Mahi27

Hi all. I originally wanted to make a post just to ask for help with my Japanese ricefish tank, but I'd like to make the discussion open to colony breeding more broadly. In theory, I really like the idea of colony breeding -- which, as I understand it, is the practice of setting up a tank in which you keep a species. That species spawns, and instead of removing the eggs/spawning mop/adult fish, you aim to have a tank with enough cover, natural food sources (biofilm and microfauna), and generally "well-seasoned" conditions such that baby fish can reach adulthood. So, again, I really like this idea because it feels natural and lower-effort than actively breeding. I'm also limited on space so not having to maintain separate grow-out tanks is appealing. The problem is that I haven't had any fry survive in my tank, which has been set up since mid-June and stocked since July. Why could this be? I'm attaching pictures so people get a sense of what condition the tank is in. It's densely vegetated and stocked only with ricefish, cherry shrimp, and snails. Moss everywhere. I feed 2x daily Xtreme Nano. I've seen day-old fry here and there, tiny little things just barely hatched out. But eventually they disappear. On the other hand, I've taken egg-covered moss out a couple times and moved it to a shrimp-only tank; I've grown out baby ricefish this way, but not in their original tank. Any ideas on what I can try doing differently? Do I need to give up on my ideal of colony breeding if I want ricefish babies?

I think I'm drawn to VGs because I really love orange fish. It's also really cool that they don't have quite tiger stripes, but this like badass 80s jagged interlocking of orange/red and black coloration on the tail...and that high dorsal fin? they're just so cute and seem completely oblivious to how cool-looking they are. Lol

Thank you everybody for the replies and suggestions and encouragement, most recently @Mako13 -- will definitely follow your suggestions. I love the Vienna Guppy Appreciation Club / thread. As far as I'm concerned, the silver lining on my weird spawn issues is that they've spurred this nice conversation and connection between VG lovers. I'll update if/when I see some color.

Um, you need to name this strain and start selling these beautiful babies bc I wanna be first in line!!! I have never seen such a rich blue!!!!!!

Your loachie does look like a yo-yo type of thing, but I think there are other variations that are much less common. Probably all sold as the same thing, idk. I know Dansfish.com recently had some pseudo yo-yos in and he said he really couldn't be sure what to make of them.

I agree with the others, I need to know what strain your gorgeous blue/purple guppies are, I am transfixed

Gorgeous gorgeous tank, just wow

We recently got the garage insulated as an add-on to re-insulating the main house, so today after doing my feedings, fry checks, and top-offs, I cleaned out a corner of the garage and set up one of several 48x24x72" racks I bought last year. I want to claim part of the space as my nerm lounge -- breeding and plant propagation tanks on a couple racks forming a partition around a corner of the garage. Inside of this partition I envision a super comfy chair, a space heater/AC unit (maybe one of those expensive Korean units that can do both), a TV, and a couple gaming consoles. How cool would that be? Earlier in the day, I also helped my partner build a new stand for her 5gal pygmy cory/dwarf red platy tank that she loves. I think the new arrangement looks great and it really meant a lot to me to be able to help somebody else do something that was important to them. Here's to more fishy business tomorrow...

I've been itching to try shellies for some time now, just need a tank (and somewhere to put a new tank...). Keep us posted on how they do 🙂

Wow, that seems like such a long time! i'm amazed. Thank you for sharing. I'll keep the faith. In the meantime, I too hope some experienced breeders can chime in.

Hi everyone. I picked up a pair of Vienna guppies straight from the coop in mid-September. Started seeing babies about a month and a half later, maybe late October/early November. I don't power feed or anything but they do get Easy Fry Food at least 1x a day, usually more like 2x, plus weekly frozen and the occasional live treat. My question is...why tf do they all look like females still? Please see the provided pics. Some of these "fry" are bigger than the original male, but none of them have any color and they all have the female fan-shaped anal fin, not a gonopodium in sight. Is it really possible that water conditions such as pH and temperature can determine sex ratio of fry in guppies? I know this can be true for other species. Or is some rogue third-wave feminist in the tank eating all the male fry? Please help if you can. I live out of state from the coop so to get another pair and try again would be a long-term prospect. Thanks all...

I asked this same question in another thread, hope that's ok: I was wondering, has anyone from out of town bought fish while visiting the co op? I'm coming through in September and know I'll be tempted, but I don't want to impulse buy an animal and figure out how to take it on an airplane!! Anybody have any suggestions or experience they might share? Thanks!! The galaxy otos are SO CUTE, @Robert!

