Rebirth

[biggun110]

Hi,

Last August my city changed from underground water to surface water and didn't tell us or I missed the notice so one Sunday when I was doing water changes my fish just started dying. The surface water had 4 times the chlorine as the old underground water and I didn't know so I was using the amount of chlorine remover I had always used but unbeknownst to me it was way too little now. I lost several 100 of my fish before I realized what the problem was. One tank in particular was very hard hit. It had a little wild guppy-like fish called Phalloceros caudimaculatus reticulatus. The males are about an inch long , gold colored and covered with black spots and the females are a bit larger, a bit greyer and with fewer spots. They come from Brazil. I had wanted this fish for decades and finally found someone in Denmark who wanted something I had and we traded. They are popular in Europe but too small and peaceful for most people in the USA. Anyway, I managed to save about 30 adults out of 200 that day but for the last 5 months a few still kept dying off for no new reason and all refused to drop any more fry -- they're livebearers. I was getting extremely worried. Luckily I had sent about 40 pairs around the country to friends to try and establish this little gem here in the USA and a some people were ready to send me some of their fry. I just couldn't understand what was wrong though. Finally, I gave the remaining survivors a big tank to themselves loaded with plants from top to bottom, especially my favorite -- floating Najas and used a slow corner filter so the water was very quiet. I fed nothing but live food -- daphnia, live baby brine shrimp, grindal worms and mossie larvae. Well, last night it happened! I saw 5 new fry!!!!!!!!!!!! The survivors have turned the corner of their stress after 5 months and are giving me new babies. I am pretty relieved. Most people would probably not notice these little guys but for some odd reason I find them very attractive. One note of interest the males have a gonopodium 3 times the length of a male guppy's

Bobby

 

[RamPuppy]

pictures?

I am sorry to hear you lost so many, but estatic for you that your little critters are doing well again.

I have been thinking of setting up a small 5 gallon tank, sort of like a mini-eclipse... would these be good candidates?

 

[biggun110]

Hi Rampuppy,

Sorry, no camera here. I have a friend though who has one and I am trying to get him to come over and take some pics of my tanks and plants as I want to post them. They're in all the books and an online search will come up with pics.
The Phalloceros would be perfect for a 5 gallon tank as they are small, peaceful and don't have tons of fry like guppies. If my luck has turned and the fry keep coming I can send you some this Spring. They don't even need a heater as they like it 68-73 F and could probably go a degree or 2 lower. I don't think its an accident that mine started dropping fry again with the winter temps. Remind me in the Spring and I'd be happy to send you some. I want as many people who can to have them so we establish them over here. That's why I was raising so many (I lost a year's breeding work).

Bobby

 

[Daniel]

Hey
I just wanted to see your aquariums. I heard such marveolous things about your fishes, but I never seen how many tanks, fishes you actually own. I just know you own many rare and bueatiful fishes.

 

[biggun110]

Hi DKim128,

Thanks for the compliment. The kind of fish I have changes alot as sometimes I have to cut back but I usually have between 10-20 tanks going.
Right now I have the little Phalloceros, 4 kinds of corys: sterbai, paleatus, rabauti and caudimaculatus, black spotted Montezumae Swordtails (the sword on the male's tail gets 4-5 inches long and their dorsals are round like a dime!), 2 populations of Nezahualcoyotl Swordtails (my favorite), Green Sailfin Veiltail Mollies (these are regular sailfin mollies with giant delta tails like a show guppy), Latipinna x Petenensis Sailfin Marble Mollies (these are a cross between 2 sailfin species and are black marbled in color and really robust), Hi-Fin Swordtails, Montezumae x Red Velvet Swordtails (these are neat looking red hybrid swords with the long montezumae type swords but they seem to be sterile), Nothobranchius symoensi (only eggs right now), Fundulopanchax fallax (wild stock), Scriptoaphyosemion liberiensis "calabarica strain" and Nanochromis dimidiatus "Neza" (a shy kribensis like dwarf cichlid).
Last year I had more killies but I had to cut back. Now I am species maintainence person for the Callopanchax genus in the AKA so my killies will be increasing soon.
My tanks range from a bunch of 55's to 30's to 10's. They are usually bare bottomed with the outside glass painted black or have a thin layer of gravel. All are full of plants but I grow my plants in clay pots as you would land plants which allows me easy access for cleaning. There is also drift wood covered with ferns and mosses and lots of floating plants like najas, water fern, duckweed and bladderwort. Some tanks have peat fiber from Hagen on the bottom. My tanks look sort of like thick rainforests. I also have grindal worm, microworm and baby brine shrimp cultures always going plus daphnia tubs outside.
I am trying out this new gadget on my molly tanks. Its called an Eco-Aqualizier and it uses magnets to clear the water. Its some kind of NASA technology. I am usually very low tech (I still use big corner box filters in many tanks and grow plants without CO2) but I was given these to hook up to my Eheim Filters on the big tanks. I am very impressed. The water is crystal clear -- like saltwater or RO water! And these tanks have many fish in them that eat alot and I feed heavy to get big strong fish. I highly recommend these weird little gadgets. They cost around $60-$100 bucks but its a one time outlay. I think I would only use them on big well stocked tanks as those tanks have a way of getting a haze in the water.
I will try to get pics soon.

