Shhhh!🤫
@Hufsa's a noodle whisperer, uses special words & magic to make them come out for a photo shoot!🌟
Like the piped piper, but for noodles ~doodly doodly toodly dooooo~
Honestly her fish pics are sooooooo funny! I lvoe them and the captions. Fish love drama lmao
I don't think so - its the lights and the pump that end up injecting extra heat and pushing the water above ambient.
I doubt British lakes and rivers get much above low twenties in the height of summer, but it could be wrong - they certainly feel cold to me when I go fishing in summer!
It was a nice tank, lots of long Vallisneria to try and simulate streamer weed and the like if I remember rightly, and plenty of wood to simulate fallen branches - plant availability back then wasn't anything like it is now, neither was hardscape wood - Mopani only!
The gudgeon were great - I specifically caught smaller juvenile ones - they are a bottom feeder with barbels on the mouth much like Cory's.
The minnows weren't particularly large, maybe 50mm max including tails - they can get quite fat though as they are very greedy.
The Roach really struggled, as they are/were a very nervous fish. Despite my best attempts I couldn't keep the temps down low enough, and struggled with two bouts of white spot, lost 3-4 fish and called it a day and returned them to the Oxford Windrush where I caught them. Then I moved to full fat tropical and began experimenting with DIY yeast CO2, and that was the end of my cold water experiment.
Ahh of course, make sense. Well I'll give it a go and see what happens... got a few contingency plans if it gets too warm.
Baby gudgeons sound completely adorable!! I did see them and think ... ooooh, but then saw the size they get to. Good to know the minnows aren't too big, they sound a bit like pencils with their greediness which is great. Will say away from roach.
Is it ok to return wild fish back afterwards then? This is another option if I catch them myself, just wasn't sure about potentially spreading nasties about into the wild population.
Fab! Gotta love the ricefish. How have you found breeding them, do they eat the fry? Mine have lots of eggs over the past month but I haven't seen any hatch yet. I want to be lazy and keep them all in one tank for a bit longer, but worried the fry will get eaten.
We had some stones loaches as a child and only saw them again when stripping the tank down.
Bigger tanks can get just as warm if the ambient temperature remains constant. They take longer to reach the highs but also cool down slower. It means you have more time to reduce the temperature before they reach the peak but they can get just as hot. If you have a pond outside already then at least you can move them out if they don't look happy and lots of coldwater changes might help.
I've always been tempted by sticklebacks because they are distant relatives of the seahorses and I see quite a few similarities with them, I've just never got round to keeping them. I do plan to build two large brick walled ponds where my garage is but not got round to it yet.
Yes this is totally true, if the fish aren't looking happy I can always pop them in the pond outside that will be their eventual home anyway. It will already have pond plants in, and loads of live food for them. And I do have a large freezer, so could easily pop some plastic bottles full of rainwater in my tank every day and help to cool things down before trying the pond.
They definitely have a bit of that cute seahorse face!! I'm looking forward to keeping them
Main issue is tank size, males can be a bit of a nightmare and will hound other males down (when breeding). I think 90cm is a really good size for a group though.
We lost them when I was at school as the water got too hot, I repeated this process again in my early 20s with much disappointment. Fascinating to see the nests built, but I wouldn't go crazy with males, as they're quite territorial at breeding stage, and they do breed often and easy. In summer I was adding a frozen bottle of water to the tank every day, but it just wasn't enough. I raised hundreds of them, and can't wait to keep them again when I have the space.
@mort You'll never see them in a pond though
I'm used to just a male and female apisto in my tank, so a small group still sounds great. I'm thinking (hopefully), 3 males and 5-6 females? What do you think of that? The tank should have lots of cover so I think that'll be ok. Got a contingency plan with my outdoor pond so hopefully can avoid another mass fish destruction event so soon!
The idea I settled on was that I'd keep a small group in my unheated lean to over the winter and pop them back outside in the summer. It would be nice to do something in winter and enjoy other things in summer for a change. I may get round to it but lately I'm happy leaving nature to fill the void. In my pond, as the fish are now gone, I've got the mother of all daphnia blooms but not many fish left to feed them to. On the plus side the tadpoles that won't get eaten by the fish this year, should be the size of bullfrogs in no time😊
I'm hoping that eventually, if plans come together over the next year or so we will have a bigger back garden and be able to have a nature pond. As much as I love the fish, a natural pond with newts and frogs is hard to beat, and I like to try to support our native wildlife as much as possible!! These are the creatures that inspired me so much as a kid, at our allotment I demanded my dad build a pond when I was about 10, it's still going and is FULL of newts. Love it when the daphnia blooms and the newts ar really fat and lazy at the surface from gorging.
If anyone close to me wants Sticklebacks I have a lot I need to shift out of my tubs,it was a good year for them last year and they're breeding again already lol
Alas, it's a bit far for me but I hope some people take you up on it!! Would love to hear more about your tubs, it seems like a really interesting side of the hobby that's not often talked about.