I was wondering, has anyone from out of town bought fish while visiting the co op? I'm coming through in September and know I'll be tempted, but I don't want to impulse buy an animal and figure out how to take it on an airplane!! Anybody have any suggestions or experience they might share? Thanks!!

Thank you for your reply. That photo is just now, about 48 hours into hatch in high 70s temp. That's the other thing, I know high 70s is suboptimal, but even in low 80s (when it's been hotter in the house), they are taking forever to hatch.

Hi, I've had a can of the co-op brine shrimp eggs for about 6 months, kept at room temperature and sealed. I watched the video and got good hatches in the beginning, was super fun and educational for me and the kids alike. Got busy and didn't hatch any bbs for a couple months, now regardless of temperature or salinity I'm getting garbage hatch rates and a ton of eggs are sinking to the bottom of the Ziss hatchery, making harvesting and feeding out the bbs very messy. Are the sinking eggs the unhatched ones? What can explain my bad hatch rates -- is 6 months at room temp enough for the eggs to spoil/expire? Any help or thoughts will be much appreciated...this is very annoying. Lol. See pic

I don't have a lot of space for large tanks at my residence so I am familiar with some of what goes into stocking a 5gal. As others have mentioned, it is a bit of a catch-22 because most teeny fish show better behavior in large groups, which kind of defeats the purpose because then you need a bigger tank anyway. Fwiw, I'll share what I have and what I make of the stability of each tank: 5.3gal cube #1: This tank started with 6 white cloud mountain minnows and caridina shrimp. Like OP, I prefer no-heater tanks and am OK with the limitations of that. The tank did well in terms of bioload and maintenance, but I felt like the minnows were cramped in there, and the shrimp just never came out. One day I looked over from my desk and saw a minnow madly chase a juvenile shrimp until it scurried under the driftwood. I moved the minnows to my outdoor mini pond same day. They are doing great in there and have started reproducing successfully; meanwhile, now the shrimp are out all the time and generally appear much less stressed than they were. 5.3gal cube #2: This one is a bit overstocked but it's doing OK for now. Wild-type betta, 5 exclamation point rasboras, a snail, and 6 rosy loaches. Oh and some shrimp that never ever come out. The rasboras are a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier: they'd do better in a group of twice as many or more, but then the tank would be really cramped. Amazingly, the betta leaves all his tankmates alone -- he is more interested in trying to kill me, I think. (Flares whenever he sees my finger.) 5.5gal long: Three Asian stone catfish, 30+ zebra caridina babaulti shrimp breeding colony that has absolutely taken off in recent months, and a mystery snail. In many ways this is my most easygoing tank. It's got an algae problem, but the livestock have been really happy and healthy, so that's great. 2.5gal cube: Mixed orange and orange rili neocaridina shrimp. They're doing OK. It's really hard to keep this small a volume of water stable, and I definitely had some ammonia problems in the beginning. Almost lost the whole colony before it even started because of that. So...my general opinion on stocking a 5-gallon tank is that you can go ahead & try whatever sounds reasonable to you, but please do be prepared with a backup plan in case it's not working out in the livestock's favor.

@anewbie, I used this exact live bacteria product: https://www.aquascapeinc.com/products/maintain-for-ponds, not a full pump since it's obviously quite concentrated. I can't say I share all your skepticism about bottled bacteria, but I'm definitely going to be more vigilant about using it as a crutch in the future. Thank you so much, nonetheless, for your input regarding it. In terms of an update, today I came home and unfortunately the subdominant apisto has passed. He was really not looking hot yesterday. I wish I had not created this situation and I just hope to learn from it at this point. That said, the parameters were good (the weak apisto passed in a specimen container so no contamination in the main tank). I am going to keep testing the water on the daily for a little while. I'll also be keeping a close eye on how the remaining apisto handles his 3 remaining cory roommates and moving/rehoming as necessary. Thank you guys again for the attention toward my issues and please forgive these egregious missteps in fishkeeping. I'm sorry, too, to the fish who died under my care. 😞

I am obsessed with glowlight danios (cool vertical orange stripes along a greenish body), green fire tetras (dominant male specimens are stunning in coloration), and green neon danios for schooling fish. I tend to like really flashy colors so lamp chop rasboras haven't appealed to me. Black and orange? Only on Halloween please.

