Diapteron

[Diapterondave]

My mistake Ronnie. The matten filter is not a degassing filter.
As soon as you get fry and can risk them do try a Debryun type filter with Diapterons I promise you they do fine at higher temps It can not just be my fish and I have done this many times with different species in the genus. For me it's O2 levels not temperatures. I hope you get them going and perhaps get them established in Singapore so all of you can enjoy them. Also as Wright stated man they are just gorgeous my abacinum are drop dead gorgeous. Hope to see you on the Diapteron group good luck keep us posted.

[keehoe]

My mistake Ronnie. The matten filter is not a degassing filter.
As soon as you get fry and can risk them do try a Debryun type filter with Diapterons I promise you they do fine at higher temps It can not just be my fish and I have done this many times with different species in the genus. For me it's O2 levels not temperatures. I hope you get them going and perhaps get them established in Singapore so all of you can enjoy them. Also as Wright stated man they are just gorgeous my abacinum are drop dead gorgeous. Hope to see you on the Diapteron group good luck keep us posted.

Dave, My nick name is markc. Sounds familiar?

Gan, The fish is still alive and seems less dashing around. Will do a bit of water change tomorow and it has grow noticably bigger. But i will still wait for 6months before any attempt to breed them. Might have to separate them two different little tank next week onward.

KL and the rest drooling individual, Can't primise anything yet as many things can happen. Especially when we are talking about 6month ahead which would be dry summer season in Singapore by then.

I will keep a look out for second hand chiller for those who really interested to keep the fish. Guys, we are talking about average 30C in our summer. I will try my best.

JianYang, thanks for all the helps.

[stormhawk]

Kee Hoe, another request, do you happen to know the collection code for your cyanostictum? I'm editing the census and need to update.

[Scott_sg]

Hi for those interested, there are some Diapterons up for auction on ebay uk. D. georgiae I think, I have no idea about them, but they look like nice fish. Just thought I would mention it since they are not that common and there seems to be a few of you obsessed with them.

Scott.

[keehoe]

Hi for those interested, there are some Diapterons up for auction on ebay uk. D. georgiae I think, I have no idea about them, but they look like nice fish. Just thought I would mention it since they are not that common and there seems to be a few of you obsessed with them.

Scott.

Thanks Scott. I already got some of that coming on its way. If my guess is right. It is from same source. Now i am in big trouble. How to i rig up my 3-tier, 4feet, 9partition tank with only one chiller?

[keehoe]

This morning my first D.GEO hatch. But its body shape is still the same as it was under the egg shell. Bend spine......... 7 more eggs to go.

[Scott_sg]

Keehoe,
Was just reading through Tim Addis's site, come across some of the notes for D.fulgens and it was talking about higher temperatures for the eggs produced fry that did not straighten out.
I know you are playing with a different species, but I would assume there would be deep similarities. Anyway it is just some more info for you.
Good luck with the fry, and those to come.

Scott.

[keehoe]

Hi Scott, besides high temperature. O2 level and softwater (lack of calcium/ carbonate) might have something to do with the poor development of fish also.

Is there such setup that would allow the parent fish to take in more calcium while still maintain the water is soft <100 ppm tds?

[Scott_sg]

Hi Keehoe,
I hope the fish are ok, your asking a tricky sort of question there.
These fish coming from soft water should be super efficient at taking up calcium.
What are you feeding them?
My first suggestion would be to fortify the foods you are giving them, since vitamin D for example is needed to absorb calcium along with a lot of other things.
If you are talking about poor hatches with bent spines etc, I really don't know what is happening there, I read that the high temps during incubation of the eggs was causing that in other Diapterons. So all I can guess is that some proteins made during development are switching off or similar at higher temperatures.
If the fry are still alive I would try and ride it out and see what happens, perhaps try raising the electrolyte levels slowly over time. Maybe slowly increasing the water movement also, that will help get food to any poor swimming fry and also "force" them to get moving.
My Rachovia I had a poor hatch and a couple were belly sliders, but since I did not have many I thought I would do all I could for them. Anyway as adults they are perfectly fine, although they were belly sliding for the first few weeks. So don't give up hope.

