Crabby

Can’t comment on cories but I’ve found CPDs to be the easiest fish I’ve ever bred. Chucked in a little cup with Java moss, bam, eggs, bam, fry. Raising them is a different story. I’m yet to succeed in this. I think feeding is the problem, as they’re so tiny. I’m not sure how to get around that.

Merry Christmas all!

Interesting; I’ve heard from multiple sources that you simply keep the fry in a body of water that is producing green water, but from what you’re saying that would result in the system not maintaining itself. The good thing about that is that it sounds like I could use what I have as a starter culture for some green water?

Hey! I’m planning on breeding my Honey Blue Eyes (pseudomugil mellis) soon, and I was cleaning out a 5gal for the fry when I got to the sand level, stirred it up and saw algae and green water release into the water column. That’s the water pictured in the thumbnail. I’d like to use this, as I’m sure it’ll be good for the fry. My question is, do I try to get the water to evaporate and make a powder food from it for the fry, or do I just put it back into the tank and put the light on a bunch (and maybe add ferts?) to allow the green water maintain? What would be the best way to maximise this? Cheers!

Anyone with blue eye breeding experience know what kind of tank/box is ideal to put the fry in? I’ve got a couple 5 gallon Java moss tubs that I thought could work, or an empty 5 gallon tank (scaped), or a couple mesh breeder boxes and a smaller plastic one. Are any of these suitable? I’m having a go with my pseudomugil mellis; honey blue eyes.

You know you’re in deep when your excuse for getting fish is to help a stranger online 😂

See if there are any endangered species (particularly local ones) you’re into that you can get your hands on. There are plenty of species all around the globe that need somebody to dedicate some time or effort to get them going in the hobby. I’m from Australia and I keep pseudomugil mellis, a beautiful little Aussie native fish, because they are endangered in the wild and assisting in establishing the population in the hobby is something I can do to ensure they don’t go extinct. That’s what really gets me excited with fish keeping. I’d recommend finding an endangered species whose story speaks to you, and working to get them into the hobby (on your own, with a store, or with other breeders). It can be tough to get your hands on stock and to figure out the breeding as there is often limited info available, but it can be incredibly rewarding too.

As soon as I have them I’ll post a bunch! If you look them up, the males are the pretty, bright yellow ones, and the females are a full creamy brown.

Hey all! Against all odds, I’ve managed to snag myself a group of 4 captive bred honey blue eyes (pseudomugil mellis), an endangered and very rare blue eye endemic to Australia (for those unaware). These fish are illegal to collect in the wild due to their endangered IUCN status, so the only ones in the hobby are captive bred, and captive breeding is therefore only way to grow their populations in the hobby. There may also come a time some years in the future where it would be helpful to reintroduce some captive bred specimens to the wild population, so it’s important for breeders to be able to maintain and grow healthy colonies. I believe I’ve heard of a few in the US, perhaps exported when they were more common or less was known of them, but they cannot be exported at this time so they are almost solely within Australia. I’m picking them up locally once I get back from an overseas trip, so I’ll have another post once that’s all done, but I thought I’d set up this thread so I can ask questions, share findings (particularly for other breeders and aspiring breeders) and simply document my experiences with this fish. They shouldn’t be too dissimilar in keeping and breeding to other pseudomugils, so anyone with experience on that front would be a huge help. The group is 2m2f so I’ll start them off in a cycled 5 gallon, which at the moment is just scaped with sand and some inert natural rocks collected from a river bed, so I’ll be chucking in a bunch of plants and maybe an Indian almond leaf or two in order to give them a cosy little breeding environment. In terms of the actual breeding, I think I’ll be using a couple small mops on one side of the tank (one floating, one sitting), and pulling daily for a week or so, perhaps even just a few days the first time so I can work with a smaller group. I’ll be getting some brine shrimp eggs (what are your recommendations for cheapish eggs that are good quality and have a good hatching rate?) for both the parents and the fry, once the fry are large enough. What are your recommendations for a first food for the fry? So far I’ve still not succeeded once with an infusoria culture, despite following a variety of different methods. I’ve been wondering about shrimp as well. Would they eat the eggs? If not, I’ll go for a native species. A bit of a biotype setup would be pretty fun. The main thing I’m debating is whether to breed them in a tank or give them a go outdoors. Outdoors seems riskier but potentially more fruitful and a tad easier (because it’s natural), whereas the tank seems much much safer but I’m just not sure how easy it’ll be to get them breeding. I’m in Victoria, Aus, so I could only keep them outdoors from mid-Spring to late Summer, and there would be a period during the peak of summer where the temperature is potentially too high (weeks of high 30°s and the occasional low 40° celsius), which may make for complications. Anyways, I’ll see how they go in the tank and reassess later on. I’ll be asking plenty of questions to the guy when I pick them up as well, so I think it’ll all work out. I’m very excited to be joining the captive breeding conservation effort for this beautiful fish, it’s honestly been a bit of a dream of mine ever since I heard of the species, and I’ll be pulling out all the stops to make sure this opportunity doesn’t go to waste. I look forward to sharing many exciting posts with these cute little honeys. Cheers, Crabs.

