I’ve been fairly busy lately, so besides some regular tank maintenance, I haven’t made any significant changes to my tanks. So, with that in mind, I just wanted to share a few photos I got of my Rummy-nose Tetras. These guys are usually pretty skittish in my tank, such that when I walk into the room, they all scatter into the far corners of the tank. I imagine this might have something to do with the fact that I’ve had my hands in their tank more often recently.

Rummy-nose Tetra – front angled shot at 100mm f/11.

Rummy-nose Tetra – side shot at 100mm f/11.

This was posted on the forums, but I wanted to re-emphasize its importance. It appears that the native habitat of the Galaxy Rasbora is being threatened due to overfishing by exporters of the aquarium fish. I’m not really sure what we, as hobbiests, can do to help except to avoid buying Galaxy Rasboras that aren’t captive bred. Unfortunately, most LFS’ don’t know or display such information.

I’m a little bit conflicted because as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I recently purchased a bunch of these beautiful fish after coming across a deal I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been feeding them black-worms, so now I think I’m going to do my best to breed these guys. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of information about their spawning parameters due to their newness to the hobby. Please comment if you know how to breed these fish.

Update: I manage to come across a link to another site that details how they’ve successfully bred the Galaxy Rasboras. Here’s the link: http://www.aquamoss.net/Articles/Microrasbora-sp-Galaxy.htm

A year or two ago, GWAPA placed a group order for a number of apistogramma. In that order, I got about 6 apistogramma borellii fish. I successfully bred these guys in a 20G high and had at couple generations going. Then, unfortunately, while I was in California at the AGA, my CO2 tank

Apistogramma borellii female with babies (lower right)

dumped the remainder of the canister into this aquarium, and killed off all of my adult fish. All of the smaller fish in the tank survived, including 5-6 borellii babies, which at the time were not sexable. I decided to dedicate a 20G long tank to try and get a new population going. After a couple months of blackworm feeding to get the fish in good breeding shape, I finally noticed the drab juevenilles coloring up — bright yellows and blues! I noticed that a pair formed, which kept 2-3 other males to the outer parts of the tank. Then, this weekend I finally see the female hovering around with a handful of babies. To get an idea of perspective, this female fish is probably only 1.5 inches long. The babies are mere millimeters. Those large looking foreground plants are marselia quadrafolia! It seems that the female has taken to guarding the fry. I haven’t seen the male near them yet.

After work today, I decided to drop by the House of Tropicals since I haven’t been there in a few months. It didn’t hurt that I had a couple of gift certificates to spend there from Christmas. I had planned to just pickup some supplies and fertilizers, but I had to first do my obligatory walk through all of the fish aisles. In one of the aisles I came across a tank full of galaxy rasboras. I hadn’t previously seen these fish in person, but I’ve certainly heard plenty about them. I marveled at the tank for a bit, and then moved on. Shortly thereafter, I came across another tank of slightly smaller galaxy rasboras priced at just $3.98/fish. Well, I know most LFS’ sell these fish for around $10/fish, so I decided to jump on them. I snatched up 18 fish, got my 10% club discount, and came home.

I had to clean out one of my 10G tanks of all (or as many as I could catch) of the Endlers that were in there, to make room for the new rasboras. I don’t know a whole lot about these fish, but apparently they need soft water, pH in the 6.3-7.3 range and 10 dH. Those parameters aren’t too far off from my tap water, so hopefully they do just fine with that. I need to figure out what to feed them. A few Internet sources say that small live foods are preferable. I have blackworms on hand, but they may be too large for them right now. I’ll have to hatch out some baby brine shrimp. If anyone knows anything else about these cool fish, please comment.

The apistogramma viejita are my prize pickup from the 2006 Catfish Convention. They were setup in “fish room 2,” which was occupied by a series of tank from a breeder in New Jersey. I was amazed by the size of the fish they had available, with both the male and female being full grown at time of purchase.

Right now, these fish are in a tank by themselves with just a sponge fish, and a few odds and ends as far as plants go. They’ve have been, by far, the most personable fish I’ve kept,

always coming over to the front of the tank whenever I enter the room. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that they’re used to having people walking around their tank, but I always suspect that they happen to like the blackworms I’ve been feeding them.

As beautiful as these fish are, I hope I’m able to get them to spawn pretty soon.