daphnia so I just get small ones. I feed once in the morning and that keeps them going nicely. I spend way too much time counting! Just over 20 I reckon. They are looking like little fish now with tails growing out. So cool. Just a little proud of myself since I only bought the Aquariums a couple of months ago. Would like to thank Youtube! You can binge watch just about anything and learn more than just the basics. A few months ago I also bought a recurve bow and tried out archery, binge watched youtube and in one month I won a little competition at a club!

Have been feeding my Silvertip Tetras with a little eye dropper on the surface. They get so excited I have them jumping. Gave me a thought, do you think I could get them to jump through a hoop? The flames might be a bit much but we could progress slowly right. So I need to design a little hoop with a suction cup. Obviously way too much time on my hands! Maybe we could start a new Forum " Tetras Taught to leap through hoop in lockdown".

I would love to chat with a few other Fish keepers? say hello please! (no offense Caryl!)

Considering a Bolivian Ram? 

I am also passing on a couple of Bristle nose plecos to a friend. Didn't realize how much mess four fish eating loads of cucumber can make.

Wouldn't mind a few Lemon Tetras or Neons. Will have Silvertips to trade, Could even pass on a successful breeding pair?

Hope everyone is well.

Richard

 

 

 

 

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Good to hear the fry are doing well.

These forums used to be a hive of activity but Google, FB and YouTube pretty much killed it with people preferring instant answers.

Speaking of YouTube, here is a link to a Betta (not a goldfish as it says) to jump through a hoop so there's hope for you. Not sure about the flames bit though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEAqBNIa2mA

I cut cucumber into 1cm slices and thread them all onto a plastic knitting needle, weighted down with a sinker. The Ancistrus clean the whole lot up, except the outer skins which are easy to lift out.

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Morning Caryl,

Another stunning day in lock down. I still have about 30 fry. As they grow easier to spot but they move much faster, hard to count. They are getting big now, Daphnia definitely helped. So much in the pond the excess I have started to freeze. I use and ice tray and get loads of little cubes. Have tested the frozen stuff and they still eat it.

I have 5 adult Silvertip Tetras which spawned again the other day. I experimented to see if I could switch them on. I add an extra filter that give some flow to the tank It worked. Felt a little guilty because the females get a hell of a work out being chased. Eggs flying everywhere was good to see. But I am thinking I want something different in the tank. Love the look of the Cardinals but everyone only has neons. First I think I would need to move on the Silvertips, I have the feeling they are just a little too dominant in the tank.

My Black Neons have spawned too but only when the Silvertips were in the other tank.

So my questions to you? Do you know anyone with Cardinals? And what do I do with these Silvertips?

Some contacts in Auckland would be nice.

Hope you have a great day.

Richard

 

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I am so out of touch with the fish scene these days I have no idea who is breeding what, or if anyone is breeding anything! Go to the tabs at the top of the page and look under LOCAL NZ Clubs for the contacts of Auckland clubs and go from there. You could also advertise the fry here once they are big enough.

I prefer a tank of one type as their behaviour, when shoaling en masse, is totally different to what you seee if you only have 6 - 12 fish. I remember one member's tank (between 6 - 8 ft from memory) with several hundred neons. It certainly caught your eye! Cardinals are better, and live longer, but neons are cheaper - hence the preference by many for neons. I think you'll find an excellent article about breeding cardinls under Fish then Articles at the top of the page.

The problem with raising fry is you have to get rid of them or become over-run.

One way to try and break dominance is to remove the fish and rearrange the tank, putting the dominant fish back last.

Today has been odd with sunshine, short showers, then sunshine again. We've been having glorious days with warm nor-westers then southerlies!

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  • 1 month later...

Hello Caryl , long time , thought you might like to know I successfully raised the silvertips. Ended up with 44 from the one pair spawning on an afternoon.

Have sold a few on trade me a traded others for German Ran fry! I did try some Cardinals, beautiful fish but very shy. Perhaps it was the number, only 6. They stayed down the back and I got frustrated so traded them for tropical fish flakes! My Black Neons just spawned in a separate tank so here we go again. I am also fattening up Neons that I bought from Hollywood Fish farm. I was a bit disappointed to start with, got one fish with one eye! But I paid for 10 and got 13 so haven't complained. Think I should name him Wonky after the Wonky Donkey!

Will be heading off for a few days so need to get my auto feeder programmed again. Worked well last time. best $27 I have spent.

They cleaned out my Daphnia pond, council drained and water blasted it. Was gutted. But a few good rains and hey presto. Daphnia are back and thick again. also another batch of Ducklings to watch. They are Auckland city ducklings though so will probably grow up to be snobby Ducks that only drink flat whites.

Hope you are well. Love to hear what's new.? 

