My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY
Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 5:57 am
Hi all,
I've had the gastromyzon species of borneo suckers before, and spent a lot of money on buying lots of them. Unfortunately some of them wouldn't survive long, some died of the patchy disease (I wish I had some antibiotics for them), some wouldn't adapt to feeding properly, and then lastly a dragon fly nymph hatched in the tank and it stalked and killed the last remaining 6 gastromyzon. I also had 12 medium sized sewellia lineolata, but lost 6 or 7 of them to the same dragon fly nymph. (this was probably a year ago).
This was how the tank looked back then. It is 30cm x 30cm and 1meter long. It has a propellor style powerhead at one end (near the heater), with above that a large hang-on-back filter. There is round river gravel and large rocks in the tank. And very high lighting above it to promote lots of aglae on the rocks. The tank has a brilliant front right-to-left flow, and then along the back behind the rocks it flows left-to-right. There are lots of eddies in and around the rocks as well.
About 8 months ago I purchased 4 very large wild-caught Sewellia sp spotted. They were a bit larger than the 4 Sewellia lineolata that I have in another tank, and over twice as large as the medium sized sewellia lineolata in the tank they were joining. By this stage I had worked out a reliable method of feeding the fish.
In the picture below you can see the size difference, and the coloring difference between the stripy lineolata and the spotted species.
I feed them a variety of dry feeds that I grind up in a pepper grinder. There is also a very healthy population of black worms in the gravel that keeps the detritus levels down and gives the fish some live food (if they desire). Every couple of days I also feed two slices of zuchini, weighted down. And a few times I week I feed some blood worms or brine shrimp or other type of frozen live food. Most feeding times I turn off all filters and the airpump so that the food will tend to settle.
Then in December I decided to rearrange the layout of the rocks in the tank, and remove a lot of the littler rocks. And I discovered this little guy:
I didn't see many others, but I was a bit gung-ho with my re-arranging before I noticed the baby. Of the few others that I saw, only one of them survived the re-arrange.
Unfortunately a few weeks later in the heat of summer (32degrees in the tank!) I changed the water too quickly and the temperature dropped too fast and 3 of the spotted sewellia became shocked and only two of them recovered. I won't make that mistake ever again. Since that moment I was always worried that I had inadvertantly killed one of the breeding fish. And a few weeks after that water change I also stopped seeing the little baby.
However, I kept up the frequent water changes. My water changes are often done by simply using a clear hose to suck up individual snails out of the tank. I filtering the waste water through a large fine weave net to catch the snails as the water tumbles into a bucket. The snails then became snacks for my clown loaches or the loaches in the other 6ft tank. The water is then tipped onto my strawberries, and fresh water replaced into the tank.
And I kept up the high quality feeding.
It is winter here in Australia now (not that Brisbane where I live gets very cold), and the house average temperature is 21-22 degrees Celcius. So I need to heat the water in the tanks. I use a digital thermostat with dual heating and cooling relay controls. The thermostat allows me to adjust the temperature of the tank in 0.1 degree increments without actually adjusting the thermostat on the heater element. I have so many heaters of different origin that I don't trust the 'temp gauge' on them. So to reduce the chance of me adjusting the aquarium heater too low or too high, I use a thermostat to control the power to the heater. So over the course of a fortnight I can raise the water temp from 24degrees up to 28.5, and then I do a large water change of half the tank (with a VERY slow introduction of the water) and I lower the set point of my thermostat back to 23-24 degrees. I can't do this normally because in summer the ambient house temperature is a nice 27degrees, and with the high lights on the tank the water can often easily get up to 31degrees (which never seems to bother the fish in this tank unless I do a crazy water change, such as what I did above that killed one of my fish).
Then 3 weeks ago I started seeing fry again. I was incredibely releived.
This picture probably has 2-3 other fry in it that isn't circled, but between the quality of the Samsung Galaxy sII camera on macro and all the scratches in the glass I was unable to find them in the photo for you. But I do think there were at least two other fry visible to my eyes when I took the photo. (taken on the 10th May).
Water changes are done 2-4 buckets at a time now. Every 2-3 days. Lots and LOTS of feeding of small amounts of ground up food, as well as the zucchini slices. It is amazing to see them skittering around the adults. I once saw an adult completely cover a little baby, but a moment later the baby came dashing out from underneath.
Almost everywhere I look in the tank now there is movement of sewellia fry. I guess that there might be close to 25 of them, probably from at least two different spawns as there are two distinct sizes amongst them. At the end of the tank where most of the above photos are taken are about 15 fry.
I am now building another diy thermostat for my other sewellia tank to better control the temperature in that tank. I would love to put all of them in a 4 or 5 foot long tank, but I don't want to disrupt the current breeding.
As soon as I can source some anti bacterial medicine to treat the patchy disease I'll start setting up another tank for the gastromyzon.
I'll keep posting updates.
But I have some questions for readers: I want these fry to grow fast, but I have no idea on what the best feed would be for them. And I also don't know if I should take them out and put them into a small 2ft or a smaller 10gal tank, without varying water temperatures, and without adults competeing for food (not that it bothers the little guys when it comes to their size and getting into all the crevices between the rocks and pepples and gravel). Anyone have thoughts to offer me?
