It's extremely difficult to breed with a single pair, especially if one dies. I suggest you start with six or ten fish in a species only tank. Hopefully 6 males and 4 females. You will have even better odds with a second tank containing 6 males and 4 females too. And even higher probability of spawn...

Yes, I use ice in the evening to trigger a spawn the next morning. Instead of cumbersome water changes, I also boost dissolved oxygen with a home made reactor and oxygen cylinder. On tetras, I drain 80% water out and do a gradual overnight water change via airline siphon using rain water and a small...

Will you be breeding? Keeping a large fish species collection? Photography? Aquascaping? Maintaining species only tanks? Primarily bottom dwellers or keeping a mix of different water types and habbitats? These will determine the best size tanks and consequently the best room layout. There is a wealt...

Female doesn't look well conditioned but the male is certainly TEE positioned and trying to squeeze eggs from her.

It shouldn't be hard to find eggs if spawning was successful.

Having warm water is great. You are very fortunate. I would raise and buffer the water hardness with coral rubble chunks (or similar) which will keep your pH higher and steady. Perhaps others can offer water chemistry advice. On newly hatched fish, I use small glass tanks (30cm x 15xm x 15cm) on ver...

It's going to depend on your water change regime. If your able to keep food and fresh incoming water regularly replenished, the growing fish fry can be kept in those breeder boxes longer - similar to cage culturing food fish in rivers. What are your plans for all the fish? I wouldn't recommend those...

This is what I used to collect anchor cat eggs.

I don't mix batches of fry as different sizes means the larger fish out compete the smaller for food and it's impossible to recognise/ cull the runts. Also very labour intensive having to size sort when harvesting for sale. You can make temporary tanks out of plastic totes, polystyrene fish boxes or...

Hello Darrel, Thank you for the article suggestion. Interesting but inconclusive reading creating unsatisfactory learnings. I think we already know the importance of microbial activities especially in plant root zones. Similar to moving bed bio reactors - biofilm filters (bacterial colony diversific...

Emphasise the advantages provided by real person (face to face) contact that can't be obtained online. Some obvious examples are; collection trips to creek/lake, invitation visits to aquaculture facilities, ornamental fish importer/breeders, behind the scene public aquarium or large aquarium retail,...

I deliberately keep light levels low in my fish rooms to reduce tank maintenance however to provide the vivid pop of intense natural colours that all wild caught fish have, I culture 3 x 2000L tubs of green water algae on a weekly rotation which is flood fed (opening a valve) through my tanks - adul...

I have not read through all the posted pages on this topic but my city council water often has high levels of ammonia, partly because of chloramine dose fluctuations and partly because of cleaning activities. There is no prior warning, no indication how long this lasts and with several fish rooms, h...

Not sure what this paper shows (or doesn't show).

I keep and breed plenty of sailfin plecos that readily swim up, invert to eat floating flake food. Some of them around 50cm.

Great story! Welcome to the forum.
I've sent you va private message.

Planaria are your best friends! They provide you an early warning your tank is in trouble, the next stage is fish begin dying. A wake up call to your fish keeping skills. And in addition, planaria are the best mop up crew to remedy your errors. Besides providing an excellent live food source for you...

I'd buy a Red Tail Catfish badge (or ten) if one exists?

Centrifugal force will fix it. If you can't "flick it back" by hand then securely tape perpendicularly to a drill bit in a variable speed drill.

Yes, don't remove eggs from the cave if you are damaging them. Just use the cave as your hatcher.

Everyone has a slightly different way of fish keeping. Although it has been a few years since I kept and bred L numbers, I was keeping so many that it became too time consuming to keep checking each tank and each cave for eggs. What I did instead was dedicate a small fish room entirely to L numbers ...

I've got some in a 2m deep tank without any issues. No problem with them swimming to the surface. Breed quite happily.

Good to see your fish are training you well. Wonder what else they have planned for you?

I find PVC pipe and terracotta pots/caves/pipe all very artificial visually and both equally ugly but all of my tanks are in purpose built fish sheds. It's more important for me to maintain tank cleanliness and able to monitor fish health - behaviours - feeding. I have quite a few tanks. So my exper...

Not aesthetically pleasing but comforting to fish and easy to maintain, I use PVC pipe in several variations: 1) Three lengths of PVC in a triangular - double layer arrangement, all parallel. 2 pieces at bottom base, 1 piece above. If the fish is predatory, the top piece is shorter providing clear e...

It's quite common and very human to formulate a classification system based on ones own unique needs. Different use creates different perspectives and priorities.

Go for it. Even if it only helps yourself, that's reward enough.

I haven't hatched T intermedia but when I have difficult to hatch species in numbers, I sterilise the hatching tank & equipment with light chlorine then dechlorinate. Elevating the water temperature with a heater greatly increases cell development rate and you can reduce fungal growth with an ov...

Having two pumps running on the same circuit is quite different from having a spare pump ready to swap in. When one pump fails (which has happened several times over the many years of my fish keeping) the air volume drops considerably and easily noticed. It's one of those, wish I'd tried this - know...

Some beautiful catfish in your collection. I'd love to have jaguar cats. I've only seen one specimen once in my country thirty years ago which was $2000+ Are you happy with your power backup solution now? I stay away from those all in one solutions because if one component fails, the whole unit stil...

Hello Cartouche, are the eggs fertilised? Egg - cell development is very obvious under a microscope. If eggs are developing, do they stall at same/similar stages? My initial suspicion is low dissolved oxygen or overdose of anti fungal medication. Developing eggs have a high oxygen demand. Do you de-...

Yes, fish are often mislabelled, mis identified, etc. That's life.

I haven't kept this species. Synodontis are relatively rare in my country, usually $1500 - $3000 each. For the species I do have, I keep broodstock together in large tanks/tubs. Have duplicate colonies for redundancy as it takes many years to source & grow. It's part of fish keeping - observatio...