Sunday 22 November 2009

November update

Wow, I can't believe how incredibly slack I've been on the blog front.

It's amazing to see that I was complaining about having issues with my new Kribensis, given that I recently off-loaded around thirty 1" fry from a subsequent pair of Kribensis to Simon P. I also passed him around fifty 0.5-1" Flier cichlids, so currently the only youngsters in the fish room are my lovely Blue-gene Jack Dempseys. They're all doing great, but growing at very different rates, so at some point I will have to separate the sizes out into different tank.

What else is new:

- I had a good run at the October EACG meeting, selling around £80 worth of fish and coming back with 6 genuine P. synspilus that Rusty Wessell had kindly donated to the auction. They are only 2" long and already I can see that they're going to be really special.

- The outcome of all the sales was that I no longer have the pair of F1 Festae, the wild Blackbelts or the lone female Rainbow cichlid. To my amazement I have failed to sell my pair of Firemouths at two auctions now (this and the BCA, which Simon M. kindly took my fish to for me). Don't know why they haven't shifted, but they are looking great right now.

- The best purchase I made was 10 x H. nicaraguense was just £10 - all 2-4" long! I already sold off 4 of them, so 6 stunners left and there are easily two pairs in there.

- Also, my pair of Port cichlids spawned and had fry, but I didn't have space to raise them, so that will have to wait until they do it again.

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!