Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Bandit Angelfish at 50 days old

Here's a link to a video I took today of the bandit babies. They're so mellow compared to other angels I've raised who would be zipping all over the place at this age. These girls seem very content in their grow out tank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG2DW6BLtho

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Lot's to catch up on!


It's been a good two months since I last posted and I did start another Bandit Angelfish (A. arcuatus) larval run soon after the last one. There are 7 little fish left in this run and I moved them into their new grow out tank today. They're 47 days old and five of them have juvenile colors with two others lagging slightly but I think all 7 will do well in grow out. Here's a link to a video of them as they are acclimating to the grow out tank. In the video you can see the different stages of development they are in as they go through metamorphosis.
https://youtu.be/No8Q4kBqRfM

I also have an update on Faith, Fabio, Jaws and Connie. You may recall that at one point I introduced Jaws and Connie (the C. joculator pair) to the tank housing Faith and Fabio (the C. interrupta pair). At that time Faith and Jaws seemed to have a connection and hid together while Fabio went after Connie who was just a young small fish. I had to rescue Connie ASAP and moved her and Jaws back to their tank. Since then Jaws had shown some pre spawning behavior and Connie puts up with it but hasn't been truly interested. So I decided to try and introduce the two couples again. This time into a neutral tank containing a pair of Tinkers Butterflies. I hoped that this time around  Faith and Jaws would still hit it off and because Connie is more mature now I hoped she could hold her own.  I introduced Jaws and Connie to the tank in the morning to let them have the day to settle in. Then just before dark I introduce Faith and Fabio and turned out the lights. Next day I kept an eye on the tank and was surprised to see that Jaws did not like Faith at all. He and was hassling her and not letting her eat at feeding time. Connie and Jaws started showing more pre spawning behavior and Fabio took it upon himself to try and break up every attempt that Jaws and Connie took to spawn. Here's a video of the interaction.
https://youtu.be/zrIjoKnzkQ4

So I'll be taking apart the tank to move Jaws and Connie back to their own tank. Hopefully they'll continue to try and spawn and we can raise some cute C. jocular babies in the future.

I'm also in the process of trying to get a new pair of C. interrupta with the remaining funds from the Faith and Fabio campaign. It would be great if we could have both jocular and interrupta babies in 2016.