My wild-caught Met. callainos just had the best 24 hour span of his life - spawned with one of his harem last night, and another this evening. We're now the proud owner of two holding mommies in 24 hours. LOL

what?! no pictures!

There's a pictures of one of the girls here:

http://www.wafishbox.com/viewimage.forum?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi32.servimg.com%2Fu%2Ff32%2F15%2F42%2F11%2F39%2Fimg_2710.jpg

Unfortunately she's a bit washed out in that one though.

Congrats!

Thanks Fern.

Here's a picture of the WC father and one of the WC mommies now that she's holding.

nice!

Cool how big are those?

Very nice looking!!!
How is their demeanor?

Overall I would say very good, especially for a zebra variant. My male does dussle with the red zebra male from time to time but never anything big. And even though he's the bigger of the two he doesn't often win.

The females are all quite docile, although as with all WC, it seems, they do go crazy once they're netted. Moreso than tank raised fish.

Well, looks like we're down to 9 eggs, with one of those being questionable. One of the females had spawned previously as you may have read in my fish collection thread, but none of the eggs were viable right out of the gate. Same thing this time for one of the females, so I'm suspecting it was the *other* female since this was her first spawn. The second female, who produced 20 eggs, only lost 2 in the first 2 days but somehow we lost half of the remainder over night. However, the fry have heads and tails now, except for the questionable egg, so we're hopefully.

We're still looking at it as partial success, and great signs for the future of our WC colony.

Congrats on the spawn Larry. Do you ever try methylene blue? I use a very light dose if I lose an egg or two, and usually that stops fungus from spreading.

I haven't tried that yet. You strip into a strainer, if I recall, and then run an airstone below it? I strip into tumblers (actually front tumblers that I bought from Joe ) and the tumblers are in my 55g grow-out, which would make a methylene blue application difficult. I don't keep the tumblers in a 10g because there's just really not enough tank height to get a good draw.

I'm honestly not convinced that I have any fungus spread, but I'm not certain that I'd know it if I saw it.

I have noticed 1 possible deformed head in the remaining group.

Understood, and I had that same issue with tumblers in 10's. I can't back this up with science, but I usually put one drop in the strainer/tumbler itself. This is such a week dose for the whole tank that I have trouble believing it will affect the filtration/other fish. I have grown out some of my best looking most healthy Mpimbwe fry while doing this for tumbling eggs in the same tank. The one time I used a full dose though I had issues.

Fungus will start as a small white spot on the egg. If an egg is unfertile it will be very similar, and it's really hard to say. I usually strip when their are already heads and tails so there is no guessing on fertility for me. I don't use the blue stuff for every tumble btw, just when I see white, or if one went bad. I had a siamese front egg once. it didn't make it, but every other fish was normal. It just happens, whether WC, tank raised, or what have you there will always be the occasional freak. Just look at me!!

I don't typically strip early either, other than the first time or two one of my "prize" females holds. Generally we wait 2-3 weeks; more often than not they're free-swimming, but with the number of breeding females we have now it seems that there's always something going on in a tumbler; I've had all 3 fired up a couple of times, with multiple clutches in them even.

I recall from a thread here that methylene blue is hard to come by. Anybody know where I can buy it in small quantities locally?

Are you proclaiming yourself a wild-caught freak, me? LOL