Fish Folk

I’ve heard Cory say that in the US, everyone thinks “more is better!” But in Europe, _ perfection _ is prized. Maybe there’s a way for you to sort of “rewire” and try to perfect the tanks you’ve got already? Here’s the Green Aqua showroom...

T H I S I S T H E W A Y ! ! !

Agreed with Lefty, we gravel vac our tanks _somewhat_. Now, on Eco Complete for a Cory substrate, we’ve stopped using it on account of our Cory’s barbells getting ripped up on the sharp edges. Some folks will totally disagree. Maybe just keep a good eye on them.

BAP stands for “Breeders Award Program.” It is a common feature of most Fish Clubs / Aquarium Societies. They are set up a bit differently in each club. We belong to the Potomac Valley Aquarium Society, meeting in Fairfax, VA. Being right next to Washington, D. C. our club members are very interesting people! Some are former CIA... one works with Dr. Fauci over at NIH... and many club members have been to the Amazon to collect wild fish in Peru. Our club members have been part of leading trips with Cory McElroy and Dean Tweedle. As for us, we’re waaaay out in hillbilly land, about 3x hours away in Western MD.

Thanks! They can grow to between 3-5 inches. Very beautiful fish once bred & raised in home aquarium. Unfortunately, they are challenging fish to determine tank mates for. If they’re the dominant cichlids in an aquarium, they’re very feisty! On the other hand, if they’re sub-dominant, they can tend to be shy, hiding in corners and under structure. Our fry have had their own fry now... these are so prolific... We found that putting an adult pair of Electric Blue Acaras in a tank with a group of Firemouths works well. Here’s a video showing that setup (these are about 6x of the Firemouth fry from this BAP):

When parents raise their own fry wonderfully. Enjoy!

You’re 100% right. Excellent plan for Christmas cash usage! Thanks for some tips on usage too. We never really heard about these until getting on this forum.

Thanks! Glad to share. We ended up adding all of the cory fry together back into the 20 gal long. I think there's 40+ bronze corys in there now, all happy! 😅

Oh wow! That’s interesting. Where are you at?

Selecting a different color / pattern morph of the Ram might cut back on aggression with an apisto.

Agasizzi would be lovely. Get some where the male has bright red fins. We kept an adult pair of Cacatuoides with very young Rams, and they got along fine. It might be touch and go a bit . . . they're all cichlids, so a pecking order will need to be established! But it probably could work. Maybe check to see if someone's got good footage of it already working in their aquariums.

Hmm . . . depending on how much actual sunlight penetrates the glass, and for how long . . . you might end up with green water . . . or a bacterial bloom followed by a spurt of infusoria.

For a small-fish centerpiece South American fish, maybe try some dwarf cichlids . . . like a pair of blue frost rams . . . or apistogramma cacatuoides super reds. Or a single bright red discus (don't hate me internet!)

Make sure you're in excellent lighting. White background is really important. Check the lot number on your API bottle -- look for some printing on the bottle near the label somewhere. I think that last four digits are the month and year it was bottled. If it's more than 2 years old, it may be no longer a valid test. You might consider bottling up your tap water, and taking it down to your LFS and ask them to do the test for you. But before that, just out of curiosity, try allowing tap water to "rest" in an open jar for 48 hours before testing. I'm curious to learn if the pH fluctuates at all as it ages. Are you testing cold water? Or hot water? If hot / warm, how long have you had your water heater going? New heaters have no chemical buildup. But old water heaters can really collect minerals. Look at all of your faucets carefully. How much buildup is there? Is there evidence of hard water scale buildup on your dishes, pipes, etc?

Amazing! Are you hoping to see them raise the fry on their own? Or just coin toss and see how they do?

First off: M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S ! (or as my little brother says, "MERRY GRIMMACE!") So . . . not an advanced breeder (yet) . . . but enjoyed a talk Greg Sage gave on selective breeding at our Fish Club last year (pre-COVID). He has some really cool fish, and lots of experience to draw from. Check out his work over at selectaquatics.com We have enjoyed breeding Rams for awhile, and ended up crossing a Gold Ram with an Electric Blue. The fry came out mixed, with either blue dominant and gold recessive, or gold dominant and blue recessive -- but the fry all articulated aspects of both, once they matured. If I understand right (and from Greg Sage's talk) they were heterozygous. But eventually, we crossed the fry -- blue with blue, and gold with gold. And a little bit of "magic" sparked. Here was what one of the _females_ looked like from the blue / blue heterozygous crossing: And here is what the gold / gold rams looked like (note the blue-flame highlights on a few of the males): I know that Tom (aka the coral bandit / the ram bandit) has been trying to selectively breed towards a line of red rams. I'm thinking that Rams are a bit more friendly to selective breeding for color strains than is commonly thought. The Black / Dark Night Rams . . . and the Blue Frost coloration are just two that have been worked on in recent years. Anyway, I'm curious what colorations anyone here has been working on with different species of fish.

