Many answers to old questions

[Kathy Olson <kathy@thekrib.com>]

I am going to combine a few things here...ie nijsseni spawing, parental
stuff and Seachem buffers.

Okay everyone I apologise on the old post responses.  Basically if they
are old I don't respond unless I feel like there is something new to add.
Since nijsseni are one of my favorites I couldn't resist.  As usual life
got hectic and now I am wading through 400+ apisto email messages (for
those of you who don't know I am a resident in Internal Medicine and
depending on my scedule, recently off the ICU, I pop in an out of the list
but have been here for over two years now)

By the way Cory, I have nijsseni fry, now ready to spawn and extra females
if you want some.  First come etc.  I also sold to Steve in Vancouver last
year so he may have some as well.

On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, ALEX PASTOR wrote:

> Is it possible that this fish is proving difficult or impossible for some
> people to spawn etc. because the fish obtained had been raised without
> parental care?  The things I am reading about the fish eating their spawn

Okay, you guys can pummel me for the for bringing up parental thing.

I have had over 10+ spawns of my nijsseni, quit counting awhile ago.  The
first four to five was in pH 6's water and soft (Seattle tap) with no
avail.  Then I finally gave up and went for the Seachem buffer (only fish
I have had to for, not uaupesi/Rotkeil, gibbiceps etc).  Now on this we
did a lot of testing before adding it too the tanks.  We would mix the
water up days in advance.  Add the buffer, watch it plummet to 3's or
sometimes lower and then come back up to the 6's.  No way were we going to
do that to our fish.  So we experimented and found the right dosage to get
the water to the 5's after aging and not bounce around.  I think anyone
doing the chemical buffer thing should age their water first.  The pH
elevator is hell on the fish.

Spawning...when I did get fry the female would eat them.  So the only way
I could raise them was to remove the fry/or mom.  It was a 20 long leaf
tank and
the male always had to come out within 24 hours of spawning or it was a
blood bath.  After the first few acid water changes they were spawning
without it.
I moved them to a heavily planted leaf tank, but missed taking the male
out (was on call at the hospital) and she killed him.

My next set of nijsseni, I had 3 females and one male in a 10gal.  Two
females spawned with the male, I had to pull the third.  That was in tap
water (still it is soft and in the 6's in the tank).  The male took the
fry and raised them.  8 made it, not a great yield, but I had no extra
space, and still had left over fry from a previous spawn.  Turned out to
be 5 females and 3 males.

Turns out the fry that I had to pull and raise without the parents, were
better parents themselves and I didn't need to pull fry.

I haven't seen any lose of instinct in the fish I raise, just different
strokes for different fish.  I raise them with there parents if I can, if
not I pull them.

Oh yeah on the nijsseni, I also have a double spot variant.  Talked to Uwe
Romer about this and he noticed it as well.  In this last spawn I have
double spot females and males....hmmm....if I had the tank space I may try
spawning them, and see how true this is.  I always get one or so a batch
now.

Kathy (or if you prefer Kathryn K. Olson M.D. ;-), but let me escape from
work! )




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