My blue blushing and gold(both veils) are set up in the 35g. Getting rid of four or five pb plats as they aren't up to breeding standards as well as a blushing half black veil with a bent dorsal fin. The fish from Damon are doing well. Genes/strain type include: -> 3 Blue zebras with gold gene (pb/pb) Mike Gibbs stock -> 3 Pinoy zebras (pb/pb) Pat Thobe stock -> 1Pinoy clown (pb/pb) M. Gibbs stock -> 1Pinoy zebra(pb/pb) M. Gibbs stock 
-> 7 Rainbow Paraiba fry(pb/pb) some may be Pinoy as there is at least one dark gene. Parents were from Neil Oyama and Carol.


I placed an order with City of Angels (Pete) for 3 blue koi and 3 paraiba koi which are all threadfins. I am also bidding on some lavender het pb leopards on aquabid. 

Ordered 4 turq. blushers from blacklace22 which will shipped when the weather warms

A pair of whiptails and a pair of farlowellas were released from quarantine and placed inside the 125 gallon. I will supply various sized caves for them in the hopes they will spawn.

My Hemichromis lifillae (jewel cichlids) have spawn a few times but not raised the fry successfully yet. One jumped out a few nights ago but my mother saw him and threw him back in. She was a bit disturbed but the little guy lived!

Setting up a 55 gallon that I recieved for Christmas. It will be heavily planted with an inch and a half of top soil covered with an inch or two of sand. I will be putting the carpet in and only leaving a bit of water to keep the soil moist as it grows out. I am not using any co2 but a method that I found on theplantedtank.com and the Aquarium USA. Plants will be ordered from azgardens. I want to try V. maasi once the tank is complete (forktail loach) and attempt spawning them despite the fact it hasn't been done before. Once they get settled in I may add angelfish and use a divider in case the loaches decide to breed. 

Learning more about angelfish genes. My gold female is a g/p-v/z I believe. I've also learning that her mate which is a blushing smokey has a blue iridescent due to fecal matter? Supposedly its a type of pigmentation. I'm not totally convinced on that one. My black angelfish is a hybrid black. I'm guessing B/M because it has a white streak near its belly (which I heard also happens on black angelfish so I may be incorrect). I'd appreciate any input or further knowledge as I'm going to be breeding angelfish more often with new varieties.

My hemichromis lifalili are getting more red coloration.
I don't believe I've mentioned my Discus colors but I have 2 orange (one is paler with freckles), two striped snake skin, and a blue.
I've added some pictures of the angels and the discus if you'd care to look. They aren't the best pictures.

I now have a blue discus and ten new angelfish.

The new angelfishes' genes are as followed(in case I lose them)
6 Blue Platinums<Blue Parents. Genes- Philipphine Blue, Platinum, Pearlscale.
 I believe I purchased them from Micheal Jarvis? (Have the bags mixed up already). In any case, they are quite lovely little guys.

The other angels were 1/2 black blushing angels purchased from Gary Mclivaine. They have excellent fins.
I do believe the discus was from Jack.

I came out of the auction with much success and only a loss of 50 dollars. Right now, I have the angelfish in my 50 gallon as I wait for them to grow out a little. They're in there with 5 adolescent discus so there's been quite frequent water changes. I want them to be big enough to prevent my other angels from picking on them in the 125 gallon.
I'll soon be purchasing a 35 gallon that I plan to plant and use as a breeding/quarantine tank. Hopefully my spawning success rate will increase.
Aside from wanting to add an additional tank for apistos, I'd like to breed honey gouramis soon and hopefully will be getting some more stunning angelfish from Damonc. Ah, the excitement fish bring me.
On another note, I have planted tanks that I want to add more plants to. I've noticed most people have special equipment. Would that be needed? My plants seem fine without it.  

Everyone has been so helpful on here! I'm so glad I've joined. I'd like to thank everyone for the black angelfish tip. I mentioned to the lovely owner I'd heard she'd gotten them in from here and she seemed really pleased. She showed me her membership flyer from 1977! Wow! I could only afford two, but I'm praying they'll get along with my other angels and pair up so I can have some black fry!

My 6 cichlids I bought from the swap are doing really well, their bellies are nice and round after feeding them brine shrimp today. The one discus I bought to add to the other three seems to be a female, as the males are displaying which leaves me with 2 adolescent pairs on my hands! What luck! I am concerned however as she's very jumpy, tends to remain in a single corner and won't eat (even blood worms). Still adjusting? :/

This leaves my 125 gallon planted tank with 6 cichlid fry from the swap, 4 kuhlis (of which I hope to add to), 4 yo-yo loaches, 1 indawgyi stream catfish, 4 angels counting the new two.

My 50 gallon planted now has two pairs of discus (various strains) and two threadfins who I just can't seem to spawn with a fake mop. (Extra java moss anyone?)

--Now for some dwarf cichlids and eels!
Special thanks to everyones help on here!

Today I noticed my two largest angels cleaning off a large clump of the radican marble queen sword leaves and their breeding tubes are dropped and ready to go.  It's a shame, because when I noticed it I had just finished cleaning out the cabinet under the tank so I could hook up the Fluval 404.  I also need to vacuum.  I am afraid if I try either I will disturb them.  I'm not putting a whole lot of faith in their success though.  With nearly two dozen tetra and four other angels I don't think these two have gotten intimidating enough to prevent the eggs from getting snacked on.  

This is the second time I have witnessed the angels spawn.  The first was four weeks ago when they spawned on the intake tube of the Emperor 400.  The tetras had an elaborate system of distracting the parents and picking off the eggs which in turn caused the parents to eat the remaining eggs.  Ahhh nature. 

