ste12000
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YE HA IM BACK ONLINE AT LAST….PHEW IV MISSED BEING ABLE TO SIT IN MY OWN HOUSE AND USE THE INTERNET…
Simon, im sorry about today but since i spoke to you on thursday iv been in bed with the flu! Never mind im sure we can meet up soon. By the way the new layout looks superb…The leaves are huge, have you put them in yet?? a few chaps on another forum i use state that they can turn the water the colour of cola overnight….Your Valient Gouramis will love you lol…
Richard (shepherd_690).. Your Nigerian Reds have settled nicely into my tank but still havent spawned..I havent spoke to you recently so didnt know you had started on your fishroom! make sure you take plenty of pics to share with the forum..By the way to anyone reading i have forgot my manners and have not yet introduced my cousin Richard to the forum, he is currently fish mad and trying to pursuade either his mum or dad to let him build a fishroom in their garden shed so he can emulate his older (wiser,better looking)cousin :wink: and start to breed his fish.. In answer to your question about stopping mollys breeding then im sure you would be aware that the only real way to stop them is to remove all the females and only keep males, the females store sperm and can fetilize countless batches from one mating so if you remove the males you will still be stuck with fry every month.
Dr. Ashtray wrote:I will keep everyone posted as to how my methodology works out. I feel pretty confident that I will have large healthy spawns. I live on softened well water that is very good and low in everything it should be. The PH is 7.5 but drops a little when I add C02 to the mix. Alkaline water at low temps is the key to CPD breeding success.quote]
Hi sorry to throw your theory into chaos but i have found the Celestials to be extreamly hardy and willing to live and spawn in quite extreame contitions, let me explain….I am currently breeding celestials in water that is PH 6.2 and extreamly soft, out of the tap the TDS meter(total dissolved solids) measures about 30-40ppm this is roughly 1.5-3 GH. Temperatures regularly reach 82-84f on the top rack where my breeding fish and young fry are kept, The celestials still breed at these temps and the fry i am raising are kept at a constant 80f and are doing great, they are two months old and rapidly gaining adult colouration.
I am also keeping a few hard to keep/breed species of Apistogramma that need extreamly acidic water to spawn, these fish are in pure R/O with oak leaves and bogwood creating quite strong acidic conditions, water parameters are PH 4.5 and 0-0.5 GH hardness, temp 80-84f ..This water is so hostile to life that even live bloodworm go into shock when dropped in :lol:
When moving the young celestials into a larger tank last month three fish jumped out of the net and into the apisto tanks, they are still in there now as an experiment and there growth rate is comparable to the rest in the larger tank. I am going to leave them in these tanks until they are adult and then see if i can spawn them in these conditions.She should be ready to drop anytime soon! I think she will love algae pellets, i feed mine algae wafers and frozen bloodworm with a little bit of high protein pellet for something different. If you really want lots of baby platies, then buy a few more and introduce them to the male individually a week apart, they will all be pregnant at different times and you will soon have more babies than you know what to do with.
Just a thought!! what substrate do you use?? Platy fry tend to hug the bottom for the first couple of days while guppies tend to go straight to the surface. If yours are amongst the gravel you might not see them.
@shepherd_690 wrote:
live bloodworm always does the trick with my platies and mollies, they usually give birth within 3 days of feeding them(this could just be because they were ready to go though) :lol:
Feeding them Bloodworm will not hurry them up with giving birth, they will go when they are ready, best bet is to wait until they give birth, mark the date on a calender, Platy’s usually give birth every 31-40 days. Remove the parent fish into a smallish tanks with filter and loads of java moss, two weeks before she’s due, this reduces stress.
Keep feeding a quality diet (most livebearers prefer green foods with a bit of bloodworm for conditioning) if there is plenty of cover for the fry then with an adult platy i would expect a minimum of around 20 fry with a maximum of around 50 in very large females.Yes i agree with the theory, and also agree that it is very unlikely that any long finned captive bred fish will have to survive the conditions of the wild.
