Shadow_Arbor

Update: Some more baby pictures and a new clutch of eggs!

It's a bit hard to tell from the picture but this might be a Snow White. If it's in general good health and has recovered from shipping stress but is white with bluish tints on the fins and on the body, it may be a snow white. You can compare to the photos on my most recent post. I'll add a picture of my female and a tiny fry here. As for genetics, I agree with @Odd Duck completely. If you cross them I'd be interested in an update in a year or two on the f1 x f1 cross 🙂

Yes, true Super Whites are descendants of l144 blue eye. They keep the blue eyes but loose all the yellow pigmentation. In the future I plan on crossing them with LF l144. I will attempt with a few different test crosses to determine if there is a mendelian characteristic to the pigment inheritance. If there is I will use the knowledge I've gathered from Super Red LF test crosses (contrary to what you'd think, the LF gene is dominant) to produce a LF Snow White. That or someone will import LF Snow Whites into my country 😂 Either way I'll have fun.

Sorry for the month long wait @Beardedbillygoat1975 , I've been busy with my Biology BSc. So here's a breakdown of my Ancistrus sp. breeding setups in general, and the snow white's in particular. Aquarium dimensions: L 45, H 40, W 34 (cm). 60 liters total. I run an Eheim liberty 130 HOB on each tank filled with biological media and filter floss. Substrates is Dennerle's scapers soil. I use planted tank substrates as I have better success growing plants in them long term and they're softer than most gravels and sands available to me. All Ancistrus aquariums are more successful with driftwood in my experience. Most likely because of the wood fibre (lignin) that is ingested as a byproduct of biofilm grazing by Ancistrus sp. but this is my own private theory. This aquarium has a large chunk of spider wood. I have 3 caves of varying sizes spaced out in the aquarium. My male is young, currently he's using the smallest of the caves, but if he rivals the size of my super red male, he'll grow too large to use it eventually. Plants consist of anubias (pinto, gold, petit), other aquatic epiphytes. As well as Echinodorus (red rubin and tenelus), and a bunch of Cryptocoryne sp. Parameters & Maintenance: GH\KH 16 - 18 dGH These tanks are at my parents house, which is supplied with water from local drilled wells. In the winter the water softens a bit because our winter is the rainy season. My tap water is pretty clean. It's very hard but has a relatively low TDS (300ppm) in comparison to the hardness. This only indicates that I have little fluoride, chlorine, and other unwanted solutes. pH 7.5-8.0 I keep my tanks around 22-24 degrees Celsius during winter so growth rate is a bit slower, but I'd rather use undersized 25 watt heaters to reduce the chance of a tank cooking. 80% water changes are performed weekly or bi-weekly (depending on how busy my studying is). I bypass my RO membrane so that I can fill the tank with filtered water directly from the tap. The water passes through a sediment filter and two carbon blocks. Food: I will eventually write an in depth post on how I make all my DIY dry foods @itsfoxtail. In short, I use a bunch of powdered dry ingredients (Spirulina, BSFL, Krill, Moringa, Bee pollen, etc.) with some egg and a tiny bit of flour. I dry the dough, after putting it through a pasta maker, with a food dehydrator. The amounts and how to calculate the exact and final composition I'll leave for a future post. Inhabitants: Other than the breeding pair and their offspring I keep an assortment of other fish in my breeding tanks that are set up in this "natural" manner: Cherry barbs - mosquito prevention, pretty, fun to breed, mouth too small to hurt Ancistrus offspring. Neocaradina - make money, help keep the substrate and plants clean, help breakdown fish waste into detritus that the filter can pick up or that can be broken down by bacteria in the substrate. Khuli loaches - Unlike the other fish, I only have these in my Super Red tank because I haven't gotten any for the Snow Whites yet. I keep them in groups of three as planaria elimination. One of the first issues I had breeding ancistrus in an old tank (4 years ago) was that planaria bred to astronomical numbers in a horrible quartz substrate. This substrate was impossible to thoroughly clean. There were literally thousands. At night they would invade the cave and eat the eggs. I found the eggs covered in planaria many times. The Khulis stop planaria from reproducing in two ways, one - they eat leftover food (I also target feed them, they're fat I promise), two - they actually eat planaria. Pictures: I apologise for the terrible quality, I've no time for normal glare-less photos. The Tank A single baby About 40 babies out during a water change A fat male khuli (female is double the width)

Definitely, I will gladly update this weekend with more info and more pictures.

