Randy

40 breeder for sure! I would love to have a large enough fish room to accommodate 30-40 of these wonderful tank. A boy can dream. I also really do enjoy the 30 breeders I set up some months back from Aquarium Masters. Having that same 40 breeder footprint but with 4 less inches of height is nice since I didn't have as much rack height to work with. On that note, the Aquarium Masters black silicone is just classy. 🙂

It's been a stickerful week. Although, this is probably going to be the least popular sticker in the collection. I mean, the Vienna Guppy is ooooK. 🤣

So good!!

Hot off the presses. Will be available soon!

Hi James, 20 gallon long is good. My original breeders are in a 10 gallon and breed no problem. The one thing I would caution is to watch the # of adult males in one tank. In my experience, tanks smaller than a 40 breeder in foot print will result in the dominant male killing off a rival. This is just my experience. 🙂 Good luck and please share pics!

Another project of mine has been to set up Goodeid tubs in the garage, right outside the fish room. The idea being that these tubs will get seasonal variation that Goodeids benefit from while still protecting them from getting too low in the winter time when it occasionally snows or drops to the 20s here in Western Washington. For those that listen to the podcast, you might remember that guest Jose Gonzalez (Episode 24) sent me a group of Characodon sp. Los Berros. Those fish went in a planted 20 high and seemed to do well. That group stayed with me for close to a year but every few months I would lose a member and say no signs of breeding. That ate very well scarfing down Hikari Vibra Bites and other dry foods. Finally, the last fish from the group passed leaving me disappointed at my failure to keep, breed, and (most importantly) SHARE this awesome fish. My thought on why I faired so poorly with this fish might have to do with the consistent "high" temperature of my fish room. I believe at the time I was running an average temp of 80 degrees. I believe this is far too hot for too long for this fish. In talking with Jose, he did remind me that his fish are outside in ponds year-round. His area of the country has mild winters, but it does dip in the low 30s for several days at a time. Talking with Dr. John Lyons about Goodeids really got me fired up so that's when I made the plan to move 2 mothballed outdoor ponds into the garage and dedicate them (1 species per tub) to Goodeids. I reached out to Jose to see if I could buy a group of Characodon from him for my second attempt with this fish. He declined my money and sent me fish free of charge becuase he is so awesome (I still PayPal'd him money to cover shipping 🤫). To my excitement the fish came in today with only 2 casualties. So here we are, the first tub is up and running with Characodon sp. Los Berros as the sole inhabitants, 2 males and 2 females. Just to share the setup, the tub has two large pieces of driftwood, some crushed coral on the bottom, and a couple large handfuls of guppy grass from @Cory's fish room. Technically I think I gave him this guppy grass to begin with. 😆 I plan on adding some 3" black PVC Ts to act as caves just in case these guys are into that thing. I will eventually try and get some GoPro footage of these guys to share.

That's a hopeful side-benefit.

And when are you coming over to make this video/forum content happen?? You know where i live! 😃

Not quite IN my fishroom, but definitely fish related. I recently relocated my 150 gallon tub/pond from the north side of my house to the south side. This matters because the pond will get something like 50-80% more sunlight year-round. I also sold my wife on the outdoor tub idea a couple years ago by saying I would encase the tubs in a wood frame and make raised flower bed perimeters, well that never happened and here we are...I guess better late than never. Project was pretty easy, build a box out of pressure treated 2"x12"s, fill it with soil, plant flowers. Done!😃 See pics below. Added the gnome pic from the garden store because I was legit surprised that they made the mold for this guy.

Let's make it a back-to-back post day. Guess what is in this giant crate?

Decisions, decisions. Where to place this little guy...

I forgot what these awesome little plants looked like. Finally got a few in this week. I hope we can keep a consistent supply available!

Quite possibly the coolest thing I have seen on this forum yet!!

Good question. They were decent sized fry so possibly.

3 females and 1 male are in a 15 with some java moss, guppy grass, and a few potted tanks. After speaking with Rosario Lacorte, I now have 2 dedicated tanks that breeders will utilize (more to come on that). Before I move these group into that tank I decided to see if I could find some eggs. Pulled the clump, poked around for a few minutes, and was rewarded with 4 eggs. I can only imagine there were 2-3 eggs more for everyone I pulled, or equally likely, the killis have been enjoying eggs for lunch. Can you spot the egg on the tip of my finger?

No, but now I am intrigued by this idea.

Any guesses on what these will be used for? 🤔

Everyone knows to keep back when @Cory gets behind the pallet stacker!

Gotta keep the crew caffeinated. ☕☕

Awesome!

@Cory thinks these are for plants. Oh no. These are for my secret Pea Puffer breeding program. 🤓

They're backkkkkk 😆 Get yours while we have'em.

Indeed.

Let's kick off my fish room journal with an entry/update on my Blue Gularis breeding project for the Coop. What I enjoy most about operating a fish room focused on breeding is that there will be people in the store that see my fish, get excited, and want to take them home. Call it silly, but it's just something that really drives me, knowing that someone is going to enjoy my fish and bring them happiness. So, that being said, I asked @Cory what fish I should work with to make available in our retail store. His response was the Blue Gularis. I have kept Gardneri in the past and had great success breeding them, but the Blue Gularis is known to be more difficult. Well, I am up for the challenge. I started off by sourcing 30 eggs from Aquabid for the Blue Gularis "Loe" variety. The eggs arrived with instructions to sit on them for 7-8 weeks from the date of collection, which was about 1 week prior if I recall collectly. True to my self, I let my impatience win out and tried to hatch 10 eggs about 3 weeks in. Let's just say you should follow the seller's advice. 😆 From that botched attempt I wanted the remaining 4 weeks to hatch the rest. After putting the eggs in a shallow tupperware it took about 48 hours for the first fry to hatch. I think I got maybe 2 more natural hatches. I then used the vial pressurization method to force hatch the remaining eggs - picked this up from Gary Lange. The remaining eggs went in a vial with a little bit of water. Put the vial in the bottom of a 40 gallon breeder and loosened the lid to allow water pressure to enter the vial. From that, I had one more egg hatch. With several more eggs unhatched I decided to try the other method Gary talked about and that is to leave thee vial in your pocket and simply walk around. Sure enough this did the trick and all remaining eggs hatched. I raised the fry on BBS (via Ziss Brine Shrimp Hatcher) for the next several months. Currently the Blue Gularis are spread across several tanks in the fish room with only one tank having multiple occupants, 1 male and 3 females. I will probably spread these out too. The attached image is a shot from today (7/22/2020) of one of my males. Even if I don't have success breeding on my own I feel accomplished getting them to this point. Their looks certainly are worth it alone.

You aren't going to recognize it. Cory has been busy!