River Tank Babies!!!

[Emma Turner]

Thank you for all your comments. Interesting to know about the chenis, thank you.

Emma

[LES..]

Fun with the lights on? I'd say! We have a very interesting dynamic appearing in our tank. A few weeks ago i had really good gravel vac under all the stones and bog wood in the tank, naturally this required a lot of the decoration in the tank to be shifted around to get into all the nooks now although all the decoration went back into approximately the original positions there was enough disruption in the tank to cause a power shift between the dominant males in the tank. The original alpha loach defiantly lost his position to the challenger for a few days before re-asserting himself and staking a claim on a collection of smaller stones. The new guy is now lording over a single large stone on the other side of the tank. These territories are obscured from each other. Earlier this week i observed one of our females exhibiting clear mating behaviour with the new guy lots of tubercle ruffling and backing down into the scrapes when one of our juveniles happened to swim by, i think the new guy is a little insecure as he felt the need to immediately see off the little one leaving the female all by herself. Clearly miffed by this she upped sticks and took herself over to the other male and started the breeding dance with him. I was not able to see if any eggs were laid we will just have to watch out for the fry in a couple of weeks.

This all took place in the early evening with the lights on.

[Emma Turner]

Very interesting report LES.. Thank you for taking the time to reply. I'll just have to keep on watching the Sewellias....

Emma

[Emma Turner]

Well I thought it was about time for an update! Took these pics earlier today 17-11-06, some better than others. Please excuse the snails and snail eggs once again :









In the following pic, you can see the smaller fry from the 2nd spawn in the background:


The following 2 pics are of the lone fry from that 2nd spawning, also taken today:





The fish from the first batch are now 21.5mm TL.

Emma

[mikev]

Nice pics!

I think I see fin fences on a couple of photos...so they are nearly adults...

Hmmm.....retroactively, it is interesting at what age did the sex differences showed up? Did you pay attention?

[Emma Turner]

To be honest mikev, it is near impossible to see any 'mini fences' with the human eye, as these fish really are still very small and are in an unlit tank (receives natural light) which makes it even harder to see detail. All I have to go on are the pics, and this latest batch are with my new camera which has a lot more megapixels than the old one.

Emma

[mikev]

Oh well,,,....

If you happen to see them sitting on the glass, maybe you could take an underside picture? I'm curious to see if the fin shape is all the same or different.

[Emma Turner]

Will do. I would have taken some today, but they were being quite stubborn and mostly hiding out of view. I think they have got to that stage where they know to hide once they see the camera approaching....

[helen nightingale]

they have wonderfull yellow colouring on them. beautiful

im glad to see you are getting on well with the new camera

[Martin Thoene]

I think you're just seeing the light reflecting on those thick front pectoral rays Mike. My male was around 1.5 inches before his fences developed.

Emma....they're beyond cute! I love that second to last pic. He looks too cute sitting on that bluish coloured stone.

I just finished doing this: http://community.loaches.com/articles/s ... -aquariums (Sewellia fans get tissues )



Martin.

[mickthefish]

just stunning emma,
i love seeing young fish.

[Emma Turner]

Thank you all.
Martin, the habitat article looks fantastic!

Emma

[Graeme Robson]

Fintastic!!!

Lovely!

[Jim Powers]

Great pics, Emma!

[Emma Turner]

Thank you.

mikev, as promised, I did manage to get an underside pic today, but only of one of the specimens - the others were all hiding away....



Emma