March 18, 2011
Boris (top) and Media Luna two years later
Boris, Medea Luna, Lefty and Digitalis are about to celebrate their second anniversary since moving to Mt. Washington shortly after the nitrates dropped in the aquarium we had set up two weeks earlier. Boris and Medea Luna with Digitalis laid a batch of eggs four days later on March 31, 2009.
Boris and Blue Ram
Boris and Medea Luna laid a batch of eggs about a month ago. The young were removed with a turkey baster just before they became free swimming. They are living in the bathroom in the nursery aquarium. The parents moved them about and chased away the single Blue Ram and the two Cardinal Tetras, the last remaining fish from the originally stocked aquarium from March 2009. Lefty and Digitalis have a brood of 2 week old fry right now. This is the largest brood ever I believe.
Boris (top) and Medea Luna
Boris and Medea Luna are paler than usual tonight. I will photograph Lefty and Digitalis tomorrow when there is daylight.
Rummy Nose Tetras and Angelings
These little beauties are the offspring of Lefty and Digitalis and they were born quite a few months ago. I cleaned out the filter in the growout aquarium.
Breeding Stock Fledgling
This guy is from two broods ago. I saved the prettiest of the brood. This fledgling is the pick of the litter.
11 Rummynose Tetras and some Angelings
¶ Posted 19 March 2011 § ‡ ° November 28, 2010
Boris and Medea Luna have hatched a small clutch of eggs in the past week. Several days ago I counted 21 wrigglers. The community aquarium in which they reside has a drastically reduced population since last year. The tanks was most likely overstocked and the ecosystem could not handle the numbers. Now, other than the pair of Angelfish, there is a single Blue Ram and a pair of Cardinal Tetras (down from 6 and 10 respectively). I fear for the lives of the wrigglers the minute they start to swim, though nothing has been quite as bad as the bands of marauding fledgelings that for only short periods of time resided in the community aquarium. The hatchlings may get sucked into the filter, or eaten.
Boris (right) and Medea Luna lock jaws
This afternoon, Boris and Medea Luna began to lock jaws. The bottom line is that though aquarists have long witnessed the jaw locking of Cichlids including Angelfish, and though it is commonly associated with mated or courting pairs, it is uncertain if this is aggressive behavior, romantic behavior or dominance behavior.
As an aside, Lefty and Digitalis have a small brood that hatched the day before the fry of Boris and Medea Luna.
¶ Posted 28 November 2010 § ‡ °
Aquarium Rainbow
September 3, 2010
Every afternoon when the late afternoon light comes in through the west door, there is a beautiful rainbow on the wall behind the growout aquarium. The Rummy Nose Tetras and young Angelfish get very active at that time.
2
¶ Posted 04 September 2010 § ‡ ° Today I caught 10 baby Angelfish from the bathroom nursery aquarium to transfer to the growout aquarium. Last week, while Mom was still here, I took 20 Angelfish that were born this spring to Tropical Imports to trade for $30 credit. I did not buy anything that day. After doing that I moved 15 baby Angelfish into the growout aquarium that only had the six smallest Angelfish left. After this release, the Growout Aquarium will contain 10 rummynose tetras. Of the 10 I bought last spring, only 3 had died, and last week as part of the earlier delivery of Angelfish, which included the 3 gold adolescents (Paris and friends) which only netted me $10, so I replace the three dead Rummynose Tetras with 3 small ones, wiping out the stock at Tropical Imports. Dean said Gold Angelfish were not popular. A few days later they were gone from the store. I hope they went to a good home. I can’t remember how many spring Angelfish I sold that day. I think it may have been between 20 and 25.
¶ Posted 20 August 2010 § ‡ ° July 24, 2010
Two weeks ago, as Lefty and Digitalis were preparing to lay more eggs, I decided to get a new 10 gallon nursery aquarium since Daryl asked for the borrowed aquarium back. On July 9, I wrote: “I caught 17 more fry for relocation. Total 63. There are at least 21 remaining.“All of the fry left with the parents and they eventually vanished as did the new batch of eggs. It’s a mystery. Meanwhile, there was some mortality among the 63 fry that were put in the nursery aquarium in the bathroom. There are probably at least 30 fry still alive, though it is difficult to count them. I took some photos a few days ago.
Month old fry in Nursery Aquarium
The fry are eating well and growing and the largest are beginning to look more like Angelfish. I would like to move them into the grow out aquarium within two weeks, but first I will need to take the largest youngsters to Tropical Imports to trade them for store merchandise, perhaps a Clown Loach to eat snails even though the Clown Loach is not an Amazon species.
