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mountaintoppufferkeeper

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Everything posted by mountaintoppufferkeeper

  1. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Me either 😁. Learning on the job with this batch. Vinegar eels, first bites, algae and mulm is my current plan. Live baby brine once they can eat them. Pretty tiny at the moment but good practice for the hairy puffers whenever they give me some fry
  2. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Mekong River Puffer (pao Palustris ) 75 gallon tank with (90% sure) my fist 6 F1 fry in the breeder box. 6 adults, 4 flower pot caves, an array of COOP plants, a clay pipe 6" wide, 6 pieces of driftwood, variatus platy breeding colony and victorae mouthbrooder breeding colony. Two box filters, a 300 watt fluval pro heater 77 degrees filters, pool filter sand substrate, a few chunks of coral and some clam shells to buffer. Dircet sunlight for 1 hour in summer. The puffer fry seemed to hatch out sneak out / leave the cave and congregate on the sunny side of the tank. More of a give them food, caves, and microfauna to eat and let them do their thing setup.
  3. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Found these in the 75 with my Mekong River Puffer Colony today. Only other fish in there are victorea mouthbrooders and variatus platys doesnt look like either of those . 6 and counting just turkey baster'd them over to the breeder boxes
  4. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Success kinda. So far no hairy puffer eggs but ....... found 6 of these in the mekong river puffer colony this afternoon . Pretty sure they are mekong river puffer F1 fry. Now for the hard part.... raising them
  5. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    I would bet you could just feed the angelfish whatever you were feeding before it decided neon tetras would be tasty. If I did not have a desire to keep and breed the livebearers I probably wouldn't keep them just to have as a food source for another fish. If you put the livebearers in the 20 with the Angelfish it might just kill or eat them all. My past Aquahuna orders have worked out for me up here. They normally have groups of males, groups of females, unsexed groups of 6, or trios of their livebearers. I might try their Koi/Tri Swordtail - 6 pack that are normally in-stock if I wanted livebearers from them right now. They are very responsive on any issues in the rare instance when one happens on arrival. The benefit of hunting live fish, even for the "pure" piscivore, isn't something that requires constant feedings in my opinion; I would argue that all of the reported "pure fish eaters" feed fairly sporadically in nature and eat a variety of fish, crustaceans, amphibians, insects, miscellaneous worms, etc. when they do eat live foods. I generally utilize live fish as a semi-regular trigger of hunting behavior, to condition for spawning, and to clean up scraps from frozen food feedings. I feel its the best way for me to deal with culls and overpopulation of other fish and get the extra calcium and trace elements into the predator fish prior to and after breeding. Even my colonies of mekong puffer, hairy puffer, orinoco dwarf pike, and regani pike all eat frozen krill with vitachem, insects, cherry shrimp, snails, flake, pellet, and frozen blood or tubifex worms regularly with the live fish being a less frequent offering.
  6. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    I have not focused on betta but did manage to breed the brunei beauty before. Safely breed would be something you would need to determine as it is more in the eye of the breeder in my view. I believe the alien betta is already a hybrid of a few betta species in the betta genus to get that cool look so would assume continued hybridization would be similar results. Maybe post this one in the post for consideration for that live club talk on Betta occurring next week. If a hybrid is created from species within the same genus it is my understanding that it "may be fertile" but that also means they could be infertile. I would expect that I might not get fully viable eggs or might get some rate of infertile offspring in my generations of that cross which could be connected to the hybridization. I probably wouldn't worry about it and would give it a shot to see what happens. I would just share the genetic history with anyone i moved them to. I am interested to see how this is answered by those with betta experience.
  7. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Awesome species they look great. Klaus Steinhaus wrote about raising and breeding Geophagus sp ‘Tapajós red head in the Cichlid Room Companion in 2010 link below. Based on the reading it sounds like they can pair off and start to produce wriggler fry around 3" so you might be there already if you have noticed pairs forming. I would try a few flat rocks in the corners, wood, plants in something like the COOP easy planter or a rock pile (to break up sight lines and avoid being uprooted), and feeding good quality foods with frozen foods rotated in for conditioning. They may eat fry for the first few batches especially if they get nervous. Good luck. https://cichlidae.com/article.php?id=308
  8. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Nice. I'd move mine depending on what fish are in their permanent home. They look pretty good Id give one or two a shot if they were bigger than a mouthful for whatever is in the permanent tank and then decide on the rest from there.
