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Fish Folk

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  1. Fish Folk
    You can reach out to Discus Hans USA over near Baltimore, MD and inquire about your situation. He breeds and sells Stendkar discus, a line developed in Germany for high pH scenarios. Obviously high pH and hardness are different parameters entirely. If it were me, I’d just look at Lowes or some similar Home Depot, etc, and buy a ca. $150 R. O. system. You can mix you tap with R. O. to a desired level for your discus, rams, and other soft-water South American species. To recover the cost, just determine to buy discus small - half dollar size, and hunt for them on the cheap. A guy in our fish club was selling them 10x for $100 for club members. Some photos he posted copied below. Reality is, it’s going to take time, expense, and work to grow discus fry out to 3-4 inches for sale. Breeders know this, and would rather sell young discus cheap than preserve tons of larger ones in time-intensive contexts. You do want absolute clarity, however, on the care and water chemistry the young come from. They’re usually bred in R. O. water, and then migrated over to water with some hardness over time. But for what it’s worth, we’ve bought ours at $20 each. Straight from Florida and California distributors. Most all did very well.
  2. Fish Folk
    Yes. Yes, yes, yes. 100% agreed.
  3. Fish Folk
    With temperature swings outdoors, what is your period of time when rainbow shiners can successfully be kept outdoors?
  4. Fish Folk
    I see. But I think you said that you do not leave the adult rainbow shiners in, correct?
  5. Fish Folk
    Yes. I like de Jong and Fati. Really, really miss Iniesta.
  6. Fish Folk
    Thanks for sharing! Beautiful tanks. I like how you allow plants to cover the water surface. Very peaceful. That custom 40 looks really unique. ¡¡¡Visca el Barça!!!!
  7. Fish Folk
    Awesome! This is exactly what we're looking to learn. Thanks so much. Was watching some of your videos again yesterday too. Most of the interesting YouTube videos from Europe about them are all in German . . . which, sadly, is hard for me to follow. I think that if this video from Tennessee Aquarium shows wild rainbow shiners in situ footage, they must be able to be line bred for specific traits: [referring to the photo below from your YouTube posting] Was looking at your outdoor tub / mini pond breeding set up from a couple years ago. Can you confirm that this is a pot with rocks set on the floor of the tub / pond, with a mesh net set on top containing a few inches of water and a few rocks to hold down so that the rainbow shiners breed over the stones, the eggs fall through the rocks and mesh floor into the lower pot with rock, which is then taken out and placed into a fry tank for the eggs to hatch and raise up? Am I understanding this correctly?
  8. Fish Folk
    Very exciting! Is this LFS a store that you normally buy from? If it's Ok to ask, what did you manage to sell? You may want to call back in a week and just inquire how the fish settled in. Ask "Did they all make it for you?" . . . and "Did any of them move?" We sold 100x guppies to our fish store, and they were gone -- all sold -- in a week. But of the 40x blue platys, 12x Rams, 6x Electric Blue Acaras, and 3x Angelfish we also sold . . . only a small handful had moved for them after 3 weeks. We have 2x LFS: One will deal strictly in store credit, and another that will pay us cash outright. The one tends to have problems with keeping certain fish we bring in healthy. Their temperature may be a bit of a low-shock for some species we raise at a higher temp . . . and other water parameters / chemistry seems to lead to a struggle. In the other store, our fish do splendidly. That affects the willingness of an LFS to buy from you. If either _your_ fish are not healthy, or _their_ conditions are unfavorable to the fish you bring in, the end result is a bad deal because the fish may die there and the small investment the business has made in your fish turns out to be a waste. For that reason, we _always_ include extra fish for the store. If we sell them 10x of some species, we always try to leave them with 12x, just to be understanding. Also (and this is a tip Cory has brought up more than once) . . . we always spend money at the stores we sell to. Even if all we care to buy is dechlorinator, it says something to a LFS staff when we make it clear that we want to keep them in business rather than simply be using them for our own benefit. It is hard to make any money running a LFS, so a lot of what they're doing for us when we bring fish in to sell is encouraging the hobby rather than making really savvy business deals.
  9. Fish Folk
    Ok: so, we’ve never kept or tried to breed Rainbow shiners (Notropis chrosomus) . . . but have a long-standing “crush” on the species. We’ve got questions! Have you kept and / or bred these fish? We see their incredible color potential. Does that really come out in home aquarium set up and lighting? Or is it only displayed in outdoor ponds? Is the tremendous coloration just in dominant males (like peacock cichlids) or is it a maturity thing? Are they colored up year round? Is this a matter of selective breeding? There appears to be a reddish strain and a bluish strain. Is this just genetics or lighting? Or diet? Has anyone tried selectively breeding these for intense coloration? How often do / could they spawn in home aquaria? What we’ve seen is largely drab looking specimens indoors, but wonderfully colored ones outdoors. Is it a sunlight thing?? And... oh please, oh please, ... can they be successfully kept with Rainbow darters??
  10. Fish Folk
    Thanks! We love mutt guppy breeding too. The Rams just caught us off guard. Here’s the sister & brother from that batch.
  11. Fish Folk
    Awesome! You're a serious breeder. Thanks for sharing!
