Monday 10 November 2008

New arrivals, tragic losses (again)

Sadly I lost a whole group of baby jags after moving their parents to the 4' tank. They all got either fungus or Lympho. Horrible having to watch them die one by one each day. The tank they were in now holds a supply of live river shrimp and a coupld of female Bettas who are in recovery.

To add to this, the jag pair had a big bust up, so I had to divide them. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the temperature in their tank being higher than they're used to.

On the positive side, I have over 10 baby guppies from the red-tailed females I bought (from Ely Aquatics) a couple of weeks ago. The females don;t appear to be eating their offspring, so hopefully the babies will turn out to be 'pure strain' and I can establish a pure breeding colony.

Even better news is that the pair of super red kribs I picked up at the CDAS meeting have just brought out their first spawn (hence the recovering Bettas!).



Things are ticking over nicely in the fish room. My biggest challenge at the moment is working out how to overcome the problem that many of the tanks have suspended matter in the water as a result of having no substrate. Makes for some pretty nasty photos.

Introduction

I have always been fascinated by cichlids. They are among the most stunningly beautiful of fishes; they come in all shapes and sizes (there is a cichlid to suit everyone); and they have some seriously awesome behaviour. Since I started keeping fish 15 years ago I have kept and bred several species, but I never had enough tanks to house all the individual pairs I wanted (and their subsequent fry). In April '08, I was lucky enough to have a space-heated fishroom built into the garage conversion my girlfriend and I were having done. This diary is my way of keeping track of all my fish breeding projects. I hope you find it informative!