I've been breeding Super Red LF Ancistrus for years now and about a year ago I discovered someone who managed to get Snow Whites into the country. I purchased an adult male and female the refused to breed until now. Probably a combination of weather change and maturity. Here are some pics! Video of eggs: Female Male enjoying my DIY dry Ancistrus food

It really depends on the crayfish. If we're talking about procambarus or cherax, there shouldn't be an issue as long as the shrimp have had a chance to breed before adding the crayfish or if you start off with over 20 shrimp. With the cambarellus sometimes we can run into issues. One such issue is the male cambarellus trying to mate with the shrimp killing them. It's still possible, but in my experience usually the shrimp end up disappearing in cambarellus tanks long term. If the aquarium is really large that might work out better. Actually the Cherry shrimp will help keep the tank "clean". I raised hundreds of cherry shrimp with one procambarus clarkii in a 100 liter tank. Every now and then a cherry shrimp got eaten, but for the most part they would sit on the procambarus, and around him, while eating all the leftover food as crayfish are extremely messy eaters. In my experience you can try adding some live plants like moss, apontegetons, Anubis, and maybe some easy Crypts. If they manage to establish they usually don't get murdered by the procambarus.

If that's the case I'd add root tabs for sure. About dosing the water column, I tend to agree with earlier comments. If you do dose, make sure it's lean at the beginning. That way you'll give the plants a chance to start growing without algae blooms.

What substrate do you have? If it's a planted tank substrate then you shouldn't really fertilize at all for the first few weeks. In any case, I wouldn't fertilize until plant growth is noticed. Root tabs, if put deep enough in the substrate, shouldn't cause issues as the fertilizer shouldn't leech into the water column. Good luck!

Dennerle's scrapers soil. These groups are rather toxic from my experience. I might try some Whatsapp groups though. Some of them are a bit more welcoming.

From my experience, and like most things, it's not so simple as A or B. It depends on the egg size and strength. I've seen neos do both. Usually larger eggs they'll leave alone, but the really small ones might run into trouble. I've also seen them pull apart eggs while "cleaning" them. A similar instance, I've seen in my high volume neo tanks, neos rip (and tear until it is done - sorry I couldn't help myself with that reference) apart baby shrimp when being fed. I can only assume accidentally. So I'd say in general B but not always.

Sorry for taking forever, yes this is Rosen Maiden. I thought it would make a really nice unique carpet up front, and it does, but it grows so much faster than I'm used to with CO2 injection. Normally I wouldn't mind but I have no one to give the cuttings too and it hurts to throw them out. The hobby isn't super developed where I live, especially the social aspect :(

This is the latest iteration of my nano high tech tank. It's a 30 liter and has been scaped this way for about 6 months. It's not ready yet, still balancing out some algae issues and am missing some background plants, but it's getting there. Not sure why uploading to youtube killed the video quality, so here's a picture:

From my understanding this isn't as much of an issue as people make it out to be on forums. When you dose the EDTA into a higher pH it doesn't immediately break down, there is a gradual decline in its effectiveness. I BELIEVE that most likely a small percentage might react with the phosphate and precipitate out but most is absorbed and utilized by plants long before. I mean if you think about it, even when you dose one day macro one day micro using the EI method. On Micro day you still have plenty of phosphates in the water. I've been dosing phosphate and Iron on the same day for over a year without noticing or testing any Iron deficiency. We're also talking about relatively very low concentrations in the tank (1-0.5 ppm of phosphate). In order for these molecules to precipitate out of the solution they need to come into contact with one another. At lower concentrations the probability that an unprotected Iron ion will collide successfully with a phosphate molecule is low.

Sadly in Israel we can't get Easy Green yet. I've been using the EI dosing method for many years now in low tech and High tech tanks. Recently Cory mentioned that everyone told him it's impossible to make an AiO fert but he went and made one anyway. I've taken courses this year in Organic, Physical, and General Chemistry and decided that I wanted to make my own DIY AiO that dosed the exact same ratio of ferts into my tanks but instead of having 4 individual bottles, all I have now is one. After doing my research i discovered that there are two main issues: The main issue is Phosphate binding with Iron. What usually protects Iron is the EDTA chelator. The issue is that at higher pH this chelator breaks down releasing the iron ions and allowing them to bind with phosphate. The solution, reduce the pH in the fertilizer bottle. How? Well vitamin C or Ascorbic Acid is a readily available cheapish supplement. Great I can do all the fun math and find out how much I need to put into my fert bottle to keep the pH bellow 6. Also, vitamin c most likely has positive effects on the aquarium compared to other acids like HCl. It's also an antioxidant. The second issue? Mold. Solution? Potassium Sorbate (E202) a commonly used food preserver. Also cheap and readily available. I've only been using this new DIY fertilizer for about 3 weeks but I've seen no negative changes in my aquarium. The ratio of fertilizers is the same, and I can choose to dose daily or weekly easily. This has helped reduce the amount of time per day that I spend adding fertilizers and has freed up time for me to type up this post during finals week. The great part is that I can create a different DIY fertilizer that suits each different style of aquarium.