Following. I’m so jealous of those who can keep the American natives, they’re so pretty. Tank looking great already, excited to see how everything progresses.

Well I managed to catch covid, and I was in bed for a couple days barely able to do anything, let alone go downstairs to do specialised feeding or salt baths for my fish. Conveniently, though, that meant that the fish weren’t fed during that time, and I intentionally didn’t feed for the day or two prior to that. After checking this morning, I’m very happy to say that Bear is back on his fins and swimming as he pleases. Thanks for the assistance @Keeg and @Colu, I’m sure that if the fasting hadn’t been enough your tips would have ensured his good health. The advice was very much appreciated.

I have no personal experience with puffers but from that photo I doubt they’ll be able to eat anything other than really tiny live foods. They might be able to sustain themselves for a couple days on microfauna that’s already living in the tank, but beyond that something like microworms, vinegar eels or a paramecium culture is probably gonna be necessary to hold you over until they’re big enough for BBS. You can get any of those as cultures online. Microworms would probably be the easiest of that bunch to do but I don’t know if they would be too big, nor am I confident in their nutritional value compared to other options. As for moving the fry, I’d do a breeder box (or multiple) if that’s an option. Removing the parents may stop them from breeding again. Best of luck! As stressful as I can imagine it is, you’re in a pretty cool position at the moment.

They look like teeny little puffers to me! Gonna need some tiny food for those little fellas though.

Any ideas on how to make the pea accessible? Seeing as peas sink, and the betta floats at the moment. I can probably get creative with it but if you have an idea it might save me some time.

Hey folks. I just noticed while feeding that my HMPK betta has developed swim bladder. He’s up at the top, can’t get down to the bottom even if he tries. He’s in a 5 gallon with 4 adult guppies and ~15 juvies. I feed pretty heavily on this tank to ensure everyone gets some food, so I presume that’s the main factor in this. Everyone else is healthy, tank is looking great. What do I do to treat this? Give me the full run down on how to best handle swim bladder disease. I really love this fella so I want to get him back on his fins as soon as possible. Thanks in advance.

I’ve got a 29 gallon that has been filled about 80% with Java moss until a couple days ago. Now that it’s gone, the tank looks pretty empty. I’ve got a pair of apistos with some juvies, a couple BNs, a school of ember tetras and a SAE. Looking for ideas to add.

I was advised by someone else on a different forum that they’re actually blackwater and the eggs will hatch more successfully with a lower pH and softer water, like below 6 pH. It’s cool to see the range. I’ve bred Nijsseni before in a pH of 5.5 or lower, and heard stories from others of breeding in a pH above 7. Dustin’s Fish Tanks talks in a video about collecting bitaeniata in water that “looked like chocolate milk”.

Hey! As the title of this thread suggests, I’m looking for any and all hobbyist information about Apistogramma Bitaeniata. I’m an experienced breeder of A. Nijsseni, looking at getting into another apisto species to breed, and I’m thinking Bitaeniata might be the one. I’m looking for some general information like what would you recommend as a minimum tank size, general water parameters, and then some more specific stuff like tips for breeding, observations on temperament, amount of eggs in a spawn, hatch rate, ideal cave type & size, ideal substrate, all that good stuff that only someone experienced will know. Thanks in advance!