Bobby

 

[Nflytrap]

Sounds pretty similar to the Heterandria formosa I've got here. They produce fry in little sets.

Im going to ressurect my 46 gallon bowfront tank and Im thinking over what to put in it. Its going to be planted. Im a more conservation minded person...so something that isn't that popular here(my hets, BTw, are from St. Johns county aquaculturestore.com). Im at about the point in your hobby when you've decided that you've got the basics nd you want to try something a tad harder than say, breeding kribs.

Some things I've mulled over

Wild mollies(Florida)

Fundulus chrysotus(Golden topminnow)

Notropis hypselopterus

This would be one tank

Or a couple swordtails of some sort, like Nezas. I've seen what they call "blue" Neza swordtails(look more like tuxedo to me!) but the price was too high for me!

Caudos would be nice, but are pretty similar to hets. I'd imagine they'd get lost first in a tank that size! Course you could probably convince me!

Wonder if caudos would work for outdoor ponds. During summer, I put baby golden wonder killies outside in the pond, and they grew like wildfire. They wer of saleable size in 2 months...and were even bigger than the ones the petstore had in stock. Next spring, I'll be trying hets in the 55 gallon.

BTW, have you had any trouble with hair algae in your daphnia tubs? I've been trying to get rid of it for a while(hard to tell if manual removal is giving me the upper hand though). I ceased feeding the daphnia(composted manure...no smell).

Can you still feed and harvest in winter?


Thanks in advance, and good luck on maintaining the species!

 

[biggun110]

Hi Nflytrap,


I guess Caudis are kind of like formosa in size but the colors are very different. I have always liked both fish and had formosa many years ago. I think the gold and black on the male Caudi in particular is stunning. I'd be happy to send you some in the Spring provided production has really restarted. I'll believe it after I get another couple of batches. Caudis would do great in a pond provided they were the only species and you had enough to make a little group. I'd definitely keep an indoor tank going also just to play it safe. Caudis don't like it too hot (not much more than 80F) and can take it fairly cool (65-68F). I keep them in the low to mid 70's. They mainly like to eat small live food like baby brine shrimp but they eat small dry food too.
I could also send some Nezzies in the Spring. I jsut cleaned out my extras so they are rebuilding which won't take long as Nezzies are very prolific. I'm sure I'll have plenty by Spring of the 2 types I raise.
Wild Sailfin mollies are always nice. I'd vote for those.
No, no algae in the daphnia tubs except green water. I keep a billion small snails in the tubs to eat algae and to help produce infusoria for the daphnia. I feed brewer's yeast dissolved in water about once or twice a week. Production goes way down from January to March but I am in Houston so it never stops completely as we can be 70F in January! The best times are late Spring and Fall. When I raise them indoors in filtered tanks I feed the Brewer's Yeast and baby food sweet potatos and still keep lots of snails with them. Water changes are important and the tubs are under good shade.

Bobby

 

[Nflytrap]

How big do the Nezas get? I've heard seven and 2 inches(or is that the Montys). How similar arer they to normal swordtails?(My grandma raised about 5 generation while I was young). In fact, she left a couple weeks ago and left me some fry that descended from these fish(though she had to buy another male). These guys are the current occupants of the tank. Also, their is a white one with black fins.....wonder what that is? They are the owners of the tank for now....till the project gets going!


