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Hello from another Californian!

Hey everyone! I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, so it's probably about time to introduce myself =P I usually go by Kuro, but since this is a CP forum, I took my screen name from my sundew, Pandora. Pandora was a cape sundew I had last year, my first and only sundew plant. Unfortunately, I forgot about her and left her in the window in a closed terrarium during a heat wave, and she was completely fried. I was really bummed about it, especially since she was such a neat plant, and was growing well for me. I haven't been able to find any sundews locally since.

I'd really like to get a sundew plant again. Browsing the internet I've seen there are so many unique and beautiful varieties. I'm not wanting to drop a bunch of money on seeds or plants from online yet, because I have a special talent for killing them, so for now I'm just hanging around and looking at everyone else's pictures and trying to learn what I can :) Since I don't have any plants, I probably won't post much for now, but I'll be around.

Aside from plants, my hobbies are varied... I love drawing, cosplay, anime and manga, raising betas, keeping lots of pets, and collecting My Little Ponies. I just turned 22 last week and am a senior in college, Global Studies major. I was referred here by the owner of growsundews.com. If you're out there, thanks for telling me about the forum! :wave:

I look forward to learning from all of you here, and hopefully growing sundews again sometime in the future :)
 
:welcome:

And dont worry about losing a plant; it comes with the hobby! We've all been there, thanks to lots of talented growers here you'll be growing again in no time!
 
howdy ,:-D and welcome to the neighborhood , i've got and extra spathulata sundew.If you want it?, its a pretty easy plant, mine is just at regular house temps and humidity no need for a terrarium, just good light and never let it dry out totally.
Just as French says you will get lots of answers here, and be growin, like a pro in no time.
You can send me a private message, if you want.
If you click on the picture youll get a closer look , and again for a real closeup.
 
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Welcome to TF! Is there a Pandora's Box? I'm sure we can help you out with more sundews, particularly D. capensis. I used to breed Bettas when I was in high school, as well as other anabantids.
 
Hiya! Welcome to TF! :wave:

So you're into anime and what not, eh? Have you heard of the Touhou series?
 
Thanks for the welcomes, everyone!

Uphwiz, thank you for the offer! That plant sounds great, I'll send you a PM in just a bit :)

Jimscott, it's good to see another betta enthusiast here! What kind of bettas did you breed? Right now all of mine are pet store bettas of various colors and tail types, but I'm hoping to have the time and money this summer to get some good quality copper or marble HMPKs to breed.

Capensis, sorry, I haven't heard of Touhou. I'm a little bit out of the anime loop at the moment; I haven't been following new series like I used to. I blame it on college and all my favorite anime magazines going under =P My favorite for the last couple of years was Tsubasa Chronicles, but that just ended so I suppose I need to start looking for something new...I'm actually more or a manga-reader than an anime-watcher, but I do enjoy both.
 
Capensis, sorry, I haven't heard of Touhou. I'm a little bit out of the anime loop at the moment; I haven't been following new series like I used to. I blame it on college and all my favorite anime magazines going under =P My favorite for the last couple of years was Tsubasa Chronicles, but that just ended so I suppose I need to start looking for something new...I'm actually more or a manga-reader than an anime-watcher, but I do enjoy both.

I see. Well, Touhou isn't really an anime, it's a game series, but the characters are anime and what not and it's somewhat popular. You should look into it if you ever have the time. It has a great fanbase. (My avatar is a Touhou character, by the way)
 
Capensis, I'll have to look into it sometime if I get a chance. I'm waaay behind on anime I'm supposed to watch. I still need to finish Ouran and watch Kuroshitsuji and I don't even remember what else :p i just don't have as much time for stuff as I did before I started college :(

Jimscott, the regular splendens are just as pretty :) HMPKs are halfmoon plakats...so just essnetially plakats with a 180 degree tail spread. They're the "in" type right now...I just want to raise them becuase they're something I don't have yet, and because they're popular I'd have an easier time finding homes for any I couldn't keep. I've got mostly VTs and combtails (VTxCT), one halfmoon, one double tail, a few deltas, and one girl who I think may be a plakat. All in all I have about 40 of them.