Cheers, Matt
I've had the gastromyzon species of borneo suckers before, and spent a lot of money on buying lots of them. Unfortunately some of them wouldn't survive long, some died of the patchy disease (I wish I had some antibiotics for them), some wouldn't adapt to feeding properly, and then lastly a dragon fly nymph hatched in the tank and it stalked and killed the last remaining 6 gastromyzon. I also had 12 medium sized sewellia lineolata, but lost 6 or 7 of them to the same dragon fly nymph. (this was probably a year ago).
This was how the tank looked back then. It is 30cm x 30cm and 1meter long. It has a propellor style powerhead at one end (near the heater), with above that a large hang-on-back filter. There is round river gravel and large rocks in the tank. And very high lighting above it to promote lots of aglae on the rocks. The tank has a brilliant front right-to-left flow, and then along the back behind the rocks it flows left-to-right. There are lots of eddies in and around the rocks as well.
About 8 months ago I purchased 4 very large wild-caught Sewellia sp spotted. They were a bit larger than the 4 Sewellia lineolata that I have in another tank, and over twice as large as the medium sized sewellia lineolata in the tank they were joining. By this stage I had worked out a reliable method of feeding the fish.
In the picture below you can see the size difference, and the coloring difference between the stripy lineolata and the spotted species.
I feed them a variety of dry feeds that I grind up in a pepper grinder. There is also a very healthy population of black worms in the gravel that keeps the detritus levels down and gives the fish some live food (if they desire). Every couple of days I also feed two slices of zuchini, weighted down. And a few times I week I feed some blood worms or brine shrimp or other type of frozen live food. Most feeding times I turn off all filters and the airpump so that the food will tend to settle.
Then in December I decided to rearrange the layout of the rocks in the tank, and remove a lot of the littler rocks. And I discovered this little guy:
I didn't see many others, but I was a bit gung-ho with my re-arranging before I noticed the baby. Of the few others that I saw, only one of them survived the re-arrange.
Unfortunately a few weeks later in the heat of summer (32degrees in the tank!) I changed the water too quickly and the temperature dropped too fast and 3 of the spotted sewellia became shocked and only two of them recovered. I won't make that mistake ever again. Since that moment I was always worried that I had inadvertantly killed one of the breeding fish. And a few weeks after that water change I also stopped seeing the little baby.
However, I kept up the frequent water changes. My water changes are often done by simply using a clear hose to suck up individual snails out of the tank. I filtering the waste water through a large fine weave net to catch the snails as the water tumbles into a bucket. The snails then became snacks for my clown loaches or the loaches in the other 6ft tank. The water is then tipped onto my strawberries, and fresh water replaced into the tank.
And I kept up the high quality feeding.
It is winter here in Australia now (not that Brisbane where I live gets very cold), and the house average temperature is 21-22 degrees Celcius. So I need to heat the water in the tanks. I use a digital thermostat with dual heating and cooling relay controls. The thermostat allows me to adjust the temperature of the tank in 0.1 degree increments without actually adjusting the thermostat on the heater element. I have so many heaters of different origin that I don't trust the 'temp gauge' on them. So to reduce the chance of me adjusting the aquarium heater too low or too high, I use a thermostat to control the power to the heater. So over the course of a fortnight I can raise the water temp from 24degrees up to 28.5, and then I do a large water change of half the tank (with a VERY slow introduction of the water) and I lower the set point of my thermostat back to 23-24 degrees. I can't do this normally because in summer the ambient house temperature is a nice 27degrees, and with the high lights on the tank the water can often easily get up to 31degrees (which never seems to bother the fish in this tank unless I do a crazy water change, such as what I did above that killed one of my fish).
Then 3 weeks ago I started seeing fry again. I was incredibely releived.
This picture probably has 2-3 other fry in it that isn't circled, but between the quality of the Samsung Galaxy sII camera on macro and all the scratches in the glass I was unable to find them in the photo for you. But I do think there were at least two other fry visible to my eyes when I took the photo. (taken on the 10th May).
Water changes are done 2-4 buckets at a time now. Every 2-3 days. Lots and LOTS of feeding of small amounts of ground up food, as well as the zucchini slices. It is amazing to see them skittering around the adults. I once saw an adult completely cover a little baby, but a moment later the baby came dashing out from underneath.
Almost everywhere I look in the tank now there is movement of sewellia fry. I guess that there might be close to 25 of them, probably from at least two different spawns as there are two distinct sizes amongst them. At the end of the tank where most of the above photos are taken are about 15 fry.
I am now building another diy thermostat for my other sewellia tank to better control the temperature in that tank. I would love to put all of them in a 4 or 5 foot long tank, but I don't want to disrupt the current breeding.
As soon as I can source some anti bacterial medicine to treat the patchy disease I'll start setting up another tank for the gastromyzon.
I'll keep posting updates.
But I have some questions for readers: I want these fry to grow fast, but I have no idea on what the best feed would be for them. And I also don't know if I should take them out and put them into a small 2ft or a smaller 10gal tank, without varying water temperatures, and without adults competeing for food (not that it bothers the little guys when it comes to their size and getting into all the crevices between the rocks and pepples and gravel). Anyone have thoughts to offer me?
Cheers, Matt
