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Saturday, January 8th ...

Just in case everyone is wondering what's been happening to me while I've been away, well ... first of all, the various public networks that I use for Internet access have been closed over the Christmas break, and my access is limited to say the least even now they're open. Consequently, I'll be here on this Board a good deal less often than I would like. But, the plus side is ... I've spent precious little money over Christmas, other than on food (my Christmas dinners are the stuff of legend - more on this if I'm asked in another Recovery Room forum post!), and so, I now have all the equipment to get the big Panda breeding aquarium up and running! Yay!

So, now comes the part where all the bits are put together to build a working aquarium. First stage, find somewhere safe to put the extension socket for the power supply. Somewhere where it won't be subject to the effects of all that water that will be sloshing around once the water changes around the main aquarium are added to by the new one. Next, wash something like 35 pounds of gravel. Next, fit undergravel filter and arrange freshly washed gravel. Next, add the first 25 litres or so of water. Next, arrange aquarium life support systems (heater etc) around the nice shiny hood that comes with the aquarium, and plug them in. Next, arrange several pieces of bogwood, a nice forest of Java Moss for the Pandas to spawn in, and some Java Ferns for variety (plus, those root and rhizone tangles will harbour some nice life forms as the aquarium matures, that will add to the diet of the baby Pandas I'm hoping will have an enhanced chance of survival in this new spacious nursery). Next, top up aquarium with remaining volume of water. Next, add some Hornwort because it will help make the nursery a happy place for baby Pandas to grow up in. Next, because the Java Moss I'll be using originally came from the main community aquarium, and this has a snail population I don't want in the breeding aquarium (don't want the snails snacking on Panda eggs), add some snail terminator to the water. Next, leave aquarium running for a minimum of 7 days before adding any fish, give everything time to settle in. Next, introduce four juvenile Pandas from the 2003 breeding attempt, and let them slowly cycle the filter for about four weeks. All being well, I should be ready to start producing Pandas on a regular basis, with a decent chance of survival, by the end of February.

But, I'm ready to start letting the Pandas breed in a decent sized aquarium at last. Only taken me two years to acquire the paraphernalia, what with diversions from lawyers and bureaucrats screwing my life around between September 2003 and Christmas 2004. If it wasn't for legions of idiot humans who think they're entitled to run my life for me and tell me how to live it, the fish and I would have been happily on their way a long time ago. Such is life.

That's the beauty of fish. Provided you sit down, do the research, and go into the keeping of fish with your eyes open and your brain cells fully engaged, they don't drop unwanted surprises into your lap, barring odd disease episodes. They're grateful for the things you do for them, and show this visibly by gambolling around happily, showing off vibrant colours, and in the case of my Pandas, spawning like mad about once a week. They don't stab you in the back, try to cheat you, or do any of the million and one other unpleasant things that quite a few of the humans in my life have unleashed upon me of late. Which, for the record, includes a violent assault unleashed by six yobs back in November, when they thought it would be fun to try and set fire to me with a firework. Which goes a long way toward explaining my jaundiced view of much of humanity.

My fish, on the other hand, greet me in the morning with a glint in their eyes, and a chorus of "Daddy, feed us ... daddy, feed us ...", followed by contented burping after breakfast and the day's business of madcap frolics. In the case of the Lemon Tetras, this involves getting frisky the moment any rays of sunshine hit the aquarium, while the Pencil Fish enjoy a morning's jousting. The Pandas begin their post-breakfast game of tag, in which the object seems to be to find as many comical and amusing ways of swimming in and out of the holes of the bogwood boot as possible, in between powerhead bubble surfing and inquisitive poking of barbels into nooks and crannies. Even the Cardinals, whose main purpose in life seems to be to just sit around looking pretty, find themselves motivated to put on a little chase game entertainment. And the Otocinclus, well, they do what happy Otocinclus do in aquaria all over the world, hang around the front glass and hoover algae off the Amazon Swordplant leaves. Later in the evening, Mata Hari and Shy Di think about hitching their petticoats for the boys, and if it's a water change day (which I try and arrange to coincide with the live food delivery) they start flirting shamelessly, with the result that about an hour or so later, they're setting to trying to fill the world with lots more little Pandas. Which they wouldn't do if they weren't happy. The upshot of all this is that I look at the aquarium, and find all sorts of reasons to bask in a nice warm glow all over. Don't get that from the neighbours

