More Babies!

Ok, so this one gives me a little more reason to be excited! Last night, my frontosas spawned! I allowed the female to hold her eggs overnight, but due to the lengthy development time for frontosas, you should always strip the female of her eggs or she could die of starvation (or eat all of the fry). Essentially African cichlid females will hold eggs and fry in their mouths in a special cavity and go 3 or more weeks without eating. In order to keep them strong, I always strip my females of their eggs. "Stripping", as it is called, is very simply done. You need to capture your female as quickly and gently as possible. Try not to stress her out. Hold her over the container that you will use to hold the eggs/fry with her stomach in your palm (with the net between your skin and hers - you want to avoid touching them with bare hands if at all possible). Be firm, but gentle, and wrap your fingers around her front half while slightly applying pressure to the corners of her mouth. This will pry her mouth open. Fill a turkey baster with water from her tank and stick just the tip of it in her mouth, then flush her with the water. This safely removes the eggs/fry from the cavity and they will spill out into the container. Be very quick but gentle in this process so as to not harm your female. Search her mouth thoroughly, and if you cannot see anymore eggs or fry, release her into the aquarium.

The setup you use to hold the fry is called a tumbler. Generally you should use a small, skinny container filled with the aquarium water. You will also have an air pump with an air stone inserted into the container. Here's how I made mine very simply:

I used a typical container that you find at Petsmart, Petco, Walmart, etc. that hold bettas. I've purchased multiple bettas throughout my time and saved the containers for this exact reasoning. They already have a decent sized hole cut in the center of the lid. Buy an air pump and small air stone that is adequate for a 10 gallon aquarium.When you set up your air stone, have it set as high as it will go, slip it through the hole in the lid, then put it in the container, fastening the lid. This will keep the eggs constantly moving around, which helps prevent fungus from attacking them, as well as providing oxygen release into the water.

With all that said, my frontosa's first spawn gave me 35 eggs, and I'm hoping all continues to go well!

Babies!

Ok, maybe this isn't a huge reason to get excited - for some reason, I just find it funny. In my new 125 gallon aquarium, I have strictly African cichlids, except for a pair of Honduran Red Points. Now normally a convict will keep all other fish on one side of the tank when it has fry. But that's not the case in my tank. My red points had a spot staked out from the moment I introduced them to this aquarium just over a week ago. But I never noticed eggs, and my massive male electric yellow (he's 8" long), fully grown female frontosa, and tiny 3" white calvus (this one makes me laugh SO hard) keep them whipped into shape. Whenever the red points go after another fish, one of those three gives them a good nip, and they retreat back into hiding. This morning while feeding my cichlids fresh frozen beefheart, which they were devouring, I noticed a little fish come swimming up over the back of this rock. To my surprise, there were a few hundred of them swimming down there! The red points have obviously held their own, but none of the fish are affected by it in the slightest.

Now what to do with the fry... Honestly, as much as I'd love to separate the parents with the fry to a different tank, I lack the funding, time, and energy to do so. My red points are truly beautiful fish, being oversized with perfect fins and color. I've never seen such perfect red points, honestly. But time will tell what happens. My bet is the fry will become sushi for the Africans.

Amazing Custom Aquariums!

Lately I've been thinking a lot about building some sort of custom aquarium, but I had no idea how to start. My goal is to someday have an aquarium over 2,000 gallons built into my home. As I searched the internet trying to find ideas for this, I came across the company Living Color. Their work is nothing short of amazing. Check it out for yourself, and get ready to drool. ;)

Living Color Enterprises

Setting Up a New Tank

Good morning! What better way to start off the new blog than an explanation as to how to set up a new tank? Let me first begin by saying that I used to have 8 tanks running before I moved out of my parents' house for college. Now that I've graduated, am working full time, and have my own place, I just started getting back into my hobby. Up until today, I had 3 tanks and a pond running. My smallest tanks were both 10 gallons, one of which was a fry tank for sulferhead cichlids and guppies, the other holding my betta fry. The other tank was a 56 gallon African cichlid tank, which was way overstocked but very well cared for. Outside is my 75 gallon planted pond.

So, as I said, the 56 gallon tank was way overstocked. I purchased a custom-order 125 gallon tank 2 weeks ago, picked it up last week, and have been in the process of setting it up over the past week. So now, the 125 gallon is my cichlid tank, the 56 gallon tank is holding angelfish and my sulferheads for grow out, and the 10 gallon is a guppy tank, while the other 10 gallon is still a betta tank. Now, those of you that have been doing research or are experienced in setting up an aquarium may be wondering why I only cycled my tank for a week. Well, I'm so glad you [didn't] ask! Here's what I did:

1) Buy your aquarium, filters, substrate, lights, hood, and any other equipment you need.

2) Get your tank set up on the stand, rinse out your substrate and put it in the tank, put on your hood and light, and plug the light in. I've noticed that bacteria cultures tend to grow more rapidly if they have access to natural sunlight or some light source. Be sure you are turning your light off at night and keeping your aquarium on a schedule, as you would with fish in it.

3) Keep in mind this process only works if you have an existing tank already set up. Take your new filter media and soak it in your existing tank's water for a couple of days. If there is room in your existing filter to add in the new filter media, do so. You can even set up your new filter on your old tank, allowing the old one to still run, though this isn't necessary. Doing this allows your existing tank's bacteria to build up on your new filter media, thus reducing the time it takes to cycle your new tank.

4) Begin to fill your new tank. From my 56 gallon tank, I took out 20 gallons of water and placed it in my 125 gallon. The rest was brand new water, and I then added a small amount of a bacteria culture (I believe the product was called Bio-Magnet - I've used it on all of my tanks).

5) Set up your filter(s) with media, heaters, and any other accessories. The tank will likely be somewhat cloudy, but this means the cycling process has already started. Most of the time it takes a few days to a week for the tank to become cloudy. Allow the tank to run fully overnight. The next day, you can adjust the heater if the temperature wasn't right, or make any adjustments to the decor, air pumps, etc. The tank may still be slightly cloudy, but you will notice that it is clearing up very quickly.

6) Add your fish once your temperature, air flow, etc. have evened out to where you want them. Your new tank should have nearly identical conditions to your other setups. Voila!

Hopefully these steps help you add to your collection. For me, this process is so much easier than starting with a 2 week cycle, which often times turns into a month or longer because the bacteria doesn't build up as fast. I always refer to it as the "old fashioned" method. Whatever you are most comfortable doing is obviously the path you should take, but this is my suggestion for speeding up the process. Happy fish keeping!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! Aqua Journal is intended to be an extension to my website, Cichlid Talk. My goal - to chronicle the adventures of an insane fish nerd in an effort to make everybody else's fishkeeping hobby a little easier!

There are just a few basic rules:

1) Read often!

2) Leave comments!

3) Ask questions!

4) Most importantly... be respectful. We're all human and we all make mistakes. And to all of the "experts" poking fun at rookies - you were in their shoes once. You are here to help, not make enemies.

Sound good? Great! Let's get started. :)