Randy's Fish Room

[Randy]

Let's kick off my fish room journal with an entry/update on my Blue Gularis breeding project for the Coop.

What I enjoy most about operating a fish room focused on breeding is that there will be people in the store that see my fish, get excited, and want to take them home.  Call it silly, but it's just something that really drives me, knowing that someone is going to enjoy my fish and bring them happiness.

So, that being said, I asked @Cory what fish I should work with to make available in our retail store.  His response was the Blue Gularis.  I have kept Gardneri in the past and had great success breeding them, but the Blue Gularis is known to be more difficult.  Well, I am up for the challenge.

I started off by sourcing 30 eggs from Aquabid for the Blue Gularis "Loe" variety.

The eggs arrived with instructions to sit on them for 7-8 weeks from the date of collection, which was about 1 week prior if I recall collectly.

True to my self, I let my impatience win out and tried to hatch 10 eggs about 3 weeks in.  Let's just say you should follow the seller's advice. 😆

From that botched attempt I wanted the remaining 4 weeks to hatch the rest.

After putting the eggs in a shallow tupperware it took about 48 hours for the first fry to hatch.  I think I got maybe 2 more natural hatches.  I then used the vial pressurization method to force hatch the remaining eggs - picked this up from Gary Lange.

The remaining eggs went in a vial with a little bit of water.  Put the vial in the bottom of a 40 gallon breeder and loosened the lid to allow water pressure to enter the vial.

From that, I had one more egg hatch.

With several more eggs unhatched I decided to try the other method Gary talked about and that is to leave thee vial in your pocket and simply walk around.

Sure enough this did the trick and all remaining eggs hatched.

I raised the fry on BBS (via Ziss Brine Shrimp Hatcher) for the next several months.

Currently the Blue Gularis are spread across several tanks in the fish room with only one tank having multiple occupants, 1 male and 3 females.  I will probably spread these out too.

The attached image is a shot from today (7/22/2020) of one of my males.  Even if I don't have success breeding on my own I feel accomplished getting them to this point.  Their looks certainly are worth it alone.

[MickS77]

Nice job Randy! Thanks for sharing your techniques and success. I may be inspired to try breeding these in my fish room, such a beautiful fish 😍

[Mr. Ed's Aquatics]

I've failed to raise these a couple times, but really wanted to succeed as they're such a beautiful and uncommon species.  Good job getting any, honesty impressed. Hopefully you have luck bringing them back to the hobby in our area.

[Master Photographer]

@Randy, thanks for sharing the story and the image. It will be interesting to see the progression of these beauties.

[Streetwise]

@Randy, that might be one of my new favorite fish!

[Brian K]

That's actually something I planned on starting to breed. Was going to get some in the next few weeks once I set up my main display again and move fish to it to free up 2 aquariums for the project. Also I wish I lived close enough to drive to the co-op because I would love to get some of your super reds, but alas Michigan is a little ways away from the co-op. 

[Brian K]

I do have one question which method will you go with on fry generation, let eggs dry out and hatch after 6-8 weeks or leave eggs in tank pull parents and let fry hatch normally? If you do both methods I would be interested in knowing which is more successful. I have yet to receive my eggs, so unfamiliar with how rapidly they grow to know if it would be easier to hoard up on eggs and try hatching them all at once and letting fry raise up or letting them raise up in tanks, which makes tanks a huge limiting factor for raising fry. 

[Flynnster14]

Would Co-op Fry Food be small enough for the new fry? 

[Randy]

3 females and 1 male are in a 15 with some java moss, guppy grass, and a few potted tanks.  After speaking with Rosario Lacorte, I now have 2 dedicated tanks that breeders will utilize (more to come on that).  Before I move these group into that tank I decided to see if I could find some eggs.

Pulled the clump, poked around for a few minutes, and was rewarded with 4 eggs.  I can only imagine there were 2-3 eggs more for everyone I pulled, or equally likely, the killis have been enjoying eggs for lunch.

Can you spot the egg on the tip of my finger?

[Randy]

On 7/28/2020 at 11:43 AM, Flynnster14 said:

Would Co-op Fry Food be small enough for the new fry? 

Good question.  They were decent sized fry so possibly.

[Brian K]

Can't wait to hear more about it. My eggs will be ready to hatch excitingly on my birthday so can't wait for that to come in 3 more weeks. 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Brian K

[Mark Mason]

Wow Randy i really think my tanks would make those fish look good  

Nice work so far please keep updates :  )

 

[Dana]

Wow Randy...this is amazing!  Thanks for sharing, makes me wish I could buy from the Coop's retail store!  I think about that all the time...

[Randy]

Not quite IN my fishroom, but definitely fish related.

I recently relocated my 150 gallon tub/pond from the north side of my house to the south side.  This matters because the pond will get something like 50-80% more sunlight year-round.

I also sold my wife on the outdoor tub idea a couple years ago by saying I would encase the tubs in a wood frame and make raised flower bed perimeters, well that never happened and here we are...I guess better late than never.

Project was pretty easy, build a box out of pressure treated 2"x12"s, fill it with soil, plant flowers.  Done!😃

See pics below.  Added the gnome pic from the garden store because I was legit surprised that they made the mold for this guy.

[Dean’s Fishroom]

I like it!!! Really nice and I think the grow in will look really good. Also keeps you youngins far enough away from the water. 

