Hillstream ID

[mikev]

TBH, I'm rather pessimistic about being able to do this.
(I did this before with a skinny B.Kubotai, so I do understand what you mean, but with 8 fishes involved and five of them babies I'll not be able to even locate them in the tank.)

There may be a way to solve most of my problems: move them to the tank with the Hara's. Both species eat the same food, and Hara's are not very fast eaters either.

The main problem is that I still don't know what kills the other lizards in the tank: the only possibility is that they go into the powerhead through the outtake, and this is total nuts....or is it?

[mikev]

OMG...they actually do have some entertainment potential.

One of the babies hunted the bloodworms thet were circling on top of the water, in the middle of the tank...it climbed all the way up on a tank wall, aimed, jumped, grabbed a bloodworm, ended up on the other side of the tank. Jumped back for another bloodworm. Another baby just joined it. Very impressive.

PS. It appears that at least in this species the young fish (the "babies" are skinny fish about 1"-1.25") are considerably more active than the adults. The babies no longer care about me watching them. The three adults hunt only on the ground and are very careful.
I wonder if this is the case with other lizards? Confuzona babies are incredibly active. Vanmanenia's are the same as adults (but I never saw 1" Vanmanenia's, only 1.5")

[Jim Powers]

I've seen mine take floating bloodworms too, but never in the middle of the tank. That must have been fun to watch.

[mikev]

Very cool.

To duplicate, the requirements are
(1) very young fish
(2) small narrow tank (I don't think they will try to cross a 29g this way)
(3) being able to float the worms in the right place.
(the fish is too dumb to go for dried worms....or maybe too smart...)


PS. Cannot reproduce this anymore. They now figured out that it is also possible to simply swim up and take what they want. Still cute.

They are more interested in floating worms than they ones that drifted to the ground (and are much easier to take).

[mikev]

This is absolutely impossible fish to quarantine.

I'm supposed to observe them for disease signs, right? So they got a really empty 10g tank, with no place to hide: no plants, no bubble filter, only a small pile of stones in the middle (which is the biofilter, ceramics taken from a much larger system). No place to hide -- but still I never can find all eight. 5, 6, and 7 -- if I'm really lucky. Now, if I drop a few bloodworms in, it will be eight all right, but this is cheating, and I still want to know how they hide.

So I moved all stones, one by one. Still 7. I dropped a bloodworm in. 8. Just looked into the tank: 6. Nuts.

---

[Jim Powers]

They are great at hiding in plain site when they want to.

[mikev]

Uncanny.

I _think_ they will make it (:D) : 12 days so far, no problem, and no dead in the store either. The store _will_ have some dead before long: they are feeding them with algae wafers only (I told them twice to no effect), and I can already see that my smallest ones are not too thin, while the ones in the store are beginning to look like CWS.