mountaintoppufferkeeper

Thanks also goes to @Beardedbillygoat1975 for our chat about Amazonas a ways back.

@itsfoxtailYes thats me. Thanks for the preview. Cool to see it in the magazine vs my end. I guess im a little further up the mountain than some. @AllFishNoBrakes tried to give my whole process out in that one including the finding them. That is the only magazine I get in hard copy form.

Im curious to see Page 78. I'm dying for my copies to arrive on the mountain 🙂

Will do

Yes made the journey for the party this time. Pretty great time. A little harder to work out on a work day but i plan to attend a few meetings in 2023

Thanks kindly. Those fry food needs have added that additional level of work turning me into a "food rancher" of all types and sizes. That is also a pretty rewarding aspect of the puffers for me. .... Though the sterbai did breed in a 50 with a predator characin and a herd of chain loach. The difficulty there was the situation on the corydoras side. They took a while in finding the proper spot between a ziss breeder box and the tank wall to make it happen 😁

A few bucket list this yesr 1. First up is more Pao cf palustris both F1 and F2 fry. F2 is the bucket list. I would like to see for myself how their behaviors adjust with each generation. 2. The Pao baileyi are producing eggs now I just need to decide which set up to best document spawning and pull spawn for similar footage as the palustris 3. I have also added a pair of spotted congo puffers to try my hand at egg scatterers as well. 4. Ill put the L169 plecos here. The odds of me not having a mixed group must be astronomical. I will pull those to their own tank with more wood caves and see how they go 5. That one thing that I have no idea is out there but will certainly find and go all in on.

Working on a few more species the hairy puffers are now ceetainly producing eggs. They will likely be next on the gif train

Thanks kindly. Yeah Im pretty hooked now 😁

Pretty good night at the club meeting. This is the first fish breeding plaque Ive ever received. It was a pretty fun night had by all. Highly reccomend participating in your local club breeders award program for those with any interest. It was cool to talk a bit with likeminded nerms in person. Species bred for 2022 award 1. Dwarf Pike Cichlid : Creicichla regani Rio Tapajos 2. Mekong River Puffer : Pao cf palustris 3. Corydoras sterbai

I just kinda got on a roll there 🙂 I have ordered online before for the clams etc. Its more justifyable at larger quantity of frozen foods but I definately agree that shipping cost isnt cheap.

I have kept a fahaka to about 5" or so in the past before moving that one on to a friend to replace one he lost and to focus on my puffer projects. @Grizzly I did not really see any issue with the fahaka teeth overgrowing on snails and similar foods to yours. At that small of a size the fahaka mouth was still growing as the teeth were but I would guess at 8" on up it would be more of a risk. REPASHY If you can get that on a clam shell so your puffer has to crunch the shell that would add more wear to the teeth. SNAILS I personally look at ramshorns as probably too thin to really wear down puffer teeth by themselves, trumpet snails are a tougher shell, and mystery snails seem to be thicker shells and much better longer term for teeth wear. CLAMS For a fahaka I would also try to get acceptance of clams on the half shell of appropriate size from either a seafood department at a grocery store, a seafood market, or the aquarium specific clams in the frozen food section of your LFS etc. I used Hikari bio pure clams on the half shell with my fahaka back then with good success after it had got to 4" or so. If I didnt have the LFS clams I would try fresh clams of appropriate size from a seafood department etc and just half the shell before feeding or before freezing it with a little vitachem and garlic guard for later feeding. FROZEN CRAB LEGS I havent tried it but have considered snow crab legs for a fahaka at larger sizes. They are smoother than king etc often on sale and in theory are just like a crayfish you can find in the frozen section of thr grocery store. CRAYFISH I do not believe Wisconsin allows you to recieve a shipment of live crawfish but if that ever changes.... I have thought of online ordering pounds of live purged crayfish normally used for a crayfish boil for my fahaka. My idea was if its food grade for me its food grade for my fahaka. My idea of getting pounds sent to me was to remove the need to have quite so much tank space needed for "crayfish ranching" to support my future 18" puffer. For my fahaka I estimated I would need to raise 10-20 adult crayfish a week to feed those as a primary food source. I am less of a crayfish devotee and more of a puffer guy so I knew that crayfish program would fail if I attempted it. CRABS Fiddler and mangrove same as crayfish not sure breeding and raising them would be fun for me Thats all the options I can think of that I would try with a fahaka puffer 4" and up.

