| 6/7/04 |
Wow, guess the hard part of
this is keeping the diary up to date. It's gonna take a long
message just to get up to date. First, we lost our big girl
Kuda. I was doing a major clean - cloudy water and all and she was
fine, curious, coming to check out what I was doing. Right after
that Wally saw her snick food off the sand and get a big snoutful.
She seemed to have a hard time getting the sand out and she was never
the same after that, just quit eating and died in the hospital tank two
days later - so very sad.
I finally did get the hatchery set up for the ocean shrimp with the
colander in the rubbermaid, but no babies yet. Rotifers are doing
great. Copepods and green water not so good. Reset up the
mysis as their water had got bad and I lost most of them, they are doing
better now.
We lost one of the tigertails... literally lost. I came home from
work and the filter was knocked over and sucking sand so I snatched it
out and dropped it into a bucket right in front of the tank. When
I counted the tigertails I could only find four. We never have
found the 5th one... Wally combed through the sand... nothing. I
thought maybe she was on the filter cord and came out of the tank with
the filter but she's not on the floor.. true mystery and so very
frustrating. The rest of the tigertails have been having a growing
spurt... getting pretty good size now. Just in the last couple of
days they have been showing "courting" colors and behavior... but no
pouches are visible yet!
We bought a new female erectus from a local woman who only had the one
horse and was moving. The erectus was CB, she had kept her for
about a year but had lost the male about 4 months ago, the two had had
several broods. She's a pretty thing.. I'll post pics.
Ten days ago I finally got my order from Florida Collector.. 9 adult
dwarfs (a couple are more like juvies) made it and two died on the way.
At my office, an hour after they arrived one male delivered 34 babies -
everyone in the office was amazed. That was the Friday of Memorial
weekend. Anyway.. brought them home and put everyone and
everything going in the dwarf tanks through a panacur bath, put the
adults in the 3 gallon silver tank and the babies in a big fishbowl set
up just like for other fry with greenwater, rotifers, and bbs.
Snails, hermits, peppermints, plants, sponge, etc, etc went mostly in
the reef but a few in the seahorse tanks.
That same weekend, on Saturday, we went down to Seattle and bought a
female barb from WaGuy. She was a wildcaught but eating frozen
food. She's very, very thin but appears healthy and does eat mysis
and brine - loves live brine and ghosts too. She's the most active
of all the horses.
That first Saturday night we had a fry disaster... the dwarf fry started
convulsing, spinning and dying. I could see just the smallest
amount of cobwebby stuff... HYDROIDS! I guess a 5 minute bath
isn't long enough exposure to panacur. I dosed with panacur and
moved the remaining fry to the adult tank. Immediately they were
fine again... managed to save about 17 of them.
A week later (last Saturday) we went shrimping in the tide pools (not
much luck) and when we got home, the second pregnant dwarf and given
birth.. I think about 30 babies total now. He had two tails
sticking out of his pouch and I watched him for a long time.. the tails
were twitching but daddy wasn't even trying to push them out, he was
calmly eating dinner... sheeeesh. I thought it was best to let
nature take it's course... I had the best of intentions.. but when the
tails slowed the twitching I just couldn't stand it.. I held Daddy and
gently pulled the tails.. both fry came out and swam away.. just fine.
I had intended to raise the dwarf fry separate from the adults, but the
are doing very well where they are so I think I'll let at least these
wildcaught fry stay but the next batch will be CB and I will likely
separate them.
Last Saturday, I put the new erectus and the new barb into the main tank
from the quarantine maybe not the best decision but I feel safe because
they have been in good homes for quite some time. I had been
exposing them to our tank water the whole time.
I haven't had any "big horse" fry as Jade has had some bad luck and lost
a couple of broods to tank equipment before she could get them out of
her main tank. She thinks one is expecting now so we could have
fry anytime. This is too long.. but that's most of the news and
I'll try to make more frequent shorter entries. Promise.
CHECK OUT THE NEW PHOTOS! |
| 10/22/04 |
Never promise what you can't
deliver. So this time I'll only say I'll try to do more frequent
updates. Hard to even catch up now but here goes. My four
Tigertail babies are now A YEAR OLD. They are wonderful - one is a
male (Nigel), the other three females (Lady, Kali, and Kiara). I
was also fortunate enough to adopt a male Tigertail (Lumpy) *Thank you,
Bruce!*. Had to do a pouch evac on Nigel, then infection set in, we
cured the infection with Nitrofurazone, but it looks like he might need
another evac soon. Lumpy and Kali are courting heavy... may be fry
soon. We almost lost the erectus girl (Bubbles) she had a
swollen tail, probably Vibrio and went through several treatments, cured
that then she got bubbles on her tail (that's when she got her name)
still has a couple of bubbles but they are receding at this point.
I also bought a pair of Kuda from a girl getting out of seahorse
keeping.. WC but eating frozen. I'm pretty sure they did the egg
transfer thing last night. Those 8 seahorses are all in the 37 gal
tank and REALLY seem to enjoy the group setting. We sold the barb
girl to a local seahorse keeper who had a male but no female, better to
have the pair together. We lost all the dwarfs.. my own fault - I
was checking ammonia regularly and doing at least 10% water changes
daily and it never dawned on me that the nitrates could possibly go up..
not until it was too late. But I'm going to try again, I guess I'm
just stubborn. I have the silver 3 gallon set up for them with
black sand, sponge filter, two fake plants. Twelve dwarves are scheduled
to arrive next week from Aqualand. We have decided to treat all my
tanks and cultures with Panacur to ward off hydroids - with dwarves
coming and possibly fry soon I'm not taking any chances. We won't
treat the reef tanks (we have 4 now) so will have to be careful not to
transfer stuff back and forth anymore. Two days
ago we got a pair of Sunbursts (erectus) from Ocean Rider along with
Vibrance, Vibrance II, 200 red shrimp, and 3 macroalgaes. They are
small 2.5 - 3 inches but very cute. Appear to both be females but
they may not be old enough to sex yet. Hopefully I'll have pics
posted tonight. We are planning to go with tigertails and erectus
for our breeding. We cleared out the second bedroom, pulled up the
carpet baring the linoleum and that will be the "fish room" for
nurseries, cultures, etc. Wally has big plans! We have
already set up a deal with Dan U. who breeds erectus and he wants to
expand to kudas so we will send him our pair in exchange for a few of
his juvies. Not sure yet if we will keep the kudas here for the
first fry to be born or send them to him now.
Cultures are doing ok, phyto, rotifers, pods, marine
ghosts (I have a set of babies about 1/4 grown), red shrimp, amphipods,
mysis. Wally has two batches of baby peppermint shrimp.
Guess that's all the news for now. |
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