You can tell if it’s hurting the corys just by examining their barbells. If they look worn down, you might be having problems. But if not, it may well be something else entirely. Do a comprehensive water test on your tank plus any water you do changes with. I doubt you can “cap” the fluorite. Finer substrate always ends up on the bottom. We used eco complete on a Cory tank, and it trashed their barbells. They kept dying off. We use a fine stone now - virtually like sand. Attached a photo of our Cory breeding tank. It’s NOT pretty 😂 But that’s what they like for making babies. We’ve got about 40 bronze corys in here — 30+ are 2-week, and 4-week old fry.

What substrate are you running in their tank? Sharp substrate can rip their barbells, leading to infection ... sickness... death.

[If you want a trip down a "NERM hole" . . . here you go!] Spawning Report: Corydoras Aeneus (Bronze Corys) We've successfully finished our 30 days with a small batch of corydoras aeneus (11 fry). Guess this will be the last BAP submission for 2020 for us. Learned a lot with this project. Took a year of growing the Corys bought from our LFS, and a solid 8 months mounting up failures to figure out how to raise them. We're raising up a larger batch of fry behind these (ca. 20-25). VIDEO JOURNALS (1) Eight months ago . . . setting up a dedicated Cory breeding tank (2) Nov. 20, Cory eggs pulled (3) Nov. 22, Cory fry free swimming (11 fry counted) (4) Nov. 30, Fry growth and updates (5) Dec. 7, Two-week Journal - Chemistry Discussion (6) Dec. 11, Update and New Batch of Fry following up behind Our BAP batch (7) Dec. 24, Cory fry BAP graduation - adding fry (11) to adult breeding tank PVAS BAP SPAWNING REPORT 24 December 2020 SPECIES Corydoras Aeneus Bronze Corys REPRODUCTION Method of Reproduction: Egg Layer Number and Gender Distribution of Parents: Eight Adults, Possibly only 1-2 Males Origin of Parents: Tank Raised (Purchased from LFS) Approximate number of fry: ca. 11 Date of Birth: Free-Swimming (11/22/2020) Number of Fry at 30 Days: 11 AQUARUM CONDITIONS Spawning Tank Size: 20 gal. long Spawning Tank Water Source: town / city water Spawning Tank Water Changes: 30-50% 1x per week / bi-weekly Spawning Tank Filtration System: Two sponge filters Spawning Tank Temperature: 78-degrees Farenheit Spawning Tank pH: 6.0 (water changes cause fluctuations up, but it always drops) Spawning Tank KH: Unreadably low (tap water is ca. 4 dKH, ca. 71.6) Spawning Tank Ammonia: 0 ppm Spawning Tank Nitrite: 0 ppm Spawning Tank Nitrate: ca. 30 ppm Note: This tank has experienced a recent pH crash due to humic acid buildup from leaf litter decomposition and alder comes. We removed most the leaf litter and cones, and have been monitiring it’s chemistry. Specimen Container: 1/2 gal. Lee’s large specimen container Specimen Container Water Source: Bottled (RO) water Specimen Container Water Change: 16-32 oz. / day until sponge filter added after 2x weeks Specimen Container Filtration: None, just air line for 2x weeks; then small sponge filter added Specimen Container Temperature: ca. 80-degrees Fahrenheit Specimen Container pH — ca 6.0 (due to use of RO bottled water) and catappa leaf litter Specimen Container GH — Hard to determine . . . very low Specimen Container Ammonia: actually Ammonium - can be very high, 0.5-0.8ppm) Specimen Container Nitrite: 0 ppm (after sponge filter added) Specimen Container Nitrate: 40-80 ppm (very high) Note: Specimen Container readings taken after period without water change DECOR & ENVIRONMENT Spawning Tank Live Plants: Pothos (roots only), Cryptocoryne Parva Spawning Tank Caves or Similar Hiding Places: Rocks from stream (boiled before adding), wood Spawning Tank Substrate: Fine white stone (looks like coarse sand) Spawning Tank Lighting Type and Timing: LED, 5,000 K, filtered through diffuser, ca. 14 hrs / day Specimen Container Live Plants: None; only catappa leaf litter and alder cones Specimen Container Caves or Similar Hiding Places: None until sponge filter added Specimen Container Substrate: None; again, only catappa leaf litter and alder cones Specimen Container Lighting Type and Timing: LED, 5,000 K, filtered through diffuser, ca. 14 hrs / day FEEDING Food Fed to Parents and How Often: 2x / day. Frozen Blood worms, Bug Bites flake food, wide variety of flake mix - Omega One, Kelp Flakes, But Bites Tropical Blend; live baby brine shrimp Food Fed to Fry and How Often: 2x / day. Live baby