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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:49 pm
by The Kapenta Kid
wasserscheu wrote:
Mine do not eat the vegetables I give them, but they like all kinds of melons (perhaps because it´s soft?).
Try parboiling, i.e. boiling the veggies for a short time. This softens them without destroying all the vitamins and may make them more palatable for the fish.

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:20 am
by wasserscheu
Thanks TKK, I´ve tried all that stuff, the same even applies to all my loaches too... I kept a thread busy re that. I surrendered, as they even spit out vegie-flakes, except the gobies, and perhaps the pangio, all other fish denie the vegie-flakes too, can you believe such conspiracy :!:

I even cut the surface of vatrious veggies, so very tiny cubes could be torn out by the fish, but no... perhaps I´m not really patient enough and need to try at least 10 time or so. I´ll look into trying again - thanks for the motivation.

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:50 pm
by The Kapenta Kid
Sounds like trying to feed your kid spinach if he doesn't like the stuff even though it may be good for him. You can't win :lol:

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:29 am
by soul-hugger
These are absolutely beautiful fish. I saw some similar to these a couple of weeks ago at my local fish store. I wanted them, but left them behind because the people there could give me almost no information on them. I'm almost certain now they were gobies. Do they like to be in warm or cool water?

I also wanted to compliment you on your tanks. They are very well maintained and decorated. If your fish will breed then that means they are happy.

Definitely don't worry about your English. To have the internet means we no longer have to be divided by space. Here we can come together and speak the language of the things we enjoy no matter what part of the world we live in, and share knowledge and conversation with each other. I think that is great!

Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:34 am
by odyssey
Hi wasserscheu, TKK.
Your gobies are epicures to like melons.

They graze an alga.
However, it is not only a simple alga that they eat.
They take in bacterial film and others with an alga.
I learned it in this site.
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/aufwuchs.php

Hi soul-hugger, nice to meet you.
Thank you continuously.

They like warm water.
I think that probably their habitat is the Indonesian outskirts.
Their close species is distributed over the Japanese southernmost extreme, and it is northern limit of their distribution.

I uploaded three videos in Youtube more.
It is the scene that they eat an adhesion alga and a conferva.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=u-s-tXV5KjY
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=FCWO2cSKKFU
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtyB37ijaY


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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 3:56 am
by wasserscheu
Very nice pictures and videos, thank you. I love the pic that shows the upper lip extended. I also made pictures like that and it took a lot of time to catch them like that.
The word "Aufwuchs" from the Odysses's link sounds very German and means "stuff that grows up" or "grows on something". Germans use the same word. In Aufwuchs there lives also a lot of plancton. I think cleaning tanks too much may take out some important food source.
Fish like Otocynclus and most likely Stiphodon need well etsablished tanks that already have such "aufwuchs".

Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 3:21 pm
by The Kapenta Kid
wasserscheu wrote: The word "Aufwuchs" from the Odysses's link sounds very German and means "stuff that grows up" or "grows on something". Germans use the same word. In Aufwuchs there lives also a lot of plancton. I think cleaning tanks too much may take out some important food source.
Fish like Otocynclus and most likely Stiphodon need well etsablished tanks that already have such "aufwuchs".
Yes, aufwuchs is indeed the German term which has been incorporated into English and is widely used, especially in connexion with African Great Lake cichlids.
Germans were prominent in making the study and keeping of African cichlids an important part of scientific and hobby fishkeeping.
It probably dates back to before the First World War when Tanganyika, Burundi, and Rwanda were German colonies.
To this day the journal of the American Cichlid Association is called the Buntbarsche Bulletin. (for non German speakers, Buntbarsch is German for cichlid).
One of the glories of the English language is that when there is no suitable native term available it will shamelessly appropriate a foreign one and treat it as if it had been English all along, e.g. dropping the initial capitalisation of German nouns like aufwuchs or schadenfreude.

