|
|
|
Article |
|
|
Top Ten Reasons I
Loved the Aquarium Hobby in 2002
(by
Russell Carroll
January 1, 2003) |
|
Another
year has past, and the hobby has been just as enjoyable if not more
so than last year...without further ado, my favorite exploits of the
year:
|
|
10
= Vinegar Eels |
 As you
spend more and more time in the hobby, the need for a fish food that
is alive, small enough for your baby fry to eat, easy to raise, and
inexpensive becomes a big need. I've spent years looking for
better foods for the baby fish I raise as have most hobbyists I
know. This year, I think the solution found me. Vinegar
Eels are a great little animal that lives in vinegar...as long as
you have a starter culture. They can be left alone for long
periods of time without threatening your culture, and they are eaten
ravenously by fry when seen.
A
friend of mine got me going in Vinegar Eels, giving me a culture and
explaining exactly how to keep them and then feed them to fish.
I had so much fun with them and other small foods for small fish
that I wrote an
article about them!
|
|
9 = Rebuilt Fish Room |
With
money I got last year for Christmas I rebuilt one side of the fish
room with a custom stand to hold 9 various sized aquariums.
Building on what I felt was a success, this year I took money I got
for my birthday and wood that was lying around and rebuilt another
side of the fish room. This time though I went big. It
holds 8 tanks, four 60 gallons and 4 20 gallon long aquariums.
A very good mix of size and utility that has helped the fish I have
grow out much faster.
I
have no intent of rebuilding any other side of the room as I'm
pretty happy with the way things are now. The room now houses
24 aquariums...and frankly, I cannot imagine trying to clean more
than that many aquariums at one time! Still all the extra room
has allowed me to raise a significant number of fish, not to mention
how fun it is!
 |
|
8 = Front Room Showcase |
For
the longest time I've been disappointed with the aquarium in my
front room. Having 20+ aquariums downstairs that were for the
most part fairly attractive, I always felt frustrated with the one
upstairs, thinking it really wasn't as good looking as the majority
of the aquariums I keep. Since it is the aquarium in the front
room of the house, it seemed like it ought to be the most beautiful
of all the aquariums I had...but it just never worked out that way.
Typically
what I would do to an aquarium in this type of condition is to
completely start over. Pull the fish, pull the plants, pull
the gravel, etc. I would then completely redo the tank.
Still, I hated to do that with this tank as the young plants I still
hoped would grow out and produce something nice...so I added a
single blue gourami. The fish was large and attractive, and
immediately it became clear it was a natural fit for this
semi-planted tank. So I purchased 4 gold gourami and the tank
looked even better. But, it was still missing something.
Come October, the club auction came and I took the opportunity to
get 2 absolutely gorgeous bosemoni rainbows. That was the
final trick. There are now several highly colorful fish in the
aquarium, and the plants continue to grow. Not perfect by any
means, but I'm satisfied with it now anyway!
|
|
7 = Julidochromis Dickfeldi |
I
actually got my pair of dickfeldi at an auction in October of
1999. I had long given up on them spawning when I noticed fry
in my front room aquarium early this year. However, with 4
different loaches and a very large Synodontus catfish, the
likelihood of the fry surviving was very low. So I quickly
moved the parents over to a 25 long aquarium. There they
produced 40+ little Julidochromis.
Along
the way I've come to realize something. I've always thought
that I liked the Julidochromis Kipili Reagoni best out of all the
Julidochromis, but after keeping the dickfeldi in their own tank,
I'm inclined to think that the dickfeldi is the best looking
Julidochromis. The trick is that you have to keep this fish
until it gets fully grown. At a small size they do show a
little of the purple highlights that I think are so beautiful on the
fish, but the black and white checkerboard on their fins, which is
simply amazing, doesn't show up so starkly until the fish are at
least a couple of years old.
The
pictures below are the exact same fish! The one on the left is
at 4 years, the one on the right at around 8 months. Both give
you a hint of the purple on the dorsal fin, but the one on the left
better shows how the coloration changes over time...though the flash
took away the beauty of the dorsal fin on this fish when mature.
 
|
|
6 = Fish in the .Net |
This
fish site has seen a lot of changes this year. For one thing
the name has changed. It is still located at the location of
its origin,
www.theaquarians.net, but you can
also now get here by going to
www.fishinthe.net. The idea
behind it all was that it was too difficult for people to remember
how to spell aquarian, and so people were getting lost trying to
return to the site. So after a bit of brainstorming, we came
up with Fish in the .Net. I then decided that a new name
deserved a whole new look and so I've created the layout you now
see...however it's been slow getting the whole website converted
over to the new visuals, so look for 2003 to be a banner year for
the website in the way things are done. I hope to make it
easier to change all this info into the same formatting, and I hope
to make the website easier to use for the community that uses it.
