Re: NANFA-L-- Winter breeding prep again

Bob Bock (bockhouse-in-earthlink.net)
Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:54:36 -0500 (GMT-05:00)

Hi Mys. I had good luck spawning flags in a yarn mop last year, although I didn't get a good hatch rate or fry survival.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mysteryman <bestfish-in-alaweb.com>
Sent: Nov 10, 2005 4:18 PM
To: Nativefishconservancy-in-yahoogroups.com, nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
Subject: NANFA-L-- Winter breeding prep again

Well, it's that time of year again, time to set up the overwintering
tanks for the seasonal spawners.
I've been a busy guy yesterday & today, with plenty more yet to do, but
once I'm done it should be worth it.

My Odessa Barbs look freakishly awesome right now, better than any I've
ever before seen, even in books. I'm just going to HAVE to buy a decent
camera one of these days. These fish look somewhat like black ruby barbs
with the deep intensity of their color. They spawn all the time in my
cyprinid community tank, but the eggs of course don't last 30 seconds in
THAT tank, so today I've fianlly set up a typical barb spawning tank for
them. I hope I can finally get some fry, since Odessas are pretty
pricey. For substrate I'm using a bunch of those big smooth pebbles that
WalMart sells in the arts & crafts department. That should allow for
easy egg protection, and it looks terriffic. A big glob of Java moss on
one end completes the decor.

My "lucky" 30 gallon tank is now home to a school of Flagfin Shiners. I
suspect that late next spring I'll have hundreds of fry again. This
group is made up of F1's from last year and some wildcaughts I got back
in April, and I can't tell the difference between them anymore. This
batch of tankraised fish grew up much nicer than my first batch. Lemme
tell ya; that Cyclop-eze is great stuff!
I would have put these fish in my 29 in order to experiment with easier
methods of spawning them, but that can wait until next year; this year I
want to maximize production. These little guys truly are the perfect
aquarium fish, and it's high time that I did something about getting
people to realize that.

I took my tetras back to the petshop ( except for the Rummynoses heheheh
) and am now revamping that 29 gallon tank into a spawning tank for
Orangetailed Shiners, Pteronotropis merlini.
After SIX "suburban safaris" to find some, I was finally able to bag a
whopping 5 fish. ( and not all from the same place ) Man, these guys
are hard to find and harder to catch!
Merlinis are the least attractive of the genus, but there is a big
question regarding their spawning method, so they're worth the trouble.
The experts think that they probably spawn like those fish on the
hypselopterus end of the spectrum of this complex, but I say that any
casual observer should be able to plainly see that they are a lot more
like the Broadstripe euryzonus in most ways, and as such probably spawn
like euryzonus. I really wanted to set up two breeding tanks, one for
each method, for comparison. However, since I was only able to find 5
fish, I couldn't do that and wound up picking the basic egg-scatterer
hypselopterus type of setup. I expect complete failure, but I guess
we'll see; maybe the experts are right. Any of you others who have this
fish might want to try Ray Katula's euryzonus method; maybe between us
we can solve the riddle.

Letssee... what else...
Oh!
I have two tanks set up with American Flagfish in them. I recently got
two males and a bunch of females, so I set up two tanks, each with a
male and a little harem of females. It took awhile for them to settle
in, but now they're getting tame & coloring up nicely. I don't know why
these little guys aren't more popular. There's not a speck of algae
remaining in either tank, and I chose those tanks because I figured
there would be more algae in them than they could ever want. The rumors
are true, in case you didn't know; Flagfish are indeed voracious
algavores that don't chew up vascular plants. ( algavore..is that a real
word? )

Well, that's about it. I'll let you know if any of this works.
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/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
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