Adventures in Fishkeeping or A Fish Tale

[TwoTankAmin]

There are no fish. The all went out before it got too cold. I had 10+ wpg of heaters in every tank. But I sent out about 125 fish and the lat one's shipped Weds and I pulled them to holding inside the day before.

I cleared out the 50 today. I have stowed the Poret cubefilters and their uplift tubes, airlines and the manifolds; the Poret tank dividers; coiled 100 Ft. of drinking water hose; dried out wood, slate, river rounds plus a few caves.

All that remains on the terrace is one 20L with water and sand and then the residual water in most tanks. I use old bath mats to absorb the water and then put them into the washer and do a rinse and spin. If it is sunny I dry them outside in the sun.

The battle has been won but not the war. I still have a ton of fish to move out. But they are all inside so they will live long and prosper ?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

This past summer I had the opportunity to try for a proven reverse trio from my second breeding group of L236. I had to set up a 29 gal because I needed a place for excess plants and I got the chance for the trio at just about the same time.

I create a proven trio using the following method. I begin monitoring the caves in the breeder tank 2 -3 times a day using a flashlight. I am looking for two things- a dad on eggs and a trapping in progress. The problem is that when I removed the cave with the trapping pair inside it, they never spawn. The disruption of moving them causes them to abort.

For those who do not work with plecos, the actual spawn is very quick and once the females provides the eggs, she is excess baggage for the dad who will raise and tend them until they are free swimming, This makes it almost impossible to nab the pair and have eggs in the cave. A trapping can last for days before eggs result. So, I am able to nab a male on eggs but I have to settle for a pair without them. Then the wait begins. I know the male on eggs is a proven dad, but I need the female to spawn with one of the males. Normally I would have the pair in their own space but this time i could not do so and all three fish wen into the 29 with its full load of plants. Normally, I have no live plants in my pleco tanks.

Several months have passed since the fish went in. The only thing I knew for sure was which male had been a dad and which had not by which cave each claimed. They stayed in the caves in which they arrived in the tank. I have pretty much given up checking the caves with the flashlight. I can see both caves clearly and the males in both as well.

About 15 minutes ago I decided I would do some cave checks. The 29 is right behind me and I hit that one first. One dad had his tail out of the cave and was moving as if something was up. This is often how dads on eggs act. To my surprise when I shown the light into the cave, there were no eggs. What I did see was one tail hanging out and then a head facing out from the rear of the cave. The gal was in there and the normal moment of spawning often means the two fish will be facing in opposite directions.

I have my fingers crossed. I like to be able to sell proven fish because I know the buyer wants to work with them. They are also the most expensive form/stage of the fish. The problem is the time and effort as well as luck it takes to get to this stage. Plus most breeders only sell the kids, never the parents. After all one never sells that goose that lays the golden eggs. One only sells the eggs.

I had almost managed to sell enough fish to sort out all the offspring I had accumulated. However, the person to whom I sent a bunch of my fish because I owed a lot to them asked me to hold off on sending her the zebra plecos for 2 weeks or so. I had already broken down the zebra tank and moved their zebras into the last open space I had. I expected to send them out a week ago. That space was for more of the offspring from my second 173 group. So now that is on hold.

Oh well.....

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Last night they were both facing in. One minute ago there was only dad and eggs. ?

 

[fishorama]

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I really do get a lot of joy for this hobby. One of the things i try to do that most folks who breed fish do not and that is to get produce and sell proven breeders with some of their offspring included. For my plecos this means a proven reverse trio. The 2 to one male to female ration is chosen because of how the spawning process works. The only role for the female is to produce the eggs. After that the dad does all the work. A female can produce eggs about every two weeks.

However, from the time he fertilizes the eggs to the time he releases them from the cave it takes about 4 weeks. So this suggests a reverse trio should work better than a a simple pair to produce offspring.

It is not diificult to get a proven male. All I need is to spot a cave on the breeding tank which has a dad on eggs or wigglers and pull it to a segregation tank. The trick is to nab a pair. The problem is that once she lays the eggs she will quickly be out of the cave. While the spawning itself it pretty quick, the trapping can last for days in extreme cases but usually for a matter of hours.

The way I try to nab a pair is to go into cave checking mode. This means I am flashlighting all the caves in a tank 3 to 4 times a day. Sooner or later I stumble onto two fish in a cave. Normally, this is before any eggs are laid. I then pull the cave with both fish in it to another segregated space. The problem with this is the interruption causes the spawn to be aborted. I am left to wait for however long it takes for the pair to try again. A couple in a cave is not a proven breeding pair until they actually produce a viable spawn which results in fry that survive. The pair sometimes tries again in a week or two, but more often it is a couple of months. Sometimes it never happens.

I have had a threesome in a tank together for several months. There are also about 4-5 offspring from the dad puilled with eggs. I know which cave each male has claimed and where the female likes to hide. The tank is a 29 gal. I had originally set up for excess plants. I get anubias that outgrow tanks and I prune and need a place to for them. Other tanks are filled to plant capacity. There were no fish in the tank when I set it up but it was all that I had available to segregate the three plecos, so I used it.

Not too long ago I finally got a spawn from the pair, I knew because of which cave was involved. In the past two days the fry were gone from the cave. yesterday I was doing weekly maint. and wc on the tank And I went searching for fry. U looked in all the usual places i know they might hide and I found nothing. *sigh* So I went to work vacuuming and rinsing filter media. As I funally began removing water for the change, to my delight, I spotted a tiny fry close to the surface on the silicone where the front and side glass met on the right end of the tank. I had a live baby ?

I know that one fry usually means there are more and sure enough in the back right corner i spotted 3 more. By the time I had finished working on the tank I had been able to spot six different fry at one time. For an old man I can still do a pretty could version of the Happy Fish Dance.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

But I cannot type what I think- My brain thought a pretty good VERSION but my fingers apparently heard pretty could.........

 

[fishorama]

I knew what you meant my happy dancing, bad typing, cool pleco breeding friend You don't even have a tiny phone keyboard or likely a spell checker to blame & neither do I That's part of our oldster charm

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have spell check on my browser and Microsoft Office. The problem is could is a real word, so a spell checker doesn't catch it. A grammar checker may or may not catch it.

The digital age has now become so ingrained in everything that only we older folks remember GIGO- (Garbage In = Garbage Out).

As for the olderster part, I do not object to the technology but I am oldschool when it comes to privacy. Where I shop, what sites I visit, where I vacation etc. is nobody else's business. I am not willing to sell my soul to use a smart phone which is pretty much glorified spyware. I have owned a PC longer than most members on this site- I got my first one in 1987.

Here is a secret about me. I began typing on an old manual machine when I was about 12 or 13 years old. That was almost 60 years ago. I typed all my papers for college, I typed a lot over the years. But for some reason I never learned to touch type. I also developed rebelious fingers. My brain tells my fingers to type a word and my fingers decide you use other letters. So here I am 60 years later and I still cannot type if I cannot see the keys. This has been compounded by the fact that when in school and we got tested, I was always years ahead of the curve for everything except spelling. For that I was and still am behind the curve.

For me to make a decent length post without mistakes means it will take me about double the time (or more). If I were writing a paper I would make every effort to avoid typos etc. but on sites like this one I may not have the time at the moment I am posting and I do not do the editing work i should.

 

[fishorama]

OK, I see excuses for why you're a bad typer. I can do that too. I never made any mistakes in HS typing class but I was slow as heck...& we had manual typewritng machines (only 1 electric), you know...Fingers often trapped between keys. Never a touch typer... But I usuasally (but not always) read before I post I'm calling you out...but in a nice way Ha Ha! Take that as I mean it, you know I'm you're friend always

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I just became a 21st century planted tank person.

The small T-8 Fluor. fixture over my 5.5 gal planted tank with pearl canios and red cherry shrimp finally died. It is difficukt to replace that. o I found a small LED light on Amazon. It has White/Red/Green LEDs on one control and Blue LEDS on another. The Blue are considered "moon" lighting. I can toggle between 6 intensities on each channel such they can be set to1%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. I keep the W/R/G at 20% and the Blue at 1%. There is never a time of all blue. They are on a timer.

The light is not bad as far as how it looks. We will see how the plants like it. It sits on little legs that rest on the frame. the light is supposed to be for a 2.5 gal. but it works fine on the 5.5.