myths about live bearing fish

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Yea, I dont have the equipment or space to provide EVERY type of natural food found in a habitat, so I definitely use flakes, pellets, wafers, thincrisps, frozen, and live foods.

Though I will admit, my fish have been having nauplii every evening for 3 days now. They get one of the flakes or pellets in the morning, but I gotta use up the bbs before they have no nutritional value at all. I dont know specifically what/how to "gutload" them yet either, but they do LOVE chasing down that live food! I may have to order a culture of something else for them, and try it out.
 
I dont know specifically what/how to "gutload" them yet either,

Gutload basically means well fed or over fed on food good for the brine shrimp and the fish you are feeding them too, To gutload brine shrimp you would have to keep them till they used up their yolk sack then feed them spirulina powder or yeast for example.

Newly hatched brine shrimp have far more nutrition than gut loaded. Newborns are living off their yolk sac, which is full of all kinds of nutrients and fatty acids that is more nutrious for the fish

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-do-i-gut-load-brine-shrimp.83588/


Try keeping fish that only eat live food and sometimes frozen.

I keep Bumblebee Gobys love the little guys but would not recommend them to a novice, I also keep Endlers and Cherry shrimp as food for the BBG's, I keep my Endlers and shrimp well fed on high grade dry food and veggies and once a week everybody gets baby brine shrimp or live blackworm or frozen blood worm.

I figure as long as the shrimp and Endlers are happy healthy and well fed the Gobys are fine and so far so good.
 
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Can one of the gms split this thread and start a new one with the "Myths of feeding Live Food" as a title?

I want to add my 5 cents worth but would prefer to do it in a new thread.
For Vengified, gutloading brineshrimp is usually done by putting the shrimp in a container of green salt water. The shrimp eat the algae and that increases the nutritional value of the shrimp.
 
Yea, I dont have the equipment or space to provide EVERY type of natural food found in a habitat, so I definitely use flakes, pellets, wafers, thincrisps, frozen, and live foods.

Though I will admit, my fish have been having nauplii every evening for 3 days now. They get one of the flakes or pellets in the morning, but I gotta use up the bbs before they have no nutritional value at all. I dont know specifically what/how to "gutload" them yet either, but they do LOVE chasing down that live food! I may have to order a culture of something else for them, and try it out.
it is not a bad thing to feed your fish live foods feeding live food all the time is not advisable although it is possible.
feed a variety of live food if possible you can feed two or three times per week with good quality prepared food
ive food can be and is more beneficial then prepared food especially when getting fish into good breeding conditions

l
 
I've got a good myth: Was in Petco yesterday, getting some food, browsing the "Special" guppies they got in (labeled Russian Red, incorrectly I think), and the saleswoman came to talk to me. She asked if I knew that guppies can choose which gender to be.

I have read that your pH can determine the ratio of male to female, though I'm not sure if it's true or not? I was under the impression guppies dont choose genders, but rather that people identify them wrong, or too early, or use wrong traits to identify sex?

Anyone care to enlighten me? Or was I already correct on the basis of their gender?
 
When I was breeding fish I found Apistogramma dwarf cichlids, Epiplaty & Aphyosemium killifish, barbs and rainbowfish fry hatched and raised in alkaline water (pH above 7.0) regularly produce a higher proportion of male fish. My pH was about 8.4 and I regularly got 90% male offspring in the fish I bred.

Other people I knew tried rearing their fish in alkaline water and got similar results to me.

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Some fish can change sex. Anemonefish (Clownfish like Nemo) start out as neither male nor female. If 1 clownfish settles on an anemone and no other clownfish are there, the fish will turn into a female. If there is another clownfish at the anemone, the new fish will become a male. If there is a pr (male & female) at the anemone, the new fish will not develop a sex and simply become a subordinate that hangs around the anemone.

Most wrasses and leather jackets (triggerfish) start out as females and when there is no dominant male in the area, the dominant female will become male and keep the rest of the females in their harem.

Barramundi start out as males and when they are about 18 inches long they turn into females.

In livebearers, Swordtails are the only livebearer that can change sex. If there are no male swordtails in an area, the dominant female swordtail will turn into a male. Female swordtails get much bigger than males and a female that has turned into a male is called a super male, due to the size. When these super males breed with the females, their offspring will be mostly female, whereas females bred to normal males will have similar numbers of male & female babies.

With all livebearers and lots of cichlids, young male fish resemble females in colour and fin development. This is to stop the big males attacking and killing the young males.
 
I personally don't believe that swordtails can change sex you are also confusing things a bit let's assume that someone has read your post and gone and got bought 4 females put them in there tank and after a while one develops into a male they're gonna believe that there swordtail have changed sex when it’s probably a late developing male. and if you had 4 females in a tank with no male and all have been gravid and have produced babies how is it possible for one to turn into a male. I'm almost sure that you mentioned in the past that female guppys do the same
 
Swordtails can change sex and I have had females that had given birth, and then changed and turn into males.
 
I'm damned if I can find where you said that female guppys do the same when left with no males
so if I or someone put a group of pregnant females in a tank how long before one turns into a male ? one thing that is guaranteed they will all produce Fry lol.
 
I'm damned if I can find where you said that female guppys do the same when left with no males
That's coz I never said it. It's all in your head, wooo your mind is going funny wooo. :)

My female swordtails turned into males about 6 months after the males had been removed. Whether this was because they were still producing young during this time or something else I don't know.
 
I have read that your pH can determine the ratio of male to female, though I'm not sure if it's true or not?

With Endlers warmer water appears to favor male fry development, while cooler temperatures favor female fry development. An even ratio (50/50) seems to be produced at about 77° F (25° C ).
 