Meanwhile in the same tank the male Montezuma Swords are still performing their courtship dance. I am amazed at their ease and speed when they swim backwards and their ability to contort their bodies at 90 degree angles.  Who knew fish were so flexible   And like a good girl, the female still appears to be ignoring them. Her gravid spot had darkened but it has pretty nearly disappeared since so apparently she was pregnant and dropped fry but they were eaten.  I doubt they could have survived since there is no moss or similarly fine plant matter for them to hide in.  So it looks like it will be another month or so before I get another chance at Monty fry.

And finally, this tank has significantly fewer pond snails since the introduction of assassin snails a couple months ago.  Those guys are amazing.  I had to quit harvesting snails from the big tank for fear that the assassins would run out of their food source! 

YAY! It's the new year.  Maybe that means new fish for some people.

Hope you dudes had a kewl holiday and a have GREAT new year!

I've used blogs before when I was breeding livebearers...hybrids actually, trying to improve certain traits. I fell out of the habit so perhaps this will help me remember. I've recently joined the Kansas City fish club. I've had fish since I was 6 (I'm currently 14), but I started keeping/breeding fish as a serious hobby about a year and a half earlier. My current tank contains: 3 anubias, well-developed wisteria plants (which I'm debating replacing because it looks a bit too much like a jungle for my tastes though recently I trimmed most of the unkempt features off and it has improved), seven molly-guppy hybrids, a mated pair of angelfish, 4 yo-yo loaches, 3 clown loaches (still pretty young) from Sumatra, 2 dojo loaches that spawned in the fall though unfortunantely I could not get the eggs to hatch(my theory is that they spawn in top-plants when a lot of fresh air is circulated near the tank, though others claim they scatter eggs on the ground, mine never did), an Indawgwi stream catfish(Akysis prashadi), a red eye tetra, and a red- tailed shark. Rocks from Jack's Fork and Current river along with a bit of red slate carve out many hiding places. The tank is 125 gallons. I keep the temperature at 79 degrees, the filter is a Rena Filstar xP3. I keep the pH nuetral and have two lightbulbs which are 18k aqua-glow that I leave on around 12 hours a day. My fish are fed on frozen bloodworms, frozen shrimp, freeze-dried shrimp & bloodworms, shrimp pellets, two diffrent kinds of algae wafers (one is Hikari, the other Wardley), the occasional treat of cuccumber or zuchinni, and rarely Omega One. The floor of my tank is gravel and was started in October 2008. I'm beginning to breed angelfish. Soon I will also be breeding Red Lizardtail Whiptails, Discus, various Dwarf Cichlids, and possibly a few others along the way. (I'm a dork enough to have made a list.) I do many other things besides keep fish, but it does seem to be an addicting hobby for me

Aaaah, today has been a busy day.

Started out on a trip to Lawrence to PetWorld for their semi annual sale.  I was second in line at 9:30; the store opens at 10:00.   I tried bribing the two kid brothers that were in front of me, for a dollar, to let me cut in front of them.  They said "no way!".  Nice to see that kind of enthusiasm in the youth.  Of course once the doors opened, they were aghast at the cookies on the table by the entrance...so I strode right past them to the fish area.

Saw a lot of great deals and passed some by.  I'm kicking myself for not getting the congo tetras, zebra danios, and white clouds...but oh well.  Ended up with four Bolivian rams, ten Black Phantom Tetras, four Metae corydoras, and six Skunk corydoras.   Didn't buy any plants or hard goods, but there were decent deals.  Thanks PetWorld for the great time.

Ended the day with the HAAS Christmas party.  It was nice to see alot of the regular folks and a few newer faces.  It's difficult times both economically and just planning things around in general; smaller crowd but it was fun.   Randy and Jenny (sorry if I misspelled your name) got a life time achievement award; which I'm sure both of them were excited and deserving of.  That was really cool.

The white christmas gift exchange went relatively mildly; not much stealing except for some discus.  I scored a L180 pleco.  Not sure what the heck it is, but it's alive and in a quarantine tank for now...so we'll see.   Thanks for bringing that DaveW and sharing that passion.

Time to go for now.

Thanks for stopping by.

Bb

Well, whats been going on in my fish room, i shipped java moss...for the 1st time kinda scared not sure if it froze hope not...all the baby angelfish are growing really well...i have some DD blacks that look real real good i cant wait til summer time and they start pairing up..i bought some amazon swords so far so good...i made a co2 thing..thats working good also...and i made a blue light which cost me under $5 which i will blog about it maybe utube..i have been making a lot of utube videos..i like it its fun..didnt get a whole lot of things for black friday..i am adopting a family for xmas well 3 kids...Oh one cool thing my parents bought a lake house so i will be fishing all summer...well i might blog later this month if im not busy...but everyone have a safe and fun holiday...

Peace

This is an interesting week.  This is my first week of my "vacation", or as my wife would call it, months of honey do's.  I will have plenty of time to work on the fishroom but also have to do Debbie's list and the house chores.

Up this week:  got some corydoras schwartzi and corydoras sterbai from Woo.  Other than that, no new acquisitions.  Picked up a couple of 10's from Roger, so we'll be incorporating that shortly.  Added a 55 from Dave, and will be adding filtration to that soon.  After I bap out my africans in my other 55, I'll clear those out and have two 55s for grow out.

Excited for the holidays to pass because I have more fish I want to order.  Specifically, some more cories and apistos.   In terms of wild fish from the southern hemisphere, this is their best collecting time...just when it's the worst shipping time on our side...so will have to work around that.

Good to see a large crowd at the last auciton, I think 40+?

Gotta go do some water changes now.

Bb