Of course being the perfectionist that I am I have one idea for you. Get a piece of that flexible pex pipe or something similar. Run it from under the rim of the tub, through the ground under the 2x12's and out to where you have the air supply. Then run your airline through the pex pipe maybe even drilling a small hole at the top of the rim where it enters the pond and viola' no exposed airline to the pond. 

Also what happened, did the gnome run away, I like gnomes, wouldn't it be cool if you could stash one of those Aquarium Co-op USB Nano pumps inside the gnome and it would be hidden too?

My mind just working overtime.......... .

[Randy]

18 minutes ago, Dean’s Fishroom said:

I like it!!! Really nice and I think the grow in will look really good. Also keeps you youngins far enough away from the water. 

Of course being the perfectionist that I am I have one idea for you. Get a piece of that flexible pex pipe or something similar. Run it from under the rim of the tub, through the ground under the 2x12's and out to where you have the air supply. Then run your airline through the pex pipe maybe even drilling a small hole at the top of the rim where it enters the pond and viola' no exposed airline to the pond. 

Also what happened, did the gnome run away, I like gnomes, wouldn't it be cool if you could stash one of those Aquarium Co-op USB Nano pumps inside the gnome and it would be hidden too?

My mind just working overtime.......... .

And when are you coming over to make this video/forum content happen??  You know where i live! 😃

[Mr. Ed's Aquatics]

4 minutes ago, Randy said:

And when are you coming over to make this video/forum content happen??  You know where i live! 😃

Heh heh, great suggestion. Feel free to make that happen. I encourage all good ideas others give if they're offering to do it themselves. 

I do find I get them much less with that philosophy though. 

[Dean’s Fishroom]

8 minutes ago, Randy said:

And when are you coming over to make this video/forum content happen??  You know where i live! 😃

Guess we'll have to get on Jimmy's schedule...

[Paul]

On 9/6/2020 at 8:30 PM, Randy said:

Not quite IN my fishroom, but definitely fish related.

I recently relocated my 150 gallon tub/pond from the north side of my house to the south side.  This matters because the pond will get something like 50-80% more sunlight year-round.

I also sold my wife on the outdoor tub idea a couple years ago by saying I would encase the tubs in a wood frame and make raised flower bed perimeters, well that never happened and here we are...I guess better late than never.

Project was pretty easy, build a box out of pressure treated 2"x12"s, fill it with soil, plant flowers.  Done!😃

See pics below.  Added the gnome pic from the garden store because I was legit surprised that they made the mold for this guy.

By surrounding the tub with soil the water temps should fluctuate less.

[pedrofisk]

This may be how I convince the wife for me to have a year round small pond.

[Randy]

15 hours ago, Paul said:

By surrounding the tub with soil the water temps should fluctuate less.

That's a hopeful side-benefit.

[Paul]

8 hours ago, Randy said:

That's a hopeful side-benefit.

Count on it. The soil works as a great insulator and it’s now on the south side of your house the sun will be in it all day. If you’re concerned about loosing heat during the winter put a piece of polycarbonate glazing over the top. It worked in my goldfish/koi pond in North NJ and it get’s a lot colder there in winter. Good luck.

[Randy]

Another project of mine has been to set up Goodeid tubs in the garage, right outside the fish room.  The idea being that these tubs will get seasonal variation that Goodeids benefit from while still protecting them from getting too low in the winter time when it occasionally snows or drops to the 20s here in Western Washington.

For those that listen to the podcast, you might remember that guest Jose Gonzalez (Episode 24) sent me a group of Characodon sp. Los Berros.  Those fish went in a planted 20 high and seemed to do well.  That group stayed with me for close to a year but every few months I would lose a member and say no signs of breeding.  That ate very well scarfing down Hikari Vibra Bites and other dry foods.  Finally, the last fish from the group passed leaving me disappointed at my failure to keep, breed, and (most importantly) SHARE this awesome fish.  My thought on why I faired so poorly with this fish might have to do with the consistent "high" temperature of my fish room.  I believe at the time I was running an average temp of 80 degrees.  I believe this is far too hot for too long for this fish.  In talking with Jose, he did remind me that his fish are outside in ponds year-round.  His area of the country has mild winters, but it does dip in the low 30s for several days at a time.

Talking with Dr. John Lyons about Goodeids really got me fired up so that's when I made the plan to move 2 mothballed outdoor ponds into the garage and dedicate them (1 species per tub) to Goodeids.  I reached out to Jose to see if I could buy a group of Characodon from him for my second attempt with this fish.  He declined my money and sent me fish free of charge becuase he is so awesome (I still PayPal'd him money to cover shipping 🤫). To my excitement the fish came in today with only 2 casualties.  So here we are, the first tub is up and running with Characodon sp. Los Berros as the sole inhabitants, 2 males and 2 females.  Just to share the setup, the tub has two large pieces of driftwood, some crushed coral on the bottom, and a couple large handfuls of guppy grass from @Cory's fish room.  Technically I think I gave him this guppy grass to begin with. 😆 I plan on adding some 3" black PVC Ts to act as caves just in case these guys are into that thing.

I will eventually try and get some GoPro footage of these guys to share.

[Andy's Fish Den]

Interested to see how these goodeids do for you in a set up like this. I'm working with a couple species of goodeids now, and I had thought of moving them to a tub pond outside for the summer, but my winters get too cold (NW Ohio) for them to overwinter. 

[pedrofisk]

Fantastic. Once I get my mini-fishroom up and running I hope to be able to keep a couple of CARES species for conservation also. I loved the conversation with Dr. Lyons and have been reading up on the Goodeid Working Group to see if that would be a good way for me to get involved in conservation.