The French, officially, try to take a different approach :lol:

Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 10:49 am
by odyssey
Hi! wasserscheu, TKK .

Thank you for explaining it about "Aufwuchs" in detail.
My English and Japanese dictionary does not have the words called "Aufwuchs". When I examined an alga in Web, I happend to know it.
wasserscheu wrote: I think cleaning tanks too much may take out some important food source.
I think quite so, too.
An ugly waterweed covered to algae or the dead leaf melting a little are very important for them.
But I think it to be an unbearable scene for most aquarists.
I try, on the contrary, to widen such ugly surface more.
Because Anubias.nana is very tough and never dies, I think that it is the most suitable waterweed for it.

I introduce the typical episode that happened with my water tank.
The first picture expresses it.
I have lost sight of a male of S.plewensis before. I thought that he certainly died.
However, two months later, he survived in an outside filtration tank.
The color of the body faded, but did not get thinner very much.
Because light for photosynthesises is shut out in the filtration tank, the alga cannot spread.
It seems that he ate only the slime, mucous membrane of filtration bacteria.

Stiphodon goby seems to like something slimy.
The second picture is the scene that S.percnopterygionus female eats slime on the immediate top of the waterline.
Aufwuchs, algae or bacteria colony or fungus or lichen ?
It is the place where they can reach when I add water, and water level rose.
They seem to expect this time and climb it immediately when water level rises.

I uploaded a video of such a scene in Youtube.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=H8V250ic1_Q

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Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 5:31 am
by wasserscheu
This is a very interesting report, thank you Odyssey. We share the same philosophy about tank cleaning, that is great - I think it is important to understand that algae and some other stuff is present in nature too and is good for the live in the tanks.
Some people also keep an open filter inside their tanks, so the animals can access the filter material and feed on it.

I have also watched S. to suck watersurface to eat the biofilm on it.


Tkk, Germans are importing English words like crazy (in the truest sense of that meaning). Germans don't figure that it is the way you say things and not where the word comes from - German could sound different when spoken with more enthusiasm.
I found it sweet, as someone asked in a German forum how he could "boostern" (merging of an English word with German grammar) his bloodworms... I will be droping him a little note quickly that he was boostering my mind in a sweet way...it's one of my favourit words currently.

Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 2:10 pm
by NancyD
Tkk, Germans are importing English words like crazy (in the truest sense of that meaning). Germans don't figure that it is the way you say things and not where the word comes from - German could sound different when spoken with more enthusiasm.
I found it sweet, as someone asked in a German forum how he could "boostern" (merging of an English word with German grammar) his bloodworms... I will be droping him a little note quickly that he was boostering my mind in a sweet way...it's one of my favourit words currently
Wolfram, ein Prosit der Gemutlichkeit (I hope this is appropriate, my husband told me this phrase & he doesn't know a lot of German)

habitat of Stiphodon goby

Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 10:55 am
by odyssey
Hi wasserscheu, NancyD.

Enormous English words are imported in Japanese too.
The Japanese elderly are troubled with the too sudden change of the native language. I am sometimes a few, too.

This time, I introduce several places scenery of the habitat of Stiphodon goby .

(1) Somewhere in China
http://www.tropica.cn/html/75/t-43275.html

(2) Sumatra, Indonesia
http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~fishmate/sg-pisang.html

(3) Saipan, Micronesia (Taro' report)
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/ri ... an003.html

(4) Guam, Micronesia (Taro' report)
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/ri ... r_guam.htm

(5) Palau, Micronesia
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(6) Okinawa Japan
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 11:05 am
by Cup
God, this is the best topic ever.

Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 11:07 am
by Graeme Robson
Fantastic pictures!!!! 8)

Thanks for sharing them with us, Odyssey! :D

Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 5:17 pm
by The Kapenta Kid
Yes. And great links too.

Arigato gozaimasu Odyssey San.

Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 6:43 pm
by NancyD
Fabulous! Thank you very much for sharing all the wonderful pics, odyssey, they are fascinating.