Robs fish room tales.

If they get them to free swimming which I hope they do, do you feel that constant bickering may cause them to eat the fry & if so would you then consider removing one or the other or both.

I'll play it by ear, but if I have to remove one it will probably be the male.

Well sadly the albino & his mate lost their youngsters, although they did better than on previous attempts with a reasonable number of wrigglers surviving for a couple of days, unfortunately I noticed that their filter had practically stopped, and thinking that they'd eaten the babies I set to sorting it out, sending the babies, which were hidden on the back of the flowerpot flying. I think they're getting there so hopefully in a go or two they'll get the hang of it.

Better luck with the Manacapuru pairing. Whilst the babies were wrigglers, the female kept the male penned up in the corner of the tank. On Monday particularly, as the wrigglers got ready to free swim, she was getting very stroppy with him & I almost removed him. I'm glad I didn't, because on Tuesday morning I was greeted by the sight of both parents happily tending a good shoal of babies, I didn't manage to get a good shot of both of them together, but here are a couple of half decent ones of the proud parents....

Dad...


Mum...

The Albino pairing sound like they are getting ther rob so you should have some nice albino hets real soon. 

Thats great news regards the Manacapuru pairing & your instinks paid off yet again rob
The pics are without doubt showing some proud parents, well done & looking forward to the pics of them as they grow.

Fantastic sight Rob! This should open up a whole new breeding plan for you! I was impressed with Raikos' mana crosses into the koi lines, he produced some spectacular fish! Happy breeding....

I was impressed with Raikos' mana crosses into the koi lines, he produced some spectacular fish!

I was too!

This should open up a whole new breeding plan for you!

As usual I have more directions to run in than I have tanks, but IMO there are very few varieties that couldn't be improved by the addition of a red crown!

A couple I am seriously thinking about are red crowned half black ghosts and red cap albinos, but there are lots of other possibles and crossing into koi lines is another serious prospect.

Still, it's best not to get too far ahead of myself, they only went free swimming on Tuesday!

A quick update.

Manacapuru & silver are still guarding a reasonable batch of young who are growing well.

Albino and his mate failed again, however.....

I don't usually like to let siblings pair, but I have a number of nice blacks from my not pinoys thread two of them paired up in one of my grow on tanks, and for a number of reasons (good size, nice body shape, good temperement - not too aggressive) I decided to let them have a go at being parents, I'm glad I did!
Their wrigglers are due to go free swimming tomorrow, but when I looked closely at them this evening I saw albinos!



These are going to be a very varied batch as both parents are D/+ - S/+ - Sm/+ - +/a - +/pb and in addition probably both, and one definitely have/has a streaked gene.

WOW Rob what great news for you with the Manacapuru x silver pair still having there fry & doing well, it will be nice to see them as they progress.

What happened with the Albino & his partner this time was it eating again?

Yet again WOW im so pleased for you with the unexpected albino fry,this is a spawn im very intresed in & will be waiting with baited breath to hear how you get on with these & very intrested to see what the albino's turn out to be.

I have been talking to a couple of people who are currently raiseing albino fry & both have said that no lights in the tank & regular water changes with RO has been the key to raiseing them,so it will be good to hear how you do, as you know i also hope to be breeding them in the not to distant future as my hets are all doing well & growing fast.I will be posting some pics of both spawns of hets that i have soon as it apears that the male does carry the striples gene because the pairing with your paraiba has given me Ghosts,Smokey Ghosts along with Smokey Blushing & Blushing Ghost's from what i can now see.

im very intresed in & will be waiting with baited breath to hear how you get on with these

OK, rather later than I expected this batch are up & swimming!
Parents seem to be doing an excellent job of keeping the shoal together, albinos & otherwise, none the less I decided I want two bites at the cherry, so I've transfered some of the albino babies to a 35 litre and left the rest with Mum and Dad. Fortunately the 35 litre I wanted to use for this purpose is just a short syphon's length away from the main tank.
First I drained most of the water from the 35 litre, but left the mature filter it contains, whilst doing this, and water changes on some of the other near by tanks, the parent fish were getting very agitated, rushing round grabbing babies in their mouths and spitting them out on a leaf in the middle of the tank. I'd don't know if the albinos, due to their poor eyesight, are more prone to straying, or are more obvious to the parents because of their colour, but most of the babies the parents were grabbing were albinos, so when the time came to deploy the syphon It was very easy to pick off albinos and leave others behind. In total I transfered about 40 albinos, plus I suspect a couple of rogue normal babies, which I'll sneak back to the main tank when they're a bit easier to spot.

both have said that no lights in the tank & regular water changes with RO has been the key to raiseing them

I don't want to wind up with a strain of albinos that need mollycoddling, I can see the logic of keeping light levels low, especially in the early stages, the main tank has the equivalent of a 20w T8 for a 40 gallon tank, and I'll be keeping that on as normal. Whilst the 35 litre has a low power LED light which keeps the tank dim, but lets me see how they're doing!
As to R.O. I shall carry on my usual water change regime. I use quartz gravel rather than bare bottom breeding tanks. I  have a theory, too long to go into details now, but I suspect that this should reduce the risk of bacterial infections and therefore reduce the need for R.O. and other bacterial reduction strategies. We'll see if I'm right over the next few weeks!

