Spring is in the air!

Spring is officially here! i know this cause 1) my hayfever is actually slowly killing me and 2) my ranchus have spawned! YAY!

I wasn't actually planning on breeding this year, since i've been so busy. This weekend I'm actually getting married and having the ceremony and reception wedding at home. So its been a hectic few months getting the house and garden neat and tidy for the big day. A week later i'll be in singapore for another wedding lunch banquet (as we have over seas family members), and plan on having a "mini" honeymoon in thailand for a few days.

Luckily i do have someone house sitting and looking after all my pets, so hopefully these fry will be ok :)

I managed to breed my matte white male with a calico female. I'm really hoping for some decent calico fry as it seems to be very difficult to get ANY locally.

(Above: Freshly laid eggs!)

(Above: Day 3/4 - After adding Methylene Blue to treat the unfirtilised fungused eggs. In this photo you can just see the eyes and spine)

I have also sold my large fibreglass pond. It was just taking up too much space and did not look that nice as i didn't make a base or anything for it. So now i have a full rack system with tanks. i haven't decided what i want to do in terms of filtration yet, so they are just running purely on sponge filters. Also i'm still waiting on getting a 6ft tank to house all my fish, rather than separated 3ft tanks. (they came with the rack)

Heres a video of my system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw0epYy9P8o

And here are the parents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44DCJlXHpY

Since it's been a while since i've posted - here are some extra pics of my fish and tanks! :)

 (Above - new set up)

 (Above : Red & White female, she hasn't dropped eggs yet but i think she's carrying)

 (Above: Cutey pie! Male oranda. In need of a wen trim)

 (Above: Tank is too small for this fella :(   )

 (Above: Calico male , would love to breed from him but he hasn't actually grown much since i got him...)

 (hehehe.. wen trim!)

Video on wen trim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZEa8BdijAQ

My pond filter set up

I changed my pond filter set up so thought I'd take a few photos.
Before I had a big bucket that sat inside the pond that was full of my media.
While it worked perfectly fine it just wasn't very convenient pulling a heavy bucket out every week or two to give the media a rinse.

After a few months of that I found these vertical garden pots that hung perfectly along the side of my pond.
So bought a few pvc pipes to connect it all up and it's what I have been using for the past year. It's much easier to access the media as I don't have to carry anything or turn anything off.

In the photo below I have separated my plant into 2. I love this plant as it is so hardy and grows new leaves quickly. Also has nice white flowers during the summer.

I initially had them in a pot sitting in the pond. But again was very inconvenient having to pull them out everytime to give them a wash through. (I'm a bit weary of anaerobic bacteria growing inside my pond as I have lost a few ranchus due to it)

So instead I purchased another pot and let them sit in some lava rocks. This was water is continuously passing through them rather than sitting stagnant.

This set up will probably change again during the spring and summer seasons. My grand plan at the end of is to have a visually pleasing aquaponic incorporated with my pond. That's the idea anyway.

A lot of it is trial and error. What works and what you find later doesn't work.
That's what's so enjoyable about the hobby I think, that it's continually evolving. :)

CBR update 1

I received these as BBR a couple of months ago. I have them up in a black poly tub and have been feeding them mixture of pellet food, my diy gel food and bloodworms. They are in heated water (we are in winter atm) and with air stones - no filters. I do 100% water change every 3 to 4 days or when the water starts to smell and look really dirty.

I think they are developing ok. There are definitely a few nice keepers. Some are growing too long for my liking.

Here's a video of few of my favourites:
CBR 2015 update 1: https://youtu.be/opMU1UUciKw

Ranchu update 8 months

So here's another update on my young ranchus.
A few days ago I bought a second hand tank off gumtree (basically where ppl sell any thing). It's a nice shallow 90 x 50 x 25 cm tank which is perfect for raising fry. I want to be ready come this spring as I didn't raise any the spring just passed.

