DAY 1-5
- 17.05. -
54 L tank : 50% waterchange, KH 2°, GH 5°, pH 6,5, 26° C.
I've put 2 male and 6 female Iriatherina werneri into the
breeding tank. The males started displaying after 30 minutes, 10
minutes later all started eating. I feed them newly hatched brine
shrimp and
cyclop eeze.
Unfortunately one male jumped off the tank in the evening. After
10 seconds I put him back and my first impression was that he had
really big luck !
Tomorrow I will cover the tank and increase temperature up to 28°
C.
- 18.05. -
54 L tank : 25% waterchange, KH 2°, GH 5°, pH 6,5, 28° C.
I've put a cover on the tank in the morning to avoid loosing
more fish by jumping. The males show colour that I've never seen
in my show tank before. Very awesome !!
The behaviour is very different compared with the behaviour they
showed in the show tank where they lived together with larger
fishes. It's a big pleasure to watch them and now I understand why
many people recommend to keep them alone in a tank. Due to
strongly increasing temperatures (like summer), temperature in the
tank already reached 30° C. today.
- 19.05. -
54 L tank : 25%
waterchange, KH 2°, GH 5°, pH 7,0, 29°-30° C.
The male I. werneris still try to get the females to the moss
permanently. As far as I can see without success until now but I'm
not living in front of the tank 24 h a day ;-) In the moss I
couldn't recognize any eggs. Temperature now is 29° C in the
morning and 30° C. in the evening. I'm still feeding a lot of
brine shrimps and all eat very well.
- outdoor tub
: fertilizer
I've set up a round 150 L outdoor tub which is only 30 cm high on our balcony. It's not
possible in the garden because our children and dogs would surely
do a lot of nonsense...
I filled the tub with water from tanks and some liters from
another outdoor tub with a lot of green water. For the rest I used water prepared by an ion exchanger which I always
use when doing a waterchange at my tanks.
I have swimming plants in the tub : Eichhornia crassipes and
Pistia stratiotes.
Plants in pots : Typha minima, Hippuris vulgaris, Iris versicolor
blue. I think I will add some Myriophyllum later and moss if the
Threadfins have laid eggs.
- 20.05. -
54 L tank : 25% waterchange, KH 2°, GH 5°, pH 7,5,
30° C.
A male died and all other I. werneri look great. I don't know
if it was the one who jumped off the tank 3 days ago or if the
other male was too aggressive. I coudn't find any visible injuries
or anything that looked strange except he's dead. The only male is
hassling the females very strongly. He looks a little bit
aggressive. For this reason I've put two more males into the tank.
This will give the females some time to rest while the guys are
sparring.
Due to high pH value, I will install BIO CO2 tomorrow to reduce pH down
to 6,5. One problem is that I used rainwater for the waterchange today which I mixed
with tap water to reach KH 2°. Usually I use water that was
prepared with my ion exchanger and mix this water with tap water.
The result of the last method is soft water with low pH.
Well....no day without learning !
Tomorrow I will take some photos of the wonderful coloured males
and add some photos of tank, fish and tub to this diary.
- outdoor tub
Water temperature was 32° C. yesterday evening, this morning
it was 16° C. A little bit cold for tropical fish fry. I've
installed a 75 W Jaeger heater to keep temperature at least at 26°
C. I also installed a small external filter filled with Zeolith. I
hope slow current will avoid temperature increase above 30° C on
hot days.
- 21.05. -
54 L tank
: 25% waterchange, KH 2°, pH 7,0, 30° C.
pH value reduced a little because I used the water from my ion
exchanger this time.
Bio CO2 production hasn't started yet but I think this will
happen this evening and pH should be around 6,5 tomorrow.
In the morning I found some I. werneri females with a
golden stripe from their mouth over the neck. I've never
heard about this and until now I thought this was a sign of mating
males. Maybe this is a sign of sexual matuarity or being ready to
lay eggs ??? Perhaps somebody reading this has experienced the
same before ? I would appreciate some feedback very much !
The biggest of the three males is very dominant agains males and
females. I'll watch him and probably put him back into the bigger
tank if he doesn't change his behaviour till tomorrow.
This evening I found something in the moss that looked (in my
inexperienced) eyes like an egg. I'll have a detailed look
tomorrow.
I took some photos of the female I. werneris in the evening.
Colour becomes more intensive day by day. They're looking great !
On the third photo on this page there are two sparring females.
I've never seen this before. They look a little bit like male P.
signifers from Harvey Creek ;-)
Today I ordered O.S.I.micro food. Hopefully I will have the same
success with it like Adrian Tappin who recommended this food for
raising fry.
- outside tub
Although using a heater, water temperature was only 16° C. this
morning. Unfortunately the same as yesterday without using a
heater. I've to test the heater. When it's o.k. then it's not
strong enough for our cold nights but not a single degree more the
whole night? I can't imagine that.
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