Whats Wrong With These Fish

[Better is Betta]

Hi everyone......I'll show you some pics of my baby girls. Have a good look. I paired 2 HM blue dragons and out of the pairing I ended up with all assorted coloured females. Sorry some of the pics are not good as the little rotters will not stay still. See if you can spot what is wrong with some of them.

 

[sausagewinkle]

Ventrals?

 

[Better is Betta]

Ventrals?

Spot on Nearly all of them in this batch have none. So what should I do......I know they will be no good to breed and some of them have amazing colour patterns.

 

[sausagewinkle]

My first spawn Id say 60% either had no ventrals or just 1 ventral.

Its supposedly due to the bacteria on the bottom of the tank when they are small, when they are on the bottom the bacteria stops their ventrals growing.
I found that I over fed my first lot with micro worm, causing excess bacteria and lack of ventrals.

My 2nd spawn who are 7 weeks now all have ventrals, I didnt feed these microworm.

As far as im aware this isn't hereditary so should be fine to breed from.

 

[Better is Betta]

My first spawn Id say 60% either had no ventrals or just 1 ventral.

Its supposedly due to the bacteria on the bottom of the tank when they are small, when they are on the bottom the bacteria stops their ventrals growing.
I found that I over fed my first lot with micro worm, causing excess bacteria and lack of ventrals.

My 2nd spawn who are 7 weeks now all have ventrals, I didnt feed these microworm.

As far as im aware this isn't hereditary so should be fine to breed from.

Thats good to know......this lot did get the microworm diet. So what did you feed them instead. I'm pretty limited here when it comes to live foods.

 

[sausagewinkle]

First time around I fed them micro worms for a good few weeks, too long really.
This time round they got micro worm for the first week then moved straight onto newly hatched baby brine shrimp (hatched myself). They have grown twice as quick as my first lot

 

[Willdrafter]

You have some really nice girls there!

 

[Better is Betta]

Thanks Wildrafter, its amazing what comes out of the gene pool . I feed my frys for the first 2 weeks on microworms then moved onto the newly hatched brineshrimp. I kept the both feeds going until they were ready to eat the processed food plus grated frozen bloodworm. I use to use liquid fry food when they hatched but the mortality rate was high and I only ended up with about 20 fry at the end of it all. Also the reason I used microworms constantly was I read that they are more nutritious than brineshrimps.

 

[LadyDragon]

Daphnia eat bacteria... and they are super easy to culture as a live food (and smaller than BBS) have you tried adding some of those to help clean up the water and feed the fry?

 

[Baccus]

Speaking from experience it is nigh on IMPOSSIBLE to get lilve daphinia, it's also practically impossible to get the eggs and start your own culture from scratch. Most pet shops in Regional Australia don't even carry live bloodworms, blackworms or brineshrimp.
I remember years ago not even being able to get mealworms without having to mail order them.

And Better is Betta even with a defect they are very pretty.

 

[Better is Betta]

Speaking from experience it is nigh on IMPOSSIBLE to get lilve daphinia, it's also practically impossible to get the eggs and start your own culture from scratch. Most pet shops in Regional Australia don't even carry live bloodworms, blackworms or brineshrimp.
I remember years ago not even being able to get mealworms without having to mail order them.

And Better is Betta even with a defect they are very pretty.

Thanks Baccus...... We are limited to a lot of things and it is impossible to import a lot of products into our country because of our strict quarantine laws. You people overseas seem to have the availability to so much more, it makes me envious. We need our lfs to catch up on what is available in the big world and make it accessible to us all instead of feeding us the run of the mill. Sorry I'm just venting my frustrations.

 

[Baccus]

I am thinking try breeding your pair again but this time get a really good crop of different sized mozzie wrigglers happening (perfect time of the year for mozzies) and then use a super fine net to catch the wrigglers and put them in with the fry. With a really fine net you will even catch the newly hatched wrigglers. Or you could put one of those breeding traps (the clear plastic ones that float and have slits in the bottom) into the breeding tank and any mozzie eggs you find put them into the trap and as the wrigglers hatch they will end up in the tank ready for eating.
Maybe also crush up some Betta pellets into a powder and try feeding that to the fry, at least it should stay on the surface for a while and not just fall straight to the bottom to rot.
You know what else would probably be handy in your breeding tank? Some khuli loaches they will eat any over feeding of the fry and help keep the bottom of the tank moving so that should reduce the risk of a bacterial infection at that crutial time of the fry's development.

