Over It

Last night my male Black Orchid plakat died of dropsy. I'd noticed he was starting to bloat a couple of days ago and immediately started him on a course of Kanaplex (Kanamycin). Seems he was beyond aid.

A few people out in Australia have aunts and uncles of these guys so maybe the line will continue under someone else's guidance.

The two spawns I have been trying to get up and running continue to remain unsuccessful - not surprising really as my heart just isn't in it at the moment.

I think it's time to put the fish away for a bit. My lack of energy is not doing the right thing by them.

If I can find the inspiration, I would still like to get some photos of my current stock and send them out to new homes, but I may just end up putting all the girls into a community tank and keeping what boys I have as pets.

Life outside the Fishroom just isnt conducive to me to persevere with my current efforts. The idea of creating my own lines doesn't have the draw it once did.

So that's it - if I get around to doing photos, I'll post them here, and maybe auction some off. If not, I'd like to thank everyone who helped me along this part of my fish-keeping journey. I'll probably be back at some point, just no idea when at this time.

Oops - She Turned Out To Be A He...And So Is His Sister

The presentation for auction of the White DTHMPK's has been placed on hold for another week or two due to stupidity on my behalf...

I separated two females and paired them up, one with a brother, and another with a male from a different line.

During the introduction phase of conditioning, it began to become clear that my female was actually a sub-dominant male, just beginning to exert his masculinity. As he bloomed, he became a better candidate than his brother in the other spawn tank, so he went in there, and his brother became a second male to be put up for sale.

I sorted out the next best female to take his place...and she too has begun to lose the female traits and exert his male form when confronted with another male. The poor fella I'm trying to find a mate for must be worried as everything I put in front of him changes from a dominated female to a male.

So I'll play it safe and wait a little longer for the DT's to grow out a bit more before offering them up. The good news is that there will probably be three pairs available now.

I'm also going to play it safe with the luckless male and spawn him with his sister for F3 - crossing in DT will have to wait till next time.

Still haven't made the time for photos - but it's on my to-do list...

White DTHMPK Spawn and the next cabs off the rank

Only two months later than expected, my white spawn has sufficiently grown out to be sent out into the world - yay!

Bad news is there is only one male up for grabs. Only two survived through to maturity, along with a dozen or so females.

I'm keeping one male and two females, the rest are available for new homes. I still have a few females growing out, but I can put together a sibling pair for sale and then a few individual sisters.

These will all go up for sale on the Betta Buy/Sell Australia Facebook page and advertised this blog and on the CTPK Project Australia page.

I just need to find the time to take the photos...

On the spawning side, currently being conditioned are:

Male Yellow F2 combtail x female white DT HMPK (with extra yellow iridophores obvious)

Goal - increased chances of getting plakat combtails
         - increasing spawn tank temp to see if I can get a better male ratio
         - Commencement of DTCTPK line
         - Introducing new blood into the recessive line for F3
         - Looking to get yellow back in F5 (unless my white DT's have the nr1 gene somewhere)
         - Looking to get DT back in F5 - maybe even Yellow CT DT PK
           (very small chance though...something like 1.6%)

(not sure on the correct presentation of a fifth generation line which has had new blood introduced at the third generation...do I go back to F1 - which hides the amount of work that's gone into the line, or is the annotation more like F5 -2 to show the 5th generation two generations removed from new blood...)

Male White F1 DTHMPK x Female White F1 DTHMPK

These are F1 as far as I am concerned. Not sure what generation they came from when imported. I asked but wasn't informed so I can only play it by ear and keep an eye out for deformities. The spawn above with the yellow male will help as it will allow me to cross over and introduce new blood from a line of cousins.

Goal - Continue a line of white DTHMPK
         - Breed out (as much as possible) the marble gene, which I wasn't aware of but has appeared.
         - Gain more males in a spawn without any sign of marble
         - Gain males with better dorsals
         - Increasing tank temp (but different to above spawn) to test theory for gaining more males

Fingers crossed these spawns will take off over the next week or two.