I just dont see why people have to mess with the fins of fish, to me personally i just dont like the look of the vast majority of long finned fish, Black widow tetras, Bristlenose plecs and various danio species are three recent examples i have seen that look truly appalling.
I would like to think that we can keep the Celestial in its natural form for years to come and not try to IMPROVE
it…..Thanks guys,
Chris your tank looks great, iv just had a look at your pics. The fishrooms fine, plenty of baby fish and not enough room.. I could have double the space and struggle for space. I have now got three seperate variants of Pelvicachromis taeniatus (Bipindi, moliwe and Nigerian Red) and 5 seperate species of apistogramma in breeding tanks, they take up the most room as i have to leave them in peace until they decide to breed. After christmas i am ripping all the racks out and adding more tanks, i have worked out that i can fit 1500 litres in there!!!!! mainly 18x18x12 tanks and about 10 18x12x12 to hold my dwarf cichlids.Celestialdude, Glad you missed me :wink: .. I’v got a load of new pics and some good ideas for new posts/articles, it will have to wait until my home internet is back on though..I keep getting told they will sort it out tomorrow!!!!!!! 3 weeks ago…
Maximumbob, Thanks for the links, and sorry to hear about your fry, iv been trying to think what would cause the ammonia spike and cant really come up with anything. If the filter was mature and the same water used then i cannot see that four tiny fry would pollute a tank to the extent, maybe it wasnt the Ammonia?? What are they feeding on now? i have microworms if you wanted to start a culture going? they should also be feeding on baby brineshrimp at around 7 days old. Ill stay in touch anyway.
Right im of to ebay to buy a CO2 diffusor for my living room discus, tank….see you soon.
You wont be seeing any long finned CPD’S or anything else coming from my fishroom..I hate how breeders breed from a deformed mutation and then line breed them from generation to generation to fix the strain so that they breed 100% true, these fish are worthless runts that need to be culled, these kinds of deformed fish never survive in the wild for one simple reason, deformed long finned or balloon fish are incapable of competing for food or breeding partners in the wild.
I think most true fish breeders think along these lines that you should not breed from deformed stock.Hi Atlantis…have you missed me :wink: :lol: ill be back online soon and joining in again. Hows your new(ish) celestials doing..
Oh well chris, ill soon be back to brighten up your life :lol: …Having no internet at home is really killing me, its amazing how life now revolves around this huge virtual world. Hows your Mbuna tank going, is everything maturing nicely?? See you soon mate..
@aquaholic85 wrote:
shellies breed tho, and whats nice some are pairing fish,
ste you ever keep african cichlids?No, iv never kept African lake cichlids, i keep and breed Pelvicachromis but they are more like south american (soft acidic water) the Mbuna and others arnt really suitable for my water, i cannot provide the ideal conditions easily so have never kept them. They are stunning though and the nearest to a freshwater reef tank as you can get. Thats something else ive never kept, Marine…..
I am contemplating setting up a small tank for shelldwellers in my fishroom and experimenting with hardwater.. Mine is extreamly soft straight out of the tap. The shelldwellers are the only ones at the minute that look really interesting..
Hi all, regular users might already know a bit about me but here it go’s..
As you might of guessed my name is Steven i am just turned 30 and still have a full head of hair :lol: , i am married and have been for ten years, i have two lovely children, Ben who is 10 and football mad and Kelsey who is 6 and loves dancing and also crafts and fishes. My wife is currently pregnant with our third child(Not planned :roll: ) so we are looking forward to another little girl next spring. I wanted to call her Guppy but the wife and kids have settled on Grace and that sounds nice, guppy can be her second name :wink: I work full time and am currently doing well in both private and working life.Right onto my hobby, i have been interested in fish ever since i can remember, i have recollections of wading ankle deep catching sticklebacks as a 5 year old and digging small ponds in my Grandads back garden to keep them in, i also remember receiving a book on freshwater fish around the age of 10 and it became my bible. As soon as i was old enough i asked for fishing equipment and set of into the big bad world, friends and i used to fish for perch and roach using huge hooks and even larger worms, needless to say we didnt catch much but the time spent in the open next to a pond, river or lake was priceless and very rewarding.I continued fishing until this summer 2007 and over the years became very competent at it, i sold my fishing equipment this year to help pay for my fishkeeping expansion.
