this is for you, Ben! A. nijsseni spawn ;)

[wickedglass]

hiyas,
today I had the great joy of coming into the studio my girlfriend and I have set up (which contains all our working fishtanks, too) and realising that my nijsseni have spawned.
The reason I believed this to be so was that the male kept looking into the hole of the flowerpot and the female coming out and giving him what-for. I have never believed what people wrote about nijsseni being extremely aggressive (I've only ever had 3 females and they were quite peaceful) until now. I haven't even seen bettas fight like that before!!!! these guys are feisty. Anyway, as it all happened in one of my community tanks I felt obliged to take out the pot with the eggs. The parents have stopped fighting and all is peaceful again.

Thanks for your help in sourcing the male, Ben, much appreciated!

just as an aside, some of you may have seen my post about the exo-terra reptile caves. they're great for checking for eggs as the side comes off. After my frenzy with these I've come up with a much easier solution. I resize the drain hole to suit the fish and place the top of the flowerpot I use against the glass of the tank. Then I tape some black cardboard on the outside of the tank to provide some privacy. When the fish start acting like they've laid, it's easy to lift the cardboard to look into the pot to confirm my suspicions.

here's some pics of my nijsseni and their eggs.

[wickedglass]

I had two pairs of angels spawn in the same tank as the nijsseni a few days apart, too, the cories are also breeding and the pencil fish are shimmying like crazy, man, I'm running out of fry rearing tanks. Also my girl's kribs are on the boil again, we already have about 70 fry in varying stages, the first lot are ready to breed, already. Meanwhile, I have breeding A. agassizii "double red", more A. viejita on the way, too, and a pair of rams that are doing the do, and cleaning a piece of slate. For both the agas and the nijsseni it is first time breeding, so there's not that many eggs at this stage. Hopefully future spawns will yield more ;)

Here's a little home-made tank setup, with an inbuilt filter, for artificially incubating eggs in their pots which I always have at the ready,

[Ben]

Thats great news Chris!
A big well done mate!!!

I cant believe they spawned so quickly!!

Keep up the great work and keep us posted aswell mate!

Cheers
Ben

[Robdog]

Good one mate. I had a nijsseni trio a while back the three of them were always squabbling in the 4ft but never had them spawn for me.
I've had a pair of Inca's for a few months now but I think the male is gay. The two of them just hang out in one of their caves like best friends.
What kind of values are you running on your tanks as you can't seem to stop them all from getting jiggy!

[wickedglass]

hey Rob,
the viejita tank is at 5.6 Ph and hangs at about 29 C,
my aga and blue ram tank (divided with sump grind covered with fly screen) is at 6.5 Ph and 27 C,
the tank that has everything breeding in it (angels and nijsseni, etc) sits at 6.3 Ph and also 27C.
I don't use water softeners anymore, as it seems not to be necessary with melbourne water. For water changes I take straight tap water (warmed to +/- 2 C of the tank's water), dechlorinate it, add some bio booster and put it straight in. I used to use peat a lot, but when I think it necessary now, I add a little Tetra peat extract, which I think can be good to add when you're doing a waterchange to simulate humic run-off during rains in nature. I feed a variety of foods, including flake, tetra bits, algae discs and live foods such as brine shrimp and blood worms.I make sure that all my breeders take dry food before I introduce the worms, that way they get a good balance. Depending on the bio mass in the tank, I tend to do a water change every two weeks.
When setting up a new tank for breeders I usually mix at least half old tank water from one of my established tanks.
when a pair won't breed for me, I take the male out, or section him off behind a partition so the female can't see him, and feed them both up on mosquito larvae, brineshrimp and blackworms. Then when the female looks nice and fat with eggs, I take the partition out and do a little water change. Usually when she's that fat, she will want to mate. I've found mosquito larvae especially good for stimulating both appetite and mating drive but only use it when blackworm and BS fail. I also tend to use very fine sand from the garden center as substrate in a lot of my tanks so the fish have something to dig around in. It's a real pain to clean before putting into a tank, though, but I've found those fine white mesh nets very good for putting the sand in and running water through, and clean it that way ... the fish love it.

hope that helps

[Robdog]

Well I got back from a week down the snow last night and I have one very dead gay male Inka. I had my old man coming over to feed them all while I was gone but it's far from his fault.
The little guy was acting a little strange just before I left so I was expecting to worst. (hint hint Thomas, grow me up a nice male from your first lot!!!)

[Noddy65]

While were talking about agassizi double red and nijsseni fry...heres a pic of mine.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/Noddy65/aggassizifry.jpg

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/Noddy65/nijessenifry.jpg

Mike

[Th0mas]

Well I got back from a week down the snow last night and I have one very dead gay male Inka. I had my old man coming over to feed them all while I was gone but it's far from his fault.
The little guy was acting a little strange just before I left so I was expecting to worst. (hint hint Thomas, grow me up a nice male from your first lot!!!)

Rob,

Sorry to hear of your losses, you probably don't want to hear mine either (pretty bad).

Anyway, the Inka juveniles are doing exceptionally well, they've filled up 2 two foot tanks and I'll require more tanks to raise them. The first batch will be close to ready in October given the way they're going (now thriving on bloodworm as well as the usual BBS and dry stuffs).

Apology for hijacking the thread on a different topic.

Cheers,
Thomas.