The auction for the available white DT's will hopefully happen next week :)

A New Year Begins 2015

It's been a long time since I've done an update, but that was because there has been a lot going on in the background that needed to be resolved before I knew what this update was going to be.

There was a strong possibility that I was going to have to rename this blog from Adelaide Betta to Townsville Betta. An opportunity arrived which may have led to the whole family moving north but the numbers didn't add up and so it has been shelved for the foreseeable future.

Due to us figuring out if we were moving or not, breeding programs were also put on hold. Pairs scheduled to spawn are yet to have their chance in the honeymoon suite. This will be rectified from early next week.

Current state of play:

Originally I had two green lines running side-by-side, but one of the F2 generations didn't pan out. I have, however, been keeping a F1 female from that line - a little green dragon girl I quite liked and couldn't bring myself to let go. So now I'm going to cross her with a F2 male from the second green line. It is a small step back in progressing to true CTPK's but I keep the genes in the green pool, and reduce the amount of lines I've got on the go.

My recessive line is looking promising, except I seem to be lacking male plakats from the F2 spawn. I do seem to have a few choices of female plakats though. I'll match one of those up with a male from my DTPK spawn. I also seem to have the beginnings of a green pastel line...need to think about whether to pursue that one or not...

Black Orchid plakat line is looking good and ready to go onto F3...or have DT introduced...

White DTPK spawn is almost matured - maybe another month before being fully cooked...which is fine as I'd rather only have a couple of spawns going at any one time with only a partial overlap.

Next move(s):

Green Line F1 female x F2 male...if not successful, F2 male will be crossed with sibling for F3.
Recessive F2 x DT (yet to decide on which sex from which spawn).

Sell excess fish from Recessive and DTPK spawns (February).

Spawn Black Orchids in March.

Have a break....start again :)

Heading away for the next few days, but I'll be looking to setup my spawns and take photos of the fish next week...stay tuned :)

Depressing

Recently there was another conversation regarding the use of salt in freshwater tanks.

I have used it for the last 12-15 months in my tanks. I reduced it from 1 tea spoon/10 litres to 2 tea spoons/30 litres about 6 months ago. I further reduced it to 1 tea spoon/30 litres around a month ago.

The conversation took place a week or two ago.

Since then, I thought I'd give it a shot at going back to no added salt...late last week, I had one female develop dropsy and keel over. A few days later, a prize male showed some lethargy, which developed into dropsy within 12 hours and he was gone. Yesterday a female lined up for a F2 spawn went the same way even quicker.

My tanks are far from salt free just yet, as I'm using the non-salted water for the water changes - so my fish are being slowly adapted back to no salt. I don't think it's the salt that caused the issue, nor do I think it is the lack of salt in the new water. It's Murphy's law - you talk about something and defend your stance and...bang...something kicks you in the softest of places to remind you of your limited understanding of things.

Then my largest fry from my DTHMPK spawn keels over...

Every now and then, the Fishroom is the last place I want to be...

But it doesn't matter how long you've been doing this, or how much you know and take care of your piscatorial charges...something, somewhere, sometime, will jump up and bite you.

Be supportive of others, and don't think your way is the only way to do things. What works for you, works for you...until it doesn't.

Good luck with your spawns :)

White Out With A Chance Of Blackness

Spawn Updates

The white Double-Tail Halfmoon Plakats are going okay. As is usual for my spawns, they are starting to slip behind the accepted growth rate and week three is where I normally have a bit of a "wheat from Chaff" die off period. That is to say, by my way of thinking, I tend to lose quite a few of the weaker ones.

This time round I'm not particularly concerned. I started with a ridiculously high number of fry and there is still more than enough left for me to deal with.

I did manage to get the first pic showing their caudal lobes tonight...even though the rest of the fry is still blurry...another week or two till my camera picks them up well.