As a warning Keehoe, I have only ever seen Diapterons in pictures so take what I say generally But definitely adding some multivitamin or supplements to your brine shrimp or whatever you are feeding will not hurt and might help.

Scott.

[Diapterondave]

KeeHoe,
Hello over there how are your Diapterons doing? I just wanted to comment on the subject of TDS. In my experience and in my research I see a trend and that is that Diapteron eggs will fungus when the TDS is above 60 ppm. If we research the native Biotopes we also find that they come from one of the wettest areas in the world receiving over 99 inches annually. My best success with Diapteron eggs has always come in very soft acidic water. I have also worked with soft water fish all my life. Dwarf Cichlids, Tetras, catfish etc and I have never seen any problems raising the fry in such water. I feel diet is the way we can make sure they receive the proper nutrients. We should enrich their diet especially the live foods we feed them such as Moina and grindleworms. We are having a discussion on this right now on the AKA website which opened the new Diapteron forum. Stop over when you get a chance. www.aka.org Look forward to hearing more Diapteron talk on this forum!

[keehoe]

Hi all, a plesantable report. One healthy D.GEO fry hatched today. In normal room temperature 27-28C.

Something very distictive about its tail. It is not white colour! The tail is redish brown in colour. This fish sure got potential. Colourful since they were born.

Dave, talking about warm temperature. How does 28C compare to the temperature you had tried ^^. I think they will need low temperature to spawn and incubate. But as far as hatching and growing up concern. Normal temperature 28C might not be that bad to them.

I am feeding the young with baby brine shrimp right now and the two sub-adult with tubiflex worm. They love it. Is the fish in breedable size? They are about 1.5CM in size.

Scott, i got a feeling that what we feed to the fish is not their main diet. They are taking up water/ mineral from their surrounding more often then their feeding. Anyone done any study on that before?

[Scott_sg]

Hi Keehoe,
You are right, I very much doubt Daphnia, BBS and Tubifex are there main diet. In soft water jungle streams it will be all the different types of Rotifers and Copepods mixed with insect larvae. Daphnia for example don't like acidic water at all, but cyclops loves it.
Even large fish still eat lots of very small animals, if you ever "gut" a fish you will know what I mean.
Most of the nutrients will come from the diet, some nutrients can be absorbed no problem across the gills, but you have to remember that a lot of these jungle fish are living in almost pure rain water with only some leached tannins from all the dead leaves. The water is almost nutrient level zero. In fact one of the characteristics of tropical jungles is the very low nutrient levels. With high rain fall most nutrients are quickly washed away.
So fish in such conditions are really relying almost totally on all nutrients from the food they eat. In captivity we can only give them a very small subset of the balanced diet they would get in the wild.
Try adding some multivitamins and supplements to your brine shrimp hatching water, the BBS will absorb at least some of it directly in the first few hours of hatching.
I don't have any rotifers around at the moment, but I was playing around with cyclops cultures a few weeks back as part of my "mad scientist" experiments. The Germans have always used cyclops, but they are not so popular elsewhere - they can be nasty little things. But the adults will love them, and it is something else you can vary the diet with.
Give me a week or two and I will see what I can come up with and pass to you. I might even be able to get some rotifers going for you with a bit of luck. They have been on my "gonna do" list for a while.

Scott.

PS I vaguely remember some 10% rule for oxygen levels in water decreasing with temperature.

[keehoe]

Hi Scott, I read some info on cyclop. It ever mention that Cyclop is just like miniature crab. Capable of digging a hole right out from the fish stomach. Is it different type of cyclop that we are talking about? The only cyclop that i had used before (intentionally) is those cyclop-eeze freeze dried. Those that comes with the daphnia water. Well, small quantity, i just ignore them.

What i mean is the fishes are feeding all the time. Many filter feeder such as cyclop/ daphnia would helps the fish in absorbing the nutrient from the environment compare to what we feed.

I am trying to setup some auto feed system that would feed the fish round the clock. That promise great variaty of food so stay tune.

[Scott_sg]

Hi Keehoe,
I think at last count there were about 20000 species of copepods, so some of them are no doubt nasty - "fish doctors" and "fish louse" are one I think, if you ever catch a wild saltwater fish look inside the mouth and you might find one type
The normal cyclops has a mixed reputation, the Germans and Europeans have been using them for a hundred years now. Outside of Europe they are not popular at all.
I still have no idea how the Europeans are able to get them in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile.
Generally if an animal can survive the stomach and then tunnel out, I would suspect there is something wrong in most cases, with the fish in the first place. The only time I have ever seen something similar was in some fish that showed up in quarantine in Australia years ago and one had I think a screw worm maggot eating the fish alive. Needless to say everything was destroyed then.
I came across some Rotifers the other day, they would probably be ideal for your small fish. I have not had time to even try and culture them yet, busy with other things. But they would be good, the ones I came across were quite a good size, not much smaller than BBS.
But a rotifer culture and some of those supplement algae powders would make a nice live food for your small fish.

Scott.

[Raf]

Hi Keehoe,

Just some thoughts about keeping and breeding Diapteron:

- Try feeding them ants. I feed ants on a regular basis and it works great for all my surface dwelling killies (Aphyosemion, Rivulus and Epiplatys). It sure enchaces their health, egg production and fertility. If you want to give it a try, look for a small species that doesn't have big jaws or doesn't spray acid.

- When I visited Henri Debruyn a couple of months ago, he told me that for breeding so-called cold water killies, it's more a problem of oxygen levels than temperature.
For delicate species as Diapteron he combines the Debruyn filter with another type of oxygen generating filter. I don't remember the name of it, but it looks like an inversed pyramid. Anyway, the important thing is to enchance oxygen levels as much as you can without hardly any current.

- Another feeding mechanism some breeders in Europe use, is a mixture of live Daphnia, mosquito larvae, Artemia and Ostracods. They say the trick lays in the Ostracods that clean up the place. The fish don't like to eat them, as they are too hard to digest. The only thing you have to take care of, is not to add any ostracods in a fry tank, as they may eat your fry.

best regards,

Raf

[keehoe]

Thanks Scott and Raf. I have difficult identifying ants not to mention various type of daphnia, infusuria. I would just let them choose what they prefer to end. As long as not too many "fish surgeon", the fish should survive.

In our weather Henri filter loose water fast and hence harden water much faster than normal. May be it is a good idea for our environment. Just that i have to change water more often. But if that gives more viable egg. I suppose why not.

[BFG]

Hi for those interested, there are some Diapterons up for auction on ebay uk. D. georgiae I think, I have no idea about them, but they look like nice fish. Just thought I would mention it since they are not that common and there seems to be a few of you obsessed with them.

Scott.

Thanks Scott. I already got some of that coming on its way. If my guess is right. It is from same source. Now i am in big trouble. How to i rig up my 3-tier, 4feet, 9partition tank with only one chiller?

If I may assist.

You need another tank to collect water from the 3 tier tank. You also need 1 pump for the chiller and 3 separate pump for each of the tier tank. Since you have 3 tanks, you need 3 pumps.

Mohamad Rohaizal.

[keehoe]

Thanks, But i want maintain about 6inches dept of water without mixing water from any tank (for better control of any disease outbreak. Most likely i will do over flow for the 3 middle partition while the side 6 tanks just enjoy thermal transfer through the glass. I only need one pump.

Pump from bottom to the chiller, chiller to top, top overflow to middle, middle overflow to bottom.

Anyone can recomment an adjustable water pump for this purpose?

[keehoe]

Short update. Collected a viable egg last night.