Right, I've just spent three hours setting it up, and now it'sticking over nicely, with some Java Ferns and Java Moss sitting nicely in two corners stuck to some bogwood. Just let that run for 7 days with a spot of fish food to start up the filter, then introduce the Pandas to their brand new Passion Flower hotel, five star variety, and let them get on down and boogie! After 7 days turning over, the new aquarium should be ready. One advantage of living on my own is that I can let the aquarium tick over minus fish, without a wife and kids moaning about how unsightly it is! But then, if I ever do acquire a wife, I'll make certain she's a fishkeeper as well ...

In the meantime, the main community aquarium is humming nicely, the Pencil Fish are jousting, the Pandas are beetling about the gravel looking for tasty morsels after the regular feed, and the Otocinclus are clambering about the Hornwort, which they've taken a liking to for some reason. That's what I like to see, happy fish gambolling and frolicking about, all vibrantly hued and frisky with the joys of Spring, even though it's January and Spring is some way off yet Two of the Pandas have just found something to interest them in the Java Fern root tangle atop my bogwood 'tripod', and it's hilarious to see their little tails waggling at frantic speed as they bury their snouts in the rhizomes to ferret out whatever happens to be lurking there that tickles their taste buds. Meanwhile, two of the 'alpha male' Lemon Tetras are getting in the mood too, engaging in a spot of jousting of their own, which probably means that if the following morning is a sunny one, they'll be treating me to the patter of tiny fins soon after breakfast. Warm glow all over, contented sigh, the stuff that happy fishkeeping is made of.

So, fingers crossed, I'll be rearing a nice batch of Panda babies in the not too distant future. And, as if they know that there's a new home waiting for them, the other Pandas in the old nursery aquarium have just started spawning too, almost as if they're trying to tell me that *they* want first turn in the new aquarium! Wonder how they knew I was setting it up? Just goes to show, fish are smarter than they're given credit for!

For the record, the new Panda Passion Flower Hotel™ is a 70 litre aquarium, same size as the main community aquarium, and sits on the bottom tier of the same stand. Filtration is undergravel, driven by airstone, through a gravel bed of fine particle gravel (2mm dia), and the lighting for the moment is a bog standard warm white tube, although that'll shortly be upgraded to a 10,000K colour temperature aquarium tube optimised for plant growth similar to the one in the main community aquarium. When everything is settled, and the new aquarium is ready to receive its first paying guests, so to speak, I'll add Hornwort sprigs to help keep nitrates down and make the place a happy nursery for baby Pandas. I'll also add some more bogwood, LOTS more Java Moss, and possibly an Amazon Swordplant for them to play on too, as the Pandas in the main aquarium use the Amazon Swordplant leaves in that aquarium for all the world like an underwater budgie swing - it's fun to watch! I might try a Vallisneria thicket as well.

Then, the old nursery that has served so well in the past can be my quarantine tank. Either that, or I can see if I can persuade the Otocinclus to breed in it. Now that would be nice, breeding the Otocinclus as well. I might even experiment with a floor of Java Moss and try letting the Lemons breed in it - raise the temperature to 80°F, carpet bomb them with live Daphnia, and possibly raise a batch of Lemons. The world is my oyster now ...

Who knows, if I can find a Cryptocoryne or two, I could even try breeding the Pencil Fish. Although that will be a pretty ambitious project, given that they are, to put it mildly, of idiosyncratic temperament. I might even push the boat out and try breeding the Cardinals - although if I succeed in doing that, I'll be able to give myself a major pat on the back, because even the experts still find those a challenge. However, the fish dealers in the area charge a premium price for local bred Cardinals if they get their hands on them, so turning up with a batch of my own will be a nice little earner if I manage it - an incentive to try! However, the Pandas will be the main breeding focus for the time being, given that [1] they spawn so readily in my community aquarium [2] they're utterly lovable, and [3] one local dealer has told me that he can sell Pandas for £8 each, and will pay me £4 each if I can supply a minimum of 25 bouncing juveniles. £100 will pay for a lot of fish food over the coming year!

