18 replies to this topic

[Anka]

Hi Guys

Are there any local breeders of rainbowfish or other native fish?

Cheers

[sydad]

A number of locals (myself included) breed and rear rainbows. At any given time some of us will usually have something under way.

Syd.

[Anka]

Which ones do you breed?

[Graeme]

I have fry of

Melanotaenia boesemani
Melanotaenia australis (Drysdale)
Desert Gobies Chlamydogobius eremius

Nothing sale size yet

Graeme

[Anka]

What colour are the boesemani? Any pics?

[Westie]

Males take a while to colour up. females are a bit plain. do a google image search and youll see how nice they are. my personal fave rainbow are boesmani

[Anka]

I've got the aqualog and looked them up in that. Amazing colours.

How many different types of rainbows should I get in a 330 tank? I want to get some empire gudgeons as well.

Whats the male/female ratio? Will rainbows cross breed?

[Bowdy]

what are the dimensions of your tank anka

[Anka]

4x2x2 ish

it's not quite 2ft wide, but its 2ft high

[Bowdy]

4x2x2 is 430L you will probably find if it's only a little less then it's around 400L. Calculation is in cm LxWxH devided by 1000. Sorry to mess the post it's just good to know how much water your working with.

[Anka]

Just measured it. It is 4ft long, 2ft high and 1.5ft deep.

Glass is 10mm thick.

[Anka]

does anyone breed/sell freshwater pipefish?

[Arcturus]

FW Pipefish are very hard to keep alive

[Anka]

awww but they look so awesome.

How are they hard to keep? Is feeding the issue?

[sydad]

Which ones do you breed?

Currently breeding/rearing:

Pseudomugil gertudae: morphs from Eubenangee swamp and Moa Island
P. mellis
Melanotaenia boesmanni
M herbertaxelrodi
M maccullochi
M trifasciata: morphs from Wonga Creek and Cape Arnhem

Also have another 6 or 7 that I need to do something about before too long. It's a small list, but still need to do a lot in my fish-room before I do much more breeding.

Apropos your question about keeping freshwater pipefish. Yes, they are difficult to feed, and just generally damn hard to keep alive in general. The only way you will access these fish is to collect them yourself.

Syd.

Edited by sydad, 09 January 2012 - 12:18 AM.

[Anka]

Hey Syd do you have any of sellable size?

[Kleinz]

The Cape Arnhem and Wonga Creek rainbows look really similar to me now that I come to google them, and I come to wonder if what I have in my tank might not be Wonga creek, instead of the Cape Arnhem I thought they were.

Looks like their geographic range coincides pretty closely too.

You don't have this trouble with Boesmani...

[Juls]

I only have western Pygmy perch available now,

The only picture of a colored up male is on Wikipedia.

Juls

[sydad]

Hey Syd do you have any of sellable size?

The only natives I have of saleable size are the Eubenangee Swamp gertrudae, and the Cape Arnhem trifasciatas. As Kleinz has observed, these latter are very similar to the Wonga Creek trifasciatas: so much so that I would never put the two (females particularly), in the same tank.The Cape Arnhems have a bluer cast on the flank when mature. In fact my original Capes, that I lost some years ago were a deep metallic blue that would not have been seen on my Wongas. It appears that years of captive breeding may have affected colouration to some extent. We just have to take it on faith that breeders have been rigorous in keeping the morphs separate.

Syd.