Yea, as I said, I had read that pH can influence gender, and I have no doubt that temperature could also play a role in that. What I thought was silly, was that the employee told me guppies specifically, could change their sex. I didnt knos that about swordtails either, so maybe they mixed up those two?

*To add to your list @Colin_T the Pea Puffer [or Dwarf Puffer, Malabar Puffer, Pygmy Puffer (Carinotetraodon travancoricus)] does this as well, in regards to choosing sex. As they mature, the prospective male secretes a hormone that prevents others from becoming male. I watched it first hand in the last few weeks (dont scold me too hard) as one puffer I expected to be the male, as it was slimmer, and seemed more dominant, ended up staying female, and the largest, roundest puffer, developed eye wrinkles, a yellow belly, and turned into the dominant one.

On another note, I stumbled upon an article, while looking for some live foods online (if anyone knows of a good, reputable website to purchase live food cultures, I would be interested to know), and if it weren't for my recent inquiries about water changes, I would have believed it. This article talks about a woman inventing a special aquarium, starting it NEVER needs water changes. After reading the article, I thought to myself "what about the minerals, calcium, iron, etc, and how will the fish get these minerals and vitamins with doing nothing but adding food?" So, it leads me to bring up another sort of myth, or what I'm curious if it is a myth?
If anyone wants to check, here is the article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ns-old-bacteria-food-crystal-clear-water.html
 
*To add to your list @Colin_T the Pea Puffer [or Dwarf Puffer, Malabar Puffer, Pygmy Puffer (Carinotetraodon travancoricus)] does this as well, in regards to choosing sex. As they mature, the prospective male secretes a hormone that prevents others from becoming male. I watched it first hand in the last few weeks (dont scold me too hard) as one puffer I expected to be the male, as it was slimmer, and seemed more dominant, ended up staying female, and the largest, roundest puffer, developed eye wrinkles, a yellow belly, and turned into the dominant one.
Did you buy more fish? :)
sorry I am cackling maniacally at your MTS :rofl:
You will buy more fish. You will buy more tanks. You will buy more fish. You will buy more tanks. You will buy more fish. You will buy more tanks. You will buy more fish. You will buy more tanks. You will buy more fish. You will buy more tanks. :)

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re: your link about the self sustaining fish bowl.
Suzy Shelley, a graduate from Loughborough University, created the 15-litre tank, which is packed with technology enabling fish, plants and bacteria 'to work together to create a balanced ecosystem'.

She is using a small volume of water and has a simple nitrifying bacteria cycle with the end product being nitrates that the plants use. Chances are most of the ammonia will be used by healthy growing plants and the nitrates will stay low because of that. However, the tank still has the same problem as any other tank, the reduction in minerals and an ever increasing build up of hormones and microscopic organisms that will eventually take their toll on the fish. The gunk in the gravel will eventually build up too, regardless of what the company claims.

The small volume of water will also be more susceptible to temperature fluctuation and water quality problems if something does go wrong.

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The closest anyone has come to a closed system is a reef tank full of live rock, corals and a few fish. The live rock acts as the biological filter and has aerobic bacteria on the outside that breaks down ammonia and nitrite. Inside the live rock is anaerobic bacteria that helps convert nitrate into nitrogen gas. These tanks usually have a thick layer of sand (4-5 inches) that also becomes anaerobic in the bottom and that helps remove nitrates too.

Some of these tanks have sumps that are full of marine algae like Caulerpa and these plants help remove nutrients as well. Most of the sumps have a piece of filter floss to trap debris that washes out of the main tank into the sump and this floss is cleaned or replaced regularly.

These tanks do have supplements like calcium added to them on a regular basis and are topped up with fresh water to compensate for evaporation.

People have had reef tanks set up like this for years and don't do water changes on them. However, if they test the water they will find it full of microscopic organisms that can harm the fish or corals. The only way they can remove the microscopic organisms is with a UV steriliser but a lot of people don't use them and they remove beneficial plankton as well as harmful organisms.

These tanks are usually large (1000+ litres) and have less than 10 smallish fish (average size 3-4 inches), and they have the gunk removed regularly. Comparing this to Suzy Shelley's tank, which only holds 15 litres and has a 2-3 inch fish in it and the gunk is not being removed.

Some people have small reef tanks and keep them like this and sometimes they do well but other times they don't. Generally the more water, fewer fish and lots of plants will work better than smaller volumes of water.
 
The article in the link is utter nonsense and that thing they call a fish tank is nothing but a death bowl.

That's what I kind of figured. It's an old article, but it was posted by a fairly large and active website, makes me wonder how many people bought that and killed fish before realizing what they did wrong?

Did you buy more fish? :)
sorry I am cackling maniacally at your MTS :rofl:

Yes, I got more fish. I decided to pull the trigger on my Pea Puffer obsession, and got three of them. The local LFS (the good one) got 2 dozen in (owner took 10 home, lost 3 in first 3 days), and I couldnt resist after seeing them on quarantine for 2 weeks after arriving. So, I took 3 home, one made the change to a boy. They are in my community tank, I am fully aware of the risk, and keep a daily log and monitor their interaction, and have a backup plan if things turn, but as of the last couple weeks, they coexist peacefully with the guppies, gourami, oto, and HUNDREDS of RCS. They had hundreds of snails to eat, went through them ALL, and have been getting snails from other tanks daily.

Anyways, sorry for the hijack there. Back to the myths! All tanks need some supplement or water changes for replacement of minerals, pH affects gender in livebearers, and swordtails are strange transgender/duogender/weird fish.
 

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