So for fun, I set it up with an aquaclear 70 that I had lying around (also secondhand off gumtree that I got for $30 plus it came with a 100 watt eheim heater) and put seeded filter media from my pond outside.

It was a good chance to put them in there so I can finally see them properly from the side. 2 have coloured, 2 are still transitioning and the other is slightly just noticing a tinge of colour on his tail.

The matt ranchu is by far the smallest which I'm not surprised. I did find when they were smaller the calicos/matts were not as strong or healthy looking as the metallics.

They are not perfect but I'm happy with how they are growing (approximately 3-4 inches in total length). Slow and steady. I'm just hoping for healthy happy fish :)

(The calico in the background is a separate fish that I purchased)

New TVR

So about 2 weeks ago I picked up some new tvr from a family friend.
I have put them in the 60 gallon tub for now. I'll be getting some more tmr, which I'm thinking I may need to get another tub or maybe think about selling some of my younger fry soon to make space.

The plan was to keep my normal pet store SVR inside in an aquarium and groom the TVR in the larger pond.
Sigh... it's a bit of a headache trying to look for a rack to place tubs on top of one another

Update : I have also sold my female telescope butterfly. I think some times we get so drawn into the hobby that It can get out of control and overwhelming. Anyway I decided I wanted to step back and concentrate on ranchus for now.
I'm still what I want to do with my oranda which I bought on impulse from a pet store about 1.5-2 months ago. 😧

Ranchu update @ 5.5 months

Here's a quick update on my ranchu babies now at 5.5 months.
I'm glad that I stuck to it and continued to raise them. The uncoloured ones (which I feared were going to stay wild coloured) have finally started to change. This happened when I put one of the largest ones (the uncoloured ones tended to be larger than the others that coloured up quicker) into my main pond. My main also receives a few hours of morning sun and I think this has helped with the colour change.

Ranchu fry 4 months

Today decided to take some updated photos and video of my ranchu babies.
Unfortunately, since I was away on holidays for 2 weeks, they were fed very minimally and had no water changes (except a top up) so they did not really get a chance to grow much since the last blog post.

However since being back (it's been 1 week) I have been much more proactive on feeding more blood worms and doing more water changes. I have also culled the last few which were growing to long, which is evidence of the wild carp gene trying to revert itself. Also culled the last few with collapsed bung mouths. They were getting worse and would only continue to get worse as they got bigger. Also they probably wouldn't be able to eat normal size pellets.

I then also separated them again into two batches. One batch of smaller ones are in my larger black tub. This tub originally housed my tvr but those I have since placed into my main pond.

The larger batch are in the same tank but since there are less of them they have more space to move and grow. This way I can really focus on this batch and their water quality won't be compromised as easily.
I prefer the tank as i can easily grow wall algae in which they like to forage and need really, as a supplement to their pellet diet.

The batch below are almost 3 cm long now. They are definitely a lot fatter then before. And can start to see a teeny tiny bit of wen starting to thicken and grow.  :)

I must say, I have definitely learnt a lot with this first batch of fry. When I get a chance to raise a new batch of eggs, I will definitely feed a lot more BBS early on and for a bit longer. I'm hoping that the next batch will be this size at around 1-2 months old.

Unfortunately in my main pond, I lost another female fish :(
My black wild colour I called "batman" suffered internal bacterial infection. I have a feeling it was due to having too much sand in my pond as substrate. As since I usually am home to clean and do water change at least once a week it usually isn't a problem. But I think being away for 2 weeks and not having the substrate stirred caused anaerobic bacteria to grow and unfortunately she was the fish to get sick :(
It's unfortunate and I'm a bit sad but this is the learning part of the hobby. Also because antibiotics are strictly regulated here its quite difficult to get certain medicines.
Oh well.. we move on and learn from it. Since then I have removed about a bucket worth of sand. I'll continue to remove more when I can and if needed.
Fingers crossed the rest do not fall ill!