Sickk choices, and obviously I highly recommend 🤩
The paucis seem a bit rare on stock lists indeed, but I really feel they are worth hunting around for and waiting a bit to find if needed. They're super cute and really active.
Yeah I’ll hunt around for them over the next few weeks, I don’t mind buying online if somewhere has them.
Finding other pangio species than "standard kuhlii" (semicincta) could be interesting 😃 Perhaps specialist stockists like Glaser and (I dont know exactly who distribute in the UK), but it should be possible. I hadn't caught that the alternans are smaller, how much are we talking here?
As far as I’ve read standard Kuhli’s get up to around 10cm whereas the Alternans max out at around 7cm.
Wow that picture makes them look really lovely. A medium size tetra I think?
No, they’re very small, maxing out around 3cm. The males are a bit longer once you account for their long display fins - but I’ve seen them several times in the shop (that video was one I took) and I love the way they interact with one another - more active than a lot of tetra tend to be - with males flaring their fins at one another etc.
Oooh.. Do you have both sexes too? I seem to recall a forum thread about the females being like unicorns.
Man im wanting ALL the fish now
Lol yes Louis was kind enough to give me 3 males and 9 females.
They’re currently in my crypt growing on tank:
This was when they first went if and hadn’t fully coloured up yet:
They are tiny too - about 25mm.
I wonder how the shrimp will do with some of the smarter fish. I had heard especially the Badis are skilled hunters. Perhaps youre just letting "nature take its course", and either the shrimp population makes it or they dont?
Well Louis said that they were aggressive hunters, but I’ve not see any evidence of that in my tank, there are a LOT of Gammarus shrimp (scuds) in there and they don’t seem to go for the adults. Even feeding daphnia to them, they seem to follow a target around for ages trying to grab it - not very savage. It might just be that there are so many baby scuds in there, it’s a constant buffet for them so when I eventually feed some daphnia they’re like “Meh . . . I could eat I suppose!”.
Ive had shrimp for years now but if one wants to make sure shrimp aren't eaten, it really limits fish options a lot 🤔 Sometimes I think about all the cool fish I could have if I just didn't keep shrimp
My plan was to start with a sufficiently large population of shrimp that their population can sustain any predation. I’ll start with about 50, and as I mentioned above, leave them for a couple of months before adding fish so they get a couple of rounds of breeding in. I also plant to add some to another tank as an isolated population to hopefully “restock” if needed. I’ve also got a couple of piles of rocks in the layout that should give them hiding and birthing places free from most of the fish.
I also think, over a certain size (and Tangerine tigers can get quite big) the fish won’t touch them - it’s the babies that re obviously most at risk. That is aside from the Apisto’s which is one of the reasons I’m not so sure about them as an addition.
