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I've gathered together most of the equipment for the breeding aquarium now. I have the aquarium itself, a hood, heater, air pump, undergravel filter and about 20 kilos of gravel (and believe me, it was fun cycling home three miles in sticky, humid heat with that in my backpack - the things we do for the love of our fish!). Oh, and assorted ancillaries including 2 metres of air hose, connectors, clips for a fluorescent tube, screw mountings and various other bits and pieces. All I need now is a lighting system and a fluorescent tube, and away I go.

Also waiting to go in the breeding aquarium is a big collection of Java Moss, several large Java Ferns (and some bogwood bits to attach them to), and a collection of Hornwort. After reading the article on vegetable filters, and alighting upon the news that numerous breeders have discovered that fry mortality is greatly reduced in an aquarium containing Hornwort, I went out and bought some. My LFS has, it seems, has masses of it in stock, but all of it in a big tub outdoors round the back where most of the tropical aquarists never see it. And believe me, he's got some humungous pieces in that tub too. One of them was four feet long.

So, I'm within a whisker of setting up a five star Passion Flower Hotel for Mata Hari and the boys. Somewhere where they can really let rip with their spawning instincts. And hopefully provide me with a nice crop of baby Pandas that are not going to be wiped out by various causes.

Just to make sure, I've put some Hornwort in the original nursery aquarium with Big Junior and his pals (always assuming of course that 'Big Junior' isn't the female - since they grew up, they've been impossible to tell apart ) and so any spawning fun and frolics that those guys get up to will also, hopefully, reward me with a nice crop of surviving baby Pandas.

I'm still puzzled as to why the last batch went to the great aquarium in the sky. Especially as I went to the trouble of temperature matching the water for water changes, and condtioning it beforehand. One possible reason for their demise I have alighted upon is this: the fry may actually be sensitive to any accidental overdosing of dechlorinator. And, with smaller volumes of water, judging the dose is fairly tricky when you don't have a graduated syringe to measure doses precisely. Anyway, that won't be a problem in the big breeding aquarium, because this one is a 2 foot aquarium, which should be plenty big enough to raise a batch of Panda babies, given that a female Panda averages around 20 eggs per spawn. Enough space to raise the babies to a saleable juvenile size, certainly. And, with a playground of Java Moss, Java Ferns and Hornwort, any future Panda babies should be VERY happy indeed!

Even though the Lambourne book advises the use of sponge and box filters in a Corydoras breeding aquarium, I'm going to go for an air-powered undergravel filter this time round, partly to make nitrogen cycle control a lot easier (namely, get a population of bacteria to do it for me!). I can invest in a powerhead at a later stage to make the filter more efficient when the babies have reached the 12 week old stage, and once I've managed to sell some Panda babies, start thinking about setting up another aquarium for Anomalochromis thomasi

Oh, and everyone's had their water change. Consequently, it's madcap fun and frolics again as I write this (Saturday 14th August 2004, 23:14) especially among the Pandas, who always respond to a fresh water change the way small children do when they're let loose in a chocolate factory. And just lately they've been getting 25 litres of new water once every 3 days in this heat, partly because getting my arms wet during the gravel vac operations cools me down in this heat too

Oh, and Big Junior and pals in the nursery aquarium seem to like the Hornwort. I think the approach I'll adopt in the big breeding aquarium is this: one or two pieces anchored, and others floating. It's a pity that plant doesn't root in the substrate, because as a background for photographing fishes, it really is special, it really does help to show off all manner of fishes to advantage, as Innes notes in his venerable tome on the subject. Even in his day, he made the comment that illustrators of fishes never seem to tire of having at least one or two sprigs of Hornwort in the background, and I can now see why. In fact, I might even drop a piece in the main aquarium if I have some left over, and see if the Pencil Fishes and the Lemons like it!

And, just as I was about to wrap up with a brief comment on how much fun it is to have a 'busy' aquarium to watch while working on the PC, my Pencil Fishes are jousting again, and my Pandas are alternating between powerhead bubble surfing and swimming up and down the glass doing the 'ritual cleaning' display bit to Mata Hari and Shy Di. This time round, I think it'll be Shy Di's turn to hitch the petticoats, as it were, judging by how round she's looking, and this is before I go out shopping for the 'red spaghetti' to make them all happy! And, upon changing the 'Otocinclus Pet Rock' for a new one, it took the Otocinclus precisely 45 seconds to discover they had a new one, and all seven of them were hoovering away at the surface. It'll probably be picked clean in about 10 minutes knowing these guys

As I return to this document the next day (Sunday), prior to it being posted to everyone on Monday, I've put a sprig of Hornwort in the main aquarium with the Pencil Fishes and the Pandas. And it makes a wonderful colour contrast with the rest of the foliage in the aquarium. I can now see first hand why fish photographers love it - which will give me the perfect excuse to dig out the camera and start firing off some more film rolls immortalising my fish! Needless to say, the prospect of the aquarium being photographed in the near futurewill give me renewed impetus to supply a recent photo to the FishProfiles aquascaping photo competition ...

