Revaria

I have to say the Norman Lampeye Killi. They are low in price, small and easy to take care of and when well fed in a planted tank, a large school of them is quite appealing to the eye.

I never tried the can o cyclops, but I have a can o bloodworms laying around which I got from a fish convention a while back. If you don't want to continue freezing batches of the can you can purchase frozen cyclops which are pre-portioned for you. There's also a decent amount of storage ideas on the amazon reviews section, I liked the ones where they made a thin frozen sheet of cyclops then just broke bits off of that to feed.

If you are an aquarium coop member, I just listened to a great talk about egg scatterers by Randy Carey which he gave a year ago explaining how they breed and how to do replicate it as well. A high protein, fat and heavy diet will help condition the fish and higher temperatures definitely play a role in spawning. Usually egg scatterers only spawn during certain times of the year and you have to replicate those conditions to trigger them to spawn. Usually it happens during the rainy seasons which involve more abundant food, higher temperatures followed by a quick temperature decrease due to rain.

That's one healthy looking cray, its nice to see it wandering the tank instead of hiding all day lol.

Welcome to the forum and good luck with the gold rams! I have been quite unfortunate with the blue ones so far.

Wow thanks for all the photos and that image of the saffron shiners is absolutely amazing if you can have an entire tank and let them get that intense coloration. And the bluenose shiner looks really interesting as well with the different patterns on its body. And sure I am always willing to learn about more species of fish lol. How many of those do you plan to keep? Ahh the killifish species, I always wanted to try the blue gularis, but never really found an opportunity where I had a couple of spare tanks I could dedicate to them, but I have bred the Norman lampeye killi for a short period of time. I really do wish more people would keep crayfish, they are such interesting pets. Though you do have to keep that lid shut, they escape at every possible opportunity which usually ends terribly unfortunately. I myself have been breeding some of the papua new guinea species for a few years now, but took a break recently.

Wow that is a host of beautiful fish, I really like the colors on the first two pictures. are they available in the hobby? Its a shame our native fish are not more popular or available. The only native fish I hear about are the rainbow shiners and the okefenokee sunfish as well as the different colored procambarus alleni species.

I personally never kept them, but they are on my list. I didn't realize they were heavily into live foods, that's quite interesting? Do you think that the later generations will be as picky or were yours already tank raised?

It's pretty disappointing to hear that aquarium coop will no longer be selling their heater, I got two of them recently and they seem to have been doing well granted one of them keeps falling off the side of the tank. I especially like the size difference compared to your standard heater. But looking at the AQQA heater it appears to me that other companies have already found the company that Aquarium coop was using and starting putting their own logos on them. Didn't the coop create their heater by finding a manufacturer they liked and did their own testing before adapting it into their lineup, rather than creating one from scratch with their own specifications? Also, I am pretty sure that the other retailers they are working with will still sell the stock they have, April's aquarium had a few for sale when I was there a few weeks ago.

Ideally storing fish food in a cool dry area away from moisture and light should be good enough. If you want to be super extra, reducing the exposure to oxygen will also help, so if you have large containers you can break them down to smaller containers and remove the air content via your method of choice. Some companies buy large amounts of feed and then sell them off in their own vacuum packaged containers after packing it themselves. Generally as a rule of thumb once you open a package it would be ideal to use the food within 6 months and toss the rest as exposure to air and light can cause the food to go lower in quality, rancid or alter the flavor of the food so the fish may refuse to eat it, but its also just a rule of thumb. Many in the hobby akin the food to a bag of potato chips where its only good for a little while after opening. Pellets are also thought to last longer vs flakes as only the surface is exposed, but this really gets into the nitty gritty bits of the hobby. As for myself I am currently just using the cool dry area away from moisture and light bit, it would be nice to get a bunch of the super fancy oxygen removing containers one day though or a dedicated fridge/freezer. A man can dream!

Wow, that's pretty crazy. Thanks for the warning.

Thanks for the update, I'm glad that it worked out.

I think they took it down to edit the prices, when I last checked the scratch and dent products they did not reflect the current prices on the site and were discounted based on the old pricing.

How long have you been playing? And yeah I'm kind of in that spot too, but there's other stuff going on as well career wise. And yeah that's the shopping fun going on right there lol.

Good luck with the breeding, once they start they don't seem to start. I've been finding 1-3 fry everyday for the last few weeks. It's been interesting.