  9. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    78 is toasty have you run them at 70-74? Id try the wondershell, crushed coral etc I have trouble with snail shells melting due to low calcium in the planted tanks unless I add a crushed coral or another buffer. I've also used those nano banquet blocks for shell strength. Shrimp and snails will directly eat that. The plants uptake the minerals and limit what is in the water for the snails for my system. Algae wafers normally have a ton of ingredients so it could be those. I would feed whatever I had around to snails and uaually use the extreme spirulina flake. I try canned or fresh vegetables as foods too: salt free canned green beans or the organic zucchini washed thoroughly cut and frozen to allow for sinking when I feed them. I drop a disk of frozen zucchini semi regularly and it sinks to the bottom fast once frozen and allowed to thaw in the tank. Everything eats it including snails, all sizes and types of fish, cherry shrimp, etc eat it. I net it out when there is a rare remnant and it floats up to the surface.
  10. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Thats more impressive to me than if it were a panda loach fry as potentially thought last week.
  11. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Thanks again. Panda garrra definately look similar to the panda loaches i have in there. The fry you identified for me did prove out to be a flag fish fry who amazingly enough survived 3 weeks im the system before detection, had to get past a prefilter, go through a sump pump, up 7.5 feet of 1/2 inch tubing out a 1/4 " supply line and through an RO connector used as an outlet. Then avoided being eaten by limia or the panda loaches somehow.
  12. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    After further review it now seems I have an impressive survivor flag fish fry up here. Amazingly must have made it through the prefilter on the sump pump, through the pump, up 7.5 feet of 1/2 inch tubbing, out the 1/4 inch supply line and RO tube connector output into the panda loach and limia tank. Then survived 3 weeks unnoticed....such a cool fish.
  13. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    I would try GBRs in one of the 7.5 gallons so long as I could keep the water parameters stable. Dean has a video on them in a 10 gallon set up for a pair. My Bolivian ram pair in an approximately 7.5 gallon that is part of my rack sump system of approximately 80 gallons total. They appear to be prepping to spawn soon and dont seem to mind the dimensions to me.
  14. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    I had the flex 9 before. Likes That black honeycomb marking stuff on the top inch or so of the glass to obscure the waterline The foam sheet for the base of the tank to cushion the base and give a little safety margin The ability to hotrod the filter chambers a bit with whatever you want. I added my heater to the last chamber with the pump to keep the tank at an acceptable temperature and cut additional coarse foam to fit the first chamber. I used the provided foam filter to hold any chemical filtrstion to bind up and remove meds when needed. The inlet at the top functions as a skimmer **** Didnt like The lighting didnt have the ability to set a timer for on off and requires the remote to adjust them on or off. The lighting remote vanished a few times under couches or cushions making the lights on off with the plug only. The feeding port on the cover is just an open area i added sponge to prevent jumpers The output flow can be pretty significant I believe I turned the pump down to low and angled the output up to limit the flow. I wasnt a huge fan of the rimless vertical bowfront. ***** That 9 is rimless and is basically 100lbs full so the surface needs to be fairly level and flat to avoid it leaking or cracking even with the foam underneath. Overall I view it as a nice clean look tank if you have a space for it.
  15. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Happy to share my thoughts there. Just my personal views on it based off of observing fish in my aquariums over the years and thinking about the why behind the behaviors and interactions I see. I refine that individual philosophy of keeping fish as I learn more but my opinion is those are the real benefits to the keeping fish in groups that work for my setups when I can.
