Keeping wild caught fish. Crossband chocolate gouramis

Sorry to hear. It is heartbreaking. Everyone who breeds has been there.

 

Thanks @TheGrissom. In general it is the hard part of fish keeping unfortunately. I never intended to breed them that was just pure luck.

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Thanks @Reedfish. At the moment I'm just doing my normal maintanance and counting fish, which is officially 3, and feed them. At least the shellies have kept the fish keeping bug going.

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The chill in the air also gives you time to ponder, sometimes these mutl-year projects need a holiday to set you up for something better.

Later Ferdie

 

Thats true Ferdie. This tank.is basicly on auto pilot for now. Will see where it takes me. At least there are a lot of other stuff going on to keep me occupied

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@pierreschoonraad ...
Thanks for the kind words.... always a pleasure
I think somehow we get to know each other fairly well and we do care about each other
Glad it helped and we certainly look forward to future posts!
Sorry.. had silly accident and havent been much online last few days...so only catching up now

 

Semi happy days with the aquarium. One bastard was hiding the whole time. Now it's officially official that I have 4 and not 3 left. Very hard to sex them at the moment as they are not that much into flaring their finns. The biggest of the 4 is defnitly a female and she rules the aquarium at the moment.

 

Awesome. lets keep our fingers crossed... surely out of 4 there must be a male!!

 

Almost a month later and all 4 are still alive. Big relief.

I can defnitly spot 1 male and 2 females. Not sure about the 4th one yet. Weard enough with this group it's the male showing agression towards the other. With their parents it was the one female that was dominant. Unfortunately everybody pick on the unsexed one and he mostly stays on his own while the othe 3 shoal together.

 

Not much have change with this aquarium. Due the extreme sentimental value this tank will never leave my fish room. Even if there is only shrimp and snails left. Still 3 survivors left.

I added 3 Emeral cory's, Corydoras splendens, with them. I believe it to be 2 females and 1 male. I just love the shape and color of these cory's and I just had to keep at least a pair to see if I can breed the. For some reason these active fish have given the choc's more confidense so I see them way more than usual.

Update foto of what it looks like now.

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Since my last update a few things have changed in this aquarium

Firstly I defnitly have a male in the aquarium. Although the two females stick together and basicly attack him when he get close to them.
Secondly I will let the bad picture explain how I found out. Note fish on left.

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Thanks @A new day. Unfortunately the go into hiding the moment I want to take a foto, normally they don't mind me staring at them. Will see if I can get a clearer one today.

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In the end it was a false alarm as none of the fry were released. Still keeping my fingers crossed that there is a possibility of fry in the future

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Still one of the best view when I go into the fish room at 6 in the mornings.

Can't believe the moss wall is about 1 year old. Moss spread out nicely. Have one java fern growing on there as well as some lilaeopsis and hc. Added some terestial grasses to it yesterday, will wait and see how they do.

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Thank @A new day. This is my denses planted tank with the idea of creating security for the gouramis. I have some water sprite drifting at the top to further defuse the light. Only 20W, 10W per light, lighting up the aquarium and moss wall. All low light plants, no ferts, that is doing great under these conditions. Add strong rooibos tea to the aquarium after wc just to get the black water look going, combined with the tannins from the oak leaves.

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Way overdue update on this aquarium.

Ok there were no fry from the female. She's at the end of week 2 of holding fry for the second time, so I'm holding my fingers crossed this side.

Added 13 Ember tetras to the aquarium, awesome fish for somebody that doesn't like tetras in general. They act as good dither fish for the gouramis which are more in the open now.

Did a 80% wc with ro water today, as the tds creaped up to just over 100ppm, which isn't ideal for them. Brought it down to 47ppm which is were I would like to keep it as a max. Another reason I did the big wc was to drop the aquariums temp and lower the tds at the same time, simmulation the natural occurance after a rain shower. Hopefully this will convince the female that it's fine to release the fry. Only time will tell.

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Long over due update.

Aquarium is still doing good. Unfortunately I only have two gouramis left. At the moment I'm not doing any wc, as I'm using ro for that, and my current stock pile is used on the marine tank. Due to the tds that was running belowe 50 I only top up with tap water to raise the tds slowly. Once it's at the 120 mark I will start doing normal wc again. Luckely the plants, and low stocking, helps a lot to keep the param stable

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