New Nothobranchius coming .

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I have two new Nothobranchius in the mail and should arrive Friday . Nothobranchius korthausae and Nothobranchius rachovii Beira 98 . Two pairs each . The aquarium’s are all set up and I finished up washing a big batch of coconut coir this morning . My guentherii fry are a week old today and doing very well . Ordered more brine shrimp eggs from www.brineshrimpdirect.com today and my white worm culture is staying productive in the refrigerator . My microworm cultures and fruit flies look good too . It’s nice to be fully prepared and ready . I’m going to have to be organized with this many different fish and label every container and aquarium so I don’t do the worst and mix up females . I haven’t seen any females of other Nothobranchius except my guentherii but I expect they will be indistinguishable from each other .
Standby for forthcoming pictures and further developments .

 

[GaryE]

It's fun when you wait to see such beautiful fish, when you've never seen them before live. I'd lend you a few 5 gallon tanks, but there's this ongoing distance issue.

 

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It takes coconut coir a long time to get completely waterlogged and sink . Some say boiling helps speed up the process . It’s dirty when you first soak up a new batch too . I rinsed mine through a sieve yesterday with the garden hose . This picture is my spawning jars set up yesterday . The coir soaked up and sunk a lot overnight but still has a ways to go . I soaked this for a week beforehand to get it to this point before rinsing it yesterday . That brown color goes away fairly fast but you can see that it leaches off something .

 

[GaryE]

I have to learn those coir tricks. The last time I raised Nothos I used peat, but that's not ecologically sound. I used to boil a kettle, make a cup of tea and pour the rest into the peat container to sink it. It did hurry things up.

 

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I have to learn those coir tricks. The last time I raised Nothos I used peat, but that's not ecologically sound. I used to boil a kettle, make a cup of tea and pour the rest into the peat container to sink it. It did hurry things up.

The biggest two things I found with coir are that it takes a long time to get waterlogged and that it’s dirty . It takes a lot of rinsing . Charlie Nunziata , in an article in the January / March 2023 JAKA , states that coir contains salt . That is certainly a concern as we don’t know how much . Coir also dries fast and does not retain moisture well . Wash it and rinse it well and keep it wet if you’re using it right away . Otherwise , for any faults it may have , it works well as a spawning medium in my limited experience .