So, while 2004 was, in the last months, a year I'm happy to see the back of, 2005 has started nicely, and here's hoping it'll continue that way. Preferably with nice batches of baby Pandas coming off the assembly line, staging a campaign for world domination.

I think it's time for some sinking algae wafers for the Otocinclus. And with that, I'll let you all read this through again a few times and enjoy my fish watching reportage. Oh, and a belated Happy New Year to everyone, and here's to lots of breeding successes to you all - Bruce Moomaw and his Diamonds (poor guy deserves some good luck after the scrapes he's been through with those critters), Cory_Di and her cute habrosus,, Jason and the Cichlid collection, Angiewny (where's she been of late?) and her own batch of Pandas, and one I'd *love* to hear is an account from Shini breathlessly panting and calling everyone to come over and look because he's bred his Rhinopias - that should put a good couple of thousand dollars in the bank account if he manages it! Not forgetting, let's see, how many names can I remember sitting here in my living room ... Madattiver, Tiny Clanger, Toirtis and his Bichirs, Oleta and the reef gang, Roona, Koi Keeper, Adam of course (by the way, just what DOES Adam keep? Does anyone know?), SunFlwrGrl, Cory_Addict (come on girl, spawn those duplicareus you wowed us with last year!), and of course, better luck to poor JasonPisani in Malta who spent last summer watching his fish being cooked in a heatwave - hope you got a cooler for Christmas!

UPDATE: It's now Monday, January 10th as I write this, and the new breeding aquarium has been simmering for around 36 hours. And it's gone cloudy. Why?

To set the filter cycle going, I only used a small pinch of fish food, which shouldn't be enough to cause this level of turbidity. The main aquarium didn't do this when I set it up 10 years ago!

Could it be silt from the gravel? Only the gravel I chose was an utter pig to wash, took me 1½ hours to wash it, and some of the filth that emerged from the first washings was pretty awful to look at. Even so, after 1½ hours of washing, the gravel should be clean. Doing that in cold water in January makes the hands tingle a bit I can tell you ... ! Have to say on reflection that I'm a tad disappointed. Shouldn't be this cloudy with no fish in it! In any case, there shouldn't be enough organic debris in a brand new aquarium to cause this pea-souper - it looks like a bad London smog from the days before the Clean Air Act ... funny part is, though, the water doesn't smell. Which again should be the case, given that it's only 36 hours old as I write this. Shouldn't need a water change this quickly! And it can't be the fault of the bogwood, that's been soaking in water changes for nearly a year waiting for the grand opening ...

As I've said above, the kind of fine gravel I've chosen to use for my Panda breeding aquarium is a complete pig to wash, which is all the more of a puzzle to me since it came in a hermetically sealed bag. The only conclusion I can come to is that whichever aggregate merchant supplied it to my LFS bagged a vacuum cleaner full of floor sweepings and mouse droppings with the gravel before shipping it. Anyone else had this much hassle with fine gravel? If the amount of detritus latent in the mix is related to particle size (i.e., smaller particles equals more muck), I hate to think of the labour involved in washing sand, which some people here use.

I'll see what a couple of water changes does. Hopefully that'll do the trick. And, I'll pop some more plants in, give any suspended particles some nice plant roots to become entangled in.

Oh, and take a tip from me. If you have (unlike me in my Third World brick shack) running hot water, use it to take the chill off the water if you're washing gravel in Winter. Either that or buy a pair of Marigolds.

Any offers?

[Edited because I just realised Cory_Addict is another girl ... sheesh ... trust me to write this after the Christmas claret ]

Last edited by Calilasseia at 10-Jan-2005 08:54

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Red wine and a forum always make for some amusing musings Cal!