The Manacapuru and her mate are going to need to be moved out soon, as the babies are really starting to pick at their fins! - more photos soon!

Great news there then rob what with the parents doing there job & you being able to move as many as you have.I realy hope all goes well & you manage to keep this lot.
Its great to hear that you dont intend to give them anything special regards RO etc as i would like to think that all the extra mollycoddling is not a necessity.

Well, I would like to show you a photo or two of the Manacapuru cross babies, but although they're doing well, they're also very camera shy and disappear to the rear of the tank every time I point a camera at them! Just about 3 weeks since they went free swimming they now look like proper little angels.

The albinos haven't done so well, although the parents are very attentive numbers of young in that tank have dwindled and although the parents still have a reasonable shoal of babies (about 150) I don't think any albinos have survived. Of the 40 or so babies moved to the 35 litre tank, I think only 4 remain and one of these is a little black individual, I did also move 2 non albinos back with their parents. One problem I encountered with previous batches of albinos was the babies eating brineshrimp still in their shells, so this time around I've been adding the sieved brine shrimp to a jar of water and swirling it round, any shells that find their way in tend to collect at the bottom in the centre and I then pour off a little of the water with brine shrimp into the tank. It seems to work!.....




The challenge now will be keeping the babies fed, without over feeding them.....

In other news....

I have a pair with more wrigglers than I've ever seen before from one batch! However, their previous batch dwindled away and only a couple made it to free swimming and were gone 48 hours later.

The albino and his mate have eaten their eggs/wrigglers yet again, if they don't come good next time, they're going to lose their breeding tank, probably to the black pair who gave me my latest lot of albinos!

I have another pair, male koi, female gold marble ghost who look like they've got eggs/wrigglers, but have hidden them at the rear of their breeding cone, so I'm not 100% sure if/what & how many!

I've also put this pair together, nothing doing yet, but fingers crossed....



He's a platinum marble (hopefully ghost) she's a koi with a pb gene. Hopefully another step in my quest for better coloured koi.

As ever those photos are amazing rob  
The colour of that Koi is also very nice & deep so i will hope you get what you want from them.
Sorry to hear about the albino's.I was chating to a guy on friday who has said with his albino fry he found that micro worms seem to be better than brineshrimp regards them eating more & getting on there way like normal none albino fry.

With regards to the albinos, the ones that have survived seem to feed happily on brine shrimp. because I like to keep a bit of gravel in my tanks, I don't think microworms would work very well for me. Someone on TAF II suggested that keeping lights dimmed when the fry are wrigglers and even at the egg stage avoids damage to the eyes. I'm not 100% convinced by this theory, but I'm prepared to give it a go, my tanks already have background on the sides & rear, so I'm thinking of using black quartz gravel, and putting something on the cover glasses to dim the tank futher, that should have the added advantage of making the albinos more obvious for the parents to spot.

I can see what you are saying about micro worms not being much good if you have gravel & if brineshrimp is working why change it.
Regards something for the front glass would the clear coloured material that they use for window blinds be any good as you could also use that to cover/dimm the light on the tank.
I'm takeing notes here rob as im trying to put together a list of other peoples results so as to help me as & when i get my hets breeding so please keep the info comeing & good luck with those you have left.

Regards something for the front glass would the clear coloured material that they use for window blinds be any good as you could also use that to cover/dimm the light on the tank.

The breeding tanks I use are 2' x 1' x 15" but mounted end on so the "front glass" is 1' x 15", at this stage I'm not planning on dimming that out. If I'm going to breed albinos, I want to keep the process as normal as possible.

Well the Manacapuru cross babies are no longer camera shy! A couple of weeks a go I had a minor panic as I found 3 dead one morning, could have been an issue with the brine shrimp, but as a precaution I treated with octozin (3 day course) and Anti Slime & Velvet (one off treatment) and have had no further losses....

I'm pleased to see most are already showing nice red colouration in the fins, but I suspect this is more Dad's influence than Mum's....






I still have 3 of the albino babies and they seem to be growing reasonably well, although I suspect that one may have swim bladder issues, time will tell.

They look great Rob.  

Hi Paul,
To belatedly answer your question....

What happened with the Albino & his partner this time was it eating again?

I have to say that I've been getting very frustrated with this pair, some fish seem to have very little clue as to how to, and even less inclination to, tend eggs or young. Yet this pair both seem very attentive, but their wrigglers invariably disappear either, shortly after hatching, or before going free swimming. I have a theory that the parental instinct is heightened by large spawns, and that often, when most of the spawn fails to thrive that parents are more inclined to cut their losses and try again a week or so later. In light of my theory, I was pleased to note that this pair had their best clutch of wrigglers so far, and I resolved to leave them in charge, 48 hours later however and the wrigglers were significantly fewer, so I decided I'd better step in....