I did it! I collected the sand, rocks, plants, algae, snails, shrimp, and some special bonus creatures (which I’ll get to in a minute)! I’ve had the tank fully set up and running for about 4 days, and everything is doing amazingly. This is by far my coolest tank at the moment. I’m loving it so much. From afar it almost looks empty (aside from the awesome scape), but when you get up close, there is endless action. It is truly enamouring. So, before I get too far, I want to quickly discuss a couple points - fish, and aquarium size. In terms of the fish, I’ve talked about two varieties in this thread. The first one was a species I couldn’t identify at the time, and I still don’t have a certain ID for (although I have an idea). These fish were very small, and looked almost like freshwater fish, almost the shape of an erythromicron, with a gentle yellow colour to the body and fins, and 7-9 reasonably distinct black vertical bars. I thought it would be easy to ID a fish with such distinct features. No. Not at all. I honestly poured hours into trying to figure it out (which probably wasn’t worth it), and the closest I came is that they might have been juvenile Girella Zebras. I couldn’t find any images of juveniles of this species, and I actually found literature claiming that the juveniles have much less distinct barring than the adults, but I didn’t have anything better. The Girella Zebras can get pretty big, about the size of a small Oscar it looks like, so it would’ve been very risky to collect those little fish without solid proof they would stay that size. The other fish I found and was interested by was the Variable Snake-Blenny. This one took me under an hour to ID (thank goodness), and I was truly enthralled by. I thought it would be the perfect fish to collect. They stay decently small, have personality but aren’t constantly moving, have awesome individual patterning, and are livebearers! And they love plants too! Unfortunately, I couldn’t collect them the first time I saw them, because the tide came in so quickly. I figured I’d get them the next day, just before driving home, but no, said the universe. The tide pool had completely changed from the previous day. No longer were there millions of little water-flea-looking-things swimming everywhere, or a massive amount of seaweed and uprooted vegetation. The habitat was no longer suited to the Snake-Blennies, and so the Snake-Blennies had found somewhere else to be. Somewhere that I couldn’t find them. Yay. Anyways, it was probably for the best, as the tank has ended up being about as full as it should be. I’ll be upgrading in the next few months to some sort of shallow 8-12 gallon tank to allow for population growth (which means next time I’m down at a beach like that, I might be getting a bit more sand, another big rock, or some extra plants). So, to round off this post (I’ll do another one later to talk about what happened to all the critters once I got home, and share photos), let me just tell you the special species I brought back at the last minute… Dwarf, fully aquatic hermit crabs. Mhm. Cool. So cool. The coolest.

Glad to hear your fish are okay! Bummer about the pagoda snails (I just looked them up and they’re SUPER cool), but I’m sure they’ll bounce back given enough time. I used the exact same thing (same bottle even) to trap shrimp in a rockpool for my new planted rockpool invert biotope aquarium (I need an acronym for that). Works decently well, I’d just recommend some more enticing food than dog food. I’m sure you’d get a few if you left it in there for long enough.

My conservative vote is for the L236s, for the main reason that those awesome plecos with orange and red like the L397 always seem to dull out in the hands of the average aquarist, and it’s only in superb photos that they have that crazy colour. Whereas, a good white and black pleco pretty much always has strong colours. Take that opinion with a grain of salt though. It’s just what I’ve seen in videos of other people’s fish rooms, not from personal experience. They both look like super awesome fish.

I used to keep and breed hundreds of endlers (only kept one n-class variety though) - here are some of the nicer ones. Unfortunately I didn’t take many photos at the time I was breeding some of these species (most of these photos were from a mixed fry growout). I had a couple awesome black bar males with purple dorsal fins that had little black speckles. Black bars (my own variant derived from a yellow king cobra and a male mutt guppy). Yellow king cobras Japan blues N-class Campoma Blue Stars edit: I just found an extra album of photos on my phone that were taken on my DSLR. These are pretty good. Still no photos of the epic black bar males though 😢

Okay, I almost ended up not going ahead with this idea. I was lacking inspiration, but today I spent a while in the tide pools and I’m back on board and excited. I saw a big school of smooth toadfish (beautiful puffer-like fish), some tiny, potentially fully aquatic hermit crabs, some cute Tasmanian Blennies, and a new fish I’m in love with - Variable Snake-Blennies (ophiclinus ningulus). They max out at 7.5cm, they’re livebearers, they all have highly variable and individual colours & patterns, and are SUPER personable and adorable. And I love them. I’m going to collect everything tomorrow, so I think I’ll get 3-5 of the snake-blennies (so I could have the opportunity to breed in the future if I'm interested), 10ish shrimp, a few snails and sea stars, and a bunch of plants (the blennies love plants apparently).