  16. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Short answer is i think 6 is something customers can handle for the smaller sized tanks but generally more is better if within "reason". I do have some opinions and reasoning on my magic number : ** Schooling species and all fry ** I often apply the rule of 6 for growing species that are not commonly thought of as schooling as well. I would say for all species 6 is more for reducing the level of alertness/stress each fish has to have, spreading out aggression during growing to adult size, and to act as a bit of a dither fish for each other in the tank. The bigger group evens out behaviors and I believe limit stress by allowing the school to be collectively alert for predators and each fish only having to be proportionally stressed/aware. My opinion is that the lower the numbers of a species in a school the shorter the lives of those individuals just because each fish must be more alert/stressed for possible predators. ** Non-schooling fish in groups of 6 ** My personal theory is that 6 gives me the best possible chance of a non-schooling species forming a fully bonded adult pair in an environment which would simulate competition and natural selection within their species group. Its not the traditional 6 minimum idea but I believe it allows for the strongest individuals to outcompete the others, form a stronger pair bond, forces better parental care, and produces stronger fry. I have done initial groups of 6 with more than a few species of cichlids, freshwater puffers of the pao group, flagfish, mouthbrooding betta, african butterfly fish, plecos, livebearers, corydoras type catfish, and a few loach species with pretty good success so far.
  17. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Interesting. So far for my personal tanks that is also the case with the meekong river puffer pao palustris as well. 6 are happy to ignore variatus platys breeding in their 75 gallon and spread their occasional shennanigans across their group. The Pao baileyi Hairy puffer are smilarly more relaxed in a group or in a bonded pair set up for me.
  18. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Racoons are fast learners and fairly brilliant problem solving predators in my unfortunate experience. A resourceful and persistent foe when they find something of interest in my area. I think they would either need to be trapped and removed from the area completely or actively deterred from getting access to the pond. Id probably do one of those +/- $80 2 strand electric fence style barrier kits made for gardens and similar applications. Something like the Small Animal Garden Electric Fence Kit, GS-50 which is a 110 AC plug in would be my solution if you had an outlet within 100' of the pond it would work to deter whatever might enjoy taking them. Basically a plug in two wire "fence" you could have and put on a timer so it was just active at night when they were hunting your pond once they figure out the pond is off limits they would likely skip your stop on their nightly travels, find some other food source, and leave your goldfish in the water.
  19. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Congratulations. Ive had the flagfish males guard the eggs before and raise up the fry to adults in the same 20 long tank. Probably one of the most fun fry to raise up. They are stout from day 1. I recall the "process" being a bit intense and uncomfortable to be present for as well.
  20. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Shrimplets are so small everything eats them. Id probably not worry about an overrun but for me nano rasboras ember tetras etc will eat shrimplets when hungry and are somewhat less likely to go for adults but... In my tanks anything that eats shrimplets has a chance and might go for antennae and pick at , damage or otherwise harass the adults. The population control for me is to either trade extras or remove them as culls in whatever way you decide. If I had to have fish in the tank i would try ember tetras or similar and have some plant cover for the adults to molt and keep a stable population.
  21. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    I keep two types at the moment the L129 and the L169s. I havent noticed any breeding just yet could be too old now or possible they are more sensitive to my atmospheric conditions at about 2774 meters in altitude up here in Colorado USA. I havent ever seen male odontodes or any size differences but have had fighting before. I suppose I may only have females or onlybhave males somehow but that seems nearly impossible with groups of 6. Still working on both it would be neat to make some plecos. Current pleco groups * 6xL129 Colombian Zebra Pleco (Hypancistrus debilittera) recieved 2017 * 6xL169 Gold Stripe Panaque (Panaqolus sp. L169) recieved 2017-2018
  22. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Do you find that water parameters that are not "ideal" have an impact on fry development over "ideal" parameters? Will betta successfully breed in a range of parameters?
  23. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    Congratulations. My panda corys got going like that and never stopped. I'd try also using whatever dry foods you have crushed up to sufficiently small size in your fingers, the sera, and the live brine. I have even had panda loaches chase down live baby brine in the water column. My preference is to include a small piece of driftwood etc with the hatched fry so they have the oppertunity to eat mulm and associated micro organisms. Vinegar eels would probably be excellent in moderation if you had those as a culture. They dont particularly smell and are a pretty long term nearly unlimited culture.
  24. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    This has been mentioned a few times in the forum in the past searchable under brineshrimp with some excellent reaponses. Personally I have not noticed unhatched eggs being an issue in my tanks and imagine that the fish and microorganisims in an established tank break them down efficently. Id probably call it good until my normal water change time and keep an eye on it if it were my tank. If i notice an odd behavior or parameter i dont like i change more water but otherwise i dont worry about it.
  25. mountaintoppufferkeeper
    About 120 miles south divide co
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