One minor observation I have is this: as well as an aquascaping photography competition on the board, how about one for close-up pics of everyone's fish? I'm sure quite a few other people here have a nice gallery of close-up pics of their fish that they'd like to exhibit, and so, a competition for close-up pics of fish would be, in my view, a nice addition to the board. Of course, someone will have to run this (yet more workload for the mods and admins!) but the way I envisage the competition running is this. Each contestant supplies a single image for each competition, with details of file size and image dimensions to be duly arranged, and sends it as an attachment via E-Mail in a manner akin to the Aquascaping contest, to whoever is willing to host this competition. The E-Mail subject heading could be something such as "FishProfiles Portrait Fish Competition", and the E-Mail body should contain the following details:

Common Name (if one exists for the fish in question)
Scientific Name (superseded taxa can be accepted, e.g., Rasbora heteromorpha for Harlequins, as I don't think anyone would dispute the identity in that case, even though it's now Trigonostigma heteromorpha)
Category (e.g., tropical freshwater, tropical marine, coldwater/native fish, inverts)
Date photo was taken
Some details about the camera used
Some details about when the fish first became an occupant of the aquarium (or details about the spawning it resulted from if the competitor bred the fish)
Some details about the fish's aquarium companions (or, if anyone out there is mad enough to have bought a Hoplias lacerdae, mention that it's in a species aquarium on its own and why!)

I'm sure the mods and admins can think of refinements to the above.

As several people here may be aware, I have in my possession one or two (hundred? ) photos of this kind that I can enter into such a competition (and, with a lot less effort than in the case of the aquascaping competition), and I suspect that I'm not the only one. Cory_Di probably has some nice close-ups of "Mini-Me", her habrosus, that she'd be happy to share with everyone, and doubtless the multitude of Cichlid fans can't wait to roll out their prize portraits of their Electric Blue Haps, Frontosas, Malawi Peacocks, Jaguars or rare Central Americans such as Paraneetroplus bulleri (I think Jason has a few rarities in his collection that will make some eyes pop out when he shares them!) and of course, Cory_Addict probably has a few hundred pics of the multitude of Corys in the collection that will make a few eyes stick out on stalks too. And what about Oleta and the marine crew? I'm itching to see if any of them have Cirrhilabrus rubriventralis in their collections, for example, as this fish is one of those traffic-stopping blasts of colour that always look good on film, and also if any of them have good pics of Banggai Cardinals, because while the Banggai Cardinal is one stunning fish, photographing it well in a typical aquarium setup actually takes some skill, because of its unusual combination of monochrome colour pattern and wildly extended finnage.

Other species I envisage will provide a challenge (to anyone who has them of course) will be fishes such as Altum Angels (particularly adult ones), as these are a challenge even to someone like me with decent SLR equipment, let alone anyone struggling with a 'point and shoot' compact.

So, how about it?

And with that, I'll bring this latest addition to 'General Freshwater' to a close ...






Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Its always interesting to read your ramblings Cali!
And I would be curious to see what interest there is in the contest you mention. I'm not volunteering to run it. (yet)

---

Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

You do like to ramble, dont you?

Other species I envisage will provide a challenge (to anyone who has them of course) will be fishes such as Altum Angels

And what about those of us who thought we had a great shot of an altum to be told that it wasn't ! I couldn't believe that the National Aquarium in Baltimore would mislable their fish .

In anycase, I think a FP close up contest would be fun, in fact photo contests have been mentioned before (guess it would be up to moondog to do it since he gets to mediate PB) I just fear as always about images being stolen. I've submitted a few to the galleries, I have many many more (mostly SW's) that are waiting to have a profile written up before I can submit them.

good reading Calilasseia, and an extra purple star for getting the gravel on your bike!!!.

^_^



[span class="edited"][Edited by Babelfish 2004-08-18 13:48][/span]

UPDATE!!!!

Another water change and gravel vac completed as I write this (at the unearthly hour of 2:40 a.m.- I keep strange hours!) and I have a sparkling aquarium once more. It's amazing how much dirt these fish can generate in just three days!

Once more, it took the Otocinclus about 40 seconds to find their new 'pet rock' ... five of them hoovering it clean once the lid was replaced on the aquarium! I also have a nice clutch of Pandas scuttling about the gravel, looking for titbits now I've dropped in some flakes. As I look over my shoulder at the aquarium, there are now four Otocinclus giving the Amazon Swordplant a good cleaning, and the Lemons are hovering around purposefully while two more Pandas play in the Java Moss on the right hand side, doing their usual impersonation of three-year-old children in mud ... another Panda is exploring the Java Moss on the bogwood 'boot', at a vertical head-up angle, and the male Pencil Fish are getting boisterous with each other. I have a 'busy' aquarium with a vengeance tonight!

