March 30, 2008

Spring is here, my goldfish have survived their first winter outdoors, and surprisingly so have the gambusia!  There seem to be quite a few gambusia still around, which is cool.  I wasn't sure they would survive the winter, but they did.  The water temperature still isn't holding above 55*f, so no feeding yet, but soon:)  Once it is steadily warm, I may add a few small koi and I am very interesting in finding blue bitterlings.  I think I may decide against adding golden orfs, they seem more delicate and seem to need a very large pond to be happy.  I might also try zebra danios and white cloud minnows in the pond and see what happens with them.  I think if I have enough plant cover they will survive being eating by the goldfish and koi. 

Keywords: pond

March 23, 2008


Micro Worms
 I recieved a starter culture of micro worms yesterday. Today I set it up. Micro worms are similar to the walter worms and banana worms but are larger. They are easy to see; the walter worms and banana worms you can't really see, you can only see a shimmering on the surface of the culture media. Micro worms are a good first food for bigger fry, or as a second food for smaller fy.

Setting Them Up

First, add about a 1/2 inch or so of dry instant baby cereal. I use gerber mixed grain baby cereal. Then add water, tap water is fine, I ran it through a brita filter first, and mix it all together so it is pasty, but not watery. I found a fork the easiest to use.


Next, add a pinch or so of dry active yeast to the top of the cereal. The micro worms feed off of the yeast. Lastly, spread your micro worm starter over the top of the culture medium. If it is dry, add a touch of water to make it easier to spread. Be careful to not make it watery though.

 

 

Feeding Them to Your Fish
Soon you should see the worms climbing up the sides of the container. To feed them to you fry, simply wipe them off and swish them into the tank. They will live for about 6 hours, so do not over feed or they may die and dirty the water. These can usually be kept going for a month, maybe 2 by adding a small pinch of yeast to the culture once a week or so. If the culture gets watery, add some more baby cereal or oatmeal (whatever you are using). When the culture starts to smell bad its time to start a new one. Simply follow the steps above again and add a spoonful of your old culture to the new one. Micro worms can be used as a substitute or an addition to baby brine shrimp. If you only have a small amount of fry and don't want to go through the hassle of hatching baby brine shrimp every day, these can be a great alternative.

Thank you malaysiantrumpetsnails on aquabid for the great starter culture!

Keywords: baby fish food, fish food, food, live fish food, live food culture, live foods, microworms

March 17, 2008

I did a water change on my 29 gallon display tank and some of my crypts melted!  I didn't do any bigger than normal of a water changes, so I'm not sure why they melted.  Will they grow back? 

Keywords: crypt, crypt melt, cryptocoryne

March 02, 2008

I have become a bit bored with my tank, not only do I want to completely redo it, but I think want different inhabitants as well.  I have been considering discus for a long time.  The fish store  I worked at gets fairly healthy young discus in that do fine in our water, despite the pH being a bit high for what is normally acceptable for discus.  My only concern is that my tank is only 13" wide.  It is a 60 gallon tall tank.  I have seen some rather large discus so I'm not sure te tank is wide enough for them at adult size.  I suppose I probably have some time before they got huge though.  I would do a planted tank, as I love live plants and maybe 6 young discus and keep my rasboras and botias.  As the discus grew, I would keep which ever 2 paired off I think.  I don't think a 60 gallon is big enough for 6 adult discus for sure.  Is a 60 gallon even big enough for 2 adults?  I know people breed them in much smaller tanks, but I am wanting a display and I want for my fish to be comfortable and have decent lives.  They are more like pets to me.  My concern is that in such a narrow tank they won't have room to explore and entertain themselves. 

Keywords: discus

February 29, 2008

A new study shows that mosquitoe fish (similar to guppies) can count up to four.  I wonder how high cichlids can count then?

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/26/eafish126.xml

Keywords: fish counting

On several of my aquatic plants the older, outer leaves are dying off and if I look in the center, new leaves are growing in:)  I think I will go through and just cut off a bunch of the older leaves before they have a chance to die and rot in my tank.  It may make my tank look a little bit more bare than usual, but I think it will be healthier for the plants and the tank for me to do so.  It might even encourage faster growth:)

On another note, I am hoping that with spring approaching my characodon lateralis "los berros" will spawn.  I have had the heater turned down to 70*F most of the winter, as I was advised to cool them down a bit for winter to encourage spring and summer spawning.  In a month or two I will knock it up to 74*f or so.  I am sadly only left 3 juviniles, who now appear to be old enough to possibly start spawning.  The males are starting to get a red hue to them (adult males are red, juvies are a grey color) and the lone female is actually a bit bigger than the males are.  I have seen both of the males making attemps at courting the female, and their is usually at least one male near her at all times.  I think I am going to remove my harlequin rasboras, as they would try to prey on the fry for sure.  I think my botias will be safe with the fry, they have fairly small mouths and goodeid fry are usually quite large.  

Keywords: characodon lateralis, goodeids, pruning, spawning

February 24, 2008

For the last 3 days I have fed my fish in the same spot and about the same time.  Already they  have learned to hang out there and weight for food.  Even my normally elusive peckolita is sitting near the spot I have been feeding.  I've seen some videos of people who have managed to "train" their fish to do certain things, such as syngronized dancing, or to ring a bell, or move a small ball through a hoop in the water.  It is usually goldfish or larger cichlids that are used for these antics, but it seems that even rasboras and catfish can learn:)

Keywords: learning, training

February 09, 2008

I have been using the EI style of caring for my tank and my plants look amazing!  I really like it.  Infact, my plants are growing really fast, I need to trim some of them every week.  Stem plants seem to show the most affects with EI, but my swords and crypts are looking better than they ever have as well.  My swords have no little holes in them, like they often used to, and my crypts are incredibly full.  I also love having pressurized CO2.  Its nice to kind of hook it up and "forget" about it.  I really like the layout I went with for my 75 gallon.  It looks good and so far the pygmy sunfish really seem to like it.  It has many like bushes of plants and then some slightly open areas between.  One side is sort of thicker planted.  Kind of like the edge of a forest next to a meadow with bushes in it was the look I was going for, and I think I got it fairly close.

Keywords: aquatic plants

January 13, 2008

I am getting a tad tired with the look of my tank and want to change it.  I want to change my substrate to ammazonia II and I want to change some of plants.  I even would like to maybe change some of my driftwood.  Want is a funny thing though, I can want things and not be able to obtain them for various reasons.  The easiest thing for me to change at this time would some of the plants.  I have 3 fairly big amazon swords that I think I might replace with saggitaria.  I have dwarf sag. in the foreground and I think replacing the big swords with a tall sag would help tie the look in together more.  I also might add some kind of smaller, redder sword (to contrast against the green of the sag) as well some crypt. balanese, which grows nice tall and has a nice dark green to it.  None of my plants currently reach the top of my tank (except when my lilies send out floating leaves), so I want to get some that will hit the top.  Overall I think I am going for a bit of a "grassy" look, where as right now I have more broad leaved plants.

January 09, 2008

This week I am pet sitting for a friend of mine.  Among his various animals he has a livebearer tank which includes montezuma swordtails.  I am now enthralled with these swordtails.  They are gorgeous, much, much nicer than any of the overbred hybrids you find in petstores.  They are mottled colored (black and white) and the males have an extremely long sword.   I think I may need to add some to my tank:)  Aquabid, here I come!

Keywords: swordtails

<< Back
Search

Your Stuff
Log on:
Footer