My second spawn tank is also full of light bodies, with the F2 of my recessive CTPK line. I started with even more fry in this spawn than the DTHMPK spawn above. They are also going well although a little behind the growth curve and also going through the Wheat from Chaff phase. This photo was taken pre-feed, hence the slightly gaunt look. I assure you, they all have orange bellies now :)

And last but not least, the Black Orchid CTPK F2 spawn...Looks to be around 50 or so that will make it to maturity. There doesn't look to be a high ratio of males in this spawn again...mostly female in F1 and it will be mostly girls again it seems.

The first male looked nice but lacked almost every trait I was trying to improve...I was worried.

As you can see, nice caudal spread, decent dorsal spread, anal is too long and a little too much hump in the top line...and bugger all webbing reduction. Feisty fella though...

But tonight I found another male who is just about ready to be jarred...

There will be a better photo once he's been jarred and a chance at a mirror, but his top line is better, webbing reduction is better, anal is more in balance...a better all round fish for my goals.

No more spawns planned till January - but I have two pairs ready and waiting to go when these spawn tanks become free and the little fellas have grown to juvies...well, at least two pairs ;)

Fry Everywhere

It's been over a month since I last updated this blog - smack my wrist...bad blogger!

Got a fair bit to report on now :)

The accidental spawn was culled due to an outbreak of Swim Bladder Disorder. The poor fellas had a rough start and never recovered.

But, that spawn was replaced by two others who have more than made up for the false start to breeding season.

The players

Many of you know that I've been after a white pair of DTHMPK for a while now. Through the graciousness of SSS's Yolandi, I managed to purchase a pair from Indonesia. As per usual, they were imported through FishChick in QLD and arrived in excellent condition.

Male

 Female

Result = a big spawn of approximately 200+ fry. Unfortunately my camera doesn't have a macro lens and so photographing the little blighters is futile...

At the same time, I setup the following pair:

Male

Female

These are my F1 choices from my recessive line of CTPK. They carry the Non-Red (nr1), Cambodian (c), and Opaque (Op) genes (among others). The goal here is to get back yellow, Opaque and Cambodians to have three separate recessive lines moving forward. These separate lines will then get crossed with fry from the DTHMPK line above. Then, as required, they will get crossed into my green and black orchid lines, and future lines I have planned.

The result (please forgive the photography - like I said, no macro lens)

This is just one corner of the spawn tank. The fry are everywhere! I estimate 400+ - easily the biggest spawn I've ever had.

BBS production has increased accordingly with a new BBS hatchery created. I'll post pictures of that once it's fully operational. For father's day I was also lucky enough to get a mini fridge with a good size freezer compartment. I need to move some things around but this will be installed into the Fishroom by this weekend (no more traipsing back and forward from the kitchen - yay!) - photos to come.

As always, both spawns were started on Vinegar Eels for the first few days and then BBS. Both are now solely on BBS, three or four times a day. Water is being added every second day to fill the spawn tank, with a water change being done every day in between (alternated between the two tanks - so one gets extra water while I do a change on the other, and then the following day I alternate).

This time round, my spawn tanks were very basic. A 20L tank from Target with 8L of IAL treated water, a small sponge filter, a half polystyrene cup (not taped to the glass) and a heater. Yep - no plant anywhere in sight. Only the sponge and the heater for the girl to hide behind.

Both girls were still introduced in a separate container, and then into a clear tube - but on release, they stayed in there respective tanks til they had done the deed (two and a half days - no tubing overnight). Both boys were very gentle, so they sustained no damage other than a nip here or there.

Both boys tended their eggs well. Red built a huge nest while the DT had virtually no nest to speak of.  Both males were removed once the fry started free swimming.

After advice from a well respected source, I'll be moving them to bigger digs in two-three weeks time, and then probably splitting the spawns even further down the track.

There will be no more spawns till around January - I think I've got enough on my plate...