New Member with lots of questions!

[fishmode]

Hi everyone, my name is David Nguyen and I have just been accepted by the admin and wanted to give my first post here.

A little about myself first. I have been an avid fish keeper for quite a long while. In the beginning, I’ve kept and bred fancy goldfish and a little of angelfish too. Then my salty side came about and I was fortunate enough to find a private dealer in my neighborhood who brought me into the live rock and coral industry.

Through all those times, I have never really grew any aquatic plants. I had always wanted to. So as I got my life to settle down recently, I looked into co2 influsion and aquatic sciences.

I was looking after a small 10 gallon full of giant vals, javafern, and lotus. With its “Jungle” look, I decided to try and keep such the look and purchased a small Rocket gar. Turned out to be a disappointment, as the tank was certainly way too small and cramped for such an active fish that I decided to look a little more thoroughly before decided.

Was at my lfs, which I have to mention is one of the best in the state in terms of rare and hard to find aquaria, and was able to glance at these guys to find them oddly attractive.

The reason I say odd is because they remind me of the local fish we have here. Not exactly, but closely enough to get my juices running. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have an excellent fishery of trout, salmon, and steelhead. I have been an avid fisherman for a little less longer than this hobby. However, I absolutely adored these cpds because they reminded me of the young trout fry we often find in the streams and even more; these guys remind me of the fantastic colours of the Arctic Char, most definately my favorite salmoniod. I hope I will be able to fish for these char in the future and to glore at their prestine colours.

I decided to buy a couple to see how well they would do in my planted tank. Was afraid of nitrate and ammonia levels too high in my planted tank so decided to leave them in my guppy tank. The reason for my fear was due to the plant tank bacteria’s inability to degrade the small snail defecates but is able to degrade a whole feeder goldfish in a couple days. I was certain the upper water column in which the gar fancied was fine, but was uncertain about the bottom water column.

Turned out, the nitrate level in the guppy tank was much larger (30 ppm) than my planted tank’s lower water column (0 ppm). I tended to the cpds and released them into my planted aquarium. They did awesome.

I decided to buy more, and as I later left that same store I evened up the total to 13.

Here’s the strange mystery. I later had a discussion with the owner of the lfs. I had asked if these cpds were wild caught. He answered that they all were wild caught. I then mentioned the situation with Myanmar and its export policy, but he assured me that these cpds were wild caught. He had a new shipment in after I had ransacked the rest of tank. The bunch I had brought (13) were doing great, so I thought it would be nice to even the total to 15, so I brought two more males.

As these new tankmates entered the aquarium, I could notice a couple differences between these fish.

First, the 13 I had brought earlier were definately different in length and color than the last two males. Although I have only brought the last two a couple of days before, they were noticeably thinner. I hope it was due to a lack in nutrition so they should be plumping up real soon, I hope. There are similarities within the batches and differences between the batches (13 vs. 2).

I hypothesized that the reasoning, if they were wild caught: due to schools caught, family commonarity. OR if they were captively born and raised, that they were from a similar family. How would you conclude them being? Captive or wild?

Anyways, thanks for reading my long intro but I’m glad I finally am in this forum.

-David

[celestialdude]

Hi David, welcome and thanks for the enthusiastic intro. Hope you post some photos of your tanks soon! There are some fellow planted tank fans on this forum. Yes, CPDs do much better in planted tanks, so good decision.

Anyways, hope you get some answers to your questions posted, and good luck with the Celestials.

[celestialdude]

Oh yes, I agree with you, I’m a big fan of the Celestial Pearl Danio too because it reminds me of a bigger fish in miniature. In my opinion, I think it resembles the Rainbow Trout ( http://images.google.com/images?q=rainbow+trout ).

Especially this photo :

[fishmode]

Celestialdude, I totally agree! It is such a coincidence that they both have the blush gills! Their behaviors are alike too; quick, effortless movement with the current.

It’s great to have a tropical tank with fish that remind me of the cold northwest.