Caudos sound like they would fit well with my tanks in general as they prefer cooler temps, which I keep in all my tanks unless I have any warm water fish(even then, little krib fry survived 63 or so degrees last year).

 

[biggun110]

Hi Nflytrap,

Nezzies get about 2 and 1/2 inches on good fish. They are a short bodied thick species with the males having a nicely curved sword and big yellow dorsal fin. They do throw small males but I have line bred mine for size so I get a fair number of big males. So, with the sword a good male is nealry 4 inches. The females can be 3 to 3 and 1/2 inches.
Monty males can get about 2 -3 inches but the sword can be 4-6 inches so they look big.
Your grandma raised nezzies or regular swords?
Monties and Nezzies look very different from regular swords with Monties closer to regular swords and nezzies similar to variatus platies.

Bobby

 

[Nflytrap]

Thanks for clearing that up!

They both are very attractive....Darn! LOL

I did some research on caudos, and it mentioned in Exotic tropical fishes, that"The fish have a tendency to revert back to wild type coloration" It also shows both male and female yellow with black spots. Are your fish, wth gold males and grey females, the "Wild type"?

 

[biggun110]

Hi,

My Caudis are the reticulatus type. There is the wild type, the reticulatus and the auratus. The auratus type has both yellow/gold males and females. The reticulatus type has the yellow/gold males and greyish/goldish females. I have never seen them revert to the wild type which is a grey fish in both sexes with a singe black bar in the center of the body. I have tried to get the auratus type but so far have had no luck. My friend in Denmark got some from Germany but they died and a guy in Los Angeles had them but they stopped breeding for him.
Which edition of Exotic Aquarium Fishes do you have? Is it an Innes edition or a TFH edition?
Sometimes the people who sell monties and nezzies on Aquabid.com will show great photos of each.

Bobby

 

[Nflytrap]

Exotic Tropical Fishes Expanded Edition

TFH publications. Among the authors is Dr. Herbert R Axelrod.


Not to sure which "edition" this is. The cover photo shows a male and female longfin danio.

 

[biggun110]

Hi,

Ah, ok, the Axelrod book. I've never been a big fan of Herbie. I have an edition of that book published in the 60's and it has a nice photo of the Caudis. It too mentions the fry reverting to the plain wild type coloring. I've never seen that happen in mine.
Look in old bookstores or at www.abebooks.com for William T. Innes' Exotic Aquarium Fishes editions 1-19 published from 1935 to 1956. While this book does not cover new fishes the information is priceless and the quality of the book's appearance and pictures is outstanding. After the 19th edition in 1956, the book was taken over by others and it lost its quality appearance. The old editions are in these rich old green bindings with glossy paper and hand painted color prints of many fish. It is filled with tons of information and is layed out incredibly well. Old editions do not sell for much either.
2 other great old books from the 1960's are FRESHWATER FISHES OF THE WORLD by Gunther Strerba and AQUARIUM CARE also by Gunther Sterba. Sterba was an East German and head of the Zoology Dept at Leipzig University. Tropical freshwater fish were his hobby and he wrote these enormous books for the hobbyist. They were translated into english in the 60's. FWFOTW runs over 1000 pages and AC is about 500. The first deals only with aquarium fish -- all 1000 pages and the second deals with tanks, breeding, live foods, diseases and plants. I can't even begin to describe how invaluable these 2 classics are and again they are ususally pretty cheap on www.abebooks.com (a collection of used book shops all over the world).
If you want a great Xmas gift these 3 old books definitely qualify.

Bobby

 

[Nflytrap]

In general care, how different are Montezumae swords from the normal ones that I have had experience with?

 

[biggun110]

Hi Nflytrap,

There is not any real difference. Monties are a bit more shy and are much faster swimmers. They are also expert jumpers. The biggest difference is that Monties can reportedly take lower temps, although I keep mine at 74-78F. They have slightly smaller appetites than regular swords. Nezzies are very different. They are in constant motion zipping everywhere and are not shy at all. They have big appetites.

Bobby