My bettas are the only bubblenest builders I have. Aside from them, I have a tank of platies and a small tank of Opae ula (halocaridina rubra) shrimp, but that's it.
 
  • #10
Have you tried breeding them? Aside from conditioning the females I can show you a way of setting up the tank for breeding.

Any particular strain of Platies? While most people seem to go graduate to the big cichlids, I've always enjoyed cultivating livebearers and bubblenest builders. And then there was saltwater...
 
  • #11
Don't worry about getting capensis... ask around the forum for a day or two and you'll probably get some 20+ offers! In the event, you might also find some more interesting ones... (I know someone who has spare dichotoma, I've seen an offer for capillaris and aliciae, etc.)

Speaking of which, I'm a n00b too. :lol:

BTW: Welcome to TF! :welcome:
 
  • #12
Jimscott- Yes, I've bred my bettas. Only once so far though. It's really fun watching them grow and watching their colors develop. I'm really anxious to try again. My platies are silver mickey mouse platies. I got a trio at the pet store and one male and one female died, but the remaining female gave me lots of little clone babies, lol.

w03- Thanks! Actually upwhiz already very generously offered me a sundew free of charge, so I will have a sundew coming to me soon! Now I can be a real member, haha. I don't want to ask for plants because I don't have anything to offer yet...but hopefully eventually I'll be able to contribute :)
 
  • #13
You're also welcome to my so-called "newbie package".

I've only had the Bettas spawn once.... and after about 3 weeks they began dying. I had them in a 5.5 gallon tank, shared with water sprite plants. I thought they all died but several months later I caught a glimpse of movement. I had a survivor! I think they start dying off when their ;abyrinth system kicks in and doesn't develop properly.
 
  • #14
I just noticed that thread while I was browsing-- I just may take you up on that, thanks! :)

Hm, what were you feeding the bettas? It pretty tricky to keep them alive, it takes a lot of maintenance. I was siphoning debris off the bottom of their tank once or twice daily and was cultivating microworms on top of the fridge and hatching baby brine shrimp daily for them. It was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding and I got 27 baby bettas out of it. All identical-- female red cambodian combtails. (Mom was a red cambodian crowntail and dad was an orange veiltail). Currently I have about 10 of them-- I gave some to a friend, and some of mine died from weird tumors a few of them developed that I think must be genetic. What happened to your lone survivor? Did it grow up?
 
  • #15
hahha. another betta breeder! i did a cross of a combtail to a rosetail last year. unfortunately, the rosetail trait was lost and the veiltail showed up on the kids. beautiful fish though, got the regular typical red/blue, but then also got a cornflower/purple/black individual (not cambodian!), steel blue and black lace kids. the male tails looked pretty plain, but the female tails had a delta thing going on (and the males are supposed to look nice :p).

i also have a spare dichotoma or two if you want. they are seedlings but they can take off in a short period of time.
 
  • #16
I just noticed that thread while I was browsing-- I just may take you up on that, thanks! :)

Hm, what were you feeding the bettas? It pretty tricky to keep them alive, it takes a lot of maintenance. I was siphoning debris off the bottom of their tank once or twice daily and was cultivating microworms on top of the fridge and hatching baby brine shrimp daily for them. It was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding and I got 27 baby bettas out of it. All identical-- female red cambodian combtails. (Mom was a red cambodian crowntail and dad was an orange veiltail). Currently I have about 10 of them-- I gave some to a friend, and some of mine died from weird tumors a few of them developed that I think must be genetic. What happened to your lone survivor? Did it grow up?

They got their start in the water sprite tank, where the male blew in his bubblenest. I also put dried straw in the tank to produce infusoria. So they went from yolk sac to infusoria and then it came time for baby brine shrimp.