I'm going to have to prune the Hornwort at some stage, as it's now staging a campaign for world domination in my aquarium, as I mentioned in the recent Planted Aquaria post on the subject, it grows like stink in a tropical aquarium, but when you have something this green and lush, it's worth the effort of pruning away the excess, because it looks just so photogenic ... what's more, at least two of my Pandas have discovered that it makes a wonderful 'climbing frame' for them to play on!

I've just alighted upon one possible reason for some people having trouble with marine aquaria while watching this ... the 'busy aquarium' look is so entertaining, and with a freshwater aquarium, it's not that difficult to achieve. With a marine aquarium, however, stocking levels have to be much lower, unless the aquarium is plugged into a huge sump acting as a reservoir of clean water, and so achieving the 'busy aquarium' look that mimics all those Jacques Cousteau documentaries of coral reefs requires a LOT of hard work, much more so than my Panda and Pencil Fish aquarium.

Speaking of which, how many people here were 'tuned in' to fishkeeping by Jacques Cousteau? I used to watch those documentaries religiously when I was a child, I'd have fun trying to identify all the coral reef fish that his camera teams filmed, and I can still remember the first time I saw these programmes in colour (the first television in my house was a steam-powered black-and-white affair that looked as if it had been designed in the Middle Ages ). That was my first ever sighting of a Royal Empress Angel, Pygoplites diacanthus, and I *really* wanted to see one of those in an aquarium. However, I learned soon afterwards that this was a sponge-feeding species, and at that time, it was considered one of the so-called 'impossibles' among marine aquarists. Someone must have persevered, though, because now, it's considered only 'moderately difficult', a sign of how advanced fishkeeping has become since my teenage years! Sponge-based foods have made a difference here, and have transformed the keeping of other, less recalcitrant marine Angels too.

Back to freshwater fishes, and someone took me to task in one of the Cichlid forums about my describing Bolivian Rams as being blue. Well, I DO have photos of them showing lots of blue colouration on the body, but when I read the caption, guess what? The photo was of a courting couple! Bolivian Rams that areNOT courting are indeed, as I was told by someone else, yellow. But when courting, they develop this lovely blue shade on the rear half of the body, and it seems that the females are the bluest, at least if this photo is any indication. So, what I've done is this: I've scanned photos of both the non-courting and courting fishes, and anyone who wants decent pics of Bolivian Rams can E-Mail me and I'll send them by return mail.

Meanwhile, a news snippet appeared in one of the fishkeeping mags that is worth a mention. Here in the UK, we have a creature called Dolomedes fimbriatus, known commonly as the Raft Spider or Fishing Spider, because large adults are capable of plucking sticklebacks out of the water and eating them! Normally, this creature is only found in the fenlands of East Anglia (find Cambridge on a UK map and move eastwards, and that's East Anglia. with its rich and diverse fenlands), but a colony has now been found living in Wales. Whether it is an 'intrinsically native' population, or arrived there as a result of being transported somehow by Man, is as yet an open question, but for anyone who suffers from arachnophobia, this creature is terrifying, because it's one of Britain's largest native spiders. It can walk on water like a kind of giant pond skater, and if threatened, can temporarily take refuge underwater. The body length is around an inch, and the leg span can sometimes reach nearly 5 inches! Its distinctive striped pattern is unmistakable once seen, although quite a few people here might want to give it a miss ...

Back to fish. A thought has just occurred. Subjects for polls. One, what is the smallest fish species you have ever kept, and two, the largest? In my case, I would have to cite the Neon Tetra as my smallest, and my largest has to be the Golden Orfe, which I kept in an aquarium during my teenage years even though I now realise it properly belongs in a pond, as it can exceed 35 cm with ease! As for the rarest fish I've kept, that would have to be a Loricariid I briefly had in 1996 that I tentatively identified as Chaetostoma wuchereri - I've only ever seen it the once, mis-labelled as (wait for it) an Otocinclus, and I doubt I'll ever see it again without some extremely hard searching. Unfortunately, this rarity went MIA about three months after I bought it, never to be seen again, and I suspect that it ended up becoming a snack for two large Corydoras trilineatus that I had bought at the same time labelled (you guessed it) as julii.

At some point, I'm going to try out some of those aquarium dwarfs I once wrote an article about here on the board - fishes such as Neolebias ansorgii and Hyphessobrycon georgettae, if I can find them of course! Plus, once the big Panda breeding aquarium is live, and I'm starting to earn money from baby Pandas, I'd like to have a go at Lamp-Eye killies, as they're all tiny, or alternatively have a go at the Rocket Panchax, Epiplatys annulatus, which is a gorgeous but seldom seen fish (like virtually all Killies!) that only just reaches the same size as a Neon Tetra. Not quite a dwarf, but utterly gorgeous, and about as rare here in the UK as the proverbial rocking horse poo, is another Killie I'd like to have a go at sometime, Aphyosemion bualanum. If you haven't seen this fish, check it out now via a Google search, and be astonished at how gorgeous it it!



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002