brine shrimp, arctic copepod powder, sera micron, New Life Spectrum fry starter powder, finely crushed flake food COMMENTS & ADDITIONAL INFORMATION We couldn’t keep track of the number of times our Corys laid eggs, we collected, and they either failed to hatch, or failed to survive. The factors were manifold. We suspect there may only be one or two fertile males in the original breeding group. Many eggs were just not fertile. We also struggled with fighting off fungus spread in the hatching container. In the end, we were successful using two pieces of catappa leaf and a few alder cones that grow wild out on the edge of some swamps where we live. These release tannins, which help to fight off fungus spread. Also, the decomposition creates lots of context of microlife to flourish for baby corys to get their earliest source of food. Before we were really successful we tried a lot of things to trigger spawning: heavy water changes; using rainwater / ground water for water changes; cold water changes; feeding a wide variety of foods; over-feeding / cleaning after; altering lighting plans; leaving lights on at night; addition of live plants (crypts); addition of a small Hydor powerhead for flow . . . and then we had the afrementioned challenges of trying to hatch eggs and keep fry alive. Documented successes from folks in our fish club helped us, as we read some of their BAP submissions. It seems that if you’ve got a decent ratio of mature males and females, feed well, and keep their water quality up, they’ll do their thing eventually. We’ve had our adults for about a year before setting up their breeding tank, so, as with other catfish, they seem to take their time maturing to a breeding age. Once we had fry, we changed out the water regularly with R. O. Bottled water. But once we were about 2-3 weeks in, our corys spawned again. So we started another batch but just used tank water instead of R. O. water. That batch is going very strong - about 20-25 fry — plus, we found 5x fry from that batch in the parent tank that must have been attached to leaves somewhere. Some chemistry things we learned / are learning: (1) Raising fry in the little specimen containers is a stress on fish fry, and on fish breeders. Constant vigilance is needed to keep parameters from danger zones. Without filtration, ammonia and nitrite build up quickly. But with a sponge filter, nitrate builds up quickly as well. (2) Using catappa leaf litter and alder cones releases humic acid, and really makes pH dive. This keeps ammonia (NH3) buidup below the 7.0 pH threshold to ammonium (NH4+) which is _slightly_ less problematic for fish . . . but really not good in any way (3) R. O. Water, and our soft tap water, lacks buffer which prevents against pH crashes. We found that the pH crashed in the adult tank when we added some tetras, and kept finding them dead. We originally added a lot of catappa leaf litter and oak leaf litter along with alder cones to the parent tank. It was just too much, and as humic acid built up over time, the pH crashed — from 7.8 tap water to 6.0 (or lower . . . our kit really doesn’t measure pH lower than that). Science aside, the jury is in: Cory fry are the cutest fish fry in the world! We all love watching them wiggle around. I think this species is one we’ll continue breeding and raising up for a while. Our fish stores are always happy to have some to sell. But we will probably not hold them in the grow out context much beyond 3 weeks so that they can be added into the larger colony and grow up in a better environment.

We resolved this by putting our aggressive lyretail molly in a floating fry container for 24 hrs. Curbed aggression fairly well.

GBRs are our all-time favorites! Got a huge fish-crush on them . . .

My younger brother once added about _3 month's-worth_ of fish food to our goldfish tank. Somehow they survived. Had to do a 100% water change, deal with bacterial blooms . . . ugh! Now he's very good with the fish.

We do two tanks there. One's this livebearer planted one, and the other is a mini-thunder-dome 55 gal up in the high school science class, full of medium-sized American cichlids and hardy tetras. My Dad and I teach the classes about the nitrogen cycle, changing water, etc.

Here’s a video of the 5th grade class tank we set up with mutt outdoor mini pond guppies (33 gal. long)

StephenP2003 that tank is . . . R. I. G. H. T. E. O. U. S. ! ! ! ! Old Sera Tab recipe or new??