 

[LadyDragon]

That seems so odd to me, not about import laws, but about keeping a culture going. I have several varieties, including some started from Ephippia (eggs) and they are practically bullet proof. Even if the culture dies off completely (which happens from time to time) all you have to do is leave it alone for a couple weeks... And like magic "they're BAAACK!"

Understanding their biology and life cycle it makes perfect sense. I got scared after my first "culture crash" but I didn't get around to cleaning it it out for a week and a half in my defeated state over the crash... I put the jug behind the barn (out of sight and out of mind) when. I came back to clean it out, there is a huge colony of the little critters.

They are also one of the most common forms of pond life (the world over, including OZ) so all you really have to do is find a pond and trap some. Native varieties will probably be more suited to your climate, but basically all you do is find a good healthy pond, wait til dark and shine a flash light at the surface... Daphnia are phototropic (like moth to flame, they are attracted to light) so in moments you'll have a ton of them at the surface and you just scoop them up in a bucket! Super easy. They also eat bacteria, so keeping them is as easy as topping off the bucket with old aquarium water (they are SUPER sensitive to metals in the water so tap water can be poison to them, as it often goes through copper pipes and dissolves some in the process) and that all they really need to go.

In my research, it made sense why they were so easy: the females clone themselves until they sense a bad environment, then the females produce male offspring to mate with so eggs can be produced. Then the eggs lay dormant until a decent environment presents itself again, at which point the eggs hatch and they can start a new colony in a week.

They survive in Vernal pools (temporary pools of melt water) in this fashion, including many other FW invertebrates (Fairy Shrimp, seed shrimp, triops etc. Even Killiedish) live similar lives... There are several companies that harvest them out of desert sands (from Arizona, South Africa, and even Australia... I see Australian Triops on eBay all the time) As far as organisms go, they are pretty hard to get wrong. Anyway don't give up on Daphnia if the culture dies on you, I've found many people had similar experiences to mine, they loose the culture quickly, but it magically revives itself if they don't just trash it right away.

Anyway, Daphnia, Seed Shrimp, and Fairy Shrimp (fresh water Brine shrimp) are all super easy, and fantastic food for fry since they are the natural food sources for most FW fry anyway. it's been successful for all my fry rearing projects so far, including Bettas

 

[Baccus]

Sadly night time forays to water holes at night in most parts of QLD (except the extreme inland where you then have the more venomous snakes out and about especially at night during summer) is not a good idea, Crocs are found right around the northern coast line all the way to Bundaberg in QLD. And even though they are called Salties they have no problems with living in pure fresh water their entire lives. I have tried collecting daphnia myself at some local waterholes (still in croc territory so a tad risky) but have only managed to collect red mites that nothing eats and are a pest if they get into your tanks.

Fairy shrimp are found way out west and its a hit and miss affair if there has been any significant rain in the area you may travel a day or two to get to. Triops are also found out west but they are not ideal in a breeding tank or community tank, they get quite large and are cannibalistic to their own kind and most likely will have a go at anything they deem might be food. Most Pet shops over here would also never have thought of selling Triops (well the big city ones might, but I am only talking about regional areas), let alone know what they are. I have only ever seen Triops for sale on Ebay, even dedicated aquarium/ fish online shops don't deal in what other places would consider must have food types .

I have no doubt that IF you can get your hands on either adult or eggs of any daphnia and get a colony happening they are relatively easy to keep but it's the finding them that is the issue.

I am sure Better is Betta will be along shortly to thank you (as I am also about too) for your advice, and please don't take our negativity as us being horrid, it's just we know from countless attempts what is and isn't available either via local pet shops, online or even wild caught.


Thank you again for the info you gave, and if we track down some daphnia or fairy shrimp we will let you know, until then fingers crossed.

 

[Better is Betta]

Yes thank you for your advice LadyDragon and as Baccus said finding these micro food for fry, daphena etc is very hard indeed, especially around where I live. I can never seem to grow any live daphena only mosquitoes. I live in the tropics and you would think it would be easy to find an abundance of fry food. I haven't been able to find anything and looking for them can be quite dangerous. You do have to keep your eyes out for snakes, spiders and crocs and some humans.
The local fish/pet stores are very limited in knowledge and availability when it comes to fish foods. You should see the strange looks I get off the sales assistants when I ask about micro worms Most lfs only sell the stuff on the shelf or the run of the mill frozen b/shrimps and bloodworms. If you want fry food then they can sell you b/shrimp eggs and thats about it. Its very frustrating. If it wasn't for the net I would never have been able to find the micro worms because it wasn't too long ago I was told I couldn't get any as it was not allowed into the country, but now its available. So maybe some time down the track and I'm not holding my breath we might be able to get our hands on a lot more various live fish foods.