My first tanks arrived at the age of around 15, my auntie had two 3ft tanks on the old steel 2 tier frames, i was facinated by the neon tetras which just shone compared to the dull native fish i was used to seeing, pearl gouramis were another fish i can remember being amazed by.
Eventually my Auntie wanted to get rid of the tanks and i scraped, borrowed and used all my savings to aquire the tanks, they took pride of place in my bedroom and stayed with me for 5 years until i moved into my own home. The tanks saw all sorts of fish from guppies and platy’s to barbs, tetras and gouramis. I also kept a Oscar for three years that i grew from a 2 inch juvenile to a 12inch eating machine.
I moved into my own home when i was 20 and started a family early,for two years i had no tank as other things were happening, i then pursuaded my wife to let me have a small 2ft tank in the living room, My angelfish soon outgrew this and it soon turned into a 180litre Juwel tank with inbuilt filtration and lighting, then there came another 100litre to grow on angelfish fry and another in the kids room to breed Kribs, then another four small tanks in the kids alcove to breed tetras and pencilfish…
Soon after the four breeding tanks went in i realised i had a problem, i didnt want to see a counciler or attend self help meetings so i decided to lock myself in the shed, i emerged two days later with a silly look upon my face….Thats right! i had a fish room. I now have a total of 27 tanks of various sizes and i think it works out to around 1200 litres in total, i keep and breed many different types of fish but my first love is south American fish especially SA Dwarf cichlids, i have bred a total of 38 species of fish and kept many many more.
I also use the forums so i am certain i will see you all around and about, dont be afraid to get in touch as i love to make contact with other fishkeepers all over the world and share info and gossip about the hobby.
See you around…SteL777 the bristlenoses are vegetarian but also eat meaty foods, mine absolutley love bloodworm, brineshrimp and other meaty foods as well as algae wafers and cucumber. I certainly would put money on them eating fish eggs if they find them.
I seperate the sexes when conditioning the fish for the simple reason that i do not want them spawning in the holding tanks and want the females as full of eggs as possible for when i pair them up. It is not essential to do this but my thousands of fry from many different species of fish prove that it works well.L777 the words of a true fish fanaticLive foods are the most important item a fish breeder needs and are one of the main causes of failiures in beginners(No live foods = No baby fish).
Live foods are without a doupt the best start for any fry, i feed all my fry on everything you mention.
I usually start with Liquifry when the eggs hatch this promotes infusiorans and microscopic foods,
Baby brine shrimp and microworms are the real growth food and the speed of growth when fed these can be tremendous. I cannot agree with you on the smell of “worm porridge”(my daughters expression) Mine stink after two weeks and keep the kids out of the shed at feeding time :wink: :roll:Hi all, im back, my home internet connection is down and isnt likely to be back on until monday…Im going mad not being able to chat fish with you guys. This is a flying visit on my mother in laws PC and ill catch up with the latest on monday when i can use my own internet.
L777 that is the perfect spawning tank, to much hassle for the adults to chase the fry..Do the bristlenoses eat any eggs or are you still getting plenty of fry?
Atlantis, hurry up and get some of these celestials before they sell out. You will curse yourself if they do sell out and you miss them. My local shop has some and he says they are wild caught, being a moderator on here i dont know if ive missed some news!ARE THESE FISH BEING IMPORTED FROM THE WILD AGAIN?????????????