They look like koi to me. If I were you I would decide sooner rather than later about whether you wanna expand (read: triple) the size of their habitat or trade them out for actual goldfish. In my experience koi and goldfish are so cute and personable that you become rather attached and it's hard to re-home them when you've grown them out a bit and named them and all that.

The co-op sponge filters really are such a gem. Definitely consider the catfish option then! I think either the Asian stone or the dwarf corydoras would make a nice option. You could also consider a semi-terrestrial crab for something really off the wall?! I've been researching vampire crabs since my niece wants one and they are pretty stinkin' cool. You might have to build out the emersed areas a bit more if that were something you wanted to try.

They're pretty nocturnal, but if you're in an oddball mood, I love Asian stone catfish, aka moth catfish, aka hara jerdoni. I have some in a 5.5gal with caridina babaulti shrimp and they're super cute and weird-looking. They don't need a heater. I would put 3-5 in your setup. Maybe do 3 of those and 6-8 celestial pearl danios or micro rasboras. Options are kinda limited in 5gal but you can have some fun.

Honestly, when the parameters are that disparate, I prefer to use remineralized RO water. As other proponents of this method say, it removes a lot of the guesswork and puts the control back in your hands. Remineralize with Seachem Equilibrium or equivalent. If you're only using RO on one small tank, it's not hard to keep water on-hand and not expensive to obtain. Where I live in SoCal it's 30 cents per gallon and I refill my bottles every month or so. I keep caridina shrimp and a couple species of softwater nanofish. I know Cory doesn't like RO and has mentioned other methods before, such as slowly buffering the tank conditions down and stabilizing them there with mild additives such as botanicals and plants. But for my preferences those sound more complicated than just remineralizing pure H2O since my water, like Florida water, comes out of the tap with max GH and KH and TDS around 250ppm. Shrug!

Thank you and @anewbie for your input, as well as your kind words about the layout. I agree that the tank must not be balanced. I really jumped the gun on this one. I cycled the tank by putting a cycled sponge filter in there and squirting an overdose of beneficial bacteria in. A couple days later I tested and saw zero ammonia and low nitrites and said holy smokes, I'm going to the LFS this weekend! I can move the fish out, but the problem with that is my QT tank isn't set up, so they'd be moving from an almost cycled tank to a completely uncycled tank. Fwiw, I always have ammonia issues in my QT setups and don't know what I'm doing wrong there. Help? As for wounds on the corys...some were missing their eyes, but this could be advanced decomposition. When the apisto attacks them, he just chases them around the tank and fin-nips and stresses them out.

I have heard they eat larvae better than even the notorious mosquitofish. I don't have experience keeping them with ricefish but the WCMMs I have are super docile with other species and are much more interested in their own kind and engaging in spawning behavior together. I think it would be a good pairing.

Hi all, I recently scaped and cycled a standard 10gal. Please see the attached pics for reference; I tried to follow the video where Dean explains how to set up a 10gal to breed apistos. I hoped to have a little community thing going on after being told by my LFS that borelliis are a more docile variety of apisto. Despite my ambitions, soon after starting to stock it about a week and a half ago, the problems began. In my vast impatience, over the course of about a week I added: two apistogrammas borellii 6 endlers -- 4 adults and 2 fry hitch-hikers (thank you LRB Aquatics!) 6 corydoras similis Can you guess what happened? The endlers are fine but I am down three(!) adorble and expensive corys and the subdominant apisto is on its way out, and I am pretty sure all of these fish have died from being bullied in combination with some other stress factor. For example, the cycle might not have been as done as I thought -- I've been seeing nitrites in the water, but I'm not sure if this is from all the dead fish decomposing before I can net them out or what. Chicken and egg. What I know for sure is I definitely did NOT receive a breeding pair -- in fact I think I got the most macho alpha male apisto you'd ever want and the most sickly, weak beta/omega male you can imagine. I understand this was a possibility since they were too young to sex; I took my chances and lost. Anyways...I also know I did a lot of things wrong with this tank. I let it cycle but didn't let it mature. I added fish way too fast. I didn't quarantine any of them. Now I'm just trying to pick up the pieces. My ask: Where do I go from here? Does anybody have any similar experience with this kind of thing? Is this normal apisto borellii behavior? Did I overstock the tank? Any other interesting/insightful fish aggression stories you can share to help others out? Thanks.