Group's a ghost town

[Kel's Blue Mustang]

Where did everybody go?
This group used to have so much traffic.
Now there's hardly any.
Too sad.
: (

[Shay Baskett]

Mostly just read but you are correct not much traffic as of late. Hoping to have internet at

home again soon just been using works LOL then I'll sit down and post a list of what there

currently is in tanks as I haven't done that in years now

 

Best Regards Shay

--
 
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Freshwater Aquarium" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to the-freshwater-aq...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Jeff Walther]

Possibly, most of the list member have settled into long term stability with respect to their tanks.   The quiet does imply that we're not attracting new members, seeking help.   Perhaps they're all ending up at the web based fora.

I haven't posted in a long time, because I've settled into a pattern of taking 100 - 150 guppies or swordtails to the LFS every few months and I assumed folks didn't want to read about it.  There's not much to tell.

I've stopped breeding guppies, although I still have a 30 gallon tank of the best males and also some females in the (separate) swordtail tank.   Every now and then, when I admire a particularly striking male, I'm tempted to resume breeding them, but it's just so much work.  I already must do water changes every two weeks without fail because my tanks are very crowded -- because of breeding.   When I add guppy breeding in, there's the sorting of males and females at adolescence, which takes a few hours.   And they mature quickly so there's  a lot more emptying and sorting of the adult tanks and trips to the LFS.   I coach LL baseball in the Fall and Spring, so between that and my job, and water changes, if I add in guppy breeding, there is hardly time for anything else.


I'm still breeding toward pineapple swords and am just about happy with the colors I'm producing.   I still get plenty of greens, reds, and orange (?) swords out of the mix.  I've also started getting a blonde sword. 

I don't know if those names are the ones typically used.   There's a solid red color with a hint of yellow in it -- so not quite the deep red of a redwag platty.  Then there's a more transparent orange.  Perhaps they are the same pigment with a transparency/opacity trait included/omitted.  I've never found a web site which explains the genetics of sword tail coloration.   And there are essentially green swords with hints or actual stripes of orange primarily on their dorsal surface.

The blonde swords are a pale yellow or cream color.   They're not actually all that striking, but they are fairly unusual looking, at least to me.  I'm not used to seeing that color on a swordtail.

I started with pineapple swords, but they were so weak and frail, that I cross bred them with green swords on the theory that the greens would be closer to the hardier original stock.   But now I've been trying to breed the pineapple color back into the breed, while also maintaining a strain of greens for cross breeding purposes.    I seem to have the hardiness thing going pretty well, although, once when I waited three weeks to do water changes I had a die-off (I think I was also over-feeding) and the blonder colors seem to be more common amongst the dead.  

The swordtail tank is the most crowded and the most critically in need of water changes every two weeks.   The swordtails dwell longer because they take longer to mature.  So their numbers tend to accumulate to greater heights than the guppies.   Additionally, the female guppies are in there, increasing the load.  Right now, I have a group of young-uns who are ready for the adult tank, but I'm keeping them back in the growing tank, because the adults need to mature enough for a culling to the LFS before I think it's safe to add more fish to the adult tank.   That die-off spooked me a little.

I kind of miss the days when fish food clouded the water.   Back then, if you overfed your fish for a while, you knew it within a week, because the water would turn a milky color.   Now, if one overfeeds, it's difficult to tell without close examination, or by knowing that the undesirable algae bloom is coming from the excess food.  But I only see the algae bloom in bare tanks.

In tanks with gravel, the food just clumps in around the plants or in the filter, if I feed too much and does its harm there.   However, in bare tanks with sponge filter and HOB filters, overfeeding causes the glass to gloss over in green algae and causes the plants (java fern) to get covered in slime, and more or less kills the java moss -- again, by getting covered in some kind of slimy algae.  I think it's an algae.

Okay, most of that is a little off topic for this thread, but that's what's going on with me.   No real problems.  It's just a pain to stick to water changes every two weeks and even someone who has kept fish for 35 years can fall into the over-feeding trap.   They're just so eager when I feed them...

Jeff Walther