Month Old Fry in Nursery Aquarium
Update: August 5, 2010
The spawning that prompted moving the fry a few weeks ago vanished, but about a week and a half ago, I placed a piece of slate in the aquarium with Lefty and Digitalis. Within days, they spawned. This was last weekend. Many eggs were not fertile, but they did hatch and the wrigglers were moved around for a few days. Monday, August 2, they began to swim and for the past two days, they have been eating newly hatched baby brine shrimp. There are about fifty fry. The fry that were moved to the 10 gallon aquarium should probably be moved to the grow out aquarium, but not until I take the largest inhabitants to Tropical Imports.
¶ Posted 24 July 2010 § ‡ ° July 9, 2010
Yesterday I noticed a huge clutch of new eggs that Lefty and Digitalis laid on the filter intake tube. The filter is not on. The last eggs were laid 16 days earlier on June 22. Yesterday I bought a cheap 10 gallon aquarium and a new heater. I set it up last night and caught 4 fry and moved them into the new tank to make sure they would live. I then caught 15 more and added them this morning. I just caught 21 additional fry and they are acclimating to the temperature change. 40 fry have been removed from the aquarium with the parents and new eggs, and there are still some fry remaining and needing to be relocated. Though the parents did not show any signs of wanting to eat their older fry to defend the new eggs, I do not want to take the chance. The fry that disappeared when I was away, and the speculation is that the parents ate them to prevent them from eating the new eggs, were older and larger. Perhaps these current fry are not a threat to the new eggs.
I caught 6 more fry for relocation. Total 46
I caught 17 more fry for relocation. Total 63. There are at least 21 remaining.
¶ Posted 09 July 2010 § ‡ ° July 2, 2010
Lefty and Digitalis have always been very aggressive when it comes to defending their brood. They have consistently splashed water at me while I am feeding the youngsters eyedroppers full of newly hatched baby brine shrimp. Yesterday, while feeding the hatchlings that have only been free swimming for a few days, I was surprised by a large splash and an adult angelfish atop the aquarium glass. It had escaped the aquarium through an inch and a half gap between the glass and the rear edge of the aquarium where the filter pipes enter and leave the aquarium. I have never thought I needed to block the gap as I did not think an angelfish would jump. Apparently parental protection instincts allow they not terribly aerodynamic looking angelfish to go airborne. It all happened so quickly, but I scooped up the fish and tossed it back into the aquarium. It was Digitalis’s behavior that seemed noticeably changed after the incident, so I suspected she had leapt out. About an hour later, I noticed a small wound on Lefty that looks like a scrape. Perhaps it was caused by the glass, or perhaps my hasty handling of the leaper with dry hands. I added 10 milliliters of Stress Coat to the water to help Lefty generate a protective slime coating on the wound. Despite the leap, Lefty’s behavior continued to be very aggressive in defending the youngsters when I approached the aquarium.
The other pair of Angelfish, Boris and Medea Luna, who have not had a viable spawning since late last summer, have always defended the eggs against the tank mates by propelling themselves sideways through the water so that they look like manta rays. I can’t help but wonder if there are other reports of Angelfish leaping out of aquaria. I have a photo taken of the family the day before the jump. Lefty appears to be recovering nicely, and both parents eagerly eat mosquito larvae I catch in the yard, but Digitalis stays close to the small fry.
Lefty (on left), Digitalis and Fry June 30, 2010
Update: July 6, 2010
Lefty has recovered and is doing nicely. The young fry are growing, but I am concerned what will happen if the adults spawn again. In preparation, I took the twenty largest youngsters from the grow out aquarium and traded them for frozen and live food today. I contemplated getting a Plecostomus to put in the community aquarium, but I don’t want it to eat the eggs that are laid there.
¶ Posted 02 July 2010 § ‡ ° June 27, 2010
Upon my return from visiting mom in Ohio, I learned that neighbor Sandy who fed the fish noticed that all the 3 week old fry being raised by Lefty and Digitalis had vanished. Though I don’t know for certain, I saw that there were new eggs. Perhaps the three week old fry went from being children that needed to be defended to a cannibalistic hoard trying to eat the new eggs. I suspect the fry became a meal for the parents in the interest of defending their new brood. The eggs hatched about Thursday, June 24, and the parents have moved them several times. I ran the filter for a few days and changed some water, but I shut the filter off again since a favorite place to place the brood is on the filter intake tube.
¶ Posted 26 June 2010 § ‡ ° 
rss
I like This