Good luck Cal . Hope it works for you.

Just to let you know, my Habrosus school has been actively mating . Being in a tiny condo and the only spare tank I had tied up with a baby mystery rainbowfish, I couldn't remove the java moss to save some of the eggs. If get to move this summer as I would like, I hope to grab that java moss to try to raise some of the fry. I wouldn't want a mass undertaking. I could easily place a dozen fry, but not much more without sending them to fish stores I'm not comfortable with.

"Mini-Me" my original Habrosus, swelled with eggs as soon as the other 5 were added. One little runt started chasing her from the get go and I didn't even think he was old enough. When I saw strange behavior a few weeks ago, I just sat back and observed figuring they were laying eggs. Looking at the size of the eggs, I couldn't believe such a large egg would come out of such a tiny fish. Then I saw it - I watched as an egg slipped out of her. They were stuck to the glass about 6cm up, especially on the glass seal, and in the java moss, java fern and any place else that suited them. The other cories had themselves a nice midnight snack.

Last edited by Cory_Di at 12-Jan-2005 18:13

The time is now cruising toward Tuesday, January 11th, 2005, as I write this. And, the Panda Breeding Aquarium is exhibiting some weirdness.

First of all, the cloudiness appears to be abating. I expected that a bacterial bloom would persist for over a week, yet this one (if that is what it is) seems to be receding.

Second, I suddenly remembered that in the main aquarium, I'd used a piece of aluminium foil as a 'Heath Robinson' reflector. Which I'd forgotten to install in the new aquarium. So, I duly installed one. And, suddenly, the water appears a bit clearer still. Not yet as wonderfully crystalline as the main aquarium (which still manages to look like the kind of aquarium that appears in a Tetra ad, and no, this isn't an idle boast, quite a few people have asked me how I do it), but getting there.

Third, examining the front glass closely, I noticed that somehow, there were fingermarks and smudges upon it. Which, when examined closer still, appeared to be on the inside of the glass. So, break out one of my collection of old pan scourers that I use for algal scraping, and again, things look a little cleaner still.

Fourth, I decide that since there are no fish in the aquarium as yet, it should be safe to give the outside of the front glass a bit of a polish. Again, hey presto, a little bit less cloudy again. Still not perfect, but the cloudiness isn't anything like the pea soup it was earlier this morning. In fact, I suspect that if I add some more cured bogwood and some more Java Moss (which I'l be adding anyway because I want a huge wall of it growing up the back as a Cory spawning bed), it may disappear altogether. So, when the LFS gets his fresh supply of bogwood on Friday, I'll probably devote some of that day to boiling lumps of bogwood in big saucepans. Just as well I don't have a wife and kids to moan at me throughout all of this - but as I've said, I'll make sure that if I do end up with a wife and kids, [1] said wife will be an MTS patient with her own collection of fishy friends to go dewy-eyed over [2] I'll promise her a batch of Panda Corys of her own as a reward for putting up with my setting-up hassle, and [3] any kids we have will know the nitrogen cycle off by heart before they even leave the womb I suspect when Jessnick announce (note the intentional plural, there's two of them in the baby photo thread!) in around nine months' time that little Hailey has spoken her first words, those words will be 'gravel vac' ... but I digress.

I'm also convinced that the bog standard warm white fluorescent tube isn't helping matters. In about two weeks time, I'll be upgrading to a 10,000K aquarium-specific tube optimised for freshwater aquarium plant growth, and then the aquarium should look a LOT better than it does now. On the occasions when I have to use the warm white tube as an emergency tube when replacing dead tubes in the main community aquarium, that looks sad and a pale shadow of its usual self, coming back to life again when I get a 10,000K colour temperature tube. Still, given that the first of those tubes I bought when I set up the community aquarium back in 1994 lasted seven years before biting the dust, I can't complain when they do finally pack up - after all, they cost £6.99 UK, which means I'm getting superb light for just under £1 per year. Needless to say, that'll change dramatically if I move into marines and start buying T5s or metal halides, but hopefully by that time, the technology will have moved on and someone will have implemented my laser lighting suggestion

Oh, yes. Almost forgot. Must remember that Cory_Addict is female, slap wrist ...