Before this, I was seriously considering joining a program where they allow students to raise trout/salmon fry from the egg stage. However, the costs was a huge factor (I had to have a water cooler, as the insides of a room are too warm for these babies). Someday I’ll hook up with this program, but now these CPDs will have to do.

Have you any erythromicron? They look even more like trout but with blue and yellow…

I took a video of them swimming around…

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=0viXlct1V8U[/youtube]
-David

[altaaffe]

Hi David, nice to meet you.

I agree with the above on planted tanks, I started my original CPDs out in a fairly bare tank with spawning mops & whilst they did produce fry it took a lot more effort than leaving them to it in a planted tank.

Whilst they may eat some eggs & perhaps some of the very young juveniles, since I adopted this method I still end up with a good batch of fry each month and they appear healthier than the original method. I suppose it’s a “survival of the fittest” thing.

As for wild against tank bred, I have found that my wild specimens tend to be a bit slimmer than my tank breds. They are much fussier eaters whereas the tank breds have been raised on flake and will accept it readily.

Do your fish readily accept flake ? If so, it is more likely that they are tank bred. When they first appeared here, people were complaining that they weren’t hardy and were just dying off. It turns out they tried nothing but flake, I tried various foods but in the end their main diet were white worms (live), baby brine shrimp & daphnia (frozen).

[celestialdude]

Thanks for the video. Can’t make out the detail, but they seem to be very happy and comfortable in your tank. Also, I took a look at the Erythromicron images and yes, I think they would be a nice complement to the Celestials. I haven’t seen any at the LFS here, or maybe I’ve never noticed it. Actually my latest craze is the Furcata rainbow (Pseudomugil furcatus). Check out Google images :

http://images.google.com/images?q=%22furcata+rainbow%22+OR+%22pseudomugil+furcatus

[fishmode]

Woah, those rainbows look amazing! I’ve never seen them around here. Since, most of the “exotics” ever really sold around here are cichlids (angelfish, discus, etc.) I’m just really lucky to have a specialized fish store near me.

I’m just worried I don’t have the correct plant material for the fish to spawn in. The only thing in my tank that I feel is of substance are the vals. But then, the vals aren’t very thick and the more dominant males have all moved into them. Whenever I walk into the room, they all hide in there and some never come out (or so I assume…).

Here’s a picture of the tank just 5 mins ago..

Does this look thick enough for the fry to survive?

-David

P.S. – I’m getting a video uploaded so I can show you guys the fish better

[fishmode]

Here’s the video I promised. This one captures the cpds more in detail. Hopefully, it will make more sense of what I mean when I say, “PALE”

You can click on the link and view it in fullscreen to get a better look…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXoq_dtTgNA[/youtube]
0:05-0:06 : Non-Dominant Male appearing on right side; he is very pale and color depth is very close resemblance to dominant females

0:10-0:14 : Dominant Female in middle; you can see her close color coordination to that non-dominant male from before. If you look closely, you can see the “gravid” spot on her…

0:40-0:43 : Females; if you look closely, they all have gravid spots. Their color is quite pale, is this normal?

The rest of the video shows the rest of the bunch. I was able to get this footage because I just dropped in some of the hikari micro wafers and it had sunk to the bottom. Those wafers smell real potent! Those guys go for ’em like trout to powerbait…

The really active one in the bunch (right bottom corner @ 2:08 ) came from the second batch (of 2) and came a couple days ago. You can notice it still has that “sunken” stomach look. Hopefully, he’ll fatten right up. The other one in that last batch is gone…I can’t find it because it already has fattened up and mixed in with the rest. :lol:

[L777]

How’s your breeding coming along? The plants in your tank look like they could hide some fry, but even more important might be to keep the adults fattened. I find that when I am able to give the adults frequent (meaning 3-6 times a day!) live microworm feedings for a week or two, the fry suddenly start appearing — I think being spawned the whole time, but immediately consumed when the adults aren’t stuffed with other food. My best successed were with a really dense pile of java moss — so dense the adults had to fight their way down into it.

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