I also hatched brine shrimp. There used to be a product / kit that was circular and maze-like. You sprinkle the seeds in the brackish water and put the cover on top. In the center is a hole and an accommodating light. The idea is that the shrimp hatch and follow the light to the center. Then you use a brine shrimp net (fine mesh) to scoop up the nauplii and rinse it out before feeding the fry.

The survivor did grow up to maturity. It was a make but it had far less finnage than his father. I had odd things happen to my anabantids, different tanks at different times. Most notable was the tank of Pearl Leeri fry that were fried by a heater that somehow cracked and raised the tenp to well over 100 F.

The easiest to spawn are the dwarf gouramis (Colisa lalia).
 
  • #17
ARGH. I had responses typed out yo both of you, and then my cat stepped on the keyboard and erased everything. Gargh. Let's try this again.

Amphiron- I'm not surprised the rosetail trait was lost on your fry. It is a bummer though, rosetails are so pretty! Do you have pictures of them? The girls sound pretty! You're lucky you had different colors in your fry-- mine were 100% red cambodian combtail females...Coulda been worse though, since the females are easier to keep and I like cambodians anyway. I'll PM you about the dichotoma in a bit, thanks for the offer!

Jimscott- Did you get my PM? I had a question about my priority stamp.
Sounds like you had a pretty fancy BBS hatchery! I just used the ghetto 2-liter soda bottle method. Effective, but not very stylish :p I wanted to get a fancier hatchery for next time I spawn. I'm glad you at least had that one male make it! I think it would be really interesting to watch a male betta mature. Since all mine were females, I didn't get to see the difference in the growth rates of their fins or observe and differences in behavior between the young males and the young females. That's a huge bummer about about your bad luck with anabantids though!
 
  • #18
i do think i have some pictures lying around somewhere. i gave all my girls away since i no longer had a place to keep them. i did the ghetto brine shrimp hatchery thing as well--too much maintenance if you ask me! plus there's no guarantee that you'd have enough food or if you got a bad batch of eggs. plus, i heard there was a correlation between feeding bbs and spine/airbladder deformities. next time i'm going to have to try vinegar eels or microworms- they last much longer in freshwater than bbs. the majority of my fatalities came from inadequate feeding.

then there was that one case where the mom decided to hop in and cull her babies. sadly i lost over half my remaining brood. on the plus side, all the ones that had spine deformities disappeared.
 
  • #19
Aww, sad you had to give the girls away! Though I definitely understand the space thing! I gave about 1/3 of mine to a trusted friend for a sorority. I couldn't give away any more than that, though, because I didn't trust anyone else with them. One of my friends bought two female bettas at Petco and put them in one of those horrible, tiny divided tanks. She asked me if they'd get along if she took out the divider. I told her no. She did it anyway, and then was surprised when they started fighting. Argh! That's why I don't trust a lot of people with them. Plus I wanted them to have better than a 1-gallon fish bowl, which is what other friends and family members would have provided.

I have heard about the brine shrimp and problems. I've also heard that feeding microworms is related to missing ventral fins. But I fed both, and all my fish are free of deformities :p I think the issue with microworms was that since they sink, feeding them encourages the fry to stay at the bottom, where it's less clean, and thus their vents don't grow. As long as you keep the tank clean, that should be no problem though. With the brine shrimp, I thiiiiink the issue was a possible deficiency of vitamin C...but again, I had no problems, and if you're worried, just vary their diet.

What a bad momfish! You had the parents and babies in a divided portion of the same tank? I learned quick that bettas are excellent jumpers, lol. Actually, I was thinking of trying an experiment (nothing new-- I know several betta breeders who have done this before) and leaving the father in longer next time I spawn. That way he would cull any sick/deformed fry, and thus control the population...But then again, caring for the fry longer is stressful for the father, so I don't know. Not planning on spawning again for a few months anyway.
 
  • #20
yeah i heard about that too. apparently the fry grow at a faster rate also; since there's a dominant fish in the tank, the fry dont do allopathy and it allows for everyone to grow big. however, i heard they're more drab (until you remove the alpha male anyway XD)
 
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