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400l mixed community

Are white worms not a viable alternative to bloodworms and blackworms? They are a similar size, largely guaranteed to be parasite free, and you can gut load them to an extent?
 
Hi all,
However looking at your statement about commercial collection for bloodworms I’d assume black mosquito larvae would be the same if not worse considering they can survive in almost any body of water even if it is heavily polluted.
I've never fed frozen mosquito larvae, and I don't know how they are collected, but I'd guess they are probably collected from cleaner water than bloodworms. You don't tend to find mosquito larvae where there are fish present, I assume that this is because they are much more visible at the waters surface, but live ones are a food item that all fish go absolutely wild for.

Ghost midge larvae ("Glassworms" / "White mosquito larvae") should be pretty safe, they only live in clean water where there are Daphnia etc

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all,
Are white worms not a viable alternative to bloodworms and blackworms?
I use Grindal worms a lot. They are a lot fattier than Midge / Mosquito larvae, so you need to feed them carefully. I've had bloating with <"Dicrossus maculatus">, and I think the issue was that that I've fed them too many Grindal and Blackworms in the winter.

I think the chitin content in bloodworms etc. is probably an advantage in keeping fish healthy.

cheers Darrel
 
They’re as bad as convict cichlids! The female eventually gave up looking after the remaining fry. I’m hoping some are still alive, I saw a fairly largish one lurking in the moss a while ago. However it hasn’t taken her long to spawn again with a big brood for such a small fish.

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Hi, Hope you’re all good.

Not much to report on this except for it has become a mass off microsorum narrow and bba everywhere due to the lack of flow the mass of fern is causing. I have a large amount of driftwood soaking in the garden in preparation of a rescape soon.

Female apisto still has a small group of fry she fiercely defends. When I was feeding the fry some baby brine shrimp this evening I noticed some movement at the bottom of the moss and found this little chap from her first spawn! Seems to be a fair size now, safe enough from most fish but not the biotodoma. Fingers crossed it’s made it’s this far it can now make it to adulthood.

Cheers
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Started looking at rescaping the weekend and got abit carried away!

It’s fair to say that I had let this one go to the point of where I felt I couldn’t save most of the plants this time round. BBA had covered a lot of stuff I didn’t fancy bombarding the inhabitants with lots of glute to try and turn it around. I like the look of the wood so much that I’m not going to bother with epithytes this time around. It’s going to be planted with a variety of medium echinodorus species and that’s all to give the inhabitants as much room as possible. The plecos only seemed to like echinodorus bleheri so I should be safe! The tetras and biotodoma seem to be much happier with more open swimming space currently.

I’m debating whether to keep the biotodoma, there’s too many fish in this set up and the biotodoma are by far the largest and the biggest waste producers. They’re also always nervous wrecks whenever there is a lot of movement around the tank as there often is as this is in my kitchen diner.

It looks a mess at the moment but I’m hoping it’ll turn around in a month or so.
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Cheers
 
Absolutely nothing that I am aware of brings out the "natural" colors of fishes than natural sunlight! ... looks stunning! ... but who know what the fishes themselves are actually seeing(?).

Cheers,
Michael

Some marine fish have hidden markings brought out by natural light (although not to our eyes) but for tropical I don't really know either. They definitely seem to like sunlight from my experience as everytime the sun has hit a tank I've owned, the fish have congregated there. When I sold fish we had lots of natural light and I would deliberately put the more bland fish in the tanks that got the afternoon sun, where they sold very well.
 
They definitely prefer it when sunlight hits the tank, as you can see all the characins will congregate where it is. It definitely helps bring out colouration too, those hemigrammus rubrostriatus in the middle of all the pictures can be quite silver with not much colouration. Once the sun hits them they turn gold with a pronounced pink a stripe.
 
Hi all,
It definitely helps bring out colouration too, those hemigrammus rubrostriatus in the middle of all the pictures can be quite silver with not much colouration.
When I had Black-Neon Tetra (Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi) they always spawned early in the morning when the sun was low and <"obliquely shining on their tank">. If I had a tank that regularly got some sun-light I might go down the "silver" Tetra route, with something like <"Hemigrammus rodwayi">.

cheers Darrel
 
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I have noticed my Gold Barbs, they split up but at certain times sunlight catches the bottom corner and they all gather. Whether it's a natural behaviour or curiosity not sure because Barbs on general are a bold fish
 
Beautiful tetra, can I ask what they are?
They’re hyphessobrycon peugoti. Quite hard to get hold of at the moment but I think they will become more available once people start breeding them. I’m pretty sure these are tank bred due to the price so someone up north is doing it already. I just need to do the same now so they become more prevalent around this way.

These are only young males, the dorsal should get a bit longer and the red deeper as they mature. The females are very nice too but different to the males, almost like a giant ember tetra.

Cheers
 
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