UPDATE : since I sometimes keep strange waking hours, I'm writing this at around 4 am. And, the aquarium smog is cleaning up nicely!

Now, it's pretty clear. Not quite the sparkling crystal clarity of the main community aquarium, but it's getting there. Which means that the plants have woken up and started to function properly after their dormant spell. It'll probably look a LOT better when I buy the 10,000K colour temperature tube to illuminate it with, but for now, it's looking fairly decent.

Which, again, is a puzzle. If the cloudiness was a bona fide bacterial bloom, how come it's only lasted around 18 hours? I thought that bacterial blooms in the water took a week or more to shift, and only then with numerous water changes. Perhaps the lack of organic debris in the new aquarium is helping, but the irony is that it's started to clear up after I added another pinch of fish food to give the filter a kick. Furthermore, in answer to one of Fallout's questions during my first ever visit to the FP chat room, I haven't used a bacterial cycle mix, instead I'm relying upon the bacteria turning up au naturel, just as I did with the main aquarium back in 1994. Hence the minimum 7 day wait before I even bother testing the water, because I know that the numbers will be swinging pretty wildly in that first 7 days.

Meanwhile, on the subject of testing water quality - electronic pH meters have been in circulation in chemistry labs now for a good three decades to my knowledge (I saw one being demonstrated when I was taking chemistry lessons at school way back in 1978) and the latest models are accurate to something like 0.001 pH units (not that an aquarium needs that level of accuracy!). So, how come no-one has figured out a way of making these things accessible to the aquarium world? At the moment, a lab quality pH meter is a pretty expensive piece of kit, and while a marine reef keeper could justify the expense, at the moment it's a luxurious indulgence for the rich in the freshwater world. A unit that costs, say, £25, and has a 10 year life guarantee on the electrodes, would in my view go down a storm with serious fishkeepers! Better still, if someone came up with a sort of aquarium multi-meter (like the ones electronic engineers have for circuit testing), with different probes for pH, ammonia, nitrite etc., this would also be a major hit with the serious fishkeepers. I know I'd much prefer to shell out for a piece of kit that would see me through 10 years' worth of testing for the one sum of money, than have to keep replenishing standard aquarium kits. If someone came up with this little dream invention of mine, and sold it for, say, £50, I think that would be a hit with most of the people on this Board, especially if the meter probes came with a 10 year life guarantee! Add up the cost of a year's standard testing for pH, ammonia, nitrite etc., particularly among marine aquarists, and it probably comes to more than £50 in a single year. In that light, £50 for ten years' worth of testing, and at a level of accuracy that blew standard kits out of the water, would sell like hot cakes. Anyone here agree with me?

Oh, yes. Almost as if the Pandas somehow know I'm setting up a brand new breeding aquarium for them, they're spawning yet again. Mata Hari has now spawned three times this month, and the Pandas in the old nursery aquarium have spawned once that I know about because I caught them in the act. It's almost as if the two sets of Pandas are competing for who gets first turn in the Passion Flower Hotel™ ...

ANOTHER UPDATE: late in the evening of 11th January - the cloudiness has all but vanished. I didn't expect it to go this quickly. I had the nasty suspicion that I was in for a long haul of water changes to clear the fog. Weirder and weirder. Anyone else experienced transient cloudiness of this kind in a new aquarium?

Now all I need is some nice new pieces of bogwood to attach more Java Moss to, and create a wall of green at the back of the aquarium as a nursery for all those Panda eggs ... preferably bogwood pieces with nice holes in them in intricate arrangements to form play caves for the Pandas, as I know they love play caves!

Oh, and Cory_Di, big eggs seem to be a feature of small Corys - pygmaeus and cochui both produce eggs that seem totally out of proportion to the size of the fish


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002