Happy hybrids

A quick photo of one of my pairs of F1 convict x HRP and their fry. They are merrily defending them against a 6' tank full of other Central American cichlids as if it was child's play.


I was in the fish room with a torch just now and it looks like I have even more fry: the new guppies have already started giving birth and, best of all, I was wrong about the bristlenoses - I shone the torch into a pot and it was full of baby Ancistrus!

Sad news and good news

First off, the sad news: my breeding male EBJD died about a week ago. I started treatment too late and he was gone in days. Absolutely devastating to lose such a beautiful fish.

However, my other fish have cheered me up by breeding away merrily. I never got those baby suckers I mentioned in my last post, nothing came of the eggs, but currently in my tanks I have:

- Mayan cichlid wrigglers

- Flier cichlid fry



- Nicaraguan youngsters (1.5") (I sold the breeding pair on eBay, posted last Friday)

- Paratheraps bifasciatus fertile eggs!!!



Also I have pairs of Kribensis, CRRH midas and Cutter's cichlid getting ready to spawn.

So much new life!

My shoal of BGJDs is also still doing well, growing at a good rate and keeping their bellies fat.


Recently bought some Israeli bred guppies from Swallow Aquatics - they are lovely green cobra tails, so I'm looking forward to breeding them en masse if I can.

Nics a plenty!

The mighty brood of Nicaraguan cichlids is growing like stink!

Mom and dad are still very shy, but attentive.

In other news:

- finally switched on the Fluval FX 5
- about 30 BGJDs all growing well
- sold the tinfoils, firemouths and spare HRPs weekend before last
- the Ancistrus trio have spawned, so hopefully I'll have baby suckers soon


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Lost and found

Sadly I lost my female Chocolate cichlid this week. She got the same awful body rot that her sister died from and there was nothing I could do but watch her die. I went for a combination of salt and Protozin in my attempts to fix her, but to no avail. Makes me wonder at the intelligence of whoever it was who came up with making it illegal to sell fish antibiotics in pet shops. I'm sure I could have saved her with antibiotics, but finding a vet in Cambridgeshire who treats fish and wouldn't charge the earth to do so is a none-starter. All very sad.

Yesterday I parted with my pair of Honduran Red Points. I was fed up with them to be honest. Beautiful fish, but not enjoying their tank and certainly not intending to pair up with one another. I have replaced them with a lovely little pair of African Btterflies who I am very much looking forward to spawning. Here's the closest internet image I could fins that does these little gems justice:



They are the Guinea race, and very smart they are too!

Back from holiday and all is well.

Got back from a week in The Gambia yesterday. Nothing too exciting on the aquatic front, the only fish I saw were some form of Tilapia and of course, several fish steaming away on my dinner plate (all with funny names: ladyfish, butterfish, captainfish...).

Plenty of other wildlife though. Hundreds of beautiful birds, lots of monkeys (Red colobus and Vervet) and my first 'wild' acquaintance with Nile Monitors (Varanus niloticus), one of my favourite lizards of all time. I was lens-to-mouth with one by the hotel swimming pool and got this great photo (among others)...



There's always a feeling of dread when you know that at some point you're going to have to check the fish tanks for casualties. I left everything in very capable hands though, my good friend Noel is a fellow enthusiast and takes great care of my wards when I'm away. To my immense relief there have been no casualties. Instead I have several pairs forming who should, over the next month or so, keep me busy with thousands of fry. Needless to say, I have some remedial water changes to accomplish, but that in itself should get things moving on the spawning front.

The only bad news is that my male Kribensis is probably going to lose his left eye, which will cause him all sorts of problems (and probably put a stop to his breeding activities). It's a real shame.

My list of potential pairs to isolate is as follows:

- Mayan cichlids
- Blockheads
- Red-shouldered severums
- Nicaraguan cichlids
- Jack Dempseys

Plus I'm expecting to get fry from my EBJD/JD pair and also the Jags.

Everything looks set for a productive festive season in the fish room!

Perhaps the happiest sight is my 4 lovely new angelfish that I bought a week before leaving on holiday. I've missed having angels in my life and they're still a species I haven't managed to raise fry from, so it's nice to have a challenge to look froward to. In the past week they have grown visibly and are looking fantastic...

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.

What's new?

Well, I got my Kribs and it all went predictably wrong. I bought two pairs and put them in a tank together to acclimatise. One pair formed very quickly and killed the other male, so I got a replacement male and separated the pairs. The replacementmale was then killed by the female I put him with!

On the plus side, the remaining pair (which I have now promised to a friend) are guarding a huge swarm of fry, so I have two Krib broods on the go from two pairs. One lot are ready to separate from their parents already!

I bought a stunning pair of urophthalmus, but unfortunately instead of spawning, the male attacked the female, so I had to shift her to the 6' tank. Typical.

All my other fry are doing great. The F2 generation from my HRP/Convict line is very interesting. Now they have grown a bit you can see that a good percentage of the spawn are platinum in colour, and look like they will express the HRP phenotype. The rest are 'convict-type'. Very interesting that the colouration genes should separate in the this generation, but not the previous one. I'm probably going to keep just the platinum fry to grow out.

The Flier cichlid fry are doing great with mom and dad. The parents are doing an amazing job, happily flaring at the urophthalmus next door!



Unsurprisingly, the latest jag fry are doing fantastically well, but I don't know if I'm going to keep them or not, as I doubt I'll find homes for them.

Only other news is that I got my old Paratilapia sp. Fiamanga male back from Ian A. along with two fish that I brought up from Brighton for him when I picked the original group up. All three fish had body rot of some decription (which explains why they were free), so I've been treating with Myxazin. Unfortunately, the Myxazin worked too well and the male regained his need to kill things, so I promptly lost the medium sized fish and went into the fishroom this morning to find that the male had had a good attempt at skinning the smallest fish (which I am hoping is female). She has now been moved to a different tank, so I'm hoping she won't a) die, or b) pass the disease on to my Saddle cichlids.