  12. Fish Folk
    That's a pretty tank! The question is a bit hard to answer without knowing more about the parameters you keep things at right now, and what your regular maintenance schedule it like. The general rule is true: "If a fish can fit in another's mouth, it will eventually go there!" Angelfish and Discus have smaller mouths -- despite being Cichlids. But the parameters for Discus . . . 86-degrees Fahrenheit, and pristine water quality often do not fit well with livebearers who prefer temperatures in the 70s. Angelfish may be a bit more tolerant of temperatures under 80-degrees; but they can sometimes get more aggressive to tank mates than discus. Just the same (someone here will disagree) I think you could get away with a pair of Koi Angelfish in this tank, as long as you keep the water clean, do weekly water changes of 25% or more, and keep the temperature at about 78-degrees. Maybe buy them at small or medium size rather than huge, fully grown.
  13. Fish Folk
    We follow your YouTube channel! You're doing great work. A guy in our fish club (PVAS) recommended your work. We actually bought some golden white clouds because of you, and definitely want to someday buy a school of rainbow shiners.
  14. Fish Folk
    You can get away with sneaking them into a small, tight-lid-fitting tank. They’re jumpers!
  15. Fish Folk
    Xtreme krill flakes are excellent! Ordered 2x of those larger containers back just before Christmas. The flakes can crush up sooooo small for tiny fry, etc. All fish love them, and they don’t foul the water. Plus you got a blue gularis sticker!! How awesome is that??!! You’ll need to start up a new 20-long and raise up a colony. They’re a gorgeous killifish.
  16. Fish Folk
    Having bred and sold hundreds of rams, this is 100% correct. I’d recommend this to anyone interested in keeping and breeding rams. Temperature above 80-degrees Fahrenheit is essential, and as stated above, we keep them hot — sometimes as high as 90-degrees, on occasion. The heat will raise metabolism. The problem comes when selling to our LFS, who rarely keeps fish able be 78-degrees. As stated, Rams quite frequently eat their eggs & fry if not pulled. Sadly, none of our rams ever got it down, even after dozens of spawns. So we always pull.
  17. Fish Folk
    For those with a few years of aquarium experience... when do you decide it’s time for a new tank? We’ve got a few small tanks that we have resiliconed where cracks appeared. We _know_ that’s like... dangerously playing with... water 😂 After a couple years without incident, we’re feeling maybe safer than we should. They’re small tanks... and the repairs were made carefully. BUT... we have a 29 gal. that we bought used, and were told been up and running for awhile when we bought it. It has a slight “bow” in the front. Got concerns it might pop. When do you decide to decommission tanks? What’s your decision process? Feel free to share your horror stories!
  18. Fish Folk
    Where’s it posted at?
  19. Fish Folk
    You'll love them! By the photo, looks like you're considering a pair of Apistogramma Cacatuoides super reds. Sounds like you're gearing up to be a fine Apisto keeper. Made this video a long while ago. It's got a few tips. Also was able to get some wild-caught Apistogramma Bitaeniata to spawn using rainwater to trigger them.
  20. Fish Folk
    Some of us are cold weather sorts. Apart from fish keeping . . . I also enjoy 18-degrees Fahrenheit, filming an elusive gull yesterday . . . the lake ice was freezing, stacked up by his foot . . .
  21. Fish Folk
    Yeah! Are you thinking about raising it up in an aquarium?
  22. Fish Folk
    Cory has a video on this you might want to watch:
  23. Fish Folk
    What's that fish in the lower photo??
  24. Fish Folk
    It's fun to catch wild fish! Would enjoy seeing photos. As for breeding colorations, I suspect that you're up for a major (if not impossible) challenge unless your resources are limitless. If you're asking about how to derive a highly colored variety of Molly from wild caught stock, you'd have to line breed multiple batches for specific traits from genetically separate stock, culling all but the most promising offspring. Let's say that after 5-6 generations, you have managed to get a subtle color "sheen" on a few in one line . . . your are nearing an inbreeding impasse where you'd have to cross out to another line that you have similarly cultivated. And then the project continues slowly forward, again, selectively breeding only the most desired traits. It takes a long, long time to produce consistently brilliant colors or desired traits that will carry forward. Check out what Greg Sage has been doing over at Select Aquatics, if you're interested in following the process of a Master Breeder. I've also recently enjoyed watching White Cloud Dynasty YouTube channel, where another breeder is working with rainbow shiners and white clouds. It takes a lot of time, focus, excellent aquarist skills, deep passion, and money.
  25. Fish Folk
    This is a delicate issue. We’ve faced this decision a few times breeding fish. Sometimes we’ve kept a shabby fish in a community tank out of compassion, but we’ve never sold one or allowed it to multiply for reasons explained already by others. We do have a tank full of African cichlids that occasionally get fed some culls. In the wild, this is the way it is. One observation: if we buy a pair of Rams at our LFS, set them up in a breeding tank, and raise hundreds of good, healthy fry for others to enjoy when we sell back to our LFS, we are really treating the original fish well, and multiplying their line, beauty, and enjoyment for many aquarists. Yes, some will need to be culled. Most culls we allow to live, do not live long lives. Occasionally one does. But where we euthanize some, many others are brought about because of good breeding care. Besides, the next customer who walked through that door behind us at our LFS when we bought the original pair might have been some... “Darla” ... (think Finding Nemo) who would have brought those rams home and brutalized them to death. I say, better off with careful breeders than the other option.
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