It's
been a fun year doing the website. It's had its struggles as I
try ever so desperately to keep up on all the updates that need to
be made, but overall I've been very pleased with the progress.
The site had back to back 100,000+ hit months to close out the year
and all the increased traffic makes the website that much more
rewarding as a webmaster. The site also serves to keep me
interested in the hobby as I share and hear so many stories about
fish-keeping from around the globe, and it has definitely been one
of this years highlights.
|
|
5 - Guppy's & Genetics |
One
of the most influential club meetings on me this year was about
genetics. I was expecting a sort of boring meeting, but
instead I got something that sent my mind racing. The speaker,
Don Dauggs, showed on the chalkboard how to breed your fish to
create strains. Using the punet square, he illustrated the
simple process. First figure out what ratio of fish you have
from your fry. If you have 4 baby fish, and 3 look the same,
but 1 has a different color, then you have one that you are working
with. How do you figure that?
Ah yes, those days
of High School science are returning. Why is this so
important? Because it gives you some idea of how long it
will take to get a pure-breeding strain of your new variation.
If 1/4 of your fry (xx) come out looking different, they all you
have to do is cross breed them as they are all recessive for the
same gene...but if it is the more likely 1/64 of your fry that
come out looking different, well then start working on your table
to figure out how many genes are involved and you can start
cross-breeding to try and solidify the genes you are looking at.
 In
addition to lots of math, the speaker came with a new guppy
variety he had created. Dubbed the "double veil" this fish
literally had two full veil tails. I bought the only pair he
brought for a cool $18 and have since been raising the fry...but
very slowly. Here is a fry, though still young, showing what
will become a double-veil tail.
|
|
4
- Sunset Gourami |
I've
always found the gourami family to be one of the most interesting
available. They are highly colorful and have very specialized
breeding habits. I mean who else in the world builds a nest
out of spit bubbles for their fry?
I
spent a lot of time this year getting to know gourami better, and
picked up some "sunset gourami" at a local PetSmart. This fish
is really just a color morph of the thick-lipped gourami.
Still they were a beautiful fish and they readily bred in my 60
gallon gourami breeding tank to my delight!
 |
|
3 -
Fish Books |
With
my re-found interest in gourami, I starting searching for good
information about the fish. Unfortunately there isn't any.
I looked for books and was unable to find anything I thought would
give me good information about the fish. So when Heiko Blehr
was in town speaking to the club, I asked him what a good book about
gourami would be. He suggested Bettas, Gouramis
and Other Anabantoids by Jorg Vierke (he
also told me the book I had just ordered, all labyrinths by Aqualog
was junk...which I greatly disagree with).
So I found
a copy of the out of print book he suggested and ordered. I
was pleasantly surprised by this little treasure of a book, and
combined with my Aqualog book, has put me well on the road to better
understanding gourami!
|
|
2 - Placidochromis
Phenochilus |
When
I first saw a fully grown specimen of this species I could not
believe my eyes. I have dubbed it the "Impressionist cichlid"
as it looked just like an impressionist painting. The fish is
splotched with various colors of blue that blend together without
start or beginning to produce a virtual tapestry of beauty.
 Unfortunately
this fish is VERY skittish, so the best photo I have is not very
good. It certainly doesn't give you a full understanding of
how amazing this fish looks. After seeing the fish last year I
wanted some...but no-one carried them and the person who had the
pair I was photographing had no luck breeding them and so gave them
to another hobbyist. Thankfully that hobbyist had good luck
and so he gave 30+ of the fry back to the original owner. I
bought my 4 at $8 a piece. They were just starting to color up
into the magnificent fish fish they are still becoming.
What was
more to my joy when I got this fish to breed and was able to spit
the young! I now have 35 very young fry growing up in my
aquarium and hope to have more...and the adults aren't anywhere
close to full-grown yet. The fish in the photo was roughly 8
inches long. My adults are just barely 4 inches long, so there
is a lot of fun yet to come!
|
|
1 - The Black Paradise Fish |
Having
read so much about gourami, I set out on a quest to find a beautiful
gourami that I'd only seen in photos: The Black Paradise fish.
Paradise fish are none to be bruisers, so I was concerned about what
I might be getting into, but I figured if I could find and raise
some of them, then I would be involved in a great undertaking.
 As
fate would have it, I found a group on aquabid and bought them.
I received 5 semi-mature specimens in the mail and have since been
raising them to maturity. My only concern as they have gotten
larger is that I might have gotten 5 males! But even if that
were the case, this fish has been an ultimate pleasure to keep.
It is a beautiful un appreciated gem among many!
|
|
Conclusion |
2002 was a
great year for fish and for me! I already have a long list of
things that I'm going to try and do next year and I'm ever excited
about the possibilities of where this website may be.
|
|
|
|
