Bob
X-Original-To: jbholmes@nwlink.com Delivered-To: jbholmes.nwlink.com@mx7.pacifier.net Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 12:41:11 -0800 From: "Betty Goetz" <Betty.Goetz@noaa.gov>User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: jbholmes@nwlink.com Subject: update on Endler'sWay way back in October of last year you shared 3 pairs (+ one juvenile which ended up female) of Endler's livebearers (and lots of live plants!) with me. I just wanted to update you on their progress and thank you again! After an acidosis scare (which I attribute to the dead brown-looking mailorder java moss the vendor promised me would green-up with patience...pH of 6.8) and the loss of all my males plus one female, I figured out how to keep the pH and hardness at a level the fish like. I also learned a lesson about complacency....the pH in this tank had seemed so stable at 7.0-7.2 I got lazy and didn't do my testing much less water changes often enough. Some experimentation with crushed coral and parakeet cuttlebones helped (weak grin). Plus dredging out all that dead looking brown stuff and tossing it in the garbage (my patience only goes so far when dead fish are involved...I don't think that java moss was EVER going to green up!). Once I got the pH back up to 7.2 or so, everyone was much happier! And all the females were pregnant and started popping out babies so I thought I was home-free. One month went by and then another....everything looked female. I was getting nervous. Then, one day I started seeing little black slashes on the sides of 2 of the younger 'females'. To date, I've got 5 males which are vividly showing their orange racing stripes....and have roughly 20 Endler's going strong. It's time to start sharing my Endler's with others. And I do have a line forming to the right....between all these fish-keeping co-workers, these Endler's will start dispersing soon. Thanks again!AND...hopefully I'll be picking up some wild-type honey gouramis this Friday! Blue Sierra in Issaquah says they showed up on the wholesale list so they ordered me some. Fingers crossed! I have a 10g tank all planted and waiting for them....but the female Apistogramma (double-red aggi) we call JAWS has to move to the 6gal Eclipse I just set up today. Can't have her killing my lovely little gouramis like she does everything else. She's called JAWS cuz her main function is consumption of the wild-type guppy fry my 29g tank produces (about 90+ per month). You can almost hear the Jaws movie theme as she lurks under the hornwort before targeting a newborn guppy (wink).Now....I'm getting pretty sucked into this aquarium thing again so just printed out the membership form to the Greater Seattle group. Am I gonna be a joiner again (sigh)??----- Betty Goetz - Research Fishery Biologist Team Leader:Bering Sea pollock/rockfish Age & Growth Task Resource Ecology & Fisheries Management Division Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NMFS, NOAA P.O. Box 15700 Seattle, Washington 98115-0070 (206) 526-4217
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