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Yay...getting back in the hobby.


KrAzY

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My SIL is a big saltwater tank guy. He has numerous corals.  Really cool tanks.  

I have a 50 gallon freshwater and it suits me. Looks nice and low maintenance.  I have an Angel fish that has dominated the tank tho. He’s about as big as your hand!

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9 minutes ago, ChrisL said:

My SIL is a big saltwater tank guy. He has numerous corals.  Really cool tanks.  

I have a 50 gallon freshwater and it suits me. Looks nice and low maintenance.  I have an Angel fish that has dominated the tank tho. He’s about as big as your hand!

I have tried my hand at freshwater tanks for a bit before I got into saltwater. It's nice at how easy they are, but I love that with saltwater you can have so many more critters.. granted the cost for setup is triple or better.. but since I have 85percent of what I need already, I can't say no..lol

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In the '70's - '80's I used to keep a large freshwater tank and several 10 gallon ones where I bred Killifish (Blue Galaris, Lyretails, Notho's, etc.).

If I ever get back into it, I think I'll do that again instead of saltwater aquariums: which are a lot of work and fine-tuning and I respect those who put in the effort!

Killies are some of the most beautiful freshwater fish and are hardy and easy to keep alive but are seldom seen in tropical fish stores because they only lay a few eggs per day and so are relatively expensive to raise. Also, they tend to hover in place in the aquarium instead of making a lot of motion.

Some killies, like lyretails, lay eggs on vegetation, so you put synthetic yarn "plants" in the aquarium - just tie several short pieces of white (easier to spot eggs) yarn together at their mid-points, collect a few eggs off them each day, put the eggs in a Petri dish filled with water (very low water pressure), hatch the eggs, put a little chicken egg yolk in the water to feed them, and after a few days put them in an aquarium to grow.

Other killies live in areas where their ponds dry up part of the year: each year the killies lay their eggs in the mud and they hatch when the Spring rains come - long after those who laid the eggs died.  That's reproduced in the aquarium by putting a bed of peat moss in the bottom and collecting it after a week (it should have 20-30 eggs), letting it dry out, storing it (3-9 months, depending on species), then putting it in an aquarium and hatching the eggs.

Some species from swamps are used to breeding in extremely soft water when the temperature warms in the Spring.  So, to get them to lay eggs, over several days you replace half the aquarium's water with distilled or deionized water and raise the temperature from 72F to 78F to simulate rains during the warming Spring.

Hobbyists often buy Killies by getting a sealed plastic bag full of peat moss with eggs since most subspecies are not available in pet shops.  Organizations like The American Killifish Association used to be clearinghouses for eggs, though you can now find them on Amazon, eBay, etc.

They readily eat flake food, but thrive with occasional treats of brine shrimp, meal worms, or egg yolk.

At one point, I got a bag of eggs of White's Pearlfish (below) from a guy in the old Czechoslovakia and, after I hatched them, another guy in Washington State and I were the only people in the USA who had that fish.  It was fun to point out to people that I had an extremely-rare-in-the-USA tropical fish!

White's Pearlfish:

450859610_WhitesPearlfish.JPG.05e06c61d74d20891e40bd2266a94eb1.JPG

The official symbol of the American Killifish Association (the world's oldest tropical fish organization) is the Blue Gularis:

504648301_BlueGularis.jpg.81f2a559c9d9394078c4133bea59923a.jpg

Personally, I've always thought the Blue Notho and Redtail Notho are the most beautiful killies:

460106695_BlueNotho.jpg.2d1f0146385005843ad68106c2b3b35e.jpg1583410846_RedtailNotho.jpg.6d8bc6fa06540ce4f300b1597bf19951.jpg

The easiest killie to raise is the lyretail, which comes in many color combinations.  A pair readily lays a few eggs every day on a "bush" of white synthetic yarn where a bunch or 6" strands are tied together.  The other subspecies above lay their eggs in peat moss.  Back in the '80's, one pet shop offered me $15/male-female pair for 30 pairs of yellow lyretails as a first order if I would raise them in large numbers and sell them.  Unfortunately, I was teaching, coaching high school cross country & track, etc. and didn't have the time to do it.

491182798_KillifishLyretail.thumb.jpg.34f4e68b07c3e295b50e4071ef7ca868.jpg

The bags with dark stuff inside them about 30 seconds into the video are dried peat moss with a week's worth of eggs from a laying pair of various subspecies:

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, ChrisL said:

My SIL is a big saltwater tank guy. He has numerous corals.  Really cool tanks.  

I have a 50 gallon freshwater and it suits me. Looks nice and low maintenance.  I have an Angel fish that has dominated the tank tho. He’s about as big as your hand!

I have a freshwater tank. It’s been up and running for many years after a short break after our youngest son moved out. It used to be in his room. We had an angel fish that started out the size of my fingernail and grew and grew. He eventually started eating his tank mates. After all his tank mates were gone he lived a solitary life for another five years or so, he was the size of the palm of my hand when he finally died. We replaced him with fish that all get along with each other.

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1 hour ago, Longjohn said:

I have a freshwater tank. It’s been up and running for many years after a short break after our youngest son moved out. It used to be in his room. We had an angel fish that started out the size of my fingernail and grew and grew. He eventually started eating his tank mates. After all his tank mates were gone he lived a solitary life for another five years or so, he was the size of the palm of my hand when he finally died. We replaced him with fish that all get along with each other.

I had a fresh water tank I made for my son when he was two. It had a couple koi fish in it.. when we left Ohio I released them into my parents pond. The fish was no bigger then two inches at the time.. my parents figured it would just be eaten by a crain or another fish.. no big deal.

A year later it showed itself and it was massive.. the coloring and marking were amazing, and someone actually said they would pay $300 for the damn fish I for from Walmart for $1... I said go for it.. you catch it, you can have it.. that guy spent days trying to get it and never did.. 

That koi ran the 3 acre pond that was 10 ft deep...lol

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1 hour ago, Longjohn said:

I have a freshwater tank. It’s been up and running for many years after a short break after our youngest son moved out. It used to be in his room. We had an angel fish that started out the size of my fingernail and grew and grew. He eventually started eating his tank mates. After all his tank mates were gone he lived a solitary life for another five years or so, he was the size of the palm of my hand when he finally died. We replaced him with fish that all get along with each other.

I have some tetras that he can’t catch & kill or my angel would be alone too.  The fish store I got him from said they would buy him back for store credit so I have considered doing that & starting over.

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6 minutes ago, ChrisL said:

I have some tetras that he can’t catch & kill or my angel would be alone too.  The fish store I got him from said they would buy him back for store credit so I have considered doing that & starting over.

I did buy a catfish to keep him company. The fish store said he wouldn’t bother the catfish. We still have the catfish, the granddaughter named it Lucy.

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