@nabokovfan87 I havent seen temps change ratios here but I imagine it could be more than a few species that it would be a factor as well

@AquaJay96 Welcome to the forum. I have found that my best route is to get a few plants I enjoy plant them and see how they work with my tanks and processes. For me its fun to learn and try new things with my tank. I am a pretty big fan of the easy green for fertilizer. Those plants you are considering sound and look pretty amazing. I have not kept any of them. They seem to all benefit full light and would likely need something like easy green liquid fertilizer regularly to stay healthy. Needs on my list : 1. A tank size I want, 2. plants and a substrate that I enjoy looking at 3. fish species that interest me. 4. This forum, the aquarium coop youtube channel, and the plant descriptions on the coop website. Those are my starting points for new projects. 5. A timer on the light for the aquarium so i have a set cycle of light and dark for the plants and fish to work within. Beyond that I think it's open to interpretation. I use my plant tweezers and plant scissors all the time those are well worth having for a tank in my opinion.

missed both of these until now. yes I have tried pretty much everything since their arrival and mostly just let them decide and see what happens. I used planet catfish as the initial guidance so had wood caves drilled like that breeding report and also did a sort of stacked wood cave using many pieces of drift-wood a little silicone and rockwork to make a pleco wood condo of caves within the gaps. I have tried ceramics of all shapes and sizes pleco ceramics options as well as the plecocaves offerings ..... I think they want me to raise more puffers at this point 🙂

@Kat_Rigel I am of course slightly late to the party again but ..... to me it seems plausible that an interfamilial hybrid between the family Poeciliidae (limia) and the family Goodeidae (characodon) could occur since the way they reproduce is similar combined with the rare instances were interfamilial hybrids within an Order of fish have occurred in the past. Nature will find a way so to speak. I have no direct experience in this type of event but what you are observing is not that far off of what unintentionally created the "sturddlefish" in 2020 within the Order Acipenseriformes. The "sturddlefish" was the result of an unintended hybridization of Russian Sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) and American Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) and was reported in Genes magazine (original peer reviewed article: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/11/7/753 ). The scientists involved were not intending to produce this hybrid and did not expect it would be possible within an order following a genetic break between the families approximated 184 million years ago. I would assume it is a matter of the genetics combining within these two families of the Order Cyprinodontiformes to make surviving offspring. It would seem unlikely that any hybrid offspring would be fertile unless some crazy level of genetic mix worked out but I wouldn't totally dismiss it as a very rare but not totally impossible outcome. Genetics is fairly fascinating topic when you get to looking at it even casually. Links https://www.livescience.com/impossible-hybrid-fish-created.html Mexican goodeid fishes of the genus Characodon, with description of a new species. American Museum novitates ; no. 2851 Smith, Michael Leonard.; Miller, Robert Rush, 1916- https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/5248 Reproductive failure of dominant males in the poeciliid fish Limia perugiae determined by DNA fingerprinting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC47076/

Congrats @tolstoy21 im 0 for every pleco group ive ever had including the L169s that have been here since 2018. No advice just awesome to read this thread

@tolstoy21I change Methelyne Blue out over 2 days post hatching personally with no issues noted. If I follow the reccomended dosing it is no issue for me to leave it in there while they majority hatch. In my opinion if its not suffocating the eggs that implies its not harming the fry in the egg and would have no real difference in fry once hatched. I just change it out with my water changes of the hatching container. I will also put in a small cube of polyfilter to monitor its color change rate as it absorbs substances. That is my visual for water quality in the container between water changes. This about my level of MB concentration for the first day post hatch I have read about some MB positive impact on oxygen carrying capacity in fish hemoglobin before that probably doesnt hurt for a day or two either. Just like everything moderation is the key. If you want to get deep in the weeds on it this peer study on how it works is interesting: https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/lam.12534 One lab with the short version on how to use MB https://www.macsenlab.com/blog/methylene-blues-uses-in-fish-aquaculture/#:~:text=Methylene Blue is a safe,overdose the fish with it.

And my $$ is on @Beardedbillygoat1975. Then I can copy his method. 😁

Im going to have to try that dried duckweed deal with the worm cultures. I wonder if i dry it and mix with nutritional yeast etc if that would make the worms more nutritionally dense That was an intriguing tasket there. I couldnt help going all in on that search 😁

Thanks @TheSwissAquarist. My guess is figure 8 knowing the type of store carrying them, the shape and colors. I have no experience with them personally and defer to the experts to confirm Correction not a figure 8..... it looks like the Dichotomyctere cf. fluviatilis "Bengal" to me now which are also brackish https://www.aqualog.de/en/lexikon/dichotomyctere-fluviatilis-bengal-tetraodon-f-2/ @FiShrewd my pao species really enjoy sight breaks and occasional adjustments to their tank and the surrounding room. I normally leave any sponge filter futuer forward to allow them to "hide" from me when they choose. Puffers, for me, really enjoy interesting tanks and the occasional change to keep them entertained.

Nice one

@Beardedbillygoat1975 yes i brought back 2 males and 3 females when i noticed them and sent the alert. I figured id be more useful in discussions if i had a few as well 😁

Ill throw a couple of pics as well

This thread is going to be awesome. Looking forward to your success