Weekly Recap

I haven't posted here in a while. Rest assured that's not because anything disastrous has been happening. Here is a short recap of recent fish room events for those curious about what's been going on. 

My pair of Betta sp. wajok have spawned, and the male is tending to a small nest of fry. This is the second they have spawned, the first resulting in all eggs being eaten - most likely due to the presence of the second male. Now the second male has been removed, my breeding male seems much more at ease, and hopefully subsequent spawns will prove much more fruitful. 

Unfortunately, the spawn between the F1 Betta brownorum male and his mother ended in disaster. The eggs were eaten, but I did manage to save three of them. Of these, I successfully hatched two in less than a tablespoon of water. They are now free-swimming and have since been moved to a larger container. I'm hoping that they survive, as I was rather surprised they hatched at all. 

Speaking of F1 fish, I have decided to move as many of my Betta sp. apiapi, Betta hendra and Betta brownorum juveniles/sub-adults into separate tanks as I can. There has been a cessation of spawning by the main breeding pair in these tanks, and a noticeable rise in aggression, particularly amongst the young males. Due to space and budget restrictions, I can't have separate grow-out tanks for each species I have. Instead I am going to using a bain-marie type system so that I only have to run a single heater. This is going to be a labour intensive task, so I have been putting it off for as long as possible. However, I hopefully should have these grow-outs up and running by the same time next week. 

There seem to be more and more Betta miniopinna fry appearing with each day. The whole group has been undergoing heat treatment for suspected ich, so there hasn't been any recent spawns. However, there are at least a dozen fry of various sizes that I have counted, with the biggest sitting at around 1.5cm total length. 

I also have paid for a pair of Betta uberis and a second pair of Betta miniopinna that may be arriving on the next shipment into Australia. At the moment I have to check dates and pay their import and local shipping fees, but I am excited at the prospect of having Betta uberis back after so long. The second pair of Betta miniopinna are from a different source as my original pair, and were purchased simply because it's only recently I've seen this species available, and I wanted to have a spare pair on hand to minimise my risk of losing it completely from my fish room.