Richard

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Well done you! It is easy to get fish spawning but not so easy to keep them alive after 30 days.
Daphnia are very hardy and will appear, seemingly, out of nowhere. I have a fibreglass stocktrough which, if I put it up the right way and it starts to fill with rain water, very quickly ends up with daphnia in it. I also used to raid the stock troughs near the walkways up the Wither Hills behind my house. The walkways run through council owned farm land.

I recently hauled a huge pile of Crypt affinis out of my 4ft tropical so the fish are swimming around wearing sunglasses as opposed to carrying machetes. Luckily I found a couple of people happy to take the excess, otherwise it would have had to be dumped and that seems a waste of good plants. The tank has been running over 20 years now and every time we have a quake I half expect it to break. The seals are well past their use by date! In the cupboard underneath are all our board games. I think I need to swap them with the fishy items stored in the cupboard to the left so they have a better chance of surviving the flood if/when the tank goes.

The pond is causing problems. It is approx 3m x 8m and was damaged in the last big quake (it's concrete). We are trying to decide whether to have it repaired or filled in. Since we are having great difficulty finding someone to repair it, as we want it altered considerably, it looks like it is going to be easier to fill it in, although that in itself isn't easy either due to the size and depth! We might set the stock trough up as a permanent, much smaller, pond. It will be easier to cover to stop the kotuku, who turns up yearly in the hopes of getting a feed.
We are chopping down the Chinese silk tree at the end of it. It has caused a great mess over the years, although i love it and it was the first tree we planted when we built the house 42 years ago. It needs to go as we are getting solar panels installed and the tree is starting to shade part of the roof where the panels will be. My husband is in his 70's (wow, how did that happen so fast?) and I am 3 years off getting a pension so we have to hire minions to do these things. He has rheumatoid arthritis and I have recently had a near death experience in hospital after ignoring symptoms which turned out to be massive and multiple blood clots in my lungs. If my friends had not insisted on ringing the Dr (I kept saying I would wait until my appt booked for the following week) and insisting I be seen immediately, I would be dead. In fact the Dr promptly gave me oxygen on arrival and immediately called an ambulance. Hospital said the friends did good but should have called an ambulance instead of the GP. If I had waited a few hours longer I wouldn't be here! Very scary considering my health was excellent, which is possibly what saved me, and I was on no medication whatsoever. When I went back to the GP a couple of weeks later for my follow-up, the nurse who had helped said they were so concerned I was not going to make it that they kept checking my test results as they came in from the hospital as that way they could see I was still alive! Never ignore symptoms or assume it is just hay fever, sudden onset asthma, or something else. Get seen ASAP! I am now permanently on blood thinners to stop new clots forming but have to wait until my body slowly reabsorbs the oringinal clots, which can take 6 months or more, and hope none break away and give me a heart attack or stroke. Just because I am president of the local stroke club doesn't mean I want to have one! They have no idea why I suddenly developed the clots. Although it was 2 weeks after I had my 2nd Covid vaccination the symptoms had started well before that and before the 1st jab too. I hadn't been on any long haul flighst, had recent surgery, been immobile, or have a family history of them - the usual precursors. My siblings took great delight in saying they always knew i was a clot 🙂
Anyway, I am now on the mend but have to take things slowly and carefully or I run out of puff. Every day there is a slight improvement so that's good. Better you didn't want that much detail when you said you hoped I was well! 🙂
 

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  • 6 months later...
On 9/22/2021 at 4:08 AM, Caryl said:

Good to hear the fry are doing well.

These forums used to be a hive of activity but Google, FB and YouTube pretty much killed it with people preferring instant answers.

Speaking of YouTube, here is a link to a Betta (not a goldfish as it says) to jump through a hoop so there's hope for you. Not sure about the flames bit though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEAqBNIa2mABP

I cut cucumber into 1cm slices and thread them all onto a plastic knitting needle, weighted down with a sinker. The Ancistrus clean the whole lot up, except the outer skins which are easy to lift out.

For forum activity to continue, you need to give users something that Google and FB can't do. This is just my opinion.
Thanks for the video, I enjoyed watching it.

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  • 5 months later...

Very late to this thread, but any chance of letting me know the source? I'm from Auckland and really keen on exploring some local water sources but don't know where to start

On 8/24/2021 at 12:10 AM, Captain Beardy said:

Hello people, new to the game and think I might have some Tetra Fry on the way. Trying to culture something but not having much luck. Until! I walked across the street in the Auckland CBD where there is some fresh water with a small duck family. A flashlight showed up heaps of Daphnia. So I sucked up a few and now hoping I can bring on a bunch more. Couldn’t resist and fed some to my Tetras. They went berserk. There was also one of those water boatman insects. A Silvertip Tetra took off after him and it took him a few seconds to catch it. Then a few to crunch it up and get it down. Was a fun watch. Black Neon Teras lit up as well.

Curious if any inner city folk are interested in the source?

Hope everyone is staying safe and doing their bit.

Richard

999772D0-767B-40EB-8FB9-3F723EDE75A2.png

 

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