Unfortunately not, I’ll have to mix my own once I’m back home, to match the water I’m bringing home for the shrimp (if I do this). Ah okay. This will be my first personal saltwater tank, although I’ve worked with saltwater and brackish tanks before. I’ll definitely experiment a bit to find the sweet spot for water changes. Yeah I had a look and it seems the species I found will stay small. Now I’ve just got to spot another one in the next 4 days… gonna keep an eye out for sure though!! Oops. I just assumed they’d be fully aquatic and totally forgot about my previous research into crabs. I have a feeling the ones here aren’t fully aquatic either. 😮 I’m so jealous. What kind of research were you doing? They’re fascinating little creatures!! The light I plan on using is one I’ve used on a freshwater planted tank before. The plants loved it. I assume I wouldn’t be able to use freshwater fertilisers though - any advice on where to look for a general marine algae & plant fertiliser? I got a pretty good video, so I’ll try to ID. They have pretty distinct patterning, which gives me hope, as fry and juvies (at least in freshwater) are usually just bland. Unfortunately the guides and resources for IDing of marine animals in Victoria are pretty terrible. Would adding fish mean I’d have to change much about the tank? Despite what it may seem, I’m doing my best not to over-complicate it. 😄 Also, do you have any ideas on good things to feed? I was thinking for the shrimp I could do some frozen bloodworms? And if I added fish, then frozen cyclops, and some live mosquito larvae when weather permits? Thanks for all the advice @Biotope Biologist, much appreciated. You’ve given me some food for thought.

I have an idea. And considering I’m terrible at being concise, I’m sure it’s gonna take me a while to explain it. Essentially, I want to do a nano marine rockpool tank, with just crustaceans and molluscs (and perhaps a seastar or two). And I really don’t know how plausible it is, but I’m pretty intent on finding out. I don’t know if anyone here has any experience with marine shrimp, but I figured I may as well see if any of the Aussies here are familiar with the shrimp I want to keep. Or if there’s a nano marine expert who can help me out. Or if anyone just has any advice. I’m all ears. So this species of shrimp is actually the species that got me into the hobby! I found them on a camping trip, and they were just so active and engaging, and I just fell in love. Then I went home, did a bunch of research, and got an aquarium. They’re part of the reason why I’m so interested in shrimp. Now I’m on holidays again (in a different place in Victoria, Australia) and they’re everywhere in the tide pools. Millions. The species is ‘palaemon serenus’, the red-handed shrimp, and they grow to about 6cm for big females (which I discovered last night) and I think 3-4 for males. Just from observation. They live primarily in colonies of 10-30 under rocks during the day, venturing out when they feel safe, and going everywhere once it gets dark. They’re omnivorous, eating pretty much everything they can get their little claws on (including my fingers and toes). They look rather like Australian freshwater macrobrachium shrimp, to be honest. I’ve had a look and it’s legal to collect from this location. There aren’t limits on anything I want to collect. So, I’m thinking I’d do a 20 litre tank for the meantime (until I can get some awesome 30ish litre low-boy tank). I’ve got one at home that could be set up as soon as I’m back. If I take home a big rock and sand, then I should have beneficial bacteria sorted, as well as a food source. The rock would have plants and a bit of algae and all the other good stuff you find on the rocks they like. Other than using salt for water changes, I’d run the tank like a freshwater tank - sponge filter for filtration, freshwater light, no heater, fortnightly or monthly water changes. I’d love to add a couple little fish if I can catch them, but I have no idea how to identify whether they’ll grow or not. Same deal with the majority of crabs (although I have ID’d a few species that would work). And unfortunately no nudibranch either… although I found the CUTEST little one last night. They’re apparently super specialist in terms of diet, and I don’t have the time to observe one for hours to see what it eats, ID it, work out how to cultivate it, and all that. I’m thinking maybe shore crabs could work? Or another small crab species. I found a decorator crab the other day, and OH MY GOSH was it the cutest thing I’d ever seen. If I see another one, that’s on the list of things I’d keep with the shrimp. So, that’s the plan. I would love any advice, recommendations, or criticisms you have. I understand there’s a good chance this could be too ambitious, and the well-being of the animals is number 1 priority, so if it sounds like it’s a bad idea then I’ll just scrap it. But I’m pretty keen on finding out a way to make this work.