I just received my July 2007 issue of Tropical Fish Hobbyist this week, and was delighted to see that the cover article is about breeding the Celestial Pearl Danio, previously the Galaxy Rasbora. After all, I previously noted that this species, while just introduced to the hobby, is in danger of being over-fished and exterminated from its original habitat. Due to my own trouble breeding these guys, I eagerly looked inside to see what I was doing wrong. Apparently I missed the boat somewhere because they’re supposedly prolific egg scatterers, spawning almost daily in neutral to slightly alkaline water. But that wasn’t the thing that struck me.

While reading the article, I was startled to read that the Celestial Pearl Danio apparently isn’t really in such dire straights as originally reported. The article uses the following reasoning why the reported crisis is nothing more than rumor:

• Collecting aquarium fish benefits local people, so they won’t over-fish because then their livelihoods are affected.
• Normally, when supply diminishes, price goes up. However, the wholesale price for the Celestial Pearl Danio has continued to drop.
• The fish have been found to originate from more than one pond, as was originally suspected, and it’s unknown how much more widespread they may be through their region.
• Since they’re such prolific egg layers, even if the adults were all fished from a pond, the eggs would hatch, and they’d make a comeback.

While this sounds like great news, all of this logics appears to be author speculation, fueled by the stated belief that they don’t want the aquarium hobby to be blamed for the destitution of a species. I’m delighted if this news is true, but for me, it’s going to take more convincing before I recommend that everyone go out and buy this fish. At the very least, I would encourage any potential buyer to ask questions of their fish store owners about the origins of the fish in their tanks. If the Celestial Pearl Danio, is as prolific a breeder as claimed, then fish farms should soon have a captive breed supply, leaving the original habitat unaffected.

One evening this week, I glanced outside at my raised brick pond, and noticed that the spring foliage and pond had attracted a little toad to our patio. After my dogs gave it a thorough inspection, the toad remaining perfectly still to avoid absolute detection, I thought it would make the perfect photo subject. I grabbed my camera, slapped on the macro lens, got down on my belly, and shot the little guy for about 5-10 minutes. Besides the motion of inhaling and exhaling, he didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even blink when the flash went off. I hope this guy sticks around for the duration of the summer. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Unfortunately, it’s not mine! On Weds, I helped my friend and fellow GWAPA member upgrade his stand from a wire-frame stand to a much sturdier wood stand that he had built himself. This, all in preparation to hold, among others, his brand new and shiny ADA 90P tank. If you’ve never seen an ADA tank up close before, you’re missing out. Seamless design with expertly done silicon, without any messy silicon drips, even on the bottom of the tank. Plus, the glass itself is incredibly clear, and nicely polished on the edges. Yeah, I have tank envy!

Before we could setup the tank, we had to get his new, nearly 7 foot, stand up a long flight of stairs and setup in his fish room. Besides the small obstacle that all of the ceilings in his apartment were not uniformly taller than 7 foot, we eventually got the stand upright, and in position. A few blocks and wedges later, and it was level and ready for tanks. Aaron proceeded to put down the padding he bought to cushion the tank, and cut it to size. With the tank now in place, I can’t wait to see how he scapes it. There’s one small caveat, he’s not using Aquasoil. He’s setting up an ADA tank with a soil substrate. Should be interesting…

On Saturday, I attended GWAPA’s May meeting at Ghazanfar’s home in Virginia. Meetings at Ghazanfar’s house are always exciting because everyone wants to see the latest adjustments to the aquascape in his huge 215G tank built into his basement wall. As always, he never disappoints, showing us the beautiful aquascape you see below. It’s hard to get the full impression of its size without being there in person.

In addition to spending a lot of time staring at Ghazanfar’s tank, we all prepared for a much smaller endeavor by picking up our 2.5G aquascaping tanks and equipment. You can see my progress on this tank at my previous post. There seemed to be a rush on downoi and HC in the auction at this meeting, presumably to use in the 2.5G contests. There must have been at least 5-6 bags of each sold at the auction. I picked up one of the downoi bags, which will hopefully fill the back corner of my 2.5G tank without too much trouble.

After the meeting ended, Ghazanfar was nice enough to give the few remaining folks there a tour of his shrimp factory, also known as the 215G tank seen above. He has pretty much ruined the local area price for Cherry Shrimp by bringing thousands of them into our local fish store. Ghazanfar claims that at any given instant, he can siphon out his tank’s canister filter, and pull out 50-60 shrimp. We asked him to backup his claim, and so above you see him dumping filter water into a 5G bucket. To his surprise, not a single shrimp appeared. I’m not sure where he’s getting them from, but there’s no denying that he’s farmed a ton of shrimp! (My guess is that he’s finally starting to win his thus-far futile war to eradicate the shrimp from his tank.)

GWAPA’s aquascaping contest is currently underway after we handed out the equipment at our May meeting. So, what did I do? I went straight home, filled my tank with aquasoil, popped in some new bulbs into my old fixture, and setup the aquascape below.

Obviously, this is a mound style of aquascape, using the downoi and blyxa japonica to highlight the rocks. In the middle is anubias barterii nana var. ‘petite’ with crassula helmsii in the foreground. I have a little bit of ranalisma rostrata in the back right to transition to a better height from the blyxa japonica. I’m still deciding how much I like this scape, but I hope to have it grow in with enough time to take a picture and try another scape before the October deadline. Hopefully that’s allowed. 😉