Re: NANFA-L-- Is the list running?

Mysteryman (bestfish-in-alaweb.com)
Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:20:58 -0800

Chip Rinehart wrote:
>
> I tried using blackbanded sunfish as substitutes this past year in my backyard garden pond. Found lots of chaetodon young but, alas, no welaka other than the original three adults. Maybe if I had a larger group to start with I might have had some success.
>
> Chip in SC
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org [owner-nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org]On Behalf
> Of psalm119.111-in-juno.com
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 1:18 PM
> To: nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
> Cc: nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
> Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Is the list running?
>
> How did your Bluenose eggs/fry do? I've got 3 females and one male 2-3 yr olds I think. The females seem to be fattening up well in my basement. I had another male last yr and they were acting like they were in the mood but I never saw any eggs laid but the males were doing their displays and each female showed up skinny but no eggs to be found. I have some Bluespotted Sunfish I am conditioning, thought perhaps they might substitute for Longears. What do you think? Any other suggestions?
.

Bluenoses are notorious egg-eaters, so unless there was somewhere for
the eggs to go, i.e., be safe, they were probably gobbled up. Cheer up;
at you got them laid in the first place, and that's an accomplishment in
itself.

A lot of cuckoo spawners are very specific about their preferred host
species, and have no trouble discerning the scent of their milt from
that of others. I don't know if there is a good substitute for Longears,
but if there is I suppose we'll figure it out someday.

TFH is dragging it's feet in publishing my article on breeding welakas,
mostly because I couldn't provide a good enough pictures-to-text ratio
to suit them. How do ya like them apples; a guy figures out the trick to
spawning these guys and the article isn't "fluffy" enough to print. I
guess there's always FAMA, but I really wanted TFH this time. Hey,
Klaus, do you have any of those wonderful bluenose pics without your
name photoshopped across them?

At any rate, in case you guys missed it, I got a welaka spawn a few
months ago by conditioning the fish indoors with a chiller and good
foods, setting up a muddy-bottomed tank with pea gravel under the dirt,
and setting up a longear in a tank touching the welaka tank. I made a
mockup of a longear nest in the mud, exposing the gravel on the end of
the tank next to the longear tank. A few days later I added some longear
milt to the tank, and an hor later I put a partition between the two
tanks to let the welaks know "the coast was clear" for spawning.
They spawned like crazy.
The introduction of the longear milt signaled the welakas that it was
time to spawn, since timing is everything for a cuckoo spawner. It is,
in my considered opinion, the missing trigger that we've been omitting
all these years. I've only managed to do this once, but that was out of
only one attempt, so I guess I could say that this method has a 100%
success rate! HAHAHAHAHA!

If you'd like, I can repost my original post to this list detailing the,
er, details of tank setup, temp, pH, hardness, photoperiod, etc...

Other species besides longears might work; I just don't know. I hope so,
since that would make things a whole lot easier.
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