Actually, I'm Keeping Galaxy Rasbora Instead

I just received my order for 25 galaxy rasbora and 5 pairs of painted guppy. Two of the rasbora look as good as dead, but I'll wait a bit longer to see if they've got life left in them after all. One thing that's very clear about the rasbora is that they're tiny fish, though I'm hoping mine grow a tad larger. (Apparently grow to neon tetra size.) I need to obtain or grow a lot more java moss in order to plant the breeding aquariums. (The rasbora are split between two ten gallon aquariums filled with established water, with sponge filter and an acrylic decoration each.)

The male guppies have an impressive variety of color patterns and the females look solid as well, so I have plenty of options for line breeding and maintaining strains. Right now I have the males in a heated five and a half gallon aquarium and the females in a heated ten gallon with a couple female guppy I have.

Coral Red Pencilfish Nannostomus mortenthaleri

After thinking about it a bit more I'm leaning towards breeding Coral Red Pencilfish along Swamp Guppy and Galaxy Danio thanks to combined shipping. Of course all three would appreciate aquariums that have already been set up, so I'll work that into future posts.

Onto a bit about the Coral Red Pencilfish (Nannostomus mortenthaleri) itself... As I said before they come from the Rio Nanay in Peru, but I've found there are two different morphs. There is apparently one group from which the males have a more extensive red covering. They're shipped under the same name, so I don't know if one would be a subspecies or what. Practical Fish Keeping had a great article on keeping and breeding them, and I guess the males naturally tend to be very aggressive with each other in confined spaces, less so in captive bred specimens. I guess they're harder to breed than other pencilfish, but it sounds like the normal method adapted by egg scatterers, which means that separating the eggs from the parents reach as quickly as possibly is key to success. (I figure I can pull this off by using some kind of mesh boundry that the eggs can fall through for the entire bottom third of the aquarium with loose java moss covering that. I'll try something similar with the danio as well since they should be similar in that regard.)

Apistogramma cacatuoides and Coral Red Pencilfish

Since my killifish still haven't hatched, I've been looking at my options for breeding set-ups. If I go with show guppies it will cost me at least $75. (Assuming I didn't need a second strain to maintain the first, like in the case of needing gold reds in order to maintain half black reds.) Thus I figure anything in between is fair game. For around the $75 I could pick up a small school of Coral Red Pencilfish and for even less I could pick up a pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides. I was looking at breeding my own fish for a Peruvian Amazon biotope, but the fish are from different areas. (Coral Red Pencilfish are from the Rio Nanay which is black water, but I think the Apisto's have a wider distribution in white water...) If I want to be accurate I can pick up fish from the same local as whichever of the two I end out choosing. I'll update with more on the one I end out choosing.

Oh yes...

After months of absence I'm finally back to blogging... The only news from the last few months is that I've picked up a couple of new aquariums (30 and 75 gallons), and that my killifish still aren't ready to hatch. I also ordered some brine shrimp eggs from brine shrimp direct and need to work out what to do with them now that I don't have any fry to feed them to. I figure I'll go ahead and set up to breed show guppies...

DIY Moss Curtain

While up to the usual browsing I stumbled upon a great site that discussed a variety of aquatic mosses and offered a great DIY project. With only a few easy to gather supplies, you too can convert the entire back wall of your aquarium into a lush forest of moss. (Maybe even the sides too...) I also stumbled onto a great post where ping pong balls were used to make suspended moss balls with only the aid of some fishing line to anchor them down. I can't wait to start experimenting with ideas like these in my own aquariums...

DIY Moss Curtain

Suspended Ping Pong Balls

Newly Discovered Fish Already Rendered Endangered By Trade

I was reading through some old topics on a discussion board and found a post about a recently discovered fish that had been hastily introduced to the trade. Within months of its introduction in 2006, the Galaxy Danio has already been over harvested for a quick buck. I'm under the impression that these guys are prolific as other danio, but suppliers were not willing to make the investment to preserve this striking new fish. It's clear that the exotic pet industry's still completely incapable of restraining itself long enough to properly introduce new species into the trade. To be honest I have a hard time believing that they'll render these fish extinct before they can be properly established by dedicated hobbyists, then again, they should have been farming this fish before they started dumping it into the market anyway. I guess I'll keep my eyes open for a few of these guys to breed so I can work toward contributing back to the hobby.

I was able to find a regular breeder of these fish and I could probably get a small school to breed for around $60 with shipping. I'll probably wait a couple months until I get my killifish all settled in before I even consider any more fish that'll take multiple aquariums to properly breed and maintain. Once hobbyist get into breeding these fish they could eventually become as plentiful as Zebra Danio and the high demand for fresh imports will diminish.

My Current Aquaria

At the moment I've only got the remnants of my old community aquarium in a five and a half gallon aquarium along with a small group of Lake Malawi cichlid, which I actually left at home in a fifteen gallon tub. Last year my five gallon aquarium was pretty sharp, but I ended out losing my school of red-eye tetra. (Everything was fine when I left for the weekend, then I came back to the aquarium being completely off color and smelling horrible. I hate to blame him, but I'm pretty sure my roommate or one of his friends must have drunkenly dumped something into it...) I did however buy a couple of platy to replace the tetra, so the tank is decently stocked for the moment.

I really didn't do my homework with the cichlid, as I neglected to be patient and do better research on individual species. I think I can make the current set of fish work, but I need to get a bigger aquarium together yet.

Once I free up the filter I'm using for the cichlids I'll have three ten gallon aquariums to raise my killifish if needed. I'll be keeping two of the aquariums at my apartment, though I'll design a stand to hold four so I can set up more as I go...