BCA, FoF...recents changes

Much has happened since I last posted. The BCA meeting was great fun. Some lovely fish for sale (I was extremely hard pushed to hold back and only spend £3.00!). I sold some Jags, Cutter's, G. brasiliensis and my pair of Bangui. My only pick up was a bag of six juvenile Aequidens sp. Peru, which I am now convinced are a geographical variant of A. tetramerus. Lovely little fish from Andrew Wood.

The Festival of Fishkeeping was really interesting. Some very informative displays and some great fish.

The meeting worked well from the point of view of attracting new members, but I do feel the location (Hayling Island) meant that many established members were put off and didn't show. As a result the auctions followed a recurring theme of being fantastic for buyers, but pretty rubbish for sellers as most lots went for very close to their reserve.

What else has happened?

Bullets:

- the Firemouths lost their eggs (I think the Bristlenoses finally had them);
- the crowntail fry never made it (temperature too cold or perhaps eaten by snails - they did hatch);
- Amber and I moved the 30" tank from upstairs into the fishroom (it now holds the Ports, female Paratilapia and female BGJD);
- I set up a 24" tank underneath it for the larger baby Jags;
- I have moved the Jag pair into the lower 4' tank (they're not too happy!) and all the fish from that tank into the 6' tank;
- the salvini pair are also now in the 6' tank;
- I still have six baby Vieja hybrids doing well;
- I separated the hybrid cons from the Redhead Midas yesterday. Both species are so fat!
- I now have Humpbacked Limia fry from one female, they have grown incredibly fast;
- I also have baby platies!

I now have an external flash for my camera. I'm so pleased with it, it has made such a difference to my fish photography:



I think that's about it for now, other than the fact that I successfully sent some Jags to Newquay (to Nev) and they arrived safely.

Happy days

Looking forward to the BCA meeting tomorrow. Should be a really good road trip with two Simons and two Martins in the same vehicle!

Have more good news today as the salvini are getting ready to spawn and my crowntail bettas are spawning as I type. Mum is visiting at the moment and she was really impressed by them! Lovely fish.

The Firemouths still have their eggs too, which is amazing given that there are two Ancistrus in the tank. The parents look amazing right now.

Not looking forward to getting up at 4:30am tomorrow to bag fish...

Snakehead tragedy....again :(

No more snakeheads for me. They were looking unhappy two days ago so I decided to up the heat. BAD IDEA! They were all dead yesterday morning. I think I have a long way to go in my fishkeeping abilities before I take on dwarf Channa spp. again.

On the plus side, my Firemouths have spawned in the mixed community tank in the fishroom.

CDAS, new fish, more fry!

Went to the Corby and District Aquarist Society (CDAS) meeting on Sunday 5th. I was really impressed with how well organised the whole thing was. It was such a shame that the horrible weather put most people off coming. The talks were excellent, particularly Uli's talk on keeping and breeding snakeheads. The talk was so good in fact that I had to part with some money and buy six of his young Channa sp. Turquoise! I also picked up a pair of super red P. pulcher for a few quid.

I managed to sell about £12 of fish too, which offset my expenditure nicely and confirmed that it is indeed possible to sell the fry from the xanthic carrier Jag brood. Simon did much better, coming away with a profit after buying four pairs of dwarf cichlids and six Corydoras.

Talking of Corydoras, I spent my £40 credit at Maidenhead Aquatics (Coton) on five Corydoras sodalis, which I hope to breed at some point, and three very gravid blue/silver Platys (for fun).

A good thing happened yesterday evening: I separated my most gravid Humpbacked Limia into her own spawning tank and she produced around ten huge fry! They are super cute and eating well, so hopefully my shoal will increase from five to fifteen in the near future. I'm so chuffed about this, as I was sure something would go wrong.

At the CDAS meet I was hoping to sell my pair of Hemichromis sp. Bangui and some spare Blockheads, but in the end I had to bring them back home. I stuck the Blockheads in my Central American community tank and it seems like they're having a great time. I think two of them are a pair! Typical that I nearly sold off a matched pair of fish. It's funny because the other fish really don't know what to make of these clowns.