I carefully netted out the parents, and using a short length of airline syphoned out the wrigglers into a jam jar, from here I transfered them to a breeding net hung in their original tank. The idea with the net was to keep the babies safe from predators (snails) and so I could keep a close eye on them, also by keeping them in a confined area I hoped that it would be easier to control their feeding for the first few days of free swimming. I also decided to lay a towel on the cover glass above the net to reduce light levels.

All this was a few days ago, the babies went free swimming Wednesday evening, I estimate about 40 in total, they seem to be doing well at the moment, my only issue being that baby brine shrimp are quite capable of swimming through the fine mesh of of the net, but this in turn means I can get away with a bit of overfeeding as the majority of shrimp escape before they get eaten.

The exciting part of all this is that whilst Dad is an albino & I can guarantee that the youngsters will have at least one albino gene, it would appear that Mum is het. for albino as about half the babies appear to be albinos! The towel definitely seems to have helped as the albinos seem much more active and alert than with my previous batches, so although it is early days, I'm hopeful that I'll get a better survival rate than I achieved with those previous batches.

This is good news for couple of reasons....
Firstly mother, is sister to the male I paired to my manacapuru, Albino red back is one of my target varieties & there's now a 50:50 chance that I'm already heading towards that goal.
Also, from your point of view, the mother is sister to my original blue marbles, which means the odds that some of the fish you've had from me may be het. albino have just improved significantly!

Well not a lot of luck with the albinos....

Of the three from the sibling pair one proved to have swim bladder issues and has been culled, leaving me with just 2 who seem to be developing well and keeping pace with their non albino siblings (who are in a separate tank).

A family holiday meant that those from the albino x ghost pairing were always going to be up against it, and I suspect I released them into the main tank too soon, long and the short of it is that I have a sole, non albino, survivor. Hopefully persistence will pay off, I've put the parents back in the tank, this time with black quartz gravel, and a towel on the cover glass, I'll probably pinch the first batch, then leave them to try and work out how to parent raise!

On the plus side, came back from holiday on Thursday evening, and on Friday morning this pair presented their free swimmers to me, fortunately my parents had popped in to set the brine shrimp going ready for my return!...

 

Photo update time....

Firstly the two surviving albino fry...



and a couple of the manacapuru x domestic silver babies...

The manacapuru crosses are very nice Rob. How many did you end up with? You should be able to create some nice varieties with these much like Raiko has done. Are the albinos growing at a normal rate still? They look to have some good 'colour', certainly not anaemic looking.

Hi Graham,
I moved the Manacapuru crosses to a larger tank a week or so ago and at a rough count I've got 44 of them, so enough to hopefully pick out some well coloured ones once they are larger.

The two albinos are as large as their siblings who stayed with their parents, and I've now moved the albinos back in with them (their siblings not their parents), looking at those photos again I think I've managed to post two photos of the same fish, rather than one of each as I intended. One is marginally smaller and I'm fairly confident is an albino pinoy, the other in the photos I'm not so sure about. But I'm certainly very happy with the way they are developing.

Well, on the one hand I'm delighted, I've finally persuaded my albino male & his mate (who's het. for albino) to breed & parent raise; and an excellent job they're doing.....



But on the other hand, despite my initial optimism & the preporations I made to help the albinos survive, (see my reply in this thread http://www.uk-angelfishforum.org.uk/t573-albino-fry#3978), it doesn't appear that many have.

There are a couple in this photo...



None the less, a few do appear to be doing well, so it will be interesting to see what the final head count is!

One last photo of the proud father!

Hi Rob the Manacupuru cross youngsters look very nice indeed & i will be nice to see what you intend to do with them regards breeding later on.

I take my hat off to you Rob with your persistance with the albino's & well done as the photo of the one you have posted looks stunning & its good to hear that the growth rate is also good.I hope you get many more & with a greater rate of survival.

When I put these two together, I did so in the hope of producing some blue angels which were het. for albino, that the female turned out to have an albino gene was an unexpected bonus, but it looks like only one of the albino babies is still going.



Despite the fact that they were still doing a very determined job of guarding the young, I decided to remove them. Once I have a spare breeding tank, I'm going to have another shot at some albinos, but I think I might split these up & try them with different known albino carriers. On the other other hand, they've now proven themselves excellent & determined  parents, so I may just keep them together, time will tell.

The manacapuru crosses are growing at a phenomenal rate. Partly because they are simply silvers with no complicating genes like zebra, pb, pearlscale and dark to slow their growth rate, and partly, I suspect, because of something called "hybrid vigour" The largest of them are already about 2" to 2 1/2" from the top of their dorsals to the tips of their anal fins, and colour is looking very promising...



I'm also very pleased with the way some of my most recent blue marble batch are coming on. All of this batch are blues, but not all are blue marbles, and there's a huge mix of types including smokey & chocolate blue marbles, blue chocolate leopards, even the odd "plain" paraiba.  

Blue Chocolate leopard "snakeskin"



Chocolate blue marble


smokey/chocolate blue leopard marbles



I must say I'm really partial to the added iridescence that the smokey/zebra combination brings to the mix.

Finally a few photos of a couple of my older blue marbles, still awaiting their chance in a breeding tank!

STUNNING !!!!!!! You must be soooo happy with these Rob! I think the chocolate blue marble is my favourite.