Posted by Sarah on July 8, 2008
German Blue Ram Fry Updates
Jeff started feeding the baby rams baby brine shrimp yesterday, and a few of them looked like they were eating it.
It’s so funny to watch the brine shrimp run away from the baby rams – it looks like they are playing chase.
It looks like there are a lot less rams than we started with, but part of that is because they are spreading out some, and not staying in big groups like they did before.
The older rams are getting some color – the largest one has a hint of a pink belly that we just noticed two nights ago.
They are so cute, but it’s hard to believe how small they were when they were born.
Discus Updates
We noticed discus eggs on Friday night, but they were gone Sunday morning.
The eggs were orange, and a few of them were an opaque orange, but the rest of them looked fertile.
We’ll have to find somewhere to put the third discus, but these fish are so skittish that I’m scared we’ll completely freak them out if we have to catch one of them, so we’ve been putting it off.
They don’t mind water changes that much, and they don’t get as agitated as they used to when people go up to the tank, but they are still very skittish fish.
They didn’t get too upset when we took the other fish out of the tank, but we tried to avoid the discus as much as we could when we did that.
What’s going on with your tanks?
Do you pay less attention to your tanks in the summer than you do at other times of the year?
Posted by Sarah on June 27, 2008
The discus spawned on Wednesday – I was surprised at how long the spawning lasted. I watched them for at least three hours.
They spawn a little differently from the German Blue Rams though.
When the rams are spawning the female lays the eggs, then the male goes over the eggs right on top of them and fertilizes them.
I didn’t see the male discus get anywhere near as close to the eggs as the male rams do, and that may be part of the problem.
The female was guarding the eggs, which were laid on an overturned flower pot that we put in the tank a couple of months ago after being unable to find a spawning cone, until this morning.
The last time the discuss spawned we left a light in the room on all night, but this time we didn’t – the eggs were fine the first night, but gone the second, so we’ll have to remember to keep the light on the next time.
There were also thunderstorms with really heavy rain overnight, but I’m not sure if that would have scared the discus at all, let alone enough to eat their eggs.
Do you have experience spawning discus?
If so I’d love to hear about it so leave a comment.
Please.
Pretty please 
.
Posted by Sarah on June 20, 2008
We noticed that the discus were spawning on an overturned flower pot on Thursday night.
I’d almost given up hope since the pair of discus stopped acting like a pair in the last couple of tanks.
There are three discus in the tank – two males and one female, and all of them have been swimming around together lately.
Before that we could tell which two were a pair because they were always together, and they tried to keep the other one away from them.
So I was really surprised that we had eggs.
The discus were more skittish than ususal, so we tried to avoid going near the tank unless we had to feed them, or turn the lights on or off. We did sneak a peek at the eggs when we were near the tank though.
Things were going well last night, and then we woke up this morning – no eggs, and no fry.
Maybe we’ll have better luck next time.
Posted by Sarah on April 28, 2008
We made it back safely from the Tropical Fish Show – I still can’t believe that it snowed so much here.
Jeff is a raffle addict, and he won enough fish stuff to fill a huge bag – and I’m sure he’ll tell you about it later.
I got some purple shells for my bumblebee gobies from the show, and some moss balls from Terrequatics, a fish store in Champlin, MN.
Here’s a picture of one of my Bumblebee Gobies perching on a shell a few hours ago. I still haven’t seen any of them in the shells, but I’m hoping they’ll get in there soon.
I want some Bumbleebee Goby fry!
Jeff got a cave system from Tiffany of Salty’s Digz, a gorgeous piece of driftwood, and some Ultra Color Fish Food from Pretty Bird (the fish part of the website is still under construction).
We also saw some beautiful fish – I was really impressed with the discus!
They are a lot larger than ours are!
I was a little disappointed in the one talk we attended because I didn’t fully understand what it was supposed to be about.
Since the talk was titled “Oddball Fish for Aquaria” I thought that it would provide information about fish that aren’t commonly found in aquariums, but it mainly focused on breeding fish that are commonly found in aquariums, but aren’t commonly bred. I think we have or have had most of the oddball fish that were mentioned that aren’t commonly found in aquariums, like the Australian Desert Gobies, Bumblebee Gobies, and Dwarf Puffers, although he called them pea puffers.
Since there were weather problems (the roads that normally take to get from Moorhead to Minneapolis were closed Friday, and Saturday, but we managed to get through ok while they were open, we decided to leave early, so we missed the Plants in the Aquaria talk, which I was looking forward too.
If you made it to the show this year, I’d love to hear what you thought about it, so leave a comment and tell me.
Here’s a picture of Jeff’s driftwood in the Discus tank.
The Discus really seem to like it, and are trying to figure out who gets to live behind it.
