Liquifry Question

[Cichlid_Crazy]

How do you guys use it? i just put the bottle in the tank and squirted it a few times towards my covict fry (there is about 40+) ....the parents let me to

The bottle says 1 squirt per gallon 4 times a day.....i have a 100g tank and that would be 100 squirts and 400 squirts per day which would be kinda expensive lol.

Did i do it rigt?

Also i have put a pair of tights over my 2 external filters but it is catching alot of crap and stopping the flow...do i really need to do this? the fry stay near the parents at all times and the loach,plec,Texas and green terrors don't go anywhere near them as the male chases them like crazy if they do.

 

[minijo]

I just got some and it said 1 drop to every 2g, 4 times a day, but mine are in a hospital tank not in the main tank so not so much used!.

 

[stiffler69]

Just squirt it into the same direction of the fry thats what i do

 

[Cichlid_Crazy]

Yeh that what i did...i do have a hospital tank but these things breed so much that i don't want to bother getting them out.

I'm keeping Cons as my dithers for my breeding Green Terrors...but keeping them small....so when they get to about 4" they gonna be rehomed....luckily cons are very slow growing.

 

[nmonks]

There's always been some debate over whether the Liquifry itself is eaten, or the infusoria it produces in the water. It's certainly true that cichlid fry do well in tanks with lots of Java moss and other nooks where infusoria can grow. For what it's worth, it's an old food, and you may find some of the more modern foods more useful. I happen to like Hikari First Bites. Convict cichlid fry are certainly easily big enough that such a finely powdered flake food will be readily taken. It's not like you want to raise many convicts; they're virtually impossible to sell or give away.* So experimenting a bit, even if you get just a few surviving fry from a particular batch, isn't going to be a big deal.

Cheers, Neale

*Indeed, I recommend you find out if you can rehome convicts before you breed them. It's often better to pull the eggs when laid and rinse them down the plughole.

 

[Cichlid_Crazy]

You'll be suprised how much people sell them for around here...theres no value in the standard stripey ones (like my male) but my female is a stripey one with yellow fins and red spots and they go for up to £10 for a 1" fish.

Now i got from a new count around 100+ fry lol

Anyway the plan is not to sell them its to keep them as dithers/ live food for my Pair of Green Terrors.

There seems to be abundance of Pinks and marbles nowadays but standard strains are hard to come by so peopel will prob take the standard cons off me to if i wanted to get rid.

Either way its nice to actually breed something

They are sharing a tank with 2 Green Terrors and a Texas that are over 5x bigger than there parents (who are both only around 1" themselves) so i'm just going to leave them to it.

 

[nmonks]

Not knocking breeding fish (it's fun) or breeding convicts. It's great you can sell yours. But I know a lot of people who can't give them away, and a lot of retailers who don't want them. So when people say they want to breed fish, and then they suggest going with convicts, I simply urge a little caution. Lovely fish in many ways, especially the wild-type fish, they aren't community fish and they aren't easy to keep with most other commonly kept tropical fish.

Do look out for the Honduran red spot. It's another Amatitlania, Amatitlania siquia, but a bit smaller, somewhat less aggressive, and with some very nice colours.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Cichlid_Crazy]

Yeh don't worry i'm pretty experienced with Cichlids...just never bothered breeding them before.

Never seen a Honduran Red Point in real life..they obviously not made it down my neck of the woods yet.

I made another thread to show off my babys

Like i said tho..i doubt i'll sell any, i'll probably keep them as dithers/target fish to my large cichlids and as food for them also.

Alot of people on MFK prefer them as dithers to say the standards like Silver Dollars becasue they are more intelligent...constantly brred so replenish themselves and can fight back if really needed so get 'less battered' they did say to remove any adult males tho as they can be a nightmare (have experience of this in the past to)

 

[nmonks]

I do have a photo in this article of some Honduras Red Spots that I saw at Wildwoods a few months ago. As you can see, they're pretty colourful (shame the tank had such lime-spotted glass I couldn't take a nicer photo).

I used to like Central Americans, and kept a 200 gallon tank of them for several years while at university. They're also pretty good fish for brackish water systems, several species being astonishingly tolerant of brackish, even fully marine, conditions. It's a shame the selection isn't as good now as it was 20 years ago. Malawian cichlids have pretty well supplanted Central American cichlids, so far as I can tell.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Cichlid_Crazy]

I deffo prefer Souths although i can see myself one day having some Red Devils or Jags...i like trying everything once

The way i see it is Souths are prettier and Centrals are more responsive...although there are a few exceptions like GT's and Oscars etc that are very responsive.

I kept Mbuna for a while until some bad stock from Watermarque (my own stupid fault for using the shop.....cheap = buy twice...very true in this case on a large scale) introduced skinny disease and wiped out £300 worth of my stock inside a fortnight....i salvaged what was left and traded them in for a batch of GT's and been with them ever since.

IMO African Cichlids seems to be dying out.....but then every area is different...very hard to get good quality Mbuna around here (I got most of my stock from breeders) and impossible to get Tangs....and that's coming from a town that has 11 LFS's and the other close towns in 50 mile radius have a further 15.

Cichlids are great check my baby Con thread out

BTW good info page that

 

[nmonks]

No idea there were so many good fish shops in Taunton! I spent a lot of childhood in Bridgwater, and at least in the 80s there weren't many good fish shops in that town.

Central American cichlids are lovely, but there aren't many "dwarf" species and few that are community fish. You need a fairly big tank to keep a decent collection together. I think that's why they aren't so popular as they once were.

Just looked over your baby fish thread: very nice! Handsome parents. Good luck. Do make sure to read King Solomon's Ring sometime. Central American cichlids, including convicts, play a starring role in this pioneering (and very readable) book on animal behaviour from the 1950s. Central American cichlids were, and to some degree remain, key species for animal behaviour work in labs and universities.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Cichlid_Crazy]

Thanks for the info Neale

Yeh Bridgy has 2 or 3 nowadays...but none that i would travel for, Yeovil has about 4, Chard has a couple...there's a few here there and everywhere

Taunton seems to be getting new ones all the time...some great (Maidenhead/Little Fish)...some awful (Watermarque/Pets at home/Bow) also some good specialist shops...there is a taunton Koi Centre and then there is Taunton Aquarium Centre which nowadays is marine only...but very renowned for quality