L777
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Congrats again! The second picture has a great picture of what some were calling a “fish stick” here a while ago.
Ste,
your A. agassizi is incredible! Most of them that I see around here are white and black — none of the bright yellow yours has. Is the bright yellow typical?I might have said it before, but your 134 leopard frog pleco is gorgeous! Thanks for this next installation of photos!
Could be daphnia, or copepods, or a whole bunch of other micro-critters. Last time I got wild food for my fish (some gammarus amphipods I knew would be hiding in a clump of lake plants), I got two years’ worth of parasite nightmare in the bargain.
What I didn’t know also came along was a bunch of copepods. Great fish food in their own right, but they were carrying one of the life cycles of what I now know to be widespread (at least in northern North America) cammalanus roundworms — intestinal parasites. Lucky me I added them to my daughter’s guppy tank
. These worms thrive in livebearers. The guppies started falling off one by one, starting with fins clamped, then losing weight, then a few days before dying, a few red threads could be seen hanging from their vents and wiggling. You guessed it – egg sacks of the worms getting ready to pop and re-infest. It took several treatments of diluted pig dewormer powder to finally get rid of the buggers. By the time I figured out what they were, they had spread to my Mbuna African cichlid tanks as well (not to mention my nephew’s tanks, since I had given him some of my fish in the meantime). No cichlid losses, but infected and needed treatment. During the 3-4 day treatment, the fish lose their appetite, and refuse to eat. Oh yeah, and in my paranoia I overtreated a tank of my favorite fancy plecos (healthy, beautiful, and $50+) and lost several.The only way I’d ever do that again is if I had an isolated tank with local fish who co-evolved with those parasites — and fish that don’t cost $$double-digits at that!
Great idea in theory (lots of people harvest wild daphnia to feed their fish), but very risky, parasite-wise!
I’d suggest treating every tank exposed or possibly cross-contaminated with the wild food as now in quarantine for two to three months while you keep those fish under careful observation, and keep a pail of net dip mixed up in case any nasty hitch-hikers came along for the ride, so they don’t cross-contaminate into other tanks.
Welcome to the forum!!
Best luck finding and raising your CPDs!
If you set up the tank you describe, you might actually have a difficult time *not* breeding them!
I’ve been looking for other Minnesotans with CPDs — let me know if you’re anywhere near the Minneapolis/St Paul area, and we could get connected sometime.
Atlantis,
sorry to hear about your losses in your previous posting. That’s frustrating on top of heartbreaking.For the java moss, you can take the whole clump out and rinse it gently in a bucket full of clean water just removed from your tank it you like. I also find that some organic mulm tends to build up in the moss, but mostly I let it be. Keeping processed food feedings to a minimum and using mostly live food helps keep down the waste as well.
As far as vacuuming the gravel, some eggs and new hatched fry may have to be sacrificed for the good of the rest of the tank at weekly cleaning time. But if you take care of it often, and aren’t sucking up clouds of accumulated brown goo (always an indicator I haven’t been doing my job frequently enough!), then it is fairly simple to let the waste water settle in the bucket for a few minutes and just visually inspect for living beings and remove them before dumping the old water down the loo.
They’re pretty tolerant of wide ranges. Just need spawning media — java moss is great — and lots of live food (microworms, BBS, bloodworms, etc.).
Best fishes to you!!
edit: Clarification: the live food mentioned is to get the adults “in the mood.” The fry won’t be able to eat anything larger than infusoria for the first several days — java moss supports lots of these with all its surface area, or supplemental fry food powders, too.
I’m working my way through pleco projects: the Ancistrus hatchery is still under full swing, which has given me enough store credit to get a trio of L-401’s and seven L-66’s. A male of each is in a cave now, and some of the females look like they swallowed golf balls, so maybe… If they’ll breed, then proceeds from the fry may give me enough fish-$ to get a couple of L-46’s (zebra plecos). I’ve been smitten with them since just before Brazil banned their export a couple years ago, but haven’t had enough hobby-budget to get any yet.
Steve’s gotten me hooked on Pelvicachromis — just need to find mates for a couple of nice unidentified female taeniatus variants I picked up a week or so ago. The coconut caves are ready whenever they are!
A few DIY CO2 generators are up and bubbling away next to my tanks, so now I need to get ahold of some EI fertilizer powders and hopefully the live plants will take off.
And of course, helping new CPDs come into the world continues to be a responsibility for me since I contributed to taking 9 of them out of the wild.
Other than that, just trying to keep the *tanks* from breeding, so I don’t have to toss out any more furniture!
Great pictures of the tiny little eye-tails! I finally gave up trying to capture mine at that stage — must be a good camera.
Happy Christmas everyone. May God’s peace be with you all through the holidays.
(Hoping for a local fish club membership myself…)
Great to hear another success! Congrats